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Topic: 2009 Arimaa Events (Read 4292 times) |
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omar
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2009 Arimaa Events
« on: Nov 1st, 2008, 8:13pm » |
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Bot developers start tweaking your engines; human players start practicing your tactics, because the 2009 Arimaa season is fast approaching.
The registration for the 2009 Arimaa events is now open. Here is the overall schedule:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2009/sch.html
Everything is pretty much the same as last year, except that I had to cut back on how much I can contribute to the prize funds. However, I am looking for companies (or wealthy individuals) who might be interested to sponsor the events. If you have any contacts that could help me in this, please let me know.
I've contacted Z-man Games and they will be helping to sponsor the World Championship tournament.
Hope we have a great turnout this year.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #1 on: Nov 1st, 2008, 9:55pm » |
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It's very cool that Z-Man is putting up prizes this year. Hopefully Arimaa will be a big commercial success, which will encourage him to pony up in the future as well. I'm getting psyched about the coming tournament season.
Big points:
* I see that for the preliminaries players will be seeded by game room rating. It doesn't matter too much, since the finals will be seeded based on the preliminaries, but I wonder if this will set off extreme bot bashing in the pursuit of better seeding. Are you still open to discussing an alternate method of seeding?
* Last year forfeits in the preliminaries were a major problem. It is silly for someone who has quit to have their ghost entry handing out wins essentially at random, perhaps to people who would rather have an opponent to play than have a free win anyway. We discussed the possibility that anyone who forfeits a game is automatically withdrawn from future rounds unless they explicitly ask the tournament coordinator for permission to continue. How would you feel about such a rule?
Small points:
* On the World Champion list of registered players, we have pairing numbers behind our names that are left over from last year's final.
* The Computer Championship registration page has the list of last year's entrants.
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chessandgo
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #2 on: Nov 2nd, 2008, 5:18am » |
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on Nov 1st, 2008, 9:55pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Last year forfeits in the preliminaries were a major problem. |
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Indeed, to my eyes this is the main problem. The whole championship lasted very long, and I prefered the previous years' method. If I recall correctly, the decisive argument in favor of the 6-round prelim + finals formula was that everyone got to play 6 games no matter what. If many games are forfeited du to lack of interest of quite many registered players, then the former setting of a single tournament where everyone had 3 lives would not give significantly less games to be played.
I'm fine with the current formula, but I hope there will be a way to prevent as many games as last year to be forfeited.
Jean
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #3 on: Nov 2nd, 2008, 6:26am » |
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on Nov 2nd, 2008, 5:18am, chessandgo wrote:| If many games are forfeited du to lack of interest of quite many registered players, then the former setting of a single tournament where everyone had 3 lives would not give significantly less games to be played. |
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I'm not sure what causes forfeits, but one virtue of a unified triple-elimination is that everyone who hasn't been eliminated can still be champion. You don't have people with no chance of winning who are still playing games.
One of the arguments in favor of a six-round preliminary last year was to give people a chance for serious, live, human vs. human games. Now that we have had 13 rounds of the Continuous Tournament, this argument has become obsolete. People already have a chance to play serious, live, human vs. human games in the off-season.
The distinction between the World Championship preliminaries and the Continuous Tournament is that in the former people are playing to determine who is best, rather than just playing to play their best. In the context of determining who is best, elimination makes more sense than Swiss. Swiss pairing is a participation format, and the World Championship is not necessarily about participation. I am a huge supporter of having the World Championship be an open tournament, with no restrictions on who can enter, but I am increasingly ambivalent about trying to guarantee that it is fun in a "everybody wins" sense instead of letting it be a bloodthirsty "survival of the fittest" contest.
Since we now have an ongoing participation tournament, the one remaining argument for having a Swiss preliminary to the World Championship is that the floating elimination format we have used in the past gives a huge advantage based on seeding, particularly to the top seed over the second seed. The bias toward the high seeds in the elimination final is not a problem if the seeding is fair, and the preliminary makes the seeding into the final fair (even if the seeding into the preliminary was wack). But if the World Championship has no preliminary and consists only of a unified triple-elimination round, then either we need to seed it more fairly than game room ratings would seed it, or we need to change the floating elimination format to give less reward to higher seeds.
