History

This page is dedicated to the history of Snail Bucket.

SB Monthly 2015

2 buckets, 56 participants. Champions of each section were as follows:

Bucket Havana: yoyoman
Bucket Reykjavik: ciedan

Snail Bucket 3

8 buckets, 57 participants. Champions of each section were as follows:

Bucket Anand: marjohn
Bucket Bacrot: KRMCHESS
Bucket Carlsen: Scodman
Bucket Ding: TwilightShifter (second/third places to PankracyRozumek and CarlosKerber on tiebreaks)
Bucket Eljanov: SportClubRecife
Bucket Fressinet: icibiri
Bucket Grischuk: UrsaMajor
Bucket Harikrishna: RoyRogersC

Snail Bucket 2

7 buckets, 49 participants. Champions of each section were as follows:

Bucket Anand: mejker
Bucket Bacrot: behzadxxx
Bucket Carlsen: Maxmagnus, winner certificate (second place to bintoito on tiebreaks)
Bucket Ding: CarlosKerber
Bucket Eljanov: CapitanSgrakkio
Bucket Fressinet: IMOEC
Bucket Grischuk: ArturPL

Snail Bucket 1

7 buckets, 56 participants. Champions of each section were as follows:

Bucket Aronian: erusin
Bucket Bacrot: mejker
Bucket Carlsen: Relu
Bucket Ding: Maxmagnus (second place to Knoeier on tiebreaks)
Bucket Eljanov: Mahog
Bucket Fressinet: BethanyGrace
Bucket Grischuk: IMOEC

The Beginnings of Snail Bucket

Snail Bucket originated on 2 October 2014 when PankracyRozumek suggested to BethanyGrace and pchesso to work together to create a slow time control chess tournament. Due to a server move, the FICS Teamleague had been down for months, and players on our teams were hungry for a tournament. PankracyRozumek captained the Mysterious Moves, BethanyGrace the Rejoicing Team, and pchesso the RainbowWarriors. The three of us had previously worked together in the RW Swiss tournaments, later as Teamleague TDs, and we had organized a multi-team matchup in the summer of 2014.

During the next ten days, we decided on the tournament format: a sectional RR for individuals, which could continue to run between Teamleague seasons. We agreed on a shorter 15 minute grace period, a stricter "2 forfeits=suspension" rule, and the option for players to choose their preferred time controls. We called it "Snail Bucket".

Bodia, who had served as the RW programmer, joined the team as programmer on October 12th. Predkoo created the Snail Bucket logo, and PankracyRozumek was elected as Chief TD. Bodia wrote the website in Java, pchesso and BethanyGrace contributed the majority of wiki pages, and PankracyRozumek wrote scripts for tourney/player management. We were ready to announce Snail Bucket 1 by October 21st.

"Originally I thought that there would be more time for writing the code, but it turned out I had only a couple of weeks until the first tournament started. Snail Bucket 1 has been a kind of beta test for the system. Many features were missing and some present were not working as intended. I am very glad the players of Snail Bucket 1 still had a good playing experience thanks to the work of TDs." - Bodia

By the time registration closed, 56 players were ready for the start of SB1. We invited RoyRogersC, captain of the Rangers, to join us as our first additional TD. On November 4th, only a month and two days after the idea's inception, Snail Bucket began. Work continued on Snailbot; it was registered as a (TD) on FICS on November 8th, and throughout the tournament continued to gain full functionality thanks to Bodia's constant improvements.

With the start of Snail Bucket 2, pchesso had completed work on the help documentation for the wiki. We were joined by two more TDs, herrahuu, captain of the Eye of the Tigran, and Maxmagnus, captain of the FlamingPhoenixFighters. All TDs were trained and supervised by BethanyGrace. An additional Swiss format tourney, the SB Monthly 2015, started in August 2015, featuring one game per month.

During the second half of 2015, we faced an increasing number of software issues. We couldn't fix them because of changing life priorities. In 2016, PankracyRozumek and crem attempted to rewrite Snailbucket from scratch in Python, but time constraints didn't allow to finish the project. The first edition of Snail Bucket came to a halt.