Hi Dann,
I'd have some questions about the Battle of the Crowns. First of all I think it's a thing of big interest to carry out such a big tournament, especially because it's a standard time (and therefore also time expensive!) one.
So far I have run a lot of 4 divisions tournaments with promotions and relegations, and I guess that's the most spectacular way to arrange them, because you can immediately see wheter an engine get so improved to climb division or viceversa. Due to my lazyness, though, I have always been using blitz timings, that's a pity, because blitz games are tough to be seen especially by people, like me, who are not ranked 2300Elo.
By the way, how are you going to schedule the matches? I'm not sure if you specified that the tournament will go on for one year, but I think it's the most likely thing... assuming 4 divisions, 12 engines round robin with 4 rounds each, it means 44 weeks with 6 matches per week per division. So 44*6*4=1056 games, that you can complete in one year, running 3 games per day. Will you be playing all the divisions in parallel, week by week, or will you complete the first division, then the second, and so on?
Then another question: what will you do with new entries? I mean, when there is a new engine, I always put it in the 4th division and wait it to climb divisions if it can do it (as, for example, Yace recently did). That's reasonable only with fast tournaments, though, when the rate of the tournaments is comparable with the rate the new entries come.
Indeed, I can't imagine you putting a new 2400 engine in the 1 crown division next year... there are at least 3 disadvantages I suddenly notice in such a thing:
1) if Chessmaster 7000 became freeware and winboard compatible so to be included in the Battle, it would take 3 years to reach the 4 crowns division;
2) it would be unfair for the 1 crown division engines, because it's likely that at least one new IM level engine is presented each year, and they would never have the chance to be promoted;
3) the 1 crown division would explode in size if all the new entries would be included there.
Surely including new engines according to their future "calibration" would eliminate those problems, but would enlarge the divisions in a not fixed way, and furthermore would increase the number of games to be played for the following year (if the engines per division were just 2, the total games to be played would be: 52*7*4=1456, +38%).
Other choices would be to create a new entry division, or split the last division in a few groups, or allow other winboarders to play official games for the Battle... what do you think about this matter?
I'm finished for now
thanks in advance, regards
Claudio