1. chocaholic
2. All-inMcLovin
3. sixfour
4. diskoteque
5. Victor
6. PoseidonCubed
7. g-bebe + alwardc4
8. The Rat
9. TTI
10. Supine
11. valenzuela


Structure: Five rounds—ABBAB.

Eligibility: You may draft players from the en passant era (the 15th century onward). Picks must be competitive human chessplayers. Computers, celebrities who dabble in chess, and house cats are not eligible.

Time limits: 3-hour limit for picks on weekdays. 5-hour limit on weekends. 1am to 9am EST dead time. Anyone who posts ITT or somewhere else during their turn must pick within an hour of said post even if they have more time—to keep things running smoothly and discourage any not-knowing-what-the-****-is-going-on. Try to PM your pick to someone if you won’t be here.

Format: This is a ~ten-year peak draft. Don’t be a nit about the number ten. For players with periods of willful inactivity, you can’t fill in the inactive gap with a projection of what could have been. The years of theirs you select, however, needn’t be contiguous (you can skip the gap), although the period you skip must be. The only projection allowed is...

Future projection: Be reasonable with projections. If you choose an active prodigy who has yet to peak, you can’t simply take whatever you project their next ten years to be; you have to take four non-projected years. This will prevent picks based entirely on speculation.

Replacement: This probably won’t happen, but anyone who disappears or continually drafts cats will be replaced.


Late entries: If you want to participate but missed the sign-up thread, you can get a spot at the end of the order until we have twelve drafters/teams. If we have twelve or we’ve reached the second round, see if someone will partner up.

Tournament: This draft is intended more for fun and general chess discussion than for any sort of serious competition. But if we have a tournament, each player will get their average ~ten-year peak strength. Match structure suggestions are appreciated. As far as tourney structure, we’ll decide between A) best four teams as judged get first-round byes, 12 → 8 → 4 → 2 → 1, and B) 12 → 6 → 3 –(latticed round-robin)→ 1.

Comparing eras: The level of competitive play has risen significantly over the ages. In this draft we'll adjust for that and make players of bygone eras competitively viable. But we won't adjust completely— e.g., if, hypothetically, the best player of the 15th century was the most dominant in history, in terms of the gap between the world's #1 and #2, he or she wouldn't be #1 value in this draft.

With past greats, both raw strength and skill relative to the era's other players are relevant factors. Chessmetrics isn’t the be-all and end-all of judging. It’s not great at accounting for raw strength, as John Nunn has explained (at the end of this page—Ctrl+F you might).

For simplicity’s sake, assume the mid-20th century to have around the same competitive level as the present day, the early-20th slightly weaker, and the 19th yet weaker but not significantly so.

Spreadsheet: Spreadsheet

frist

no, your 7th

you got your wish too, you're nowhere near 1st or 2nd pick

nice, 4th pick = the nuts imo.

i think there's 4 guys with a legit claim to #1 and i'm happy with any of 'em.

I have no idea how chess players will be ranked. Looks like this could be a very interesting thread to follow; hopefully it doesn't break apart.

I think there are only 2.

Interesting choice to hold this in "Sporting Events" rather than "Chess".

Hm, with focus on a ten-year peak instead of a combo of peak/longevity I think #1 isn't clear anymore.

My cat Spartacus has a 2562 FIDE rating.

Rules are very clear and well-outlined. Great job...should be fun!

Not that this should make any significant difference, but if we have a tournament, will all games be played using the modern FIDE time controls (40 moves/90 minutes)?

At this point chocaholic is almost skipped. If a couple or more pick in front of him, I'll adjust his order for future rounds.

Those are quite fast, historically. And it could break down into a difficult-to-resolve debate about which players play better at which speeds. So assume the time control is irrelevant and everyone is on an equal footing.

I think there's an obvious 1-2 so if they both go I'm ****ed

To me there is an obvious 3rd pick.

Add me up to the draft please

ready to pick if AIM picks soon

Am I allowed to pick now?

It seems like the obviousness of the first few picks depends really hard on how seriously you're taking the weighting between absolute strength and dominance over peers (i.e. a distinction between who the greatest players were and who the best players are.) I think no matter how you balance them there's a fairly obvious #1, but there's pretty quick divergence beyond that. This draft seems to me like it's more likely to reward strength relative to peers, as otherwise it degenerates quickly into sortbyelo....

If I had entered, I think I would have been sorely tempted to not even try to field the "best" team but just pick an entertaining team.

yes pick already

So sorry guys, I forgot we were starting today. I pick Garry Kasparov. Write-up to come.

mother****er

DUDE WTF I WAS JUST ABOUT TO PICK AND I WASN'T A DICK AND AUTO-PICKED WTF MAN

I ASKED IF I COULD PICK AND NOW YOU PICK?????????????

CAN I GET A RULING?

ruling is that you should have picked faster

1. You don't run this draft
2. I asked permission and for clarification BEFORE he posted his pick

TTI says he's almost skipped two and a half hours ago

it's a three hour clock

regardless, why are you arguing, you snooze you lose, #1 picked, you're #2, pick already