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Janzert
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2015 Championship changes
« on: Apr 26th, 2014, 2:00pm » |
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I’m starting this thread as a place to discuss possible changes to the rules and format for next year’s world championship.
First, if the community and Omar wants me again, I’m willing to take on the roll of TD and rule “legislator” another time. There is roughly a 20% chance that I won’t be available though and I certainly won’t mind if someone else wants to take up the mantle. I should know for sure by October if I won’t be available.
Here are the list of things I noticed during the tournament for possible changes: (in the order I wrote them down  )
Save order of player signup
Prepare players for first early unbalanced games or try to reduce the mismatches?
Clarify forfeit rules wording, particularly for case where 1 player shows up but leaves before 15 minutes is up.
Double, triple, quadruple check the time controls are set correctly. 
Allow players to rejoin after missing one or more rounds
Allow players to rejoin via any communication channel (with the only guaranteed method being the forum thread)
Get a way so TCs can 'peek' at game results that bypasses the delay
Have the server assign the forfeit after 15 minutes automatically
Allow TCs more expression when scheduling (Will be at a game, Can be at a game)?
Add a rules mention on chatting to the opponent during the game, overall add more information to set expectations of player behavior.
Specify sainte-lague tie break
Split prize fund based on wins only
Shift scheduling window (maybe a day later?)
Maybe a separate wiki page with step by step instruction for every aspect of the tournament (e.g. setting time preferences, joining/starting the game)
See also the post tournament survey results for more ideas on things to change.
Janzert
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| « Last Edit: Apr 26th, 2014, 2:00pm by Janzert » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #1 on: Apr 26th, 2014, 3:40pm » |
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Another thing I would like to see changed for next year is that byes count as wins for the final standings. Right now getting a bye in the preliminaries is a punishment for having done well and/or having been highly seeded.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #2 on: Apr 26th, 2014, 4:05pm » |
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It is interesting that there were multiple complaints about large mismatches in early rounds, but not from the affected players. One question in my mind is whether lots of low-rated players would sign up for the World Championship even if it weren't the only tournament of the year. If there were other tournaments that were stratified to avoid mismatches, would those opportunites be enough to keep low-rated players happy, and would they therefore simply sit out the World Championship?
I know that at least several lower-rated players would prefer to go to the big dance, even if they get clobbered in all of their first three games. There is something thrilling about starting off on equal footing, only ten wins from being World Champion, just like everyone else, even if your chances of actually winning are tiny.
There is however, a solution that would not be too technically difficult: Let players, at the time of registration, opt out of the money section and directly into the participation section. That is to say, let the Swiss pairing apply to everyone who has lost three times OR who wanted to start in the Swiss section in the first place. As the tournament progresses, more and more players get shunted from the money section into the Swiss section.
Note that I am not actually recommending this solution, because I expect that nobody would take advantage of the option to play in the Swiss section from the start, so it would be wasted effort. But I could be wrong, and I wanted to propose the idea in case any forum readers would contradict me and say that they would indeed sign up to go straight to the Swiss.
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crazyharry
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #3 on: May 17th, 2014, 1:33pm » |
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on Apr 26th, 2014, 4:05pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Note that I am not actually recommending this solution, because I expect that nobody would take advantage of the option to play in the Swiss section from the start, so it would be wasted effort. But I could be wrong, and I wanted to propose the idea in case any forum readers would contradict me and say that they would indeed sign up to go straight to the Swiss. |
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I think ultimately your assessment is pretty correct. Typically I don't mind getting clobbered in the early rounds because it's a good opportunity to play against more skilled players. I think I would be unlikely to play in just the Swiss section if the option were available simply because my goal is always to make it to the money rounds.
The mismatches might be avoided by splitting the field into two or more divisions based on rating, and spending the first two rounds folding within the divisions, then eliminating the divisions and playing normally from there on out. I'm just not sure if it could be implemented fairly, and it seems like it would result in more mismatch games, but with a smaller rating disparity than under the current system. I don't know that we could consider that a higher quality tournament, and I don't know that it would be worth adding complexity to the format.
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clyring
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #4 on: Sep 1st, 2014, 10:42pm » |
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I'm thinking it will soon be time to start a second round of discussion on the details. Some thoughts on the ideas so far:
Save order of player signup
I don't see how this could hurt, but it isn't a necessity.
