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Topic: 2012 Computer Championship (Read 8550 times) |
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rbarreira
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2012 Computer Championship
« on: Nov 5th, 2011, 7:53am » |
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The registration for the 2012 Computer Championship has started and there are two bots registered so far:
bot_sharp
bot_briareus
I wonder how many bots there will be this year? I'm expecting at least marwin and badger to join, hopefully clueless too even though it hasn't been around much. So there should be at least 5 participants which is not bad. Perhaps 6 if Omar enters Bomb2005 again.
Then I wonder if Janzert has started the new bot he was planning, or if he will re-enter Opfor at least?
What about Gnobot, is it ever coming back? 
Any new bots planning to enter?
PS: Do not forget there's a new time control this year, 2m/6m/100/0/8h/6m.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 5th, 2011, 7:57am by rbarreira » |
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Janzert
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #1 on: Nov 7th, 2011, 3:06am » |
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OpFor's replacement has had almost no work done on it. At this point I'm not planning on entering with any bot.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #2 on: Nov 11th, 2011, 7:17pm » |
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Given that we will in all probability not have nine entrants this year, does the qualifying procedure still make sense? There is always a danger of a last-minute surge of bot-vs.-bot qualifying games, which can eat up server resources and degrade quality of service.
The qualifying games originally served a double purpose: seeding and limiting the field to eight. When you take away the need to limit the field, it's not clear to me that the bureaucracy is worth it just for seeding. An simple alternative would be to seed based on last's year's finish with brand new bots getting seeded below them in order of rating.
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rbarreira
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #3 on: Nov 12th, 2011, 3:51am » |
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on Nov 11th, 2011, 7:17pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Given that we will in all probability not have nine entrants this year, does the qualifying procedure still make sense? |
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Was there a probability of > 8 entrants in any year? In 2010 there were 8 (including bomb which didn't really "enter"), in 2011 less than that.
on Nov 11th, 2011, 7:17pm, Fritzlein wrote:| There is always a danger of a last-minute surge of bot-vs.-bot qualifying games, which can eat up server resources and degrade quality of service. |
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It seems that most of the bots used for qualification have a limit of 1 running instance, so it would be quite risky to wait until the last minute to play many games. And even if people did, that limit should prevent many simultaneous games, especially since 3 of the benchmark bots are weak enough to not require many games against them for a winning streak of 4.
on Nov 11th, 2011, 7:17pm, Fritzlein wrote:| An simple alternative would be to seed based on last's year's finish with brand new bots getting seeded below them in order of rating. |
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Assuming that the seed has any impact on winning probability (has anyone calculated that btw?), I think it's a good thing to have a seeding based on the actual current skill of the bots. A triple-elimination tournament already involves some amount of luck, I think anything which can reduce the impact of luck is a good thing.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 12th, 2011, 4:03am by rbarreira » |
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omar
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #4 on: Nov 12th, 2011, 5:25pm » |
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If we only have 4 bots registering it might be better do just do a double round robin tournament. That would eliminate the need for seeding.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #5 on: Nov 12th, 2011, 5:45pm » |
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The only objections I have to round robins are the possibility of collusion and ties, neither of which are a problem in this case. I trust the bots won't throw games, and a tie is merely an occasion for a climactic playoff game!
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aaaa
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #6 on: Nov 12th, 2011, 6:29pm » |
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Especially with so few entrants, a double round robin will be considerably less differentiating. What if the two top bots happen to be way ahead of the field? They would have only two games between them. My proposal is to keep FTE and do the seeding based on the achievement of the bot's programmer(s) in the most recent computer championship, with ties broken by the result in the previous one, and so on, with remaining ties broken by earliest signup time.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 12th, 2011, 7:33pm by aaaa » |
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Janzert
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #7 on: Nov 13th, 2011, 1:14am » |
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I really liked the idea of a round robin followed by FTE with losses carried over and seeding from the round robin. A secondary seed to break ties from the round robin is probably needed though. Also maybe the FTE should be 4 losses for elimination.
