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(Message started by: Fritzlein on Oct 3^rd, 2007, 9:47pm)

Title: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 3^rd, 2007, 9:47pm

In the carpool home today, Omar floated an idea for a new World Championship format this year. If it is going to happen, we have to get started right away, so let me present the idea for community reactions, suggestions, critique, etc.

Omar has been torn between wanting the World Championship tournament to accurately determine the best player, but not be too long. Also it is nice for it to be an open tournament, so anyone can win regardless of their past record, but the more people sign up, the longer the tournament gets.

So, the suggestion he floated is to have the World Championship be an eight-player floating triple-elimination. That would take about nine rounds, i.e. not much longer than the eight-round World Championship tournament last year, but would be more accurate due to giving everyone a third life.

To keep the tournament open, however, two of the eight seats would be assigned to the winners of a qualifying tournament in November. That tournament would be an open five-round swiss-paired tournament. In addition to being a qualifying tournament, it would give folks a chance to play five serious live games regardless of their results, as opposed to having only one non-postal tourney per year, from which you can be eliminated in only two games.

There are many details to be decided, but I think the general idea has promise. One of the biggest issues is deciding who gets the six automatic berths into the finals. My thought would be this: take the p8-ratings, but only use human versus human games as the inputs. The top six in that list get automatic invitations. The list of automatic berths would be published before the qualifying tournament, i.e. very soon. Registration for the qualifier would have to begin immediately.

Another question is whether the top six can play in the qualifier. I suggest that they be totally barred from playing, since they could spoil the fun for the rest of the players who are trying to have their own party before the big party. If, however, automatic berths were allowed to play in the qualifier just for fun, then extra places from the qualifier should get berths, e.g. if three of the six automatic berths play in the qualifier, then the top five from the qualifier get berths in the final, potentially not including the folks who chose to play instead of getting an automatic seat. If you are determined to play in the qualifying tournament even though you don't have to, then your seat in the final should be genuinely at risk to ensure serious play.

If any of the six people with automatic berths into the final decline to play in the World Championship, then additional qualifiers would be invited to play in order of finish in the qualifying tournament. Also if the top finishers in the qualifying tournament declined to play in the finals, then additional finishers would be invited in order until the eight seats were filled.

This format does make it harder for anyone not in the top six to become World Champion, but in compensation there's a nice, fun, serious tournament for anyone who wants to play and not just get slaughtered, and advancing to the finals is still a possibility. The time control in the qualifier could be a little lighter, say 60 seconds per move instead of 90 for the finals.

What does everyone think of that? Fun for all? A good way to pick a champion? Who would register for a five-round swiss? I'm really very curious how this sounds to everyone.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 3^rd, 2007, 11:19pm

I've always thought that the WC tournament should have only a limited number of top rated players so it could focus on selecting the best player. Of course our current rating system is not good for this, but consider something like the p8 rating but limited to H-H games. Karl and Jeff (jdb) have always felt that the WC should give anyone who wants to try a chance to prove they are the best; and thus be open for anyone to join.

So I started thinking maybe we should have two tournaments so that everyone is satisfied. See my posting of May 18 in this thread:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1114794077;start=0

The second tournament would be designed to allow many players to participate and have a faster time control like 60s or 45s or maybe even 30s per move so that more people would be able to fit the tournament games into their schedule. The purpose of the tournament would not be to select the best player, but rather to have a fun event and see who comes out on top. Initially I thought it should be a single elimination tournament with random initial seeding, but Karl suggested making it a Swiss so that players could continue playing more games if they wanted and could drop out at anytime before being paired for the next round.

In the carpool today Karl and I considered the possibility of allowing the first and second place winners of the Open Classic to automatically be offered a spot in the WC tournament, with the WC tournament being limited to the top rated players (based on p8H rating).

The more we thought about it the more it sounded like a good idea because it seems to solve a lot of conflicting problem.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 4^th, 2007, 2:38am

I am 100 % against the WC participation being decided on ratings. I think everyone should have equal chance, so there's no reason why the 6th rated player should have a free seat while the 7th player must compete with the rest of the world for just 2 seats. A lot more annoying, ratings are subjects to being twisted, as we most unfortunately know.

Taking a look at p8 ratings, I see that syed is the third rated player. Why does it seems weird to me that syed qualifies while robinson has to go through the side tournament ?

Even if the rating used is not the p8 rating presented in the rating page, it would still be a huge problem. Does it mean every training game played during the year might be decisive for the WC ? As young as arimaa is, should we already stop innovation and play only for result, even in training game ? Or will we play most games unrated not to have to much pressure, which make the rating system inaccurate ?

And a rating system, whatever it is, can be twisted. It would mean that people investing time to improve their rating through devilish ways would have an advantage over folks who play it "fair". This I can't conceive. At least in the current WC formula, whoever want to play registers, and then only the play over the board matters.

I am not against a final tournament, but whatever the qualifying is, please don't make ratings play any important part. All in all, the floating elemination formula (with 2 or 3 lives, all the same) seems a really good compromise to me.

My final word on this is that any formula is good enough, as long at is fair : every player has the same (or almost the same) chance to win it no matter what happens outside the tournament in itself. In particular no matter the rating ...

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by camelback on Oct 4^th, 2007, 3:35am

May be we can have previous year winner and runner-up given free entry to championship round and all interested players compete in qualifying round.

Just like FIFA World Cup winner and Host is given free entry in next world cup.

This way everybody except chessandgo and Fritzlein can have fun in the preliminary round ;D ;D

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by 99of9 on Oct 4^th, 2007, 3:43am

Jean, they're not proposing to use the current p8 ratings, but instead a hypothetical p8H rating that only includes HvH games. If we're going to use ratings, I support the use of HvH only.

