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Topic: 2008 World Championship Discussion (Read 5873 times) |
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Fritzlein
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2008 World Championship Discussion
« on: Jan 4th, 2008, 11:36pm » |
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It looks like registration has closed for the 2008 World Championship. Perhaps the finer points of some rules still need to be ironed out in the 2008 World Championship Format thread, but soon the players will mark their time slots for first round games, the pairings will be up, and the games will begin, so it is high time to open a commentary thread.
We have twenty-six players registered, which is a record, but from only nine countries, down from ten last year. With ten of the players being Omar's relatives, this tournament will be much more of a family feud than in years past.
Twelve of this year's players also participated in last year's championship, an increase from nine returning players then. The average increase in rating among the returning players is 107 points. This is quite similar to the 119-point year-on-year increase for returning players between 2006 and 2007. Since bot ratings aren't inflating (at least not obviously) the increase of about 100 points per year in human ratings probably reflects a continuing increase in human understanding of Arimaa.
Each of the four previous World Champions (Belbo, Fritzlein, robinson, and chessandgo) learned the game within a year of taking the title. Belbo and robinson are not playing this year, but perhaps one of chessandgo and Fritzlein, the top two seeds, will become the first repeat champion. Or will history repeat itself by crowning a newcomer champion? This year the highest-rated newcomer is mistre, the ninth seed.
Even if a newcomer doesn't win, the champion need not be one of the previous title holders. PMertens finished third in 2006 and second in 2007. His upward trajectory is clear. Also 99of9, naveed, and omar bring valuable experience to the table; each has played in every Arimaa World Championship so far. Keep an eye out for Adanac, runner up in 2006; he has played more training games in recent weeks than anyone.
The greater number of players and the new format this year means there will be about 95 games played, compared to the 40 games last year. Everyone is guaranteed six games regardless of results, and the Swiss pairing should make for many competitive games after the obligatory early-round blowouts. In the last two rounds especially, every game should be a nearly equal match.
After six rounds, the top eight players will have their losses forgiven, and enter a double-elimination final for approximately six more rounds. At a pace of one round per week, it should be near the end of March when the 2008 Arimaa World Champion is crowned.
To be in the top eight after six rounds will certainly require four wins. Will it require more? There might be eight, nine, or ten players with at least four wins. The tiebreaker, if necessary, to determine whether you advance to the finals, is the number of wins your six opponents scored. Always root for the people you play to do well, starting after you play them! The coveted top seed into the finals automatically goes to the player who manages to win all six preliminary rounds, or if no one does, to the one-loss player with the best tiebreaker.
The most exciting thing about the upcoming tournament is that so far nobody truly understands how to play Arimaa. The simple question of whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous to advance horses in the opening is still unanswered. Surely it depends on the situation, but we don't know much more than that. Anything can happen in any given game. Stay tuned for updates from your friendly Event Reporter as the tournament gets underway.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 7th, 2008, 8:57am by Fritzlein » |
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chessandgo
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #1 on: Jan 5th, 2008, 7:43am » |
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we're certainly staying tuned, waiting for more ! 
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #2 on: Jan 5th, 2008, 9:37am » |
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Of course, everyone is welcome to comment here on the progress of the tournament, not just the Event Reporter. 
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omar
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #3 on: Jan 5th, 2008, 4:49pm » |
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My little nephew Emaad set off an avalanche of kids registering for the WC tournament. I'm not exactly sure why he signed up, but when I was talking to him about how it works my other nephews (Sulaiman and Danyal) heard and signed up also. Then when my kids found out they all signed up too. It got to be such an "in" thing that even Emaad's little brother Fraaz who had never played before also wanted to sign up. I guess it helped that I offered to cover their registration fee and buy them the commemorative t-shirts
So the first few rounds will probably see some of our best players matched against the kids. But eventually the kids will get some official games against each other. Those games will be pretty fun to watch. I figured this fits in perfectly with the intent of the Open Classic part of the tournament allowing for anyone to take part and get some good/fun interactive games. This will definitely give the kids some exposure to how the WC works and maybe they might sign up again in future years.