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rbarreira
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #8 on: Nov 13th, 2011, 4:30am » |
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on Nov 13th, 2011, 1:14am, Janzert wrote:| I really liked the idea of a round robin followed by FTE with losses carried over and seeding from the round robin. A secondary seed to break ties from the round robin is probably needed though. Also maybe the FTE should be 4 losses for elimination. |
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I like this idea. Any round-robin tournament would at minimum need a final phase to break the ties Fritz mentioned, this looks like a good solution. It also solves aaaa's objection about cases where the two top bots are quite close.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 13th, 2011, 4:31am by rbarreira » |
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jdb
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #9 on: Nov 14th, 2011, 2:10pm » |
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on Nov 13th, 2011, 4:30am, rbarreira wrote:
I like this idea. Any round-robin tournament would at minimum need a final phase to break the ties Fritz mentioned, this looks like a good solution. It also solves aaaa's objection about cases where the two top bots are quite close. |
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I also like this idea.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #10 on: Nov 14th, 2011, 3:45pm » |
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on Nov 13th, 2011, 1:14am, Janzert wrote:| I really liked the idea of a round robin followed by FTE with losses carried over and seeding from the round robin. |
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I rather like your idea of using a single round-robin to eliminate the need for seeding, and carrying forward losses into a multiple-elimination format to sort out the top. The secondary seeding could be random after that without seeming unfair, because it would have such a small impact.
Just a note, however, that with only four entrants, an FTE format automatically plays a round-robin for the first three rounds, and losses carry forward, so your proposal doesn't change anything until the number of participants gets larger than the number of eliminations plus one.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 14th, 2011, 3:46pm by Fritzlein » |
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jdb
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #11 on: Nov 17th, 2011, 9:09am » |
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on Nov 14th, 2011, 3:45pm, Fritzlein wrote:
I rather like your idea of using a single round-robin to eliminate the need for seeding, and carrying forward losses into a multiple-elimination format to sort out the top. The secondary seeding could be random after that without seeming unfair, because it would have such a small impact.
Just a note, however, that with only four entrants, an FTE format automatically plays a round-robin for the first three rounds, and losses carry forward, so your proposal doesn't change anything until the number of participants gets larger than the number of eliminations plus one. |
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From a practical standpoint there is slight difference. If there are administrative problems running the tournament, a round robin can continue. The FTE format is delayed until the problems are fixed.
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aaaa
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #12 on: Nov 25th, 2011, 7:14pm » |
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Another difference is that using FTE with enough lives such that it would start out as a de facto round robin tournament would not guarantee a balanced assignment of colors.
The new scheduling software already minimizes the influence of the initial seeding as much as possible, mostly by having current tournament performance trump it in any intermediate ranking for the purpose of assigning byes and pairings. That means that simply giving the scheduler differently scheduled round robin games as part of the tournament history should be enough. I'd still like to avoid a random seeding if possible though. Past performance seems like a reasonable choice (here, indented bots share a programmer):
1. Sharp (2011: #1)
2. Marwin (2011: #2)
3. Clueless (2011: #3)
4. Bomb (2011: #4, 2010: #5)
5. Briareus (2011: #4)
6. OpFor (2011: #6)
7. GnoBot (2010: #5, 2009: #2)
8. Badger (2010: #5)
9. Pragmatictheory (2010: #8)
10. Zombie (2009: #6)
11. Rat (2009: #8)
12. Occam (2007: #6)
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| « Last Edit: Nov 25th, 2011, 7:16pm by aaaa » |
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omar
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #13 on: Nov 26th, 2011, 4:58pm » |
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Round robin followed by FTE would make the tournament a little longer. With only 4 bots registered, it would only add about two days, but in general it could get too long. My reason for suggesting a double round robin was because only 4 bots were registered. But we really should not use formats that we can't use if more bots were registered. Using the previous years results seems like a good alternative. Thanks aaaa for ordering the bots based on previous WCC performance.
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rbarreira
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Re: 2012 Computer Championship
« Reply #14 on: Nov 26th, 2011, 6:29pm » |
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I'm not sure I understand the direction of the discussion, are we talking the format/seeding for the 2012 WCC? Or is it for later years, as this year's rules were already published?
Omar are you agreeing with aaaa's idea about there being no qualification if at most 8 bots participate? So the seeding will be determined by how good the bots were in the championship of the previous year or how quick their authors signed up? What if more than 8 bots participate, there would be a qualification but it wouldn't count for seeding?
on Nov 26th, 2011, 4:58pm, omar wrote:| But we really should not use formats that we can't use if more bots were registered. Using the previous years results seems like a good alternative. |
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If we want to use a format which can handle more than 4 bots why do we need a new alternative? Wouldn't the 2011 WCC format be good enough? Meaning qualification/seeding games followed by FTE?
As mentioned before I liked Janzert's idea, but if that's not possible then what about a floating elimination tournament with more than 3 lives? Does that lengthen the tournament too much?
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| « Last Edit: Nov 26th, 2011, 6:35pm by rbarreira » |
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