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        Arimaa >> Events >> 2007 Postal Tournament
        
(Message started by: Fritzlein on Feb 5^th, 2007, 12:35pm)

Title: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 5^th, 2007, 12:35pm

Hey, Omar, I see you opened registration for the annual Postal Tournament. Thanks! Let me start a thread to discuss the format, as well as the tournament itself once it gets underway.

I really like the idea of allowing a variable number of games per participant. That will allow everyone to participate at the level their time commitments allow. Furthermore, it gets us further away from thinking of the tournament as a championship, and closer to the "just for fun" model.

One thing I'm not sure I like is that prize money is no longer contingent on how many moves you survive in your games. There used to be an incentive to fight to the death, but now as long as you don't time out or resign, you get your entry fee back. The new system is simpler, but it doesn't discourage someone from suiciding their pieces and pulling an enemy rabbit to goal when they get tired of playing. Also it is all-or-nothing. So for example Thorin, who last year won nine of his games and timed out in the tenth after a hard-fought 48 moves, would get nothing back.

An alternative is to score it exactly like last year, except to divide each player's score by the number of games he has played. That means someone who plays 20 games won't automatically rack up the points and take all the money. Your commitment will be measured relative to how many games you promised you would play.

Given that the pairing algorithm which allows everyone to specify a variable number of opponents is not yet tested, it might pay to run it when you generate the registered players page. So when you click on the link to see who has signed up so far, and for how many games, you would also see which players each person is going to be paired with if the registration doesn't change before the deadline. Right now, of course, there are only five of us signed up, and each willing to play at least four games, so it will look like a round-robin, but it will be interesting to see the pairings start to shake out as more and more folks sign up, and would serve as a test of the new algorithm.

What do you think of allowing a second game with reversed colors between two players who both have spare games after the pairing fills up? I expect that folks who sign up for 12 games will get 12 unique opponents, but folks who sign up for 20 games will not. Should those game-hungry folks play each other twice? Surely not more than twice, though.

Are you going to send out a mass e-mail including an announcement of the Postal Tournament? I know that you don't like to spam, and that you have limited yourself to two mass e-mails in years past, but before the postal tournament is a great time to send out a mailing. Both years of the postal tournament so far I heard several people complain, "I wish I hadn't started playing just after the tournament started!"

I notice the links on the right hand side of the game room still point to the 2006 Arimaa Challenge and the 2006 Postal tournament instead of the current events.

The time control still concerns me, since theoretically the game could last 300 days with only 70 moves played on each side, and thus be decided on score after only 70 moves. I know that didn't happen last year, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but even so the 80-day initial reserve is the culprit, and if people can specify fewer than ten games, then we don't need so much initial reserve. 40 days should be more than enough given that you can scale the number of games, so I propose changing the time control from 1d/80d/100/0/300d/21d to 1d/40d/100/0/300d/21d. That would also insure games go at least 110 moves before being decided on score.

That's my laundry list of concerns, but basically I expect another fantastic tournament this year, since last year went so well. Each year the infrastructure and traditions and community seem to get a little stronger.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by omar on Feb 9^th, 2007, 5:11am

Thanks for starting this tread Karl.

I've updated the postal tournament link in the gameroom; thanks for noticing that.

Redistributing the proper amount to each player was getting to be a bit combersome. So I wanted to keep that part simple this year for my sake :-) Hope it doesn't affect the players too much.

I'll try to add a link for viewing the current pairings.

I like the idea of allowing a second game between the game hungry players.

I will be sending out a mailing to notify players about the postal tournament.

I also like the idea of shortening the initial reserve now that players can choose the max number of games they want to play. But I would suggest something like 60 days. Would like to know what others think about this.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by woh on Feb 9^th, 2007, 6:25am

on 02/09/07 at 05:11:19, omar wrote:

I also like the idea of shortening the initial reserve now that players can choose the max number of games they want to play. But I would suggest something like 60 days. Would like to know what others think about this.

I wouldn't mind if the initial reserve is cut down to 20 days. That would still work for me. I think 40 or 50 days should be enough for every one.

