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Dolus
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #45 on: Apr 4th, 2012, 9:37am »
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Just an interesting thought I had regarding the on-call business. Google Voice came to mind.  It would require some level of management, but as long as anybody who would ever be "on-call" doesn't mind entrusting their phone number to at least whoever would be in charge of the Google Voice account, then there will only need to be one public phone number for people to call should they need to. The Google Voice number.
 
The level of management that is involved would be removing/adding the forwarding phone numbers as appropriate when different people are on call. There can also be restrictions put on when the phone can't be called, to avoid unwanted calls outside of the "on-call" timeframe. Not sure if you can specify "whitelisted" call times, or if you can only "blacklist" call times. But it's certainly possible.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #46 on: Apr 4th, 2012, 10:54am »
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on Apr 4th, 2012, 12:16am, omar wrote:
The organizer can change the roles that are not essential, but essential roles like Director, Coordinator and Referees can't be changed. I would like to have these roles be well defined and not change from event to event.
[...]
We are just starting to formally define these roles. Eventually all events should have the essential roles.

One possible outcome of the direction that you are heading is that there will be fewer events run by community members.  I doubt I would have run the Continuous Tournament if I had been required to be present at all games or find an approved coordinator to be present on my behalf.  Would similar considerations have deterred megajester from founding the Arimaa World League?  I will let Adanac comment about the possible impact of requiring a game referee to be present at every game in order to obtain permission to run the Ironman Tournament.
 
And game referees is just one point of control among many you appear to be asserting in the wiki document you posted.  It has become clear to me that I need to step aside from dreaming about organizing any event, even an Open Classic event that has nothing to do with the World Championship.  I am happy to let others step forward to fill your list of volunteer roles as they have time and motivation.  I will gladly continue to provide live audio commentary on event games as I have time and opportunity, whether or not I am compensated for it out of event entry fees.
 
If you ultimately determine that "there aren't enough volunteers" to have a big tournament, it might have something to do with the way you are approaching it.  But I could well be wrong, as I have been wrong many times before.  I will be curious to see what will happen for the 2013 World Championship, curious in a detached observer sort of way.
 
Peace,
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #47 on: Apr 4th, 2012, 12:45pm »
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Yes, it may be that we don't have as many events, but at least we are able to have some official events without everyone having to physically be at the same place. Consider the burden placed on the players, fans and organizers when real events are organized and everyone has to come together to the same place on a same schedule to make the event happen.
 
For event games I do feel that there needs to be some level of strictness and adherence to rules that makes them different than casual games. If we want to have events and we can't even have someone official present to oversee the game, what's the point. The organizer has failed in making it a true event.
 
I haven't had a chance to implement it yet, but there will be a feature in the TMT so that casual events can be organized with it and not count as event games. The games from such events won't need to have a referee present and will not count towards event ratings.
 
In the past we didn't have a requirement for referees to be present during event games, but as I said I would like to eventually move towards this. For events like the Open Classic and Ironman, I would be OK with not having coverage on all the games as long as some effort is being made to find referees for the games. The WC is important enough that we should have a referee at all games. I've tried to be present at all the games when it is small enough for me to manage. If enough people in the community want a big event, then I think we will have enough people volunteering to make it happen. However, it could be that a few people are pushing for a big event, but the community doesn't really care for a big event. Or perhaps they would be interested in participating in a big event as long as the entry fee is low and they don't have to do anything more and someone else takes on the burden. I really hope that's not the case, otherwise I would feel like I'm being taken advantage of.
 
But I don't think that's the case. I think there will be many people who volunteer and I think it could work really well. We haven't even given it a try and you are already shying away from it. Don't sit back and be an observer to see if Omar can make it work, get involved and encourage others.
 
