This amuses me a bit.
Thank you very much Grey Havens.

If this becomes a regular weekly thing I'll play Sk again when I am finally back home.

The best way to determine is that if they have to AFK for a moment, then they should go into the Mission tab. If they're in it for over 5:00 total accumulative time, they can be DQ'd.

Nice that you organise this!

but I would recommend not attaching prizes to this at all, because it just invites cheaters. A time limit will not prevent anyone from using a chess computer to do the moves for them. Each player needs some time to "think" and for a cheater it takes 2 seconds to input the opponents move and for the computer to return the move they should make. In fact, the harsher you make the time limit, the easier it becomes for the cheater because if a fair player is under time pressure, he will make more mistakes and the computer will capitalize on those quickly. It can be fun for casual playing with people that you know, but if you invite strangers and promise them a prize for winning, I don't think you can expect a fair game.

This sounds cool, too bad cheating trash exists.

Let's see....chess is a game that needs time to be played properly. There needs some way to differentiate time spent thinking vs time spent looking up moves on a separate tab/computer. The only real way to do this would be to stream visual of the actual player sitting behind its/their (idk which pronoun to use anymore...) computer. Other than that, you could do speed chess instead, where moves have to be made within 5 seconds.

Ok, I think you're overexaggerating a bit, guys. It is not possible for anyone to cheat under the time limit of 30 minutes. Seriously, it's impossible to apply a cheating mechanism to Spiral Knights unless you tab out of the game and pull up a calculator of sorts to determine what your next move is. Then comes the piece placement. But yes, I am willing to add a Skype view to my stream. So please, don't get crazy about it @Kingnickolas .

Ok, this is a bit ridiculous, might as well not host a tournament with prize if you're worried about cheating. Just because someone is moving does not always truly illustrate that they are not cheating. There's always a way to cheat over the internet, you can only make it difficult for them to. Absolute zero movement requires some players to problem solve btw.

I've played in chess mini tournaments before. There's no way to tell if someone cheats unless you have professionals look/watch/study the game and be the judge (includes match history/rating, rating cap.)

You couldn't be more wrong though, I don't even have to tab out of the game. I could literally sit in front of my laptop with my phone in hand and use one of the chess apps you can get for free. I'll just input any move that the opponent makes as my own in the chess app, it will instantly make its own move. I'll then copy the app's move in spiral knights. I'm not going to be losing time at all because I mimic the opponents move while it's still his turn to move a piece. The chess app will destroy a casual player, especially so if you give a casual player limited time to think. If I'm given more time per move, I can increase the amount of time that the chess app has to calculate ahead. I'll still input the moves on my app as soon as you do them, you can't slow that down because it's literally 2 taps on the screen.

There's no feasible way to stop a cheater on online chess, if players want to cheat, they will. It's not just about the 30k crowns either, even if you were to remove the reward, some players might actually cheat just to get the win. And if you focus too much on implementing a way to prevent cheating, players might just try to cheat because it becomes a game to them. They don't want to win at the chess, they want to beat your anti-cheat measurements.

That's why I would suggest not giving out a reward and not trying to stop cheaters. There still might be that one player that cheats just for recognition in the community, but at least you wouldn't be paying him for it. And perhaps there are some active chess players who will beat that guy anyway :)

You could probably play a "checkers" tournament, where the pieces are all just checkers pieces (or alternatively, if you have a bunch of extra pawns, use pawns as normal pieces and any other piece for queens).

While there may be "cheaters" in checkers, it's a much lighter game with similar fun factor, and a lot less thinking involved. As far as I know there aren't any checkers apps to work with, so it probably would play out differently.

Not really concerned about the prize so much as it's disheartening to see someone really excited about making something, then quickly shot down for technicalities behind it without any alternative.

Nebrium, do you want to play a chess match? My guild has a complete set, and yours might as well.

I won't cheat, but unfortunately you'd just have to take my word for it. I can't really prove it. :P