I will join the tournament whatever the initial reserve is.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by arimaa_master on Feb 9^th, 2007, 9:31am

I will be happy with 14 days. But I think 30 days could be the right choice.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Feb 9^th, 2007, 10:38am

If the aim is to make the games the highest level possible then it seems logical to keep the time reserve as large as possible, in the limit of what is practical. 110 moves games are more than unlikely, so 40 days initial time reserve is more than reasonnable, isn't it ? 60 days seems good as well, and I wouldn't mind 80 days either.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by IdahoEv on Feb 9^th, 2007, 12:16pm

I think 40 days reserve would be okay, but I would discourage making it too small. I don't know about others, but I have an awful lot of travel planned in the next 4 months.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9^th, 2007, 12:31pm

Random note: we now have nine players signed up, one in each century. (i.e. one 23xx, one 22xx, one 21xx, etc.) I like how that underscores the "just for fun" tournament design. Everybody can play, and I hope everybody does!

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by OLTI on Feb 9^th, 2007, 2:46pm

on 02/05/07 at 12:35:43, Fritzlein wrote:

Furthermore, it gets us further away from thinking of the tournament as a championship, and closer to the "just for fun" model.

Actually I don't like so much the idea of "just for fun". We can play "just for fun" games all the time even without paying a registration fee.

If there is not going to be selected a winer this isn't a "Tournament" anymore.

I think it's more stimulating to play for wining the tournament.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9^th, 2007, 5:04pm

on 02/09/07 at 14:46:20, OLTI wrote:

If there is not going to be selected a winer this isn't a "Tournament" anymore.

One thing that distinguishes a tournament from pickup games is that if you enter the tournament, you can't run away from someone else who enters. I've been avoiding chessandgo for a while, but now he is guaranteed a game against me. ;) In general everyone can count on getting a variety of opponents who aren't rated too far away, and who are serious (as insured by the entry fee). It's hard to get such a good profile of opponents casually.

Furthermore the results will still be collected and prominently displayed for all posterity. I may have a thousand games in my game history, but the ones anyone is likely to ever see are my tournament games, so there is still an element of glory in doing well that doesn't exist for casual games. Does anyone care that I beat robinson postally in game 19732? You would have to hunt for it if I didn't brag, but my win over robinson in the 2006 Postal Tournament was only two clicks away from the gameroom for the better part of a year.

Finally, Omar has mentioned to me the possibility of having Arimaa titles in the future, such as "Expert" and "Master", which would be based on winning tournament games rather than just based on ratings. Start collecting your Arimaa grandmaster norms now!

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Feb 10^th, 2007, 3:15am

on 02/09/07 at 17:04:36, Fritzlein wrote:

Start collecting your Arimaa grandmaster norms now!

lol :) I agree with Olti, though : it wouldn't seem much more complicated to have the postal tournament select a winner, or a bunch of winners, and it would keep it more in the spirit of a tournament

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 10^th, 2007, 8:50am

What's a good metric for selecting a winner if everyone can play a different number of games? Winning percentage? Wins minus losses? Performance rating?

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Feb 10^th, 2007, 11:42am

With the aim of keeping it of real tourney, I'd prefer last year's rules, where everyone played a fixed amount of games ...

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by OLTI on Feb 10^th, 2007, 6:19pm

I agree with Jean ;D

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by woh on Feb 12^th, 2007, 1:07pm

on 02/10/07 at 08:50:19, Fritzlein wrote:

What's a good metric for selecting a winner if everyone can play a different number of games? Winning percentage? Wins minus losses? Performance rating?

I agree with chessandgo and OLTI. A tournament should gave a winner. So I have been thinking how to select one.

I started with the scoring system of last year's tournament but to select a winner I didn't liked the idea that the loser can gain as much points as the winner. So I changed it to

A player receives 100 points for winning
A player loses 100 points if they forfeit, resign or lose on time
If a player loses any other way they receive points equal to the number of moves in the game up to a limit of 60 points

It's easier to win all your games when you play 3 then when you play 12 games. So a player who wins 12 out of 12 should be ahead of a player that wins 3 out of 3. And also a player who loses 12 out of 12 should be behind a player that loses 3 of 3. Therefore each player gets 70 points for a fictitious game. 70 being the mean of a game he won and a game he lost in 40 moves.