Prepare players for first early unbalanced games or try to reduce the mismatches?
I brought this up quite a bit at the beginning of the tournament, but have started to get the impression that the stronger players have probably been more psychologically burdened by this. 
Clarify forfeit rules wording, particularly for case where 1 player shows up but leaves before 15 minutes is up.
That is a thorny situation. I might even imagine an extreme version of this where one player sits and leaves, then the other player does the same before the 15 minutes are up. I'm wondering whether it would be best to judge forfeits only based on who is seated at the end of the 15 minutes and say 'tough luck' to anybody who doesn't wait that long.
Double, triple, quadruple check the time controls are set correctly.
That nobody noticed until round 2 speaks to the insignificance of this mistake, even though obviously we should try not to repeat it.
Allow players to rejoin after missing one or more rounds
I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. I'm curious how others feel about this.
Allow players to rejoin via any communication channel (with the only guaranteed method being the forum thread)
Sounds reasonable.
Get a way so TCs can 'peek' at game results that bypasses the delay
Have the server assign the forfeit after 15 minutes automatically
"Would be neato if..."
Allow TCs more expression when scheduling (Will be at a game, Can be at a game)?
Fortunately this requires no new infrastructure, just awareness among TCs.
Specify sainte-lague tie break
Almost anything is reasonable here.
Split prize fund based on wins only
I think I prefer last year's system of prizes proportional to 1/n, but this is not immensely important to me.
Shift scheduling window (maybe a day later?)
I personally like to know the probable game schedule early as it gives me more time to check my schedule and decide which games I should commentate and/or TC. Of course I am not the only user who matters here, though.
Maybe a separate wiki page with step by step instruction for every aspect of the tournament (e.g. setting time preferences, joining/starting the game)
This sounds useful. Do we have any volunteers for creating this?
Add a rules mention on chatting to the opponent during the game, overall add more information to set expectations of player behavior.
Not urgently needed, but couldn't hurt. Maybe it would be better as a component of the previous item, though.
Another thing I would like to see changed for next year is that byes count as wins for the final standings.
I support this.
Let players, at the time of registration, opt out of the money section and directly into the participation section.
I'm willing to experiment with this, but also have doubts about whether it will be used.
Perhaps if you finish all your games and don't make the finals - you get your entry fee back.
Perhaps not the whole entry fee, but I think some additional incentive to not forfeit any rounds would be a welcome change to the format.
How do people feel about time controls such as 30s/30m, 30s/1h, 30s/1h30m or those mentioned by Janzert in the survey thread? I support experimenting with these, foremost in my mind being the advantage that time controls with more reserve and less increment naturally lead to more consistent game lengths and easier scheduling.
EDIT: For clarity, I don't mean these exact time controls, but rather, similar time controls with reasonable max move and game lengths.
I originally wanted to push for giving each player a fourth life because in both of the last two tournaments I have wanted more games as a player even if I get tired as a commentator after several rounds. The results of the post-tournament survey show I am clearly in the minority about this, though.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 13th, 2014, 9:17pm by clyring » |
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browni3141
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #5 on: Sep 1st, 2014, 10:58pm » |
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on Sep 1st, 2014, 10:42pm, clyring wrote:
Split prize fund based on wins only
I think I prefer last year's system of prizes proportional to 1/n, but this is not immensely important to me.
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I also prefer last year's system, but of course I'm biased against spreading out the money so much.
Quote:| How do people feel about time controls such as 30s/30m, 30s/1h, 30s/1h30m or those mentioned by Janzert in the survey thread? I support experimenting with these, foremost in my mind being the advantage that time controls with more reserve and less increment naturally lead to more consistent game lengths and easier scheduling. |
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I would personally be willing to try this.
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I originally wanted to push for giving each player a fourth life because in both of the last two tournaments I have wanted more games as a player even if I get tired as a commentator after several rounds. The results of the post-tournament survey show I am clearly in the minority about this, though. |
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I would like this because it means more HvH games. I also believe it would favor me in the tournament.
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Boo
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #6 on: Sep 3rd, 2014, 6:50am » |
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I think three lives is optimal. 4 lives would make the long tournament even longer.
