Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 19, 2026, 8:29 PM
Well, there were two events in Yerevan, World Team Renju Championship and World Team Gomoku Championship. I was the team captain of Russia-1 in Renju and a player in Gomoku.
Long story short, we've failed in Renju (we could secure bronze but we had a disaster loss 1-3 with Poland which finished 7th) finishing 5th. Then I participated in Gomoku TWC, took 7.5 out of 10, didn't manage to become the best player on my board and we finished 3rd.
18 games in a week, 8*2 hrs per player in Renju, one day of rest and 10*70 mins per player in Gomoku. Really exhaustive.
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 19, 2026, 8:34 PM
By the way.
Some Czech, Polish and Russian players mentioned Pente. Armenia can host a face2face international Pente tournament if we find some sponsors. Are you interested? Quite far from USA but in USA you will gather only American players while in Yerevan or in other European country we can gather several countries.
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 19, 2026, 9:34 PM
Can you elaborate on the time rules or how it is setup? What is the 8 in 8*2 hrs? it's 2 hrs per move? you stay face to face all day til x moves or x time?
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 19, 2026, 10:06 PM
WTRC was played with 2 hrs + 30 secs. It means that both players have 2 hours on their clock; also 30 seconds are added to each player per move made by him. When it's not your turn to move, you may leave the table for toilet, some snacks or drinks. No chat, no electronic devices, no interactions in general until the game is finished.
Two rounds per day, so it's up to 10 hours of play. 9 rounds, 5 days. It was a Round Robin with 9 teams so 1 round was missing for each team; 8 games in total.
WTGC was played with 70 mins + 30 secs, 10 rounds. Sounds easier but only Aug 15th was 1 round, other days were 3 rounds per day.
It was a team tournament, each team consisted of 4 board players and some reserve players, up to 2. Each player is bound to some board (I was playing 4th board in both events, it's about some tournament strategy). When two teams meet, 1st board of the team A plays a game with 1st board of the team B, 2nd with 2nd and so on. Reserve player may play on any board instead of this particular board player.
The result depends on the number of game points achieved by each team.
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 19, 2026, 10:11 PM
Karlw, will be nice to meet in real =)
One more problem is finding sponsors. If it works, Armenian Federation can rent a good playing hall and organize everything. Maybe June 2027 is a good choice for it.
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 24, 2026, 12:28 PM
It would be great if such an event could be organized!
Out of curiosity, do you know how much it costs to organize an event like this, and what the main expenses are? For the tournament you just played, were there any additional registration fees for players or teams?
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 24, 2026, 1:44 PM
The cost of organization of these TWCs was approx 5k USD in total, I believe. The main costs: hall rent, awards (cups, medals etc), advertising (big banner in the hall, t-shirts), beverages (food and drinks during the tournament for participants). Also some boards and stones were purchased afaik. Referees worked for free this time.
With the cheaper tournament hall, no t-shirts, less foods/drinks it could be like 1k USD or even less.
Tournament fee was 30 EUR/player. Hotel which was recommended by hosts was about 40 eur/night. For Americans, the main cost should be the flight to Yerevan.
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 26, 2026, 12:33 AM
Ok, thanks. 5K might be a bit difficult to raise, but 1K sounds achievable.
I’m quite new here, so I’m not sure how things work, but I was wondering whether one natural source of sponsorship could be the Pente.org community itself, through Pente.org.
Since players can already make donations to Pente.org, perhaps it would be possible to set up an official donation campaign where, for example, a certain percentage of the donations received before a given date would be allocated to sponsoring the tournament (the idea would be to somehow recreate the role that a Pente federation might have played, if there were one).
Re: Owen_ Face to Face Tourney
Posted:
Aug 26, 2026, 12:39 AM
Another thought.
Although I like the idea of some sort of affiliation between Pente and the Renju federation (having a federation that can award official titles, as well as the possibility of relying on local federations that are already used to organizing tournaments, would definitely make it easier to bring back in-person Pente tournaments), if raising funds is an issue, another possibility might be to get in touch with the organizers of the Mind Sports Olympiads.
I think I saw some old posts from Watsu mentioning this idea, but I don't know if anything ever came of it. Anyway, I believe Pente could be a good fit as one of the disciplines at the Olympiads.
In fact, the 2026 Olympiads are currently taking place in London. Yesterday, there was the Boku World Championship, a game very similar to Pente (except that it is played on a hexagonal board -- so there is only one horizontal direction and two diagonals, but no vertical direction -- and when a pair of stones is surrounded, only one of the two stones is captured, with the attacker choosing which one). Pente will also be one of the disciplines in the semifinals of the 2026 World Championship of Abstract Games for National Teams (aka Mochalunt), an online championship organized in collaboration with, among others, the Mind Sports Olympiads.
Moreover, Gomoku will be one of the disciplines at the Olympiads this Thursday, and Go will be played on Saturday. So they probably already have the necessary equipment and experience to organize a Pente championship as part of the Olympiads.
All this to say that if there are players interested in playing in-person Pente tournaments (and who can afford to come to Europe...), then it seems that there are already several possible ways to organize such a tournament.