Nevertheless, I agree with Jean that any rating system is open to exploitation, and using ratings to decide participation will have unintended bad consequences. In addition to your points above, here are some further issues:

Sockpuppets appear to be permissable at the moment, would sockpuppet vs sockpuppet games be included in the ratings?
Players rated better than 6th may stop playing rated games for months in advance if they are worried about losing rating. Top chess players only seem to play a few dozen rated games per year... that might be even less than me!
As far as I recall, p8 doesn't have a time decay. So can Fritz get automatic entry into the WC for the next 10 years as long as he doesn't play in between?
People may become less willing to play clearly underrated opponents. Then who will those underrated people play? Bot's don't count, so they can't get their rating back up without generous opponents.
People may seek out specific types of opponent (eg novices). We've already seen that someone of limited skill can get a very high rating by solely playing opponents way below their standard. p8 means you can't choose the same one every time, but there are plenty of novices around.

I think arimaa is still small enough to have an all-in system. If that necessarily involves a prequalifying stage with a short time control, surely a prospective champion can make it through that (assuming it has second or third chances).

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 4^th, 2007, 4:39am

Thanks for expanding my concerns about rating abuse, even in H vs H mode, Toby. I subscribe to what you wrote.

Moreover, changing the number of lives from 2 to 3 in the current formula doesn't make the tournament much longer, I think (not more than a prequalifaction + final tournament with 3 lives, unless I'm much mistaken). So the length of the tournament doesn't seem a concern for the moment, or is it ?

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by DorianGaray on Oct 4^th, 2007, 5:42am

on 10/04/07 at 02:38:12, chessandgo wrote:

I concur in spades, H vs. H ratings are no better than H vs. B. I could have a friend of mine register, I’d boost his rating against bots a little and then I'd play him for a few games and we repeat the operation as many a time as needed, and voilà!!! I could get to 2500 H rating before you know it. Would people suspect anything? Well, maybe it were me, since some people around already branded me the devil incarnate, but what if someone else did it? Will Fritz (or someone as trustworthy) analyze every one of these games to see if there is a possibility of foul play? In my book that would be the only way to be sure.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by DorianGaray on Oct 4^th, 2007, 5:51am

on 10/04/07 at 03:43:14, 99of9 wrote:

...

Sockpuppets appear to be permissable at the moment, would sockpuppet vs sockpuppet games be included in the ratings?...

I don't know of any of these "sockpuppet vs. sockpuppet" games. Maybe you could give us ONE EXAMPLE or are you just being hypothetical?

And just for the record, I don't intend to participate to any of those tournaments, as I never have in the past.

I don't despise them; it's just not what I do.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by UruramTururam on Oct 4^th, 2007, 5:58am

The 8 rounds WC is a good idea, but much to many places are to be awarded by the ranking. It should rather look somewhat like:

1. One slot goes automatically to the current champion.
2. One slot goes to the present postal tournament winner.
2. One slot goes to person of the highest current ranking (if it's one of the Champions the second or third ranked player is taken)
3. One slot goes to the person (not covered by the first three rules) with the highest human vs. human rating.
4. The remaining four places are for the winners of a qualification tournament.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by 99of9 on Oct 4^th, 2007, 6:14am

on 10/04/07 at 05:51:52, DorianGaray wrote:

I don't know of any of these "sockpuppet vs. sockpuppet" games. Maybe you could give us ONE EXAMPLE or are you just being hypothetical?

To the best of my knowledge it's just a hypothetical at the moment. But if we set up a tournament system that relied on rankings and didn't deal with this issue, then it could tempt people to try it. (Not necessarily those who already have multiple accounts.)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by DorianGaray on Oct 4^th, 2007, 6:22am

on 10/04/07 at 05:58:15, UruramTururam wrote:

I don't like the sound of that! I could agree in a pinch to number one, although I find it quite disturbing to think that a TRUE champion would avoid having to play against (most likely) much weaker opponents, why should that inconvenience him, isn't he supposed to be someone who likes the game?

2 is absurd, someone can be very crafty at postal speed and get his ... kicked by many at interactive speeds. That would clearly give an unfair advantage.

2 (the second one ;)) is even worse given what we know about "ratings".

3 Makes a little more sense than 2 (the second one) but not much given the obvious loopholes it contains.

As for 4, if you are a strong player for such or such reason, you shouldn't be afraid to have to PROVE IT by going through the qualification process.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 4^th, 2007, 7:39am

I'd like to state again that the WC should be fair and self-contained, that is to say that the chances of a player should not depend on anything else than his moves during WC (qualifying, main tourney, ...) games. Thus taking into account rating should be done to the least extent possible. If we want to have a preliminary tournament, why not, and directly qualify players according to their perfomance in the previous WC, why not (even though it's a bit unfair for new players, but at least they'll cath up on next year), but I really beg Omar not to particularize any player according to any rating. It would only bring unfairness. And in my opinion some direct qualification according to previous WC ranking should not happen this year, as it was not stated on last championship that the first n places were rewarding something particular.

As for the issue of having a preliminary tournament at all, for the sake of having a fairer determination of the champion in no more time, aren't we so few players for the moment that we can have a 3-lives floating elimination tournament with everyone in no more time than a qualification tournament + 3-lives floating elimination tournament with 8 players ?

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by UruramTururam on Oct 4^th, 2007, 8:26am

on 10/04/07 at 06:22:34, DorianGaray wrote:

Isomeone can be very crafty at postal speed and get his ... kicked by many at interactive speeds. That would clearly give an unfair advantage.

This does not matter at all. I see free slots in WC as a kind of awards for various Arimaa deeds, including winning PT.

Quote:

you shouldn't be afraid to have to PROVE IT by going through the qualification process.

So good players should not be afraid of a few lucky ones invited to WC either!