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #48 on: Apr 4th, 2012, 6:12pm »
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[EDIT]
To those of you who read what I posted here in the few hours that it was up, I apologize.  Re-reading it makes me understand that I am too frustrated to be a constructive participant in this discussion right now.  I think it is better if I remove the post and wait until I calm down before saying anything else, which is what I should have done in the first place.  My bad.
[/EDIT]
« Last Edit: Apr 4th, 2012, 10:30pm by Fritzlein » IP Logged

omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #49 on: Apr 4th, 2012, 11:20pm »
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Karl, the only thing we have a difference of opinion about is the game referee role.  
 
From my experience in running these events I know that it is very critical for someone to be present at the game in case an issue occurs. You seem to think it's enough for someone to be on call and get contacted by the spectators. I think that would add another layer of complexity in managing the event.  
 
But you seem to be very insistent on trying it this way. I hate to discourage anyone that is very motivated about something. So no problem, if you want to be the organizer and give it a try, I'm will to relax the requirement for the game referee role. In practice I think the game referees will show up to be present at the games.
 
You are welcome to think that I need to control everything, but actually I try to get everybody's opinion (or at least those who want to give it) before making a decision. I can't satisfy everyone, but I do try. I think you are forgetting that if I really wanted things my way the WC would still be a single elimination tournament open to only to a limited number of top rated players Smiley
 
OK, run with it. You have lots of time to prepare. Good luck.
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #50 on: Apr 4th, 2012, 11:24pm »
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Oops, I read it and already replied. Good thing I didn't quote you Smiley
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Thiagor
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #51 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 7:30am »
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Just to add my 2 cents to the discussion: For an event as important as the WC, I think it makes sense to have game referees, and I'd say it's not too much to ask them to be present (probably they would enjoy watching the game anyway).
 
On the other hand, for other events, such as the Ironman tournament, such a rule seems too restrictive to me.  For one thing, I suppose it would make spontaneous game scheduling practically impossible. Moreover, what can happen if no referee is present? The worst outcome I can think of is that when a game cannot take place due to technical issues, the schedule would be delayed by one week, which wouldn't be a disaster.  (And even this seems very unlikely, since in most cases, it shouldn't be a problem to get another game played in the given time frame.) So I guess the organizational difficulties to find referees for all games would outweigh the potential benefits.
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #52 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 10:20am »
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on Apr 4th, 2012, 12:45pm, omar wrote:

 
For event games I do feel that there needs to be some level of strictness and adherence to rules that makes them different than casual games. If we want to have events and we can't even have someone official present to oversee the game, what's the point. The organizer has failed in making it a true event.

 
What about the postal mixer and the autopostal games?  Aren't they considered event games?  I guess there is a difference because you can't have a technical difficulty and therefore there is no need for a referee?
 
Perhaps all postal games should be separated out of WHRE and be given their own WHR score, call it WHRP.  I think this would make for a cleaner divide and will get rid of the ambiguity of whether or not to include postal games in WHRE.
 
As for the Ironman tournament, I also don't see how it is possible to have both a spontaneous method of playing games and also have a game referee.  It kind of defeats the whole purpose...
 
My overall point is that their is a wide variety of what can be considered an event (from informal to very formal) and all of these should be taken in to account a little differently.
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Adanac
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #53 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 10:56am »
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on Apr 5th, 2012, 10:20am, mistre wrote:

 
What about the postal mixer and the autopostal games?  Aren't they considered event games?  I guess there is a difference because you can't have a technical difficulty and therefore there is no need for a referee?
 
Perhaps all postal games should be separated out of WHRE and be given their own WHR score, call it WHRP.  I think this would make for a cleaner divide and will get rid of the ambiguity of whether or not to include postal games in WHRE.

There actually is a WHRP already:
http://home.scarlet.be/~woh/whr/whrp.htm
 
But Postal Mixers count towards all 3: WHR, WHRE, WHRP.  I think it would make sense to separate the WHRP from the other two ratings because some players differ so widely between the live and postal time controls.  For example, some players have difficulty in the World League because their success in postal games put them on a higher board in live games, and they struggle accordingly.  I had the opposite problem in the World Championship where a low WHRP dragged down my seeding to 5th, from 3rd in the previous WC (now with Hanzack's rise to stardom I'm back down to 4th).
 
