So weird that your "live game" means online play... Live games are being played face to face, with board, clock and stones. And, of course, with either swap2 or Tarannikov opening rules. At least during last 10 years I've never heard about anybody playing Pro Pente live. I mean, not online but live.
> it was simpler to make one move every few days over several months
Well, for me it's crazy inconvenient.
Renju Correspondence World Championship is being played in leagues, each league consists of groups of size 12, High League has size 10. Double round robin, 135 days/game. One year - one cycle. That's manageable and this system runs since 90s mostly without skipped years. It dies over time, thanks to programs, but still exists.
2 days/move... well, I've been on a serious tournament (TWC) during this Masters, and if there were games starting on Pente.org, I would forfeit each and every. I can't go to mountains for several days, I can't go hiking with family, I have to think hard every evening. It's a format for those who have no life. And I hope you want as many participants as possible - and it directly contradicts with 2 days/move.
> Live tourneys are a good idea in theory. In practice, they are plagued with even worse delays than turn-based.
Well, maybe there are some lessons to learn from other games?
In gomoku, people play Euroleague which is team (!) tournament by Swiss system, one round takes two weeks. They play "live" games (10+3 or smth about that). It takes a couple of hours to play a round for a given match.
The main idea of Euroleague is an "admin date", if two teams didn't agree on time and date of the match, they play on Sunday evening, smth like 19:00 CET, don't remember exactly and it doesn't really matter. Forfeits are quite rare and never occur when strong teams meet. And remember, for match to happen, there should be 6+ players online (and several years ago 8+ because team size shrank 4 -> 3 nowadays, and plus reserve players).
In renju, there were numerous online tournaments during covid lockdown, usually 30+15 time control, in two or three days, gathering players from the whole globe: Japan, China, Russia, Europe like Sweden/Estonia/Greece/Czechia/whatever, USA. Youth World Cup is being played online every year in July, three days, three rounds per day since covid, usually 100+ players afair.
So everything is possible if there are players.
Why Pente has problems here? Maybe just low motivation of players? Why do they have low motivation? Gomoku experienced it (first player wins => very demotivating for most players to play as P2 => interest in the game drops quickly) and found the way.
18 players spanning multiple generations, with unique play styles and personalities, get together in the year 2026 (40 years after pente was declared dead btw) to play pente at the highest level, demonstrating rich and previously unseen ideas on both sides of the board (not a whole lot of that coming from you, just yet), while at the same generating the type of lively discussion that I doubt you see anything close to at your vaunted renju correspondence tournaments.
You can play your way. We'll keep playing our way, thanks.
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Have you read the topic or your main idea is to say that Pente is perfect and it doesn't need any development, be it tournament rules, opening rules, organization process or anything else?
Well, the whole topic was started because a top-player is saying that he is extremely tired of this format, 2 days/move. You agreed with that telling that "live" games are also dull.
I'm telling you that both these formats, TB and "live" (as well as f2f) are available for other similar games, and there are differences in organization of these tournaments which remove problems mentioned in the topic. These differences are simple, it is easy to try them. And it doesn't mean that renju or gomoku or go or chess or whatever is better than pente, btw. They have the experience and I'm here to share this experience with Pente players. That's all. Peace.