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by jdb on Oct 4^th, 2007, 8:54am

on 10/04/07 at 03:35:05, camelback wrote:

I support this format.

The winner and runner up in last year's tourny would be seeded one and two in the final tournament. The top six finishers in the qualifying tournament would be seeded third thru eighth in the final tournament. This would mean that ratings play no part in the process.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by RonWeasley on Oct 4^th, 2007, 9:08am

This year there may few enough so that it can work like last, I agree. I might add that currently, the players whose ratings are inconsistent with others of similar skill are not likely to compete in this HvH contest.

If there become too many, we might consider in the future using qualifying groups like in World Cup. The groups are formed by seeding players according to rating. Let's say there are four qualifying groups. Put the top 4 rated players into groups A through D. Then put players rated 5 through 8 into groups D through A. The top two performers in each group qualify for the final 8. The top seeds get an advantage by not playing each other to qualify and some groups might get stacked with underrated players, but everybody gets an equal shot at earning the championship. Sock puppets (is this term used in other e-forums?) would complicate things. Evidence would have to be reviewed by Omar and the TD as to whether to disqualify (and probably ban) the offending accounts.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 4^th, 2007, 10:32am

on 10/04/07 at 03:35:05, camelback wrote:

The runner-up is not always the second-place finisher, like this year ... if we are to attribute 2 seats, it would be more logical to give them to winner and second-place finisher, wouldn't it ?

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 4^th, 2007, 11:06am

Hey, it's great to see all this discussion and all the great ideas out there. We might not have started talking about the format soon enough this year. Perhaps we should start another thread for "2009 World Championship Format".

Here's a different hypothetical question. If it is too late for 2008 to have a two-stage system with a qualifier tournament and final tournament, would people prefer the unified tournament to be floating double elimination, or floating triple elimination?

A 24-player double-elimination takes seven to nine rounds, usually eight.

A 24-player triple-elimination takes nine to twelve rounds, usually ten or eleven.

Is the extra accuracy worth having the tournament be, on average, two and a half rounds longer? My answer is of course that two and a half more rounds is an advantage: more Arimaa is more better. Still, I understand if some people think it would just be too much if you had to commit to a serious game every week for two and a half months to become World Champion.

I think the idea of a longer tournament was shot down before, but if we are seriously discussing having something like five rounds of qualifying plus eight rounds of finals (or in that ballpark) then a single ten-or-eleven round tournament doesn't sound too bad.

Furthermore, one of the ideas behind a two-tier systems was intentionally to give top players a break, so they didn't have to win as many games to become champion. If we are going to level the field and make everyone qualify anyway, or everyone except last year's champion, then this motivation is reversed: in that case a single triple-elimination tournament is less hassle.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 4^th, 2007, 11:08am

on 10/04/07 at 10:32:09, chessandgo wrote:

if we are to attribute 2 seats, it would be more logical to give them to winner and second-place finisher, wouldn't it ?

Yes, if we qualify two based on last year's World Championship, it should be chessandgo and PMertens. However, you have to account for the fact that PMeterns likes live play against humans so much he would beg to play in the qualifying rounds.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by The_Jeh on Oct 4^th, 2007, 12:34pm

This doesn't have much to do with the World Championship tournament, but why can't we have casual tournaments throughout the year, perhaps one per season? Each of these tournaments could be strict single-elimination and take place over the course of one day. I realize we come from diverse time zones, but because they would be casual I think it would be all right.

And then if you're concerned over the manipulation of p8 ratings and such, you could use p8 ratings based on tournament games only - previous WCT, PT, and casual tournaments. Or you could use tournament W-L-D record.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 4^th, 2007, 1:10pm

on 10/04/07 at 11:06:35, Fritzlein wrote:

I think the idea of a longer tournament was shot down before, but if we are seriously discussing having something like five rounds of qualifying plus eight rounds of finals (or in that ballpark) then a single ten-or-eleven round tournament doesn't sound too bad.

I agree with this, Karl.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 4^th, 2007, 1:12pm

on 10/04/07 at 11:08:53, Fritzlein wrote:

Well, anyway such direct qualification could only take place for next year, if it is included in the rules of this year's WC.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Janzert on Oct 4^th, 2007, 1:41pm

I had read an interesting article about a study done on different professional sports playoff structures. The things that struck me at the time were; First, across all the sports looked at the top team only had about a 30% chance of winning the championship. This was across baseball, football, hockey and some others I believe. So they had fairly widely varying playoff structures and chances of an upset for any one game. So it would seem at least from popularizing a sport to spectators absolute accuracy in picking the true top performer is not necessarily advantageous. I have feeling this may carry over at least somewhat to popularizing it to participants as well.

Second, a way suggested by the researchers to improve the accuracy was by adding some preliminary rounds. Although the article wasn't particularly clear on what form these took and I have yet to get the time to read the actual studies.

The take away I had from it was that if the ultimate goal with the world championship is to help increase the popularity of Arimaa maybe we shouldn't necessarily be striving for absolute accuracy in the tournament. And if we do want to increase the accuracy a preliminary tournament(s) may be a good way of doing so.

Janzert

P.S: Looks like the original article is here (http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070908/mathtrek.asp) and the actual studies are here (http://cnls.lanl.gov/~ebn/pubs/theme.html#games).

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by jdb on Oct 4^th, 2007, 3:37pm

Having a five round swiss as a qualifier would be a great way to encourage participation.

Under the current system, the lowest rated player has a 99% (or worse) chance to be out in two games. Who would want to join with those odds?