So we get: score = (sum(Pt) + 70) / (Nt + 1)

Experimenting with this formula in different situations I found that a player who plays more games is by far less punished for forfeiting a game. So I left the games lost by forfeit, by resigning or lost on time out of the above calculation. Instead for each of those game 30 points is subtracted from the result.

Nt: total number of games played
Nf: number of games forfeited, resigned or lost on time
Nn=Nt-Nf: number of games won or otherwise lost
for each of those last games Pn points is awarded where Pn equals

100 points for winning
when losing: the number of moves in the game up to a limit of 60 points

Now we get: score = (sum(Pn)+70) / (Nn + 1) - 30 * Nf

Any thoughts on this scoring system?

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 12^th, 2007, 3:42pm

The Postal Tournament is currently paired by trying to give everyone as many even games as possible. There have been very few games where the players were more than 400 points apart in rating, because the biggest mismatches were simply not paired. As a result, higher-rated players get tougher opponents than lower-rated players. Does this create a problem for people who would like the tournament to have a clearly-defined winner?

For example, last year Adanac scored 8-2 against opponents with an average rating of 1985, while Thorin scored 9-1 against opponents with an average rating of 1791. Should Thorin place higher because he had more wins, even though it was against much weaker opposition? Maybe to really determine a winner in a fair manner, we not only have to have everyone play the same number of games, we also have to have everyone play across the entire spectrum of opponents, i.e. we need to pair more mismatches.

My hunch is that stronger players generally are more interested in determining a tournament winner, whereas weaker players are generally more interested in having good games. I say this as a weak chess player. When I used to go to chess tournaments, I would be very happy for the Swiss pairing. Every round I lost, I would get to play a weaker opponent, whereas every round I won I would get to play a stronger opponent. The method of determining the tournament winner was totally irrelevant to me, because I had no chance of being that winner. All I cared about was having good games.

If I had been told that the purpose of the tournament was just to determine a winner, and that I would have to get destroyed a few times by the top-rated players in order to help them determine a winner, I probably wouldn't have bothered to participate. I think our World Championship tournament has a similar deterrent effect on low-rated players. Why should they enter just to get beaten up? In order to enter, you have to enjoy taking a shot at someone rated way above yourself, and not everyone enjoys this.

I think it is totally to be expected that more low-rated players enter the Postal Tournament than enter the World Championship. Look right now: for the World Championship we had only one entrant rated below 1700. For the Postal Tournament we already have four entrants rated below 1700. I think this is entirely attributable to the "just for fun" tournament design. That's why I'm not in favor of focusing so much on determining a winner.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Feb 13^th, 2007, 6:32am

I'm not sure the "winner" issue is this connected to the fact that people get to play equal games ; for instance we could divide the pool of players between ranking categories, and play separate tourneys for each category.

But anyway, never mind the formula chosen, and I wish a nice and fruitful tourney to everyone ;)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by omar on Feb 14^th, 2007, 7:54am

I've lowered the initial reserve to 60 days. This should lower the risk of the 300 day game time limit being reached and still allow players to be able to take a vacation or two in the middle of the tournament.

I ran the pairing program on the current set of players and got the following results:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/pairs.txt

The script for pairing the players is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/pair.txt

The input file I used is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/players.txt

This is probably far from an optimal pairing program. If anyone wants to develop a better pairing program please feel free to take a shot at it and send it to me or post it here.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 14^th, 2007, 1:51pm

Omar, I like the way your code orders the thirteen players in a ring just as it did last year:

Fritzlein 2359 8
robinson 2167 3
RonWeasley 2053 12
omar 1881 4
naveed 1703 8
nbarriga 1534 4
willwould 1504 4
camelback 1508 4
seanick 1672 8
woh 1738 12
arimaa_master 1978 50
Adanac 2076 8
chessandgo 2258 12

However, you then seem to treat it as a line rather than a ring. After pairing the first twelve games you have given everyone two games against their two nearest neighbors, except for chessandgo and Fritzlein, who have only one game each. Why don't you also pair chessandgo vs. Fritzlein on this first pass?

