Pedro Martínez: Thank you for your concern over doing things properly. When I saw this tournament, I had only finished 1 Espionage variant game properly. The following is the query I sent:
"I'm interested in Espionage and have been reading the posts on the board for a while. My rating is above 1500 in all variants, but out of the total of 22 games across all variants, Indriel has timed out in 10, Snoopy got overwhelmed by games and resigned 10, MadMonkey timed out in 1, so that only leaves 1 game I've ever played properly! Would I still be disqualified as a newbie, based on these unearned ratings, do you think?"
I was told I was eligible, but if the organisers now think otherwise, I'll pull out as I don't wish to upset anyone.
Resher: You will definitely not upset me if you stay in the tournament. Having the experience of a number of ongoing espionage games against you and having seen your finished games (and knowing you would have won them easily even if completed “normally”), I was just surprised when I saw you listed as a beginner. That's it. No hard feelings.
Pedro Martínez: Both Nothingness and I checked Resher's stats thoroughly. His wins by time-outs were games not even half played against the same 2 absolute beginner opponents in every variant. The rating was based on 4 games, 1 more than an unrated status. Based on those data I call someone a beginner. If trained by Nothingness I'm not surprised Resher is improving rapidly. I have no doubt Nothingness takes this job very seriously and Resher seems eager to learn, as can be seen by the large amount of espionage games of all sorts he has taken up since he signed up for the tournament, quite some of them against you. I'm sure he's learning a lot from you as well.We encourage the beginners to train themselves for the tournament, so it's only likely some will get above the beginner's level before the tournament.
Hopefully, by the tournament rolls around at the end of January a number of the players will be well past beginner.
Espionage/Sabotage is a game without a lot of theory behind it and there's no reason a suitably clever person couldn't be one of the top 10 players on this site within a month and a handful of practice games of learning the rules.
Pedro Martínez: ... and since then, I have finished one more game against a fellow beginner (puupia), which I won, so that makes 2 proper wins across all 5 variants ever.