For the initial ranking of the players I ended up using the current ratings. I had planned to use something like the P8 ratings restricted to the past years human-human games, but didn't get a chance to write the program to do this. Karl (Fritzlein) looked at possibly using the power rankings proposed by The_Jeh.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;nu m=1194066650;start=0#0
but decided that the regular ratings seemed better especially for players who did not play many games against humans.
Well I'm going to run the pairing program soon and send off the emails. Looking forward to a fun tournament.
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omar
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #4 on: Jan 5th, 2008, 5:01pm » |
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on Jan 4th, 2008, 11:36pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Stay tuned for updates from your friendly Event Reporter as the tournament gets underway.
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Are you also going to post these comments into a blog entry like you did last year? Its nice that everyone can add comments here, but I really enjoyed reading your uninterrupted blog entry last year.
http://katieandkarl.pbwiki.com/
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #5 on: Jan 5th, 2008, 8:38pm » |
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I was planning to write my commentary only in this thread this year. Would you prefer if I wrote in the Arimaa Wiki instead?
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leo
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #6 on: Jan 6th, 2008, 1:15am » |
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I'd suggest the blog or the wiki, but copying the new parts of it into this thread so that it be easier to discuss them. If this is not too much a hassle I mean.
This avalanche of kids is really funny good news
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| « Last Edit: Jan 6th, 2008, 1:19am by leo » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #7 on: Jan 7th, 2008, 8:54am » |
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The pairings are up for the first round, and it looks bleak for the bottom half of the seeds. The minimum rating gap is 474 points, and the mismatches go all the way up to 924 points. According to the game room rating formula, that means the favorites each have between 93.8% and 99.5% chance to win.
Collectively, however, the underdogs can pin their hopes on this calculation: there is a 33% chance that at least one of the thirteen games will be an upset. Fight to the death; there is always a chance your opponent's computer will crash!
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #8 on: Jan 13th, 2008, 2:35pm » |
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Due to popular demand, game commentary has been moved off-thread. Round one commentary is available here: http://katieandkarl.pbwiki.com/FrontPage
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #9 on: Jan 20th, 2008, 6:43pm » |
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Round two commentary is up. We have sadly had five forfeits so far, but of the twenty-one games actually played, there have been no upsets over the board. Also (fortunately) the four games decided on time were all clearly worse on the board for the player timing out. Apparently a flaky Internet connection hasn't cost anyone a game yet.
What are the odds of no over-the-board upsets in round three? Anyone want to make a bet?
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omar
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #10 on: Jan 21st, 2008, 8:58am » |
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This round has games with pretty closely matched players. I would expect at least one upset this round; not including forfeits or timeouts.
In the first sentence of the Round Three section I think you meant to say 'round two'.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #11 on: Jan 21st, 2008, 9:48am » |
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on Jan 21st, 2008, 8:58am, omar wrote:| This round has games with pretty closely matched players. I would expect at least one upset this round; not including forfeits or timeouts. |
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Would you lay me three to one odds? Too bad the prediction contest hasn't started yet, so we can't make a bet.
Quote:| In the first sentence of the Round Three section I think you meant to say 'round two'. |
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Fixed. Thanks.
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mistre
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #12 on: Jan 21st, 2008, 2:44pm » |
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I would say we have a 50-50 chance of having at least 1 upset in round 3, so I would take the 3 to 1 odds for a upset.
Froody vs Naveed should be a tight match.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #13 on: Jan 21st, 2008, 5:39pm » |
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Also Adanac vs. PMertens has been entertaining in the past. It will be hard to call that game an upset no matter who wins.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2008 World Championship Discussion
« Reply #14 on: Jan 24th, 2008, 8:12am » |
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PMertens is playing at 3:00 in the morning his local time? I have a hard time believing his sleep schedule is so disturbed. Or is he visiting the States this week?
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