Fritzlein robinson
RonWeasley omar
naveed nbarriga
camelback willwould
seanick woh
Adanac arimaa_master
chessandgo Adanac
arimaa_master woh
camelback seanick
nbarriga willwould
omar naveed
robinson RonWeasley

After your second dozen games, the situation would have been exacerbated with everyone having four games, except for Fritzlein and chessandgo having only two games. The fact that robinson only wanted three games total left Fritzlein with three games as well, but in principle both ends of the chain could have gotten shafted again. Instead of short-changing the ends, you need to close the loop and pair chessandgo vs. robinson and Fritzlein vs. Adanac.

RonWeasley Fritzlein
omar robinson
willwould naveed
nbarriga camelback
arimaa_master seanick
woh Adanac
arimaa_master chessandgo
Adanac seanick
woh camelback
willwould omar
RonWeasley nbarriga
naveed Fritzlein

Continuing in this fashion, you almost didn't pair chessandgo vs. Fritzlein at all! Fritzlein filled up seven of eight games before getting to the bottom of the chain. If there had been more people in the middle, the #1 vs. #2 matchup wouldn't have been included in the tournament, despite being one of the most eligible pairings.

Clearly the solution is to treat the ring as a ring. Instead of going up and down the chain, go around and around the ring. After the first pass, you should have paired thirteen games, i.e. the twelve you paired plus the one game connecting the two ends. Then everyone will have two games, in the best way that you could give everyone two games. After the second pass, everyone should be playing two forward and two back in the ring, for a total of four games each, in the best way that you can give everyone four games. (Except that robinson will have only three games, so one of the people two away from him in the ring will also be short a game.) Then the most eligible games get paired first instead of only maybe possibly by accident at the end if those players have games left over.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by omar on Feb 14^th, 2007, 10:54pm

Thanks for the suggestions Karl. I've modified the pairing script a bit.

The new script is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/pair2.txt

The results of this script is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/pairs2.txt

It does seem to do better. The first script produced 46 games with an average difference between matched players of 274 points. The new script produced 47 games with an average difference between matched players of 244 points.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 14^th, 2007, 11:13pm

Excellent. Now we just have to hope enough people sign up that folks can get their requested games without duplicates. Not that I mind playing Weasley twice, but I'd rather play him and Belbo once each.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 21^st, 2007, 8:06am

We now have 15 people signed up, and have crossed an important threshold: everyone who requested 8 games or fewer will get all their games against unique opponents. Those who requested 12 or more games will probably get almost 12 games by playing each other twice each.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 24^th, 2007, 5:26pm

I see the pairings are up. A quick comparison of this year's registration to years past:

	2005	2006	2007
Players	15	19	20
Games	75	95	85
Mismatches	9	5	3

By "mismatch" I mean a rating difference of 400 points or more. Therefore I didn't include chessandgo vs. Zombie as a mismatch, although we know it will be a blowout. (Can it be more brutal than the eighteen-move demolition during challenge qualifying? We shall see.)

I note that everyone got up to ten games without duplicate opponents, and up to twelve with a couple of duplicates. The three game-hungry players got 14, 15, and 15 games respectively, including duplicate opponents.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by RonWeasley on Feb 24^th, 2007, 9:15pm

So ... many ... games ... uhh ...

Title: Zombie in the postal tournament
Post by IdahoEv on Feb 25^th, 2007, 6:55pm

Zombie version 6 has been entered in the tournament, playing a full complement of 15 games. V.6 is slightly upgraded from the V.5 that played in the computer championship, including some improvements to endgame rabbit eval and a fix of a minor eval bug Zombie inherited from Fairy.

The rules for the PT technically state that it must be announced what hardware bots are running on, and they must be available for under $1000.

Zombie is running on a linux server box in my basement that cost $189.00. You can see the exact hardware here:

http://store.madtux.org/product_info.php?cPath=57&products_id=240

I added 256MB RAM to the default configuration by scrounging from a box of spare parts in my closet, so the actual server has 512MB of RAM, and this compile of Zombie is using up to 400MB for its hashtable. Zombie is searching for a fixed 3 hour per move time window.

