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Topic: 2012 World Championship format (Read 15817 times) |
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Hippo
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #30 on: Mar 4th, 2011, 9:57am » |
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on Mar 2nd, 2011, 12:39pm, omar wrote:
initial reserve (R) = 4 x time per move (M)
max turn time (T) = 4 x time per move (M)
max game time (G) = 240 x time per move (M)
So for a 15 second per move (Blitz) game this would be:
15s/1m/100/0/1h/1m
For a 30 second per move (Fast) game this would be:
30s/2m/100/0/2h/2m
For a 60 second per move game this would be:
1m/4m/100/0/4h/4m
For a 90 second per move game this would be:
1m30s/6m/100/0/6h/6m
For a 2 minute per move game this would be:
2m/8m/100/0/8h/8m
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I would prefere
T/1m+3T/75/0/240T/1m+3T
(I don't remember what 0 means and I never reached the game time so I am not sure with 240T .. may be 180T + 30m?)
I understand Fritzlein reasoning and I am avare of initial time reserve and short maximal time in lightning/blitz/fast games. This would help with it.
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omar
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #31 on: Mar 4th, 2011, 11:54am » |
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Quote:| Fritzlein: I think 45s/move should remain a standard option, leaving six standard choices instead of five. |
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Yes, I was just giving some examples; didn't mean that those would be the only ones. I should have included 45s as an example too since it is very popular.
Quote:| Fritzlein: By all means, let's have a uniform standard for simplicity, but let it be uniform in a spectator-friendly way. |
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Having a maximum turn time is the key to making the time controls spectator friendly. It guarantees that a spectator will never have to wait longer than this time to see the next move regardless of how much time the player has built up.
Quote:| Fritzlein: The main argument in favor of banking 100% of unused time is that people are used to it. |
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Yes, it's what people seem to expect. Banking a fractional amount seems non-intuitive; especially for people coming from other games; no other game does this but Arimaa. I think the need for banking fractional reserve is less when the maximum turn time parameter is set.
Quote:| mistre: I am a little concerned about the banking of only 75% and shorter initial reserve times in fast and blitz games. I think these changes could potentially cause some inflation in those bot ratings due to even more increased time pressure. However, for games of 45s or longer, I am in favor of the proposed changes. |
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Yes, I was also starting to think that the faster games needed more initial reserve and that slower games don't need as much.
Quote:| mistre: We should also look at reducing the number of postal options. It appears that 95%+ of postal games are on the 1d/60d/100/0/300d/21d setting anyways. I actually prefer the 14d reserve, but most players don't like it, so I stopped using it. Maybe a 30d reserve option? |
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Yes, there are a lot of postal time controls that don't get used much. We can standardize these also once we are done with the interactive ones.
Quote:| mistre: Lastly, this time control topic should be moved to a new thread as it has gotten off track from talking about the original subject. |
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It's hard to keep threads on track  Maybe the best way to handle this is to have an area in the wiki with RFC type pages that describe the standard and as reference links back to the relevant forum threads.
Quote:| rbarreira: I should say that I expect at least some of the bots to not be ready for 75% reserve accumulation (I know mine isn't). |
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Bots won't have any problems with fractional reserves. The server takes care of determining the new reserve values and sends them to the bot.
Quote:Hippo: I would prefere
M/1m+3M/75/0/240M/1m+3M |
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Good solution for providing more initial reserve for fast games and less for slower games. I might propose:
M/2m+2M/100/0/240M/2m+2M
It gives a bit more initial reserve in faster games and less in slower games. This will make the Blitz bots feel closer to how they were before we stopped adding the setup time to reserve.
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Hippo
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #32 on: Mar 4th, 2011, 12:10pm » |
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on Mar 4th, 2011, 11:54am, omar wrote:
Good solution for providing more initial reserve for fast games and less for slower games. I might propose:
M/2m+2M/100/0/240M/2m+2M
It gives a bit more initial reserve in faster games and less in slower games. This will make the Blitz bots feel closer to how they were before we stopped adding the setup time to reserve.
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That would be OK for me
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omar
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #33 on: Mar 4th, 2011, 12:26pm » |
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I just ran some examples using:
M/2m+2M/100/0/240M/2m+2M
and it makes the maximum turn time come out to exactly the same values as what we currently have in the WC preliminaries and finals. Even the initial reserve for the WC finals is the same. Nice.
15s/2m30s/100/0/1h/2m30s - Blitz 15 sec/move
30s/3m/100/0/2h/3m - Fast 30 sec/move
45s/3m30s/100/0/3h/3m30s - Quick 45 sec/move
1m/4m/100/0/4h/4m - Regular 1 min/move
1m30s/5m/100/0/6h/5m - Match 1.5 min/move
2m/6m/100/0/8h/6m - Slow 2 min/move
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| « Last Edit: Mar 4th, 2011, 2:07pm by omar » |
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rbarreira
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #34 on: Mar 4th, 2011, 12:42pm » |
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on Mar 4th, 2011, 11:54am, omar wrote:
Bots won't have any problems with fractional reserves. The server takes care of determining the new reserve values and sends them to the bot.
