I really like the recent addition of Group Cycle and Wildcard tournaments. In my opinion, these features already satisfy most players' tournament needs.
However, I think there is still one important limitation: Yearly tournaments can last up to 24 hours, and during that time there may be no other tournaments running.
For example, if the current tournament is Yearly 3Check Arena, a player might know how to play 3Check but simply not want to play it. They then have to either play a game they don't want to play or wait until the 24-hour tournament ends.
I think it would be much better if multiple tournaments could run at the same time. The Yearly tournament could continue running normally, while shorter tournaments for other games could also be organized alongside it.
For example:
Yearly 3Check Arena — 24 hours
Chess960 Arena — 2 hours
Othello tournament — 1 hour
Group Cycle — 1 hour
Wildcard — 30 minutes
This would give players more freedom to choose what they want to play at any given time, without affecting people who are participating in the Yearly tournament.
I think this change could make PlayStrategy's tournament system much more flexible and closer to a system where almost every player can find something they enjoy at any time.
Thank you for considering the suggestion!

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Hi @Chauphuocloc thanks for the suggestion.
At this moment in time we find that giving users multiple options for tournaments ends up splitting the active players between tournaments. As we are still trying to grow the active player base and are yet to reach a critical mass where there are always some players around for each tournament we've gone for this approach.
Of course players are still welcome to play non-tournament games, or even create their own tournaments. Yearlys are only one day a week, and will still have the monthly Shield tournaments overlapping with them.
We'll see how the new tournament structure goes for a bit, and we may make changes in the future!

1

Thank you for replying to me playstrategy.org!

1

I agree with your point that players can still play normal games while a Yearly tournament is running.
However, in my experience, this doesn't really solve the problem for me because there are usually very few real players available in normal games. The pairing can take a very long time, and most of the time I can only find bots to play against.
In tournaments, on the other hand, there are usually real players and I can get games much more easily.
So my concern is not that there is literally nothing to play during a 24-hour Yearly tournament. Rather, it is that for players who don't want to play that particular variant, the normal game option often isn't a practical alternative because of the lack of active players.
That's why I think having some shorter tournaments running alongside a 24-hour Yearly would still be useful, even if the number of players in each tournament is relatively small.

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