Some of the Ironman games will be scheduled, and some will be spontaneous, depending upon what players prefer.  For the scheduled games, I am going to try to recruit Referees for the tournament.  It will be a good learning experience for players that want to be a referee during the World Championship, or any other event.  For the spontaneous games, I don't think a referee is needed, especially with a 12 week period to complete a 7 game series.  Whatever problems occur should be relatively easy to fix (I hope!!)
« Last Edit: Apr 5th, 2012, 1:01pm by Adanac » IP Logged


Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #54 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 1:16pm »
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Omar, now that I know you had time to read what I said before I deleted it, let me apologize again for saying it.  I'm impressed with how calmly and graciously you responded given the tone of my letter.  Your reply was much better than I deserved.
 
on Apr 4th, 2012, 11:20pm, omar wrote:
Karl, the only thing we have a difference of opinion about is the game referee role.

Heh, in fact there are many things we disagree about that we haven't rehashed in this thread, and it is guaranteed that if we keep working together, we will have more disagreements in the future.  The role of game referee is only scratching the surface.  Until such time as two people can share the same brain, there is no way around different viewpoints.  What I regret is my way of handling our disagreement.
 
I think we could have struck fewer sparks by framing the disagreement in terms of conflicting interests that are all valuable but must be balanced somehow.  I should have been clear that you can set some minimum standards for a World Championship without me calling you a control freak.  For example, you might say that a range of different time controls is acceptable, but 15s/move is out of the question, because the quality of play would be too low and there would not be enough time to spectate.  I'm on board with wanting the World Championship to be the most serious event of the year.  Having described and acknowledged the legitimate concern in general, I would have expressed my opinion that raising the minimum bar too high would rule out large participation.  I could have made my point without taking it to an extreme such as, "You don't care about participation."  
 
Maybe if I had acknowledged your legitimate concerns, you wouldn't have made absolute statements like, "If we want to have events and we can't even have someone official present to oversee the game, what's the point. The organizer has failed in making it a true event."  Perhaps if I hadn't provoked you into taking an uncompromising stand, we could have calmly talked about the tradeoffs involved in various choices, while acknowledging that different decisions might all have merit.
 
Quote:
From my experience in running these events I know that it is very critical for someone to be present at the game in case an issue occurs. You seem to think it's enough for someone to be on call and get contacted by the spectators. I think that would add another layer of complexity in managing the event.  
 
But you seem to be very insistent on trying it this way. I hate to discourage anyone that is very motivated about something. So no problem, if you want to be the organizer and give it a try, I'm will to relax the requirement for the game referee role. In practice I think the game referees will show up to be present at the games.
 
You are welcome to think that I need to control everything, but actually I try to get everybody's opinion (or at least those who want to give it) before making a decision. I can't satisfy everyone, but I do try.

I want to be very clear about what was upsetting me, not because I am proud of my emotional reaction, but because it matters to me that you know what I am passionate about.  Although you accuse me of being insistent on the issue of game referees, I am not hung up on having the World Championship run a certain way.  Part of my deleted text (the part I am less ashamed of) made this clear.  The World Championship can be done differently than I have in mind and still be a big success.  I do not have to get my way about format in order to be happy come January 2013.
 
The reason I flew off the handle was that I thought you were negotiating in bad faith.  I thought you were giving lip service to being in favor of having a big tournament, but then not being willing to give up any of the advantages of a small tournament.  How can you want something if you don't think it is worth giving up anything else to get it?  I also thought you were claiming that you would let organizers make decisions while in truth wanting to make the decisions yourself.  (Yes, after getting input, but ultimately deciding unilaterally.)  When someone I think of as my friend says one thing and seems to mean another, I get riled up very quickly.
 