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But they will try to save enough time to fill up the reserve, which then doesn't fill it up so they'll perpetually be using less time than they could.
I didn't think much about this, I may be missing something...
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #35 on: Mar 4th, 2011, 1:13pm » |
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on Mar 4th, 2011, 11:54am, omar wrote:Having a maximum turn time is the key to making the time controls spectator friendly. It guarantees that a spectator will never have to wait longer than this time to see the next move regardless of how much time the player has built up.
[...]
I think the need for banking fractional reserve is less when the maximum turn time parameter is set. |
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It is spectator-unfriendly if a move is too slow or if a move is too fast. The maximum time per move only prevents slow moves. Banking less than 100% of unused time addresses the other half of the issue. It discourages the players from making a quick move. Think about the extreme case of banking 0% of unused time; the players would have no incentive to move faster than the per-move time increment, because they would gain no reserve. The upshot would be that every move would take exactly the same time. The game would be played at a perfectly steady pace. Banking only 75% of reserve doesn't enforce an absolutely equal time on every move, but it nudges things in that direction. It makes it a better strategy for a player who is about to blitz out a move to stop and think for a few more seconds instead.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 4th, 2011, 1:14pm by Fritzlein » |
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omar
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #36 on: Mar 5th, 2011, 7:11pm » |
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on Mar 4th, 2011, 1:13pm, Fritzlein wrote:
It is spectator-unfriendly if a move is too slow or if a move is too fast. The maximum time per move only prevents slow moves. Banking less than 100% of unused time addresses the other half of the issue. It discourages the players from making a quick move. Think about the extreme case of banking 0% of unused time; the players would have no incentive to move faster than the per-move time increment, because they would gain no reserve. The upshot would be that every move would take exactly the same time. The game would be played at a perfectly steady pace. Banking only 75% of reserve doesn't enforce an absolutely equal time on every move, but it nudges things in that direction. It makes it a better strategy for a player who is about to blitz out a move to stop and think for a few more seconds instead.
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I see what you mean, but the nudge might be too weak and not worth the exception it causes in what people expect. In practice it seems that if players want to add more time to reserve they move rather fast anyways even with 75% of unused time being added to reserve. In favor of keeping things intuitive for the standard time controls, let go with 100% and see how that works out. I suppose that one could also argue that adding more time to reserve will slightly reduce the need for players to move faster and add more time to reserve.
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rbarreira
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #37 on: Mar 5th, 2011, 7:23pm » |
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I'm not sure I understood the scope for these new time controls. Besides human games, is the current plan to make all the existing bots or this year's bots use the new time controls?
If that's the case , I'm not sure all bots will work with the maximum turn times. This would be a bigger issue than the reserve accumulation I was talking about before, as it could cause outright timeouts... Or is the maximum turn time enforced by artificially sending a low reserve to the bots before each turn?
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| « Last Edit: Mar 5th, 2011, 7:25pm by rbarreira » |
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omar
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #38 on: Mar 5th, 2011, 8:05pm » |
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I added the ability to enter custom time controls. Also added time controls based on M/2m+2M/100/0/240M/2m+2M to the list of common time controls.
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omar
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #39 on: Mar 5th, 2011, 8:10pm » |
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on Mar 5th, 2011, 7:23pm, rbarreira wrote:I'm not sure I understood the scope for these new time controls. Besides human games, is the current plan to make all the existing bots or this year's bots use the new time controls?
If that's the case , I'm not sure all bots will work with the maximum turn times. This would be a bigger issue than the reserve accumulation I was talking about before, as it could cause outright timeouts... Or is the maximum turn time enforced by artificially sending a low reserve to the bots before each turn? |
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These standard time controls would be used for event games. I suppose we could also change the bots to use these, but that's going take a some time for me to edit all the bot config files. The server sends a lower reserve time so older bots should still work with the maximum turn time.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #40 on: Mar 5th, 2011, 10:55pm » |
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on Mar 2nd, 2011, 12:39pm, omar wrote:| Here are the most common time controls that we currently use. These are for non-postal game where one of the players is a human. |
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This list is uninformative, since when one of the players is a bot, the human has no choice of time control. It would be more interesting to query only HvH games, and exclude event games where the players have no choice. Then you would see what time control humans choose in exactly the circumstances when they have a choice.
on Mar 5th, 2011, 8:05pm, omar wrote:| I added the ability to enter custom time controls. |
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Very cool feature. I tried it out and it seemed to work, although I canceled the game before playing.
Quote:| Also added time controls based on M/2m+2M/100/0/240M/2m+2M to the list of common time controls. |
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With the ability to create custom time controls, we should look for ways to shorten the list of standard ones. I'm thinking just ten is plenty. From the current list I would remove "Relaxed" because nobody wants to play at 2.5 minutes per move. I would change "Slow" to 4 minutes per move. I noticed that when we offered 2, 3, or 4 minute games, nobody ever chose 3. The people who chose 4 were all beginners who wanted a lot of time to figure out how to play as they went along. Actually, I would change the name of the 2-minute game to "Slow", and the name of the 4-minute game to "Glacial", just to give the proper impression.