With a five round swiss, anyone has a half decent chance of making the top six to qualify for the final tournament. If they finish with three wins they likely have a chance at 6th. It would seem to me to be a much more inviting format to encourage lower ranked players to participate.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by PMertens on Oct 4^th, 2007, 8:39pm

on 10/04/07 at 11:08:53, Fritzlein wrote:

... and I totally dislike the idea of having any advantage at all for "older" players over newcomers or better players over worse.
I opposed all benefits for high-ranked players last year and I still do.

We do not need a tournament to find the best player anyway ... just let Jean and Karl slug it out ;-)
The tournament will merely show us the luckiest player in those few specific games.
No need to further improve the chances of anyone by any rules be it folding or otherwise.

And on some totally different topic: before I beg to play in some qualifiying I will first have to consider wether to participate at all :-P
Unlike the last few year I currently see no fresh blood that could compete with the top (statement not based on ratings), so it might be a bit boring in the end ... especially if the first few rounds are only for reducing the playercount to the "significant" players.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by 99of9 on Oct 4^th, 2007, 9:18pm

on 10/04/07 at 11:06:35, Fritzlein wrote:

One benefit of a separation between qualifying and tournament is that you can play at fast time control in qualifying, but any time-rushed losses would not carry through to count for the main tourney.

My personal favourite is roughly 5 rounds of open qualifying swiss, followed by a double-elimination between the top 8 (which is reasonably short for most people), seeds also determined by the swiss.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 4^th, 2007, 9:32pm

on 10/04/07 at 21:18:35, 99of9 wrote:

followed by a double-elimination between the top 8

Then the final would be six more rounds, or five if someone wins undefeated, for 10-11 rounds total, just like a single, open triple elimination. But maybe having the five-round qualifier first is friendlier, allowing everyone to get in some serious games while providing a fair basis for reducing the field to eight and seeding that field on something other than ratings.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by 99of9 on Oct 4^th, 2007, 10:02pm

The first 5 rounds would be at a short time control so don't require as major time commitments. Are you suggesting the same for the FTE?

I'm also still happy with a straightforward open double elimination, but I am getting more wary of the effects of seeding.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 5^th, 2007, 2:55am

on 10/04/07 at 12:34:08, The_Jeh wrote:

Yes, I think the time zone differences is what makes this difficult. But we've never tried it before, so we don't know for sure.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 5^th, 2007, 4:17am

on 10/04/07 at 21:18:35, 99of9 wrote:

My favorite is still the swissKnife format :-)
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1114794077;start=84#84

What we do know from experiments we've done in the past is that if you have an accurate rating system you can just use the rating to pick the best player and it beats every other format by a long shot. But in the absence of an accurate rating system the Floating Elimination formats provide the best alternative. However its main drawback is that it doesn't provide many games for the weaker players.

Our present rating system is far from accurate at predicting ones performance against the field and I would never consider using that for the original proposal of this thread. I feel the p8H or some variant of it will be much better, but the feedback from the community has reminded me that it still needs to be tried out and proven before being used. So the original proposal of this thread is perhaps a bit premature given the state of our rating system. Thus, I think it makes a lot of sense to have all eight of the contestants in the final WC tournament determined by the preliminary swiss tournament.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 5^th, 2007, 5:19am

So I think the basic format for this year will be a swiss preliminary to select 8 players for the final Floating Elimination tournament. There are still a lot of details that need to be sorted out.

One thing I would like to determine is if we should use the double elimination or the triple elimination format. Now that we know there will be 8 players I ran some simulations to see how the two formats compare. Here are the numbers:

run2 'formats/floatTripElim' 2000 8 500 200 999999
1 51.0%
2 25.1%
3 13.8%
4 6.3%
5 2.2%
6 1.2%
7 0.4%
8 0.1%
average number of rounds = 9.05
average rating from best = 36.3

run2 'formats/floatDoubleElim' 2000 8 500 200 999999
1 42.5%
2 32.5%
3 12.6%
4 8.8%
5 2.3%
6 0.8%
7 0.3%
8 0.2%
average number of rounds = 5.65
average rating from best = 43.1

Each simulation was done with 2000 tournaments with 8 players having a true rating distribution of 500 points and measured ratings having an inaccuracy of 200 and chance of draw games 1 in 999999. The simulation programs can be downloaded from here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/compare/sim.tar
or in ZIP format:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/compare/sim.zip

The FTE picked the player with the highest true rating 51% of the time and the FDE picked the player with the highest true rating 42.5% of the times. But to gain that 9% it adds about 3.5 rounds (almost one month with one round per week) to the schedule.

Though I was originally thinking to use the FTE since the number of players is less. After looking at these numbers, FDE still looks tempting. Would like to know what the players who plan to participate think.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 5^th, 2007, 5:36am

Another thing to think about is how to rank the players in the swiss tournament. Do we want to use any kind of ratings for this or not. One way to not use any ratings would be to just rank the players randomly in each round. Byes could also be given randomly from the set of players who have received the fewest byes so far.

There are also other methods of ranking that don't rely on initial ratings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchholz_chess_rating
Should we look into using one of these?

Also exactly how many rounds swiss rounds should we have. Is 5 the right number if we know we want to select the 8 best at the end; or should it be something else? Of course it also depends on how many initial players there are. If there are ties in selecting the 8 best how do we break them?

Looks like I already have this swiss pairing program from before. Should we just go with this one?
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/compare/sim/formats/swissTypical

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 5^th, 2007, 8:42am

Sounds like a plan. If we don't want the qualifier to interfere with Christmas and New Year's, we should open registration and start publicizing soon, perhaps even before the format is finalized. I assume there will be a holiday break between tournaments, with the finals starting in January.

The "typical swiss" you linked to looks fine, and has the virtue of already being coded, which is important under scheduling pressure. That page recommends lg(N)+2 rounds, i.e. 6 rounds for 16 players and 7 rounds for 32 players. However, that formula probably arises from wanting a clear single champion, and is accounting for the high probability of draws in chess.