Am I making sense?  It was not the result of the discussion that was making me flip out, it was the structure of the discussion itself.  My motivation for bailing out (and lashing out) was not a feeling that I couldn't get my way, but rather a feeling that I couldn't work with you in a constructive fashion.  There are a jillion things that have to be hashed out to make a tournament run well.  I foresaw that each discussion would further damage our friendship.  Better to walk away than to keep on trading punches.  (Although, sadly, I also wanted to get in the last dig.)
 
The fact that you are willing to compromise on the issue of game referees tells me that you are not, in fact, negotiating in bad faith.  It suggests that I could have approached things differently so as to work out our differences in a positive way.  Your concession makes me embarrassed about the way I have handled myself.
 
Unfortunately, it doesn't address my real concern of how to handle disagreements in the future.  What I am most keen to see is a satisfying way of talking about bones of contention.  What will happen next time we have different views about what should happen in the 2013 World Championship?  How will talk about it?  How will the decision be made?
 
Quote:
OK, run with it. You have lots of time to prepare. Good luck.

Thank you for offering to let me run the tournament.  I am honored by your trust and excited by the possibility.  Before I accept, however, I feel that we need to work out what was really bothering me, as explained above.  You have offered to let me have my way in some superficial sense, but I care much less about that than I care about our relationship.  What do you think of me?  How will you treat me in the future?  What will happen in our next conflict?  Am I too intransigent and too easily offended to be a good partner in making something happen?
 
Quote:
I think you are forgetting that if I really wanted things my way the WC would still be a single elimination tournament open to only to a limited number of top rated players Smiley

If my choice were between the Arimaa tournament of my dreams plus a bad relationship with you on the one hand, or the stupidest format in the world plus an ongoing friendship with you, I would rather have your friendship.  Nothing motivated my outbursts as much as my feeling that you weren't treating me like a friend.  Do you believe this?  If you don't, then I don't want to collaborate until we work things out, in public or private as you choose.  Otherwise we are doomed to create further unpleasantness by attempting to work together.
« Last Edit: Apr 5th, 2012, 1:27pm by Fritzlein » IP Logged

omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #55 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 2:47pm »
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on Apr 5th, 2012, 7:30am, Thiagor wrote:
Just to add my 2 cents to the discussion: For an event as important as the WC, I think it makes sense to have game referees, and I'd say it's not too much to ask them to be present (probably they would enjoy watching the game anyway).
 
On the other hand, for other events, such as the Ironman tournament, such a rule seems too restrictive to me.  For one thing, I suppose it would make spontaneous game scheduling practically impossible. Moreover, what can happen if no referee is present? The worst outcome I can think of is that when a game cannot take place due to technical issues, the schedule would be delayed by one week, which wouldn't be a disaster.  (And even this seems very unlikely, since in most cases, it shouldn't be a problem to get another game played in the given time frame.) So I guess the organizational difficulties to find referees for all games would outweigh the potential benefits.

 
OK, I guess you are right about this. The nature of the event does have an impact on the game referee role. If an issue can't be resolved to keep the game going the most important factors to consider are the potential delay of the event schedule and disappointment to the spectators present. As usual reality throws in a lot of exceptional cases and I have a tendency to want to apply the same rules through out. But I'm beginning to think that the game referee role should be kept flexible so that the organizer can decide if the game referee needs to be present or on call.
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #56 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 3:00pm »
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on Apr 5th, 2012, 10:20am, mistre wrote:

What about the postal mixer and the autopostal games?  Aren't they considered event games?  I guess there is a difference because you can't have a technical difficulty and therefore there is no need for a referee?
 
Perhaps all postal games should be separated out of WHRE and be given their own WHR score, call it WHRP.  I think this would make for a cleaner divide and will get rid of the ambiguity of whether or not to include postal games in WHRE.