NOTE: Through an agreement with Fritzlein, if my server crashes while I am on vacation this spring or summer, Fritzl will pick up the slack by running Zombie on an old laptop he has sitting around. Since this laptop has quite a bit lower specifications than my sever, I assume this eventuality wouldn't offend anyone. (Even though the rules say that technically the hardware is not allowed to change).

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 25^th, 2007, 11:12pm

Thanks for entering Zombie, IdahoEv. The restrictions on computers seem a bit excessive to me, especially now that prize money is awarded 100% for participation and 0% for game results. I would be happy to play postally against a bot that was running on a supercomputer, just to see if the bot could hang with us. Furthermore, I think it would encourage developers to enter their bots if they could periodically update the code with whatever improvements they have made in the mean time.

I know we discussed this before, but how do folks feel now that there is no prize money on the line?

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by arimaa_master on Feb 26^th, 2007, 2:03am

I fully agree with you, Karl. I am very interested to play against computer opponent with some super powerful hardware and especially if program could be modified during postal game (Our playing technique could be updated so why not allow computers do the same? ;) )

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Feb 26^th, 2007, 4:42am

agreed 100 % :)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by IdahoEv on Feb 27^th, 2007, 12:20am

on 02/25/07 at 23:12:41, Fritzlein wrote:

Thanks for entering Zombie, IdahoEv. The restrictions on computers seem a bit excessive to me, especially now that prize money is awarded 100% for participation and 0% for game results.

I would tend to agree. I think the rules are right for the WCC, but I think they are somewhat irrelevant for the postal tournament. However, them's the rules we've got. I would suggest we lobby Omar for alterations for next year if we want them changed.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by nbarriga on Feb 27^th, 2007, 10:23am

Hi, I just realized, that in everyone of my games, one player has 20 days reserve and the other 60. Is that normal? If so, why?

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by IdahoEv on Feb 27^th, 2007, 12:07pm

on 02/27/07 at 10:23:30, nbarriga wrote:

Hi, I just realized, that in everyone of my games, one player has 20 days reserve and the other 60. Is that normal? If so, why?

This confused me for a long time as well. Here's what you are seeing:

For the active player's turn, it shows the remaining amount of reserve time that player can use for this turn.

For the non-active player's turn, it shows the total remaining reserve.

The time control for this tournament starts you with 60 days of reserve (2nd number in the time control), but you can only use 21 days of it for a single turn (5th number in the time control).

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 8^th, 2007, 1:32pm

Here's a rough look at the continuing evolution of Arimaa opening preferences, as demonstrated in the annual postal tournaments:

Elephant File	2005	2006	2007
d	98.1%	79.5%	85.3%
c		13.7%	9.4%
b	1.9%	6.3%	5.3%
a		0.5%
Rabbits Forward	2005	2006	2007
none	14.4%	22.6%	10.0%
a	2.5%	15.3%	4.1%
c	3.1%
ah	55.6%	56.3%	76.5%
cf	23.1%
ag		0.5%	1.2%
adh		2.6%	4.1%
abgh	0.6%
acfh	0.6%
adeh		2.6%	4.1%
Setup Balance	2005	2006	2007
Symmetrical	56.9%	50.5%	54.1%
Balanced	22.5%	30.0%	34.1%
Unbalanced	20.6%	19.5%	11.8%
Gold Move 2w	2005	2006	2007
E up 4	68.8%	26.3%	25.9%
E up 3 over 1	11.3%	11.6%	1.2%
E up 3; X up 1	6.3%	41.1%	40.0%
E up 2; X,Y up 1	3.8%	10.5%	23.5%
E, X, Y, Z up 1	3.8%	3.2%
Other	6.3%	7.4%	9.4%

Unbalanced setups and decentralized elephants lost a little ground, and having two forward flank rabbits became the dominant choice.

In 2005 80% of the opening moves used all four steps on the elephant. This year only 27% of the opening moves use four elephant steps, 40% use three, and 33% move the elephant two steps or less. This seems to correspond to a philosophical shift away from lone-elephant openings, and away from unbalanced flank attacks, toward keeping the elephant centralized while poking with a horse on each wing. For Silver openings, "Other" was tied for first this year by "E up 2; X,Y up 1", both at 33%.