I like five rounds for the qualifier. There will always be a problem with ties for the final places, but the more rounds there are, the better the tiebreakers work. In a 24-player four-round swiss, you might have a situation where folks with 4-0 and 3-1 records are in, and exactly one of the nine 2-2 players enters on tiebreaks, with a fair chance that the top two 2-2 players had the same strength of schedule. With 24 players and five rounds instead, the 5-0 and 4-1 players will get in, plus half of the seven or eight 3-2 players. The typical tiebreak is sum of wins of opponents, and by round five it is clearer who got to 3-2 by a rough road and who backed in.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 5^th, 2007, 9:30am

By the way, I know that some people don't want pre-tournament ratings to have any effect whatsoever on the process, but I think that would be an over-correction to the problems we had with the #1 seed in the past two World Championship (me) getting too many breaks. The "typical swiss" format uses the pre-tournament rating, but doesn't favor the top seed(s) nearly as much.

For example, the swiss pairing tries to be sliding, not folding. So instead of 1 vs. 16; 2 vs. 15; 3 vs. 14; etc. it pairs 1 vs. 9; 2 vs. 10; 3 vs. 11; etc. This not only means the games have a more equal amount of mismatch, it also make the post-tournament tiebreaks more informative.

Also, the swiss pairing gives any bye to the lowest-ranked player, not the highest.

Also, as the tournament progresses, the swiss pairing uses the pre-tournament ratings less and less, because it not only relies on in-tournament records first, but because it relies on strength of opponents second, and only uses pre-tournament rating third to distinguish rank.

Finally, if some player must "play down" against a player of a worse record, the swiss pairing code tries to have it be the lowest player in the higher group who plays down, not the highest player in the higher group.

In combination these factors mean that, while pre-tournament ratings are still influential in pairing early rounds, they by no means give an easy path to the top seed. And of course, for the finals the ratings will be completely forgotten, with seeding only on the basis of order of finish in the qualifier, so the influence of pre-tournament ratings will have almost completely attenuated by the time the champion is crowned.

Also I don't think the pre-tournament p8H ratings will be that bad. (By the way, to answer an earlier question, p8 ratings do have a time attenuation factor that gradually draws ratings of inactive players back towards 1500.) Maybe Omar can publish a list so we can see if they look reasonable.

[EDIT]
I should also reiterate the argument for using pre-tournament ratings in the qualification tournament: it makes the results more accurate. Random seeding could lead to silly situations such as the true #4 player facing the #1 player in the first round, losing, and then in the second round having to face the #3 player, who lost to the #2 player in the first round.

With two losses, the #4 player would then get paired against easier opponents, but potentially too easy. After beating players ranked #24, #21, and #17 in the final three rounds, the #4 player has a 3-2 record, but too few tiebreak points to finish in the top eight, and therefore doesn't make it into the final.

Contrast this to using ratings for the pairings, so that the #4 player is more likely to face tougher average opposition, say beating #16, beating #10, losing to #1, beating #8 and losing to #3. Although he had the same two losses and finished with the same 3-2 record, he had a chance to prove something against a tougher schedule, and will therefore have enough tiebreak points to qualify. (Also note that with swiss pairing seeded by ratings, it is reasonably likely that the #4 player will face only one higher-ranked player in five rounds, and therefore have a better shot to finish with a 4-1 record and a decent seed for the final. In the given example his final-round opponent will probably be #6 rather than #3.)

It's not that random seeding of the qualifier makes strange twists of fate inevitable, it just makes them more likely. Naturally random seeding make the selection of the final eight a little bit more random, and a little bit less related to skill.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 5^th, 2007, 11:04am

Floating double elimination would be well-behaved for the finals with the field guaranteed to be eight players, a power of two.

In the first round, there would be folding pairing with #1 vs #8, #2 vs #7, etc. This seems like a reasonable advantage to give to the top seeds, since they earned their seeds in the qualifying tournament, but can't carry their records forward. (Actually the folding pairing is much less of an advantage than carrying forward extra lives would be.)

In the second round, the four winners from round one would play each other, while the four losers play each other, again with folding pairing in each group. Two people will be eliminated in this round.

In the third round, the two undefeated players would necessarily play each other, while the four one-loss players will be paired in a way dictated by avoiding repeat matchups. There will always be a pairing without repeat matchups. Two more players will be eliminated.

By the fourth round, there will be one undefeated player and three one-loss players. It is possible but unlikely that the undefeated player has played each of the one-loss players in the three previous rounds. In that case there would have to be a repeat matchup. Most likely, though, the undefeated player will play against the one-loss player he hasn't beaten yet, while the other two one-loss players play each other.

If undefeated player wins in the fourth round, then it is simple: he plays the other remaining player for the championship, needing to win only once while the one-loss player needs to win twice. On the other hand, if the undefeated player loses in the fourth round, then we have three one-loss players left, and one bye must be assigned in the fifth round. This is the one possible ungraceful moment.

If any of the three possible matchups hasn't occurred yet, then it must occur in round five while the other player gets a bye. More likely, however, all the matchups have already occurred, so there must be a repeat pairing. In that case the highest seed gets the bye. This is one point where I would like to change the way floating double elimination works: instead of giving the bye to the highest seed, it should be given to whichever of the three faced the toughest opposition in the first four rounds, as measured by the total wins of their four opponents. Using the seeds should be a last resort when there is no other way to determine who deserves the bye.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by mistre on Oct 5^th, 2007, 12:21pm

Count me in for a 5-round swiss qualifying tournament as long as the time control is at 60 sec/move or less.

I don't play live much because of time constraints, but a short tournament format sounds like fun.

On another note, I am also interested in participating in the next Postal Tournament. I looked at the results from last year and I was disappointed that there is no ranking or winner. Is there a way to make the Postal Tournament more like the World Championship?

