From: "Dr.Eduard Werner" GMX DE> Date: 11 mar 2001 Subject: Shogi ladder freeze Dear Shogi-ladder players, I was very astonished that I received quite a few responses to my last postings, but none of you wanted to have the ladder as it is. (Thanks for all the constructive suggestions and help!) So I declare the (old) Shogi ladder frozen. Games can still be played, challenges issued and so on, but they will not effect the old ladder--which will probably still be available on shogi.net for historical reasons--but the new one: The new ladder will take effect as soon as I have made all the necessary changes to my programs and updates to the ladderrule file, but no later than April, the 1st. The changes are: - The ladder will be sorted by the new Correspondence Shogi Rating. For players with an ELO rating, this will be the ELO number. Players with a grade, but no ELO rating, receive the ELO of the weakest player with the same grade and an ELO -1. If nobody with an ELO has the same grade, I have assigned the ELO of the weakest player -50 of the next higher grade. This way the initial sorting is ELO first, then grade, and from now on we can only work with the ELO. New players w.o. any rating get an initial CSR of 400. Please tell me if I am to take into account any other rating of yours (you might have a Shogidojo rating, for instance). I have assigned the following ELO numbers on the grounds given (if you want to disagree, please do it now): Lawrence Chai 1358 Yoshiaki Nakanishi 1835 Simon Wilcock 833 Harold Shore 1284 David Keeble 833 Atsushi Fukuchi 1707 Takeshi Miyao 1255 Mitto Oda 1255 Farrel Bullock 1141 Robert Scott 1284 Malcom Maynard 1358 Andrew Wood 1350 Victor Hinchliffe 984 Randy Andrews 1255 Hans van Velzen 984 Bill Gaudry 1627 Mike Facer 1707 Leonard Hirsch 975 Hitoshi Nishimura 1707 - You have 30 days for 10 moves. This is more flexible than 1 move every n days, and more sensible, since in some cases you might want to take your time, while in other cases you might be able to answer immediately. Please log the days taken and left for the last move with the move you're sending. (You might also consider using Richards PBeM-server on www.gamerz.net which logs the moves and provides you with an ASCII board automatically.) - You always have one (assigned) opponent, you can challenge additionally if you want to. There will be no limits to the number of challenges or who you challenge, but each player will have two new positions on the ladderrank file: a number saying how many more games you will accept (the default will be 3, but you can adjust this individually), and a date (or nothing), saying when you will return from an absence, so you won't be bothered with challenges when you don't want any more games or are on holiday. If you are available for a game, however, a challenge can't be declined, unless you have already played a game against the same opponent during the last 12 months. If both players agree, handicaps can be given (then the game will be evaluated differently, of course). All the best Edi