Of course, it is dangerous to draw sweeping conclusions from the data. 8.2% of the setups had three or four rabbits forward, but all of those are blue22's games, and the jump happened because he is playing a greater percentage of games this year than last. Likewise the decline in unbalanced setup may be partially attributable to robinson playing fewer games.

I'm curious to see whether my lone-elephant style of opening becomes totally obsolete in comparison to centralized elephant plus advanced flank horses. I can't yet find a way to punish chessandgo's advancing horse in our game, and when I took Adanac's horse hostage with my elephant, he forced a re-alignment which leaves me equal at best, and probably slightly worse. I need some kind of horse-repellent if my style is going to stand the test of time.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 8^th, 2007, 7:58pm

Since I looked at all the openings in this tournament anyway, I thought I might as well report on whether Arimaa openings are starting to become stereotyped like chess openings.

In last year's postal tournament, there were 95 games. After two moves on each side (i.e. after 2b (i.e. after the setup and one move on each side)) there were 92 unique positions. There were three pairs of repeats, all of which diverged on move 3w.

In this year's postal tournament, there are 85 games. After two moves on each side, there were 81 unique positions. There are four pairs of repeats, all of which diverged on 3w.

This points to a small increase in standardization, but it is still nothing like chess. For comparison, last year I looked at a grandmaster chess tournament, in which there were 91 games. After two moves on each side (i.e. not counting the setup, since there is no choice) there were 20 unique positions. Many of the 71 repeats did not diverge for several more moves. We have a long way to go before reaching that kind of uniformity in Arimaa openings.

For the curious, the repeats this year are:

Fritzlein vs. chessandgo
bot_Zombie vs. chessandgo

petitprince vs. JacquesB
Fritzlein vs. Adanac

Fritzlein vs. RonWeasley
99of9 vs. Fritzlein

RonWeasley vs. 99of9
RonWeasley vs. arimaa_master

These games show that, if there is anything like a standard, it is the 99of9 setup, followed by elephant forward three and horse on the same wing forward one.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by JacquesB on Apr 9^th, 2007, 12:46pm

Its a honor to open like Fritzlein vs. Adanac .

I wish I could play like them more than just one move.

I didn't copy. ;-)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 9^th, 2007, 2:21pm

Yes, I also insist I did not copy Zombie in my opening versus chessandgo. ;)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by 99of9 on Apr 10^th, 2007, 7:49am

Thanks for keeping the opening analysis up to date Fritz. I think this is one of the best ways to watch the progress and development of the dominant strategies.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 12^th, 2007, 8:09am

RonWeasley finished off three games in the last two days, surging into the lead at +4. Under the "win-loss" scoring, it seems probable that only a game-hungry player can top the standings. Will that encourage folks to sign up for more games next year?

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by camelback on Apr 13^th, 2007, 5:05pm

Is it possible to send the opponent's move notation along with email notification?

Then I don't have to click the game link and I can plan the game totally off-line.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 13^th, 2007, 5:20pm

on 04/13/07 at 17:05:17, camelback wrote:

Is it possible to send the opponent's move notation along with email notification?

I would appreciate this feature as well. Sometimes I remember the position perfectly well, and I don't want to bother opening up a client just to see what happened. Not a big deal, but a nice convenience.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by RonWeasley on Apr 25^th, 2007, 3:40pm

When I started the tournament, I guessed a probability of winning against each opponent. Adding them up gave me my expected number of wins. With Omar's pairing formula, all but the top and bottom few players should expect to win about half their games. So it was with my own estimate.

Well, I've now won 6 out of 12, so this tourament is now a success for me. Any additional wins are gravy. And I really didn't want to lose to Zombie!

I hope the other players are enjoying the tournament.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Apr 25^th, 2007, 3:58pm

on 04/25/07 at 15:40:38, RonWeasley wrote:

With Omar's pairing formula, all but the top and bottom few players should expect to win about half their games.

Unless your rating is inaccurate. Maybe you were grossly underrated at 2089. Your current rating of 2232 might be more realistic...