Maybe if there was a time control of 1d/1d/100/2d/0 - A fast postal if you will, then more of a tournament structure could be set up.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 5^th, 2007, 1:40pm

on 10/04/07 at 22:02:49, 99of9 wrote:

The first 5 rounds would be at a short time control so don't require as major time commitments.

It seems to me that the hardest part, when scheduling a game, is to find a common spot, not really the potential length of the game. It's much more difficult to play two 45 sec/move games than one 90sec/move game, for two common slots with two opponents must be found. So I'd say the actual length of one game is not the problem, when it comes to making an arimma tourney fit in one's timetable ; it's rather the total number of games to be played.

So I don't think playing the premilinary round at a short time control would do much good.

Mistre : I'm not sure I understand your statement. Do you say you'd play in a 5-rounds swiss tourney but not in a 2-lives floating elimination tourney, as was used last year ? It seems to me that, even if the swiss tourney is played at a realatively short time control, it would require at least as much involvement as a 2-FTE tournament.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 5^th, 2007, 2:17pm

on 10/05/07 at 12:21:36, mistre wrote:

Count me in for a 5-round swiss qualifying tournament as long as the time control is at 60 sec/move or less.

Awesome! And would you also play for the World Championship at 90 seconds per move if you qualified in the top eight? If not, the ninth-place qualifier might be happy to take your place, so there is no problem. I'm just curious if there are a lot of folks who would want to play in a swiss for fun, but wouldn't want a seat in the final even if they earned one.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by RonWeasley on Oct 5^th, 2007, 2:41pm

Just so everyone knows, I have a relative who will be spending much of December in St. Mungo's Hospital. This will leave no time for me to play the WC or even be the TD. I hope to watch some of the games from the Gryffindor section of the stadium.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by mistre on Oct 5^th, 2007, 2:56pm

on 10/05/07 at 13:40:36, chessandgo wrote:

Mistre : I'm not sure I understand your statement. Do you say you'd play in a 5-rounds swiss tourney but not in a 2-lives floating elimination tourney, as was used last year ? It seems to me that, even if the swiss tourney is played at a realatively short time control, it would require at least as much involvement as a 2-FTE tournament.

Actually, it IS the length of 1 game that poses a problem for me and not multiple shorter length games. I do have sufficient time here or there to play Arimaa, just not in long chunks. Which is why I mostly play Postal vs. humans.

So, I am probably not the best candidate for a tournament, but I am interested - so I would try to make it work if I can.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by jdb on Oct 5^th, 2007, 3:29pm

on 10/05/07 at 14:56:24, mistre wrote:

This is my situation also.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 5^th, 2007, 3:43pm

on 10/05/07 at 14:41:52, RonWeasley wrote:

Just so everyone knows, I have a relative who will be spending much of December in St. Mungo's Hospital. This will leave no time for me to play the WC or even be the TD.

What if the qualifier is in January/February and the final is in February/March? This morning Omar was letting on that trying to squeeze in the qualifying tournament in November/December sounds a little rushed.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 5^th, 2007, 4:08pm

on 10/05/07 at 13:40:36, chessandgo wrote:

Well, apparently everyone disagrees with my statement, so I withdraw this. Mistre, I'm glad that you will play (apparently the new formula will be prefered to the old one ?), same goes for jdb.

The preliminary starting only on january would be fine with me as well as in november ; if it allows a looser timetable, all the better.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 5^th, 2007, 5:16pm

Actually, I agree with you Jean: I prefer a 90-second time control, and the difficulty is for me is not finding a long enough block of time but rather a mutually agreeable block of time. I could resign myself to a 60-second time control for the qualifier if the finals were still 90 seconds per move, but even at that level most games will be decided by tactical blunders, so I would rather it not slip further, in order that the games be of a higher quality.

Random thought: [moved to new thread]

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Janzert on Oct 7^th, 2007, 1:53pm

I wish the last games of the WC were still played at 2 minutes per move as they used to be. But it's probably too many games to make the whole final tournament 2 minutes and I don't see where after that it would be appropriate to bump up the time.

Janzert

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 8^th, 2007, 7:35am

I feel that the games should be played with time control as long as possible for practical purpose too, to make game quality as high as possible, especially for the last games.

In my exeprience from last year, 90 sec is quite a good compromise, with games ending within a reasonnable of time (around two hours iirc), and yielding higher game quality than 45 sec a move, so I'd be for the last stage games to be played at at least 90 sec per move. 2 min seems quite good too, or maybe just for the last games (like when only 2 people remain, or 3, or 4 ?) ?

How about the preliminary stage ? I saw 45 sec and 1 mn mentionned, what is going to be chosen ? I hope we won't have a too short time control ; 45 sec is the very standard time control for training games H vs H throughout the year ; it would feel strange not to have longer thinking time for a WC game, even a preliminary round. Would 1 mn per move be ok for everyone ?

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 8^th, 2007, 8:40am

The registration for the 2008 World Championship is now open.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2008/

Lets hope we have another record breaking year of participation. If anyone would have a problem with sending the registration fee through PayPal, please let me know through the contact page:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/contact/

Since we do have a few months until the WC begins, people may decide to delay registering until later to avoid sending the registration fee now. However I would rather have players register now and send the fee later then to delay registering. That way we begin to more quickly get an estimate of how many players there will be.

One of the nice things about the new format with a Swiss preliminary is that I don't have to worry about the pairing program crashing if the number of players gets beyond 22 :-)

It is also good for the players because it means more games against closely matched opponents even if they don't make it to the finals.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 8^th, 2007, 9:25am

I notice the rules for pairing the finals still refer to using the rating. Would it not be better to use the seeding instead? The seeding would be determined by the order of finish in the preliminary tournament, not by the rating.

