Tafl in the Basque Country

[Hagbard]

Dec. 23rd 2020 I received this mail from the Basque Country:

Hi, how are you? My name is Egoitz and I am the president of the Basque Association of Strategic Games. We are a group of 16-24 players that we meet twice a month to play to several games, most of them are abstract, and we would like to join to your organization and represent Basque Country. I have talked to the men who manages the facebook page of World Tafl Federation. I would want to ask you two things, apart from playing online (me and maybe another basque player could participate) if I organize the Basque Tafl CHampionship face to face could you take these results into account for the World Ranking, and in that case would you post a shot text and photos on your site? Thanks.

Answer:

Hi Egoitz,
thank you for the email.

Your Basque Association is very interesting, and it would be an honour that you would be part of the hnefatafl world.
I guess that you would be the alias Auskor already known here?

If you would record the game moves of your tournament, we are used to the format a1-a2xa3xb2, then the games of your national tournament can be copied into our database, which will at the same time register and rate the players.
For this you could use any of the variants used here - I can see that you specialize in the Brandubh 2.
It would also be interesting with photos from the event for the gallery, and perhaps a text to go with it.

I would add a mention of your national tournament to the page here:
http://aagenielsen.dk/natturneringer2020.php
I suppose, that the winner would be Basque National Champion.

With best regards
Aage Nielsen

[Hagbard]

Jan. 22nd 2024 came this follow-up mail:

Hi how are things? My name is Egoitz. I am the president of the Basque association of Oware and Strategic Games. We play to several games and now we would want to play to tafl or tablut. We could buy 5 boards to organize our tournaments, including the Basque Country Tafl Championship.

A few years ago I think we got in touch but in the end we didn't start playing Tafl.
I am sending you this message because you would like to start playing Tablut or Tafl and we would like to ask you for a few things regarding the website. They are these questions:
1-If we organize the I. Basque Country Tafl Championship face to face between 6-8 players and using the Swiss system (3-4 rounds) you would put the results here; http://aagenielsen.dk/turnoversigt.php?
2-I don't know if the ranking is done based just on online tournaments or those that are done face to face would also count like the one we want to do. But if we play online and also face to face, despite our low level, could we appear in the ranking, at least, at the bottom but with our name, city and territory? Could you put Basque Country instead of Spain in that case; for example "1100 Egoitz, Bilbao, Basque Country"? It would be a great recognition if all of us could appear in the ranking as Basque players.

Greetings and tell me something please. Egoitz.

Answer:

Hello Egoitz,
good to hear from you again.

You have very high numbers here,
you're known here as "Auskor" and "Irish Raven" with
number of games 163
rating 1974
max. rating 2044
marks: IM and Nat.Master (Latin area).

You seem to prefer the Brandubh 7x7 games.

As to your questions:

1. If I receive your tournament games, moves notation a1-a2xa3xa4 (a1 moves to a2 and kills a3 and a4), then they can be manually uploaded and recorded as one tournament.
It is possible to do that if a game variant of ours is used.

2. When the games are uploaded, the rating calculation is done from the uploaded games plus games played online here if any, and players appear on the rating list.

The territory data are your choice. One player fx. registered as "Donbass".
If "National Master for the Latin area" is a problem, it's easy to change into "National Master for the Latin and Basque areas".

With best regards
Aage Nielsen

[Hagbard]

Jan. 25th 2024

Summarizing; These would be the steps to follow:

1-First I have to read the rules well; I think there is in Spanish. From what I see there are many modalities (11x11, 7x7, 3x15) but are the rules the same for everyone?
2-I want to buy 5 boards to be able to do the Basque tournament in April or June. I found these 4, but maybe we will make a simple cardboard one to reduce costs. With these four boards could we only play 11x11, or could we also play 7x7, 9x9...?
I imagine that in 7X7 you play with smaller boards and fewer pieces, logically.
Then we would try to get 5 11x1 boards and 5 7x7 boards.

These are the games I would buy online:

11x11
https://es.wallapop.com/item/hnefatalf- ... CiaXCjDqBU
https://es.wallapop.com/item/juego-hnef ... uymUASkSJI
https://es.wallapop.com/item/hnefatafl- ... UT0cGFns3w

9x9
https://es.wallapop.com/item/juego-hnef ... TMau3E4QlE

3-Our intention is to hold two Hnefatafl Basque tournaments during the year; one for each most popular modality. Maybe 11x11 and 7x7? Or also in the shape of a hex, rectangular...
Then how should I send you the results so you can publish them? Something similar like this?

Swiss system, Basque Country Tafl Championship (11x11):

1-round
Egoitz Campo 1-0 Maximum
Daniel Barrientos 1-0 Andi
Joseba 1-0 Jacob
Luis 1-0 Jesus

2.round
Daniel1-0 Egoitz
Luis 1-0 Joseba
.....

Classification
1-Joseba
2-Egoitz
.....
Like this or just the results without the classification?
Should all players register on the page?

Thanks for your help.