 
I like the idea of separating postal games from live game in computing the ratings.
 
Quote:

As for the Ironman tournament, I also don't see how it is possible to have both a spontaneous method of playing games and also have a game referee.  It kind of defeats the whole purpose...
 
My overall point is that their is a wide variety of what can be considered an event (from informal to very formal) and all of these should be taken in to account a little differently.

 
Good point. The Ironman event isn't an informal event and we do want the games to count towards event ratings, yet the scheduling of the games is very informal and makes it very difficult to require a game referee to be present. Yet, if a game times out, the players need to be able to contact someone to investigate the problem right away and if the game is to be resumed from the current position have access to the tools to do that. This event is a prime example of where a game referee only needs to be on call.
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #57 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 9:34pm »
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No problem Karl. From my side there isn't even a dent or scratch in our relationship.  
 
We will have disagreements in the future, but the best way to convince me is to discuss it and give me examples. Try not to get frustrated if you can't convince me about something. I do try to listen and take multiple views into consideration. Sometime it may take me a while to see a certain point of view.
 
Looking at my statements in retrospect I can see why you might have thought that I was arguing in bad faith. Although if I don't want something or just want to do it my way, I would never put on the table to begin with. I do want the community to run the WC, but I also want to ensure that the standard by which I try to run it is maintained. I have to admit I was wrong in thinking that a game referee needs to be present in all events and eventually moving towards that. I realize now that it depends on the nature of the event and not all events need that. I still think the WC should require it and that we would be able to get enough volunteers to cover all the games. But I'm OK now with trying to make a best effort and seeing how it goes, because as I thought more about it I realized that people who sign up as referees for the WC event would be wanting to watch the game anyways, so they would be present even if it wasn't a strict requirement. Also in case the referee wasn't present there is bound to be someone else around who can serve as a backup referee. So that allowed me to be more relaxed about it. Also I didn't realize you were so motivated to run a big tournament. I definitely trust that you will do a good job of making it a success.
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #58 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 9:49pm »
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on Apr 4th, 2012, 9:37am, Dolus wrote:
Just an interesting thought I had regarding the on-call business. Google Voice came to mind.  It would require some level of management, but as long as anybody who would ever be "on-call" doesn't mind entrusting their phone number to at least whoever would be in charge of the Google Voice account, then there will only need to be one public phone number for people to call should they need to. The Google Voice number.
 
The level of management that is involved would be removing/adding the forwarding phone numbers as appropriate when different people are on call. There can also be restrictions put on when the phone can't be called, to avoid unwanted calls outside of the "on-call" timeframe. Not sure if you can specify "whitelisted" call times, or if you can only "blacklist" call times. But it's certainly possible.

 
Dolus, thanks for providing this suggestion. This sounds like a good way to allow anyone to contact the game referee without having to reveal private phone numbers.
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #59 on: Apr 5th, 2012, 11:01pm »
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on Apr 5th, 2012, 3:00pm, omar wrote:

 
I like the idea of separating postal games from live game in computing the ratings.
 

 
Ok, now that we all agree, who is in charge of calculating the WHR ratings?  Is it Woh?
 
So, if I understand correctly, all that needs to be done is to take out postal games from the WHRE leaving only live H-H event games.
 
In this way, we can see a true comparison of how good a player is live vs postal (I always wanted to do an analysis on that, but had no pure way to do it).
 
Adanac,
 
Thanks for posting the WHRP link.  Is there a page on the Arimaa site that takes you there?  If so, I haven't been able to find it...
 
Finally, it would be really neat if we could have all of our ratings (Gameroom, WHR, WHRE, WHRP) show on our profile page.  Is that possible?
 
*Edit* One more thing I thought of.  Shouldn't the postal mixer games be paired based on WHRP?  With the start only two days away, I hope that Omar sees this.
« Last Edit: Apr 5th, 2012, 11:08pm by mistre » IP Logged

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