I also notice that the time controls only bank 75% of unused time instead of 100% of unused time. I like this change because it encourages people to think for about the same length of time on every move rather than blitzing some and being slow on others. Not only is that better for the spectators, it is generally better for the players. I wonder, however, whether it will be controversial just because it is new.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 9^th, 2007, 2:31am

on 10/08/07 at 09:25:53, Fritzlein wrote:

Yes, it should have been changed to use the ranks from the Swiss rather than ratings. I've changed it now. Thanks for spotting that; I'm glad someone is reading :-)

Quote:

I also notice that the time controls only bank 75% of unused time instead of 100% of unused time. I like this change because it encourages people to think for about the same length of time on every move rather than blitzing some and being slow on others. Not only is that better for the spectators, it is generally better for the players. I wonder, however, whether it will be controversial just because it is new.

I've added these time controls to the 'Invite' and 'Start Game' buttons so we can try them out. I've also temporarily changed Bomb2005CC to use the same time control as in the Swiss preliminary. Since we have a few months before the WC starts I hope this will give players a chance to try it out and practice with these time controls.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 9^th, 2007, 7:37am

on 10/09/07 at 02:31:12, omar wrote:

I've also temporarily changed Bomb2005CC to use the same time control as in the Swiss preliminary. Since we have a few months before the WC starts I hope this will give players a chance to try it out and practice with these time controls.

Perhaps you should instead change the default on Bomb2005P1 to the swiss preliminary time time control, because BombP1 was in any case playing at one minute per move, and because it gets played more often than BombCC? For BombCC you could use the proposed time control for the final, since that is closer to Bomb's normal two minutes per move.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 10^th, 2007, 10:07am

Thanks for changing the rules to reflect the finals being seeded, not by rating, but by the results of the preliminary swiss. Yes, someone is reading the rules, as this post will show. ;-) Of course my intention is not just to be critical but to raise points of possible improvement.

I notice that for the four of us already registered, the listed ratings are as of last year. Woh is still listed at 1705! According to the current rules, the ratings still do matter, because they seed the swiss tournament, so we would want them to be as accurate as possible. Omar, what do you say to using some sort of "HvH only" rating for seeding the preliminary?

I notice that the preliminary rules refer to 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw, and 0 for a loss. It is true that with swiss pairing (as opposed to elimination) draws are not a problem, so we could use the game room rules that declare a game drawn if all 16 rabbits are captured. However, I have come to like the match rules better, where capturing all 8 opposing rabbits is a win, so I recommend removing the possibility of draws even from the preliminary.

Whichever decision you make (draws possible or impossible) the rules should make it clearer than at present which is in force. Right now it says in one place that a draw is worth 1 point, and in a later place that draws are not allowed, but it isn't clear if the latter statement applies only to the finals.

I notice that the rules say the preliminary will be five or six rounds, depending on the number of players. What did you have in mind for the tipping point? 16 players? 32?

Here is one strange way to define the tipping point: It would be weird if players with a 3-3 record would qualify in the final eight. But if there are only 16 players, then two or three 3-3 players will indeed qualify. That makes six rounds of qualifying seem like overkill: it's enough to play five rounds and let all the 3-2 players advance. However, as soon as there are 24 or more players, then a 3-3 record is no longer good enough to qualify in the top eight, and it takes 4-2 or better to advance. So by this sideways logic, there should be a six-round preliminary for 24 or more players, but only a five-round preliminary for 23 or fewer.

The rules say "If a player does not show up for the game within 3 minute after the scheduled start time then that player will lose by forfeit. In case of a valid reason the tournament director may consider rescheduling the game." I don't like this much, because the time window is very narrow (only three minutes) and the punishment fuzzy (what is a valid reason?). I would prefer the time window to be wider (say ten minutes) and the punishment to be absolute (forfeit regardless of the reason). Even if I had to take my dying wife to the hospital, surely a valid reason for being late, we shouldn't disrupt the tournament to reschedule games on this account.

I note there can still be a two-way tie for third place, which is a small matter now that no money is on the line, but the glory of being listed among past medalists is still important. It is quite possible in future years that there will be no prize money and people will play only for glory. Therefore let me object to the rule "Highest pre-tournament ratings will be used to break ties for third place." I would rather have the tiebreaker be first by sum of wins of opponents, and second by rank in the preliminary tournament. This is in service of rewarding whoever played best in the tournament, not whoever played best before the tournament.

In the time controls 60s/120s/75/0/4h/4m and 90s/90s/75/0/6h/5m, isn't the initial reserve rather small? I would have expected something like four moves' worth in the bank, i.e. 60s/4m/75/0/4h/4m and 90s/6m/75/0/6h/5m. That way the players don't have empty banks at the very beginning, and can survive a minor connection issue. My intention this tournament will be to keep at least four minutes in my reserve, not for the purpose of using on tough moves, but as insurance against a disconnection or computer crash. I would rather not have to blitz at the beginning to build up this safety net. Given that it is already quite harsh for a four-minute disconnection to result in forfeiting the game, I think we should at least provide that safety net in the initial time bank.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Oct 30^th, 2007, 5:47pm

Quote:

I notice that for the four of us already registered, the listed ratings are as of last year. Woh is still listed at 1705! According to the current rules, the ratings still do matter, because they seed the swiss tournament, so we would want them to be as accurate as possible. Omar, what do you say to using some sort of "HvH only" rating for seeding the preliminary?

I plan to use HH P8 ratings. For now ignore those ratings.

Quote:

Whichever decision you make (draws possible or impossible) the rules should make it clearer than at present which is in force. Right now it says in one place that a draw is worth 1 point, and in a later place that draws are not allowed, but it isn't clear if the latter statement applies only to the finals.