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Janzert
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #7 on: Sep 13th, 2014, 7:16pm » |
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It seems likely that we won't be able to get any server changes finished before the WC, so anything requiring that is out.
I'm also not going to consider any major changes to timecontrol or overall tournament format. So 3 lives stays and no major change to something like 60s/60m timecontrol. I will consider minor adjustment to the timecontrols or shifting when timecontrol changes from one stage to the next if there is enough support shown.
I should also mention that my initial list posted above was mostly written as a todo for myself. So the above list trimmed down to just rules changes and then to ones can be done without server changes gets down to just this I believe:
on Apr 26th, 2014, 2:00pm, Janzert wrote:
Clarify forfeit rules wording, particularly for case where 1 player shows up but leaves before 15 minutes is up.
Allow players to rejoin via any communication channel (with the only guaranteed method being the forum thread)
Add a rules mention on chatting to the opponent during the game, overall add more information to set expectations of player behavior.
Specify sainte-lague tie break
Split prize fund based on wins only
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I don't think any of these are actually contentious except for the last one, they're just things I need to actually write up.
Regarding splitting the prize fund my feeling is most people prefer leaving it the way it is.
There was feedback in the post tournament survey regarding reducing the effect of initial seeding. Including a concrete suggestion to reduce the weight of the virtual games fed into the tournament performance rating.
I don't have a good feel myself for counting byes as wins for the final standings. I should play with this and form some opinion. I'd love to hear anyone else chime in on this as well, so far I believe we're at two people in favor of it and one opposed.
Anything else I've missed?
Janzert
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Kushiel
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #8 on: Sep 15th, 2014, 4:01pm » |
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Not sure if it's still relevant, but you could multiply win ratio * # of rounds to determine # of wins for players who had byes.
This avoids giving a free win to someone who otherwise loses all their games, while still allowing a player to control whether they end up with a perfect record.
If you win 7/7 games with a bye for the 8th, 7/7 * 8 = 8 wins for final standings purposes.
If you win 0/7 games with a bye for the 8th, 0/7 * 8 = 0 wins for final standings purposes.
The behavior at the extremes is intuitive, reasonable, and the formula is not complicated.
The downside is that you could end up with fractional wins if someone wins 6/7 games, gets a bye for the 8th, the final win ratio is 6/7*8 = 6 and 6/7.
To avoid this downside you could round if having whole numbers of wins is important. This could skew results though, as someone who wins 3/7 games (wins first 3 against easiest opponents then loses following 4 against progressively harder opponents) could claim they should be credited with 4 wins rather than 3 since it's intuitive if they'd had an even easier first round match they'd have won that too.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 15th, 2014, 4:02pm by Kushiel » |
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clyring
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #9 on: Sep 15th, 2014, 7:34pm » |
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on Sep 15th, 2014, 4:01pm, Kushiel wrote:| Not sure if it's still relevant, but you could multiply win ratio * # of rounds to determine # of wins for players who had byes. (...) |
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For finalists, this is practically equivalent to the 2013-4 system of ranking first by wins and then by internal performance rating since the pairings try to give byes only to those players with the highest internal performance ratings where this is reasonable.
See also this relevant thread. My current feeling is that ranking by performance rating is marginally better than ranking by wins including byes first, which is in turn better than ranking by wins not including byes: The only real exception, as mentioned by aaaa in the linked thread, involves playoff games. Maybe there is a natural way to handle this in a performance-rating ranking, though: Treat two players as 'close enough' if adding a virtual half-win by the lower-ranked player against the higher-ranked player switches their order.
I'm also not going to consider any major changes to timecontrol or overall tournament format. So 3 lives stays and no major change to something like 60s/60m timecontrol.
I won't mourn 3 lives, but still want to hear more discussion on possible changes to the time control.
There was feedback in the post tournament survey regarding reducing the effect of initial seeding. Including a concrete suggestion to reduce the weight of the virtual games fed into the tournament performance rating.
I'm not sure that seeds are a very meaningful influence in the current format. At the end of the day, it still comes down to winning games. (I'm not even convinced this is a bad thing.)
(That said, maybe it would be better if the final rankings, even if not the pairings, were done by UTPR.)