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99of9
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #4 on: Nov 4th, 2008, 8:54pm » |
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Quote:| During the 3 months before the start of the tournament any rated games played by the program should use a time control with a time-per-move between one and three minutes. |
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I feel that this requirement is too onerous. Similar conditions are not imposed on humans.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 4th, 2008, 10:31pm by 99of9 » |
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99of9
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #5 on: Nov 4th, 2008, 9:24pm » |
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Quote:| Also the programs submitted for the championship tournament will be made available for others to play against in the public Arimaa gameroom after the challenge match is over. Thus the programs and players participating in the following year can be improved against the best programs of the previous year. |
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Omar, could you please comment on the IP status of bot binaries that are handed over under this rule? I presume this is something like bot developers giving you a free perpetual nonexclusive license to run it in the gameroom.
Some specific questions:
Will this still apply if one day you start charging for access to the gameroom? What about other such changes to the nature of the gameroom?
If the stated intent is only to help players and programs for the following year, perhaps a (longish) time limitation would make sense?
Would it be possible for developers to propose conditions of use that you would agree to upon accepting a bot for the tourney? If you did not agree, the developer would either have to remove the offending condition, or not enter.
Quote:| ... programs that are limited after some time, some games or limited in any manner will not be allowed to participate in following years... |
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I presume that handicapping unrated games is ok according to this rule? Gnobot already deliberately sets up poorly in unrated games (to prevent a certain form of ratings-exploitation-botbashing). Am I excluded already? Do I have to remove this feature?
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omar
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #6 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 3:42pm » |
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on Nov 1st, 2008, 9:55pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Big points:
* I see that for the preliminaries players will be seeded by game room rating. It doesn't matter too much, since the finals will be seeded based on the preliminaries, but I wonder if this will set off extreme bot bashing in the pursuit of better seeding. Are you still open to discussing an alternate method of seeding?
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Since we don't have another rating system setup yet, I just went with the gameroom ratings. The gameroom ratings are easily available to the page that shows the registered players; so the players can see what their seeding would be. If someone wants to propose a different rating system and provide a web service to access it (so I can integrate it with the registered players page) I am open to using it.
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* Last year forfeits in the preliminaries were a major problem. It is silly for someone who has quit to have their ghost entry handing out wins essentially at random, perhaps to people who would rather have an opponent to play than have a free win anyway. We discussed the possibility that anyone who forfeits a game is automatically withdrawn from future rounds unless they explicitly ask the tournament coordinator for permission to continue. How would you feel about such a rule?
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Yes, I forgot about this. I think it makes sense that if someone misses a game they are dropped from the tournament unless the tournament director lets them continue. I'll add that note.
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Small points:
* On the World Champion list of registered players, we have pairing numbers behind our names that are left over from last year's final.
* The Computer Championship registration page has the list of last year's entrants. |
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Thanks; fixed it.
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omar
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #7 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 4:19pm » |
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on Nov 4th, 2008, 8:54pm, 99of9 wrote:
I feel that this requirement is too onerous. Similar conditions are not imposed on humans. |
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This was just so that the seeding into the bot tournament would be a little fair. Since bots that played at a fast speed could get a higher rating and that would not be fair to a bot running closer to the tournament speed.
Since the tournaments for the humans and bots are different, different conditions could be used for each. As long as the same conditions apply to all the participants in each of the tournament.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 5th, 2008, 5:34pm by omar » |
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99of9
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #8 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 4:39pm » |
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on Nov 5th, 2008, 4:19pm, omar wrote:| This was just so that the seeding into the bot tournament would be a little fair. Since bots that played at a fast speed could get a higher rating and that would not be fair to a bot running closer to the tournament speed. |
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Unfortunately with the current ratings system, you have to rely on the developer's goodwill anyway to hope that the seedings are a little fair. If we wanted to distort the seedings, it would be easy to get our bots to win 100 straight games against the P2 bots just prior to the tourney.
My concern here is that often during development it is useful to play blitz or low ply games to quickly test new improvements. This rule effectively prohibits this (against the existing diversity of bots) for the next 3 months! Alternatively we could do everything unrated, but it seems a waste of good information, and some opponents play differently anyway.
Quote:| Since the tournaments for the humans and bots are different, different conditions could be used for each. As long as the same conditions apply to all the participants in each of the tournament. |
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Yes and no. My point is that you have not imposed the same constraints to ensure "fair seedings" in the human tourney. Humans are also better at some time controls than others. Some have a very high blitz rating, but a low postal rating. Should they be allowed to inflate their ratings at non-tourney time controls?
