Correspondence Tournaments

Dear lichess team,

I really like lichess.org, but what I am really missing is the opportunity to play correspondence tournaments.

Is there a specific reason, why it is not implemented here on lichess.org/? (other chess platform offer this option).

Thank you,
Eric

@ all, in case you also want to see this option on lichess.org, kindly join:
lichess.org/team/petition-for-correspondence-tournaments

(Btw. I am happy to read that lichess recruited a full-time mobile developer for the mobile app - good move)

@MrIr0nman said in #1:
> what I am really missing is the opportunity to play correspondence tournaments

What I wrongly assumed is that you were alone about this, but I see there's a bunch of people on that team.

So my suggestion for you would be to create a league for players on that team.

You can organize the team on your own, as others did before in other scenarios. From the top of my mind:
- Lichess4545 league for team competitions of 45+45. www.lichess4545.com/ the website is great, and bots to notify players on Slack and lichess
- ZH and ZH960 Leagues, sometimes organized through website, sometimes through a simple shared spreasheet
- ZH Underground arenas, organized from a lichess team + website (arenas were automatically created on lichess)
- ZH Nations Battles, just organized from a lichess team

The last 2 examples are especially relevant as they started as community initiatives, but eventually got enough traction and now they're officially handled from lichess (ok, the underground are no longer called that but they got back to having ZH arenas every hour which is what the community asked for).

I'd say go for it, and *after* there's enough interest then I think your request would make sense.

There is the Correspondence League on Lichess: lichess.org/team/correspondence-league. Please join!

@pepellou

Thank you for the quick reply and the references.

Not sure what ZH means, but you may explain me. :D

From my perspective the **usability** for the enduser is a key-aspect here! I would already loose some interest of anything what is not directly on lichess and what is organized outside the platform.

(What I would prefer:)
Correspondence tournaments should be set up directly by lichess-user on lichess.org. E.g. setting up a tournament with 100 players. Once 100 players are registered for the specific correspondence tournament the tournament will start, e.g. 10 groups á 10 players, first places will proceed playing in tournament.

I would prefer that lichess will define a number of users from which on it would be valuable to implement Correspondence Tournaments on lichess.org. Once a petition will reach this number, you may thing about implementing it.

Just my 2 cents ;) ...

I joined lichess.org from chess com mainly playing correspondence matches on chess com (from time to time 5 minute matches). Anything else I am not (personally) a fan of.

Thank you very much for your time and thoughts.
Eric

P.S.: Keep up your good work. Thank you.

@lexnederbragt said in #3:
> There is the Correspondence League on Lichess: lichess.org/team/correspondence-league. Please join!

Thank you, joined the league. Hopefully this will become a part of lichess.org at a certain point of time. Results will be hosted outside the platform and I can assume this is a bunch of extra work for some users. Thank you spending this extra time.

Greetings Eric

@MrIr0nman zh is slang for crazyhouse.

@MrIr0nman said in #4:
> Not sure what ZH means, but you may explain me. :D

Crazyhouse, sorry for the lingo :-)

About your proposal, I do understand your view, but I think lichess is mainly focused on live chess.
On the other hand, I don't imagine lichess just doing it for no reason and I personally would take more seriously a big community of players organizing leagues/tournaments than a list of players signing a petition.

I was trying to find the video where NoJoke explains how developing new features is like having a child (the "effort" is not creating them, but rather maintaining them and doing so in a sustainable way so you never have to delete them, as features are intended to be free forever).

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the video (but I recommend it if someone can link it), but I found one where he directly answers the question about correspondence tournaments (min 31:46):
youtu.be/FjaUPI-dHSk?t=1906

> "If there's enough demand for it we could consider it"

Thank you for your response.

Understand the maintaining part pretty well (doing some coding for iPhone lockscreens) and it can be annoying.

Nevertheless the answer is still a bit fluffy for me 🏼. Defining a scenario/number when a new feature makes sense to implement, would be great .

I am trying to join the external lichess.org options (having the results on external homepages. Personal data going to external page, too).

As of now I will go with 2 options, using lichess.org for normal correspondence matches and chess com to have a convenient way of playing correspondence tournaments.

Thank you again for providing answers.

Greetings. Eric.