Anything else I've missed?
What of the suggestion to allocate a small portion of the registration fees as an incentive for players to not forfeit any games?
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Janzert
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #10 on: Sep 18th, 2014, 8:59pm » |
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on Sep 15th, 2014, 7:34pm, clyring wrote:
I'm also not going to consider any major changes to timecontrol or overall tournament format. So 3 lives stays and no major change to something like 60s/60m timecontrol.
I won't mourn 3 lives, but still want to hear more discussion on possible changes to the time control. |
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The primary tension in choosing the time controls seems to come down to how spectator friendly versus player friendly to make them. For me personally the primary metric for spectator friendliness seems to come down to roughly something like, inversely proportional to the time taken for the 80th percentile of moves. For many player's it seems freedom of choice (i.e. allocating the overall game time to moves however they see fit) is the most appealing metric. Personally I think that metric is probably actually counterproductive for most players, most of the time. But I'm not too concerned about protecting player's from themselves if they aren't going to hurt others in the process.
I also want to keep a continuity of experience across years. That and the lack of community experience with an initial reserve many times in excess of the increment, rules out wholesale dumping the current timecontrols and moving to them. Beyond that most debate seems to be going into increasing the maximum turn time.
Even though I don't think increasing the limit for the longest time control will effect spectators much, I'm leery to do anything that would cause the cause the time control that is hardest on spectators and commentators even more problems. So my current thought and leaning is to make the limit the same 6 minutes for all three timecontrols used.
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There was feedback in the post tournament survey regarding reducing the effect of initial seeding. Including a concrete suggestion to reduce the weight of the virtual games fed into the tournament performance rating.
I'm not sure that seeds are a very meaningful influence in the current format. At the end of the day, it still comes down to winning games. (I'm not even convinced this is a bad thing.)
(That said, maybe it would be better if the final rankings, even if not the pairings, were done by UTPR.) |
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Given the overall low amount of feedback and push for change as well as lack of consensus, I'm starting to lean toward leaving all ranking and pairing changes alone for a year.
Quote:Anything else I've missed?
What of the suggestion to allocate a small portion of the registration fees as an incentive for players to not forfeit any games? |
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I'm not opposed to this but I'm also almost completely unsure how much effect it will have (by one line of reasoning I expect it to have almost no effect, by another that it will have quite a large effect). If there is general support for it I would be in favor of trying it but would want to ok it, or any other monetary changes, with Omar first.
Janzert
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aaaa
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #11 on: Sep 19th, 2014, 4:23am » |
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If, when it comes to time control, you are going to start making (minor) concessions to the players (at the supposed expense of the spectators), then partial banking should really be the first thing to go. Why should players be punished with having less time left after being more dynamic in allocating the same total amount of time over a given number of moves?
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Janzert
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #12 on: Sep 19th, 2014, 1:00pm » |
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Because the players aren't complaining about partial banking, they're complaining about max turn time.
Janzert
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| « Last Edit: Sep 19th, 2014, 1:00pm by Janzert » |
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browni3141
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #13 on: Sep 20th, 2014, 12:13pm » |
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on Sep 19th, 2014, 1:00pm, Janzert wrote:Because the players aren't complaining about partial banking, they're complaining about max turn time.
Janzert |
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Now's a good time to note that I don't really either, I've just been focusing on the one that noticeably bothered me in the last WC. The 75% reserve added feels more like an inconvenience, while the max move time is all the way up to frustrating
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Janzert
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Re: 2015 Championship changes
« Reply #14 on: Oct 12th, 2014, 1:23am » |
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on Apr 26th, 2014, 3:40pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Another thing I would like to see changed for next year is that byes count as wins for the final standings. Right now getting a bye in the preliminaries is a punishment for having done well and/or having been highly seeded. |
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Going back and reviewing this suggestion one more time I'm now leaning pretty strongly toward making this change. In both the 2013 and 2014 tournaments all the players this directly effected would be moved ahead of players they beat over the board (2014: 99of9 and Adanac, 2013: omar).
I recall this being discussed in chat before and the discussion leaving me slightly in favor of the change, but I don't recall specifically the arguments for and against. I'd appreciate hearing the pros and cons again, whether brought up before or not.
Janzert
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