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Jun 27^th, 2007, 8:03am

We are four months in and there are still 35 games that haven't finished. Is it my imagination, or are more games stretching out longer than in past years? I guess more and more people are dipping way into their reserve as a matter of course, which can add a month or two to the game duration, whereas formerly the majority of folks would finish their games with full reserve.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by camelback on Aug 22^nd, 2007, 6:37pm

My first ever postal tournament was a wild success.
Thought I would win only 2 games but I won all 4 :D, well I had a few lucky breaks.

It's either Fritzlein or chessandgo, who is going to join me in "all_win club of 2007 postal". Curious to see who it is ;D

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 22^nd, 2007, 8:17pm

Thol, if chessandgo loses to 99of9 and I lose to chessandgo, you will be the only undefeated player of the tournament. Congratulations on a fantastic result!

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Aug 23^rd, 2007, 4:53am

yeah, congrats camelback. Karl, I offer draw (just to make sure that Thol will be the only undefeated player, of course !) :)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by RonWeasley on Aug 23^rd, 2007, 7:41am

Daily Prophet headline: Camelback Sweeps!

Keep that broom for quidditch and you could be a fair chaser.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Sep 9^th, 2007, 10:18am

Congratulations, chessandgo, on an amazing undefeated tournament. I know that the focus of the Postal Tournament was supposed to be more on participation and less on determining who the best player is, but it is nevertheless quite clear the you outperformed us all. Well done.

Now only two tournament games remain, including my game against Ron_Weasley for second place.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Sep 9^th, 2007, 2:03pm

thanks, Karl !

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by RonWeasley on Sep 9^th, 2007, 6:35pm

Tournament games still going on? What slowpokes! These last games are like sitting through a lecture from Professor Binns.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by 99of9 on Sep 9^th, 2007, 8:30pm

Nice one Jean! We tried as hard as we could to beat you :-). I suppose we'll just have to try again as TheMob, and see if we can do it together. I think this justifies your choice as the Mob game opponent.

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by Fritzlein on Sep 9^th, 2007, 10:46pm

on 09/09/07 at 20:30:58, 99of9 wrote:

I think this justifies your choice as the Mob game opponent.

Indeed, Jean is the right one for the job. As soon as my last Postal Tournament game is over, I may take a bit of a break from Arimaa, so I would have been a poor choice for the One. (I know, I've threatened to take a break several times before, and I've always been too addicted, but this may be the time...)

Chessandgo, I'm pretty sure that the Mob is playing better than any of us would individually. For example, the Mob out-voted me to charge forward with a horse as I never would have done, and it turned out to be a strong move. Even so, our combined efforts might not be enough!

I think we should start a tradition that the winner of the Postal Tournament takes on the world in a postal game. This year we jumped the gun by a few months, but quite possibly the current Mob game will last us until next year's Postal Tournament ends, and we have a new champion (or the same one).

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by arimaa_master on Sep 10^th, 2007, 2:10am

I am happy to announce that I withstood the maximum number of moves (45) of all of chessandgo's opponents in this 2007 postal tournament (nevertheless still lost :)).

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by chessandgo on Sep 10^th, 2007, 5:13am

lol arimaa_master ;)

Thanks a lot, guys, these games were a lot of fun, and many of them could have gone one way or the other.

Let's make a petition against Karl taking a break from arimaa ... if words aren't enough, I propose commando action to sneak posters of arimaa and snapshots from arimaa games everywhere he will go ;)

As for the Mob game, you guys got me in this opening ... and with my own beloved technique :) gonna be tough ... would you folks accept a draw offer ? :)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by arimaa_master on Sep 10^th, 2007, 7:15am

on 09/10/07 at 05:13:18, chessandgo wrote:

Draw? No way! We are going to win! 8)

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by camelback on Sep 10^th, 2007, 8:57am

CONGRATS Chessandgo!!! and Welcome to the all-win club.

It's unfortunate we didn't played together but the good thing is, you would have been so lonely in the club then. Now, you got company ;D ;D

Title: Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
Post by omar on Nov 6^th, 2007, 7:11pm

I have returned the 2007 postal tournament fees to everyone who did not time-out, resign or forfeit any games. If you do not receive it please let me know. Thanks everyone for playing.