I would remove all of the sudden death time controls. There simply doesn't seem to be any demand for sudden death time controls among experienced players. Chess players who are new to the site may miss sudden death at first, but they quickly adapt. Sudden-death time controls are doable for chess because a chess move can be entered in a second or less, whereas Arimaa moves take at least five seconds to enter, often more like ten seconds counting the animation of the opponent's move, so it becomes silly to play with no increment.
Then I would wipe out all of the "Experimental" time controls. They are just confusing. Forget them. If anyone wants to experiment, they can, so you don't need to try to define an experiment for them. And if any non-standard time control appears to be gaining traction, you can always add it to the list later as it becomes popular.
As for postal, I think we could get by with just the most popular one, which is also the Postal Mixer one, and the "no time limit" option, which has a special purpose and needs to stay.
I suspect it will improve the average user experience to offer fewer choices. And of course the other choices aren't really gone now that folks can make custom time controls. If people really want sudden death, or large reserve and small increment, or 3-day postal with no initial reserve, etc., they can still have them.
Simplify, simplify, simplify.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 5th, 2011, 11:01pm by Fritzlein » |
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chessandgo
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #41 on: Mar 6th, 2011, 3:43am » |
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I don't think that all moves are equal. As a spectator, I would much rather see a player move in 10 sec to make an obvious capture and then think for 2mn 50 sec in a complicated position rather than have that same player use 1mn 30 for both moves because the time control gave him the incentive to do so.
That's even more true with commentated games. I understand a beginner spectator would get bored after 10 mn of thinking time on the same move in a non-commentated game, but with the commentator(s) there to explain stuff, that's totally fine. If the player needs time to figure things out then for sure the commentator(s) need time to explain what's going on as well.
To me, the most player-friendly the time setting the most spectator-friendly, but well
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| « Last Edit: Mar 6th, 2011, 3:46am by chessandgo » |
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rbarreira
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #42 on: Mar 6th, 2011, 3:20pm » |
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on Mar 5th, 2011, 8:10pm, omar wrote:
These standard time controls would be used for event games. I suppose we could also change the bots to use these, but that's going take a some time for me to edit all the bot config files. The server sends a lower reserve time so older bots should still work with the maximum turn time.
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In that case, the only potential remaining problem I see as far as bots go is that there's no maximum reserve limit in these suggested time controls, which might confuse bots that expect it (I'm pretty sure mine will have some problems with that).
I would recommend not changing bot controls unless there's very heavy demand for it, besides having to edit a lot of files you would also have to test all bots with the new time controls.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 6th, 2011, 3:21pm by rbarreira » |
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Janzert
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #43 on: Mar 6th, 2011, 3:56pm » |
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on Mar 6th, 2011, 3:20pm, rbarreira wrote:
In that case, the only potential remaining problem I see as far as bots go is that there's no maximum reserve limit in these suggested time controls, which might confuse bots that expect it (I'm pretty sure mine will have some problems with that). |
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Pretty sure old versions of opfor (2008 and possibly 2009) had problems with that as well.
Janzert
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omar
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Re: 2012 World Championship format
« Reply #44 on: Mar 9th, 2011, 8:02am » |
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on Mar 5th, 2011, 10:55pm, Fritzlein wrote:
This list is uninformative, since when one of the players is a bot, the human has no choice of time control. It would be more interesting to query only HvH games, and exclude event games where the players have no choice. Then you would see what time control humans choose in exactly the circumstances when they have a choice.
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Thanks for the suggestion. Here are the results:
Code:select count(*) as n, timecontrol from game where postal=0 and eventgame=0 and (wtype='h' and btype='h') group by timecontrol order by n desc limit 20;
+-----+------------------------+
| n | timecontrol |
+-----+------------------------+
| 843 | 45s/3/100/5/0 |
| 825 | 1/1/100/5/0 |
| 737 | 0:45/4:30/100/0/3:30/5 |
| 433 | 2/2/100/10/0 |
| 417 | 30s/3/100/4/0 |
| 264 | 15s/1/100/2/0 |
| 227 | 1:30/1:30/100/7/0 |
| 200 | 4/4/100/20/0 |
| 163 | 60s/5m/75/0/4h/4m |
| 148 | 1:00/6:00/100/0/4:30/5 |
| 140 | 0:30/3:00/100/0/2:30/5 |
| 85 | 3/3/100/15/0 |
| 82 | 3/3/100/3/0 |
| 79 | 0/30/0/0/0 |
| 71 | 15s/1:30/100/2/0 |
| 67 | 0/120/0/0/0 |
| 60 | 0:15/1:30/100/0/1:30/5 |
| 56 | 30s/3/100/5/0 |
| 44 | 60s/120s/75/0/4h/4m |
| 40 | 1:30/1:30/100/5/0 |
+-----+------------------------+ |
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