Single Comment

Greenwood refers to ''award-winner'' presumably TamerSpiel. In 84-square Contest, among the judges I consistently rated Tamerspiel the lowest, as Peter Aronson in the group may recall. The least reason of all is the style of write-up. It starts ''Hi'', as if Rules thought up on spur of moment, and indeed the Entry just made or missed the deadline. The Rules are in fact still hard to sort out for bad writing. Other reasons generally are overcomplication in promotion rules, unoriginal piece mixes, and that one new Mutator, potentially interesting, not explained. For example, Guard promotes to Champion. Now it says in turn that Champion promotes to SuperCav. So, the intention is that there is double, or second, promotion allowed. First, that is not explained well or at all, and the reader must interpolate. Second, when re-promoting, presumably it must be at the other corner (Citadel) square. So, unfortunate players must keep track of where such pieces have been and are going. What a sorry morass. Contrast is great with nice Renaissance Chess two decades earlier. For all that, major reason to rate Tamerspiel 'Poor' is the ridiculously-high number of piece-types, over 20 counting promotees. Among several hundred rated CVs with specialization in Large CVs, TamerSpiel ranks within the lowest decile (-10%) with Omega. Notice that Game Courier TamerSpiel logs go uncompleted; there were other games of Tamerspiel dropped mid-play in the first year no longer recording, or deleted, as players ask, why be subjected to this? Two 'Excellent's for this game are by Greenwood himself and the 3rd of 3 by non-member ID.