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| « Last Edit: Nov 5th, 2008, 4:45pm by 99of9 » |
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Janzert
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #9 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 5:32pm » |
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Hmm, I had completely forgotten about the rated game time control for bots. I've been planning on testing opfor in the coming months. This is often easiest done at faster time controls. How do I set unrated mode on its account so that it can play against the fast or blitz bots?
Like 99of9 I'm not sure how this helps give a better rating since a developer can easily manipulate the rating if desired by choosing the opponents the bot plays. This is probably even easier for a developer than the traditional human botbashing manipulations since the developer doesn't have to hang around for the games.
Janzert
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omar
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #10 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 5:41pm » |
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on Nov 5th, 2008, 4:39pm, 99of9 wrote:
My concern here is that often during development it is useful to play blitz or low ply games to quickly test new improvements. This rule effectively prohibits this (against the existing diversity of bots) for the next 3 months! Alternatively we could do everything unrated, but it seems a waste of good information, and some opponents play differently anyway.
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I see what mean now. No problem I'll remove that. Hope the other developers are OK with this.
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Yes and no. My point is that you have not imposed the same constraints to ensure "fair seedings" in the human tourney. Humans are also better at some time controls than others. Some have a very high blitz rating, but a low postal rating. Should they be allowed to inflate their ratings at non-tourney time controls? |
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I probably should also tell the human players to not do bashing to boost the ratings, but as Karl mentioned the rating have less of an impact in the human tournament because of the preliminary stage.
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99of9
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #11 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 5:47pm » |
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on Nov 5th, 2008, 5:41pm, omar wrote:| I see what mean now. No problem I'll remove that. Hope the other developers are OK with this. |
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Many thanks!
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omar
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #12 on: Nov 5th, 2008, 7:21pm » |
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on Nov 4th, 2008, 9:24pm, 99of9 wrote:
Omar, could you please comment on the IP status of bot binaries that are handed over under this rule? I presume this is something like bot developers giving you a free perpetual nonexclusive license to run it in the gameroom.
Some specific questions:
Will this still apply if one day you start charging for access to the gameroom? What about other such changes to the nature of the gameroom?
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A bot developer does not lose any IP rights by submitting the bot for the tournament and challenge match. The bot developer is providing a binary for indefinite use in the Arimaa gameroom. However, I do not have any intent to use the submitted bots in a commercial way. If the nature of this gameroom ever changes to become a commercial one then I would not run those bots here. I would have to setup a different non-commercial gameroom for the developers and run them there. If I wanted to run the bots in the commercial gameroom I would purchase them from the developers for that purpose.
Before the first bot tournament had occurred, I purchased Occam from Don Daily and a version of Bomb from David Fotland for the purpose of having them run in the Arimaa gameroom. Don later decided to release the Occam code publicly. David later decided to sell Bomb commercially. So developers always retain IP rights to the code (unless they sell that).
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If the stated intent is only to help players and programs for the following year, perhaps a (longish) time limitation would make sense? |
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I also like to preserve the original bots for historical purposes, so it would be nice if they didn't. I should change the wording on that to say years instead of year.
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Would it be possible for developers to propose conditions of use that you would agree to upon accepting a bot for the tourney? If you did not agree, the developer would either have to remove the offending condition, or not enter. |
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I would rather not do this, just to keep things simple.
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I presume that handicapping unrated games is ok according to this rule? Gnobot already deliberately sets up poorly in unrated games (to prevent a certain form of ratings-exploitation-botbashing). Am I excluded already? Do I have to remove this feature?
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As long as the bot runs the same way after the tournament as it did in the tournament there is no reason for concern. It is OK for bots to play differently for rated and unrated games; they can even play differently against humans then they do against other bots or even differently against specific different opponents.
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aaaa
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #13 on: Nov 6th, 2008, 10:53pm » |
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Why not make the computer championship a (possibly double) round-robin tournament? That would eliminate seeding as a factor.
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omar
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Re: 2009 Arimaa Events
« Reply #14 on: Nov 7th, 2008, 5:39pm » |
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The double round robin format does eliminate the need for seeding. But it requires a lot more games (not that the bots care, but the tournament coordinator does) to complete. Also it doesn't have a climatic finish.
Actually, we never done any experiments to see how much the seeding matters for floating double/triple elimination tournaments. This would be an interesting project.
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