Changed the wording to make it clear that drawn games are not allowed in the preliminary or the final; which is what the original intent was.

Quote:

I notice that the rules say the preliminary will be five or six rounds, depending on the number of players. What did you have in mind for the tipping point? 16 players? 32?

Here is one strange way to define the tipping point: It would be weird if players with a 3-3 record would qualify in the final eight. But if there are only 16 players, then two or three 3-3 players will indeed qualify. That makes six rounds of qualifying seem like overkill: it's enough to play five rounds and let all the 3-2 players advance. However, as soon as there are 24 or more players, then a 3-3 record is no longer good enough to qualify in the top eight, and it takes 4-2 or better to advance. So by this sideways logic, there should be a six-round preliminary for 24 or more players, but only a five-round preliminary for 23 or fewer.

Thanks for thinking through this. I'll go with that recommendation. For now I've just said that there will be 5 rounds if less than 24 players and 6 otherwise. But at what points would we want 3 or 4 rounds and when would we want to go to 7 rounds.

Quote:

The rules say "If a player does not show up for the game within 3 minute after the scheduled start time then that player will lose by forfeit. In case of a valid reason the tournament director may consider rescheduling the game." I don't like this much, because the time window is very narrow (only three minutes) and the punishment fuzzy (what is a valid reason?).

Yes I think it is good to have this clearly defined and take the preasure off the TD in such situations and also eliminate such situations from disrupting the tournament schedule. I've changed it to allow 15 minutes before the game is considered forfeit.

Quote:

I note there can still be a two-way tie for third place, which is a small matter now that no money is on the line, but the glory of being listed among past medalists is still important. It is quite possible in future years that there will be no prize money and people will play only for glory. Therefore let me object to the rule "Highest pre-tournament ratings will be used to break ties for third place." I would rather have the tiebreaker be first by sum of wins of opponents, and second by rank in the preliminary tournament. This is in service of rewarding whoever played best in the tournament, not whoever played best before the tournament.

I decided to use a tie breaker game to decide third.

Quote:

In the time controls 60s/120s/75/0/4h/4m and 90s/90s/75/0/6h/5m, isn't the initial reserve rather small? I would have expected something like four moves' worth in the bank, i.e. 60s/4m/75/0/4h/4m and 90s/6m/75/0/6h/5m. That way the players don't have empty banks at the very beginning, and can survive a minor connection issue. My intention this tournament will be to keep at least four minutes in my reserve, not for the purpose of using on tough moves, but as insurance against a disconnection or computer crash. I would rather not have to blitz at the beginning to build up this safety net. Given that it is already quite harsh for a four-minute disconnection to result in forfeiting the game, I think we should at least provide that safety net in the initial time bank.

In consideration of the possibility of disconnects I've increased the initial reserve in both games to 5 minutes.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback on the tournament rules.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 30^th, 2007, 6:01pm

Quote:

For now I've just said that there will be 5 rounds if less than 24 players and 6 otherwise. But at what points would we want 3 or 4 rounds and when would we want to go to 7 rounds.

I'm not sure if my weird logic holds up, but here's the extension by analogy: The preliminary tournament, although it is a Swiss so everyone can keep playing until the end, could effectively be triple-elimination in terms of qualifying. If you lose three games, you don't make it to the final, period. If you lose exactly two games, you will probably make it to the final, but not necessarily, depending on the strength of your opponents and how many people entered. Of course if you lose one or none in the qualifier you automatically advance.

To put in another way, in the table below the column "wins" means that you can't advance to the final unless you get that many wins in the qualifier. Among those who win exactly that many, most to all of them will advance.

Players	Rounds	Wins
1-8	0	0
9-11	3	1
12-15	4	2
16-23	5	3
24-35	6	4
36-55	7	5

I'm not sure if the system makes sense as the number of players grows. If we have 56 registrants, do we really want to have an 8-round Swiss qualifier? We could stick with 7 rounds even as the number of players grows, with fewer and fewer two-loss players qualifying, up until there are 128 players, and only the one-loss players qualify.

But no, I actually like this system, at least in the range of players presented. If we get 56 registrants, an 8-round qualifier would not seem like an excessive way to celebrate. There must be some accounting for the luck of the draw, and I like the notion that you can probably make it to the final even if you lose twice.

Quote:

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback on the tournament rules.

Thank you for taking the time to engage the feedback!

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by mistre on Oct 31^st, 2007, 8:42am

I just signed up for the tournament. Looking forward to it. We might get more sign-ups if there was a link to the registration on the main page. I had to go back to this post and find the link to sign up.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Oct 31^st, 2007, 12:13pm

on 10/31/07 at 08:42:47, mistre wrote:

Yes, I agree, I wrote a post which has been apparently deleted when there was a pb with this thread ; it would be fine indeed if the WC link in the gameroom directed towards the WC08 and not 07. And thanks for answering my phantom question about which rating will be used, Omar :)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Nov 1^st, 2007, 12:56am

Hope to link the upcoming events in the gameroom soon. Just trying to finalize the write ups before I release them.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Nov 1^st, 2007, 9:02am

Quote:

To put in another way, in the table below the column "wins" means that you can't advance to the final unless you get that many wins in the qualifier. Among those who win exactly that many, most to all of them will advance.

Thanks a lot for coming up with this table. I've added it to the tournament rules page.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 1^st, 2007, 11:05am

on 10/30/07 at 17:47:28, omar wrote:

I decided to use a tie breaker game to decide third.

Excellent. I suppose the winner of the third-place tiebreak gets an extra $10 in prize money for winning the extra game? It seems that whoever takes third place will net a $30 prize:

$10 for 5 preliminary wins
$20 for 2 finals wins
$10 for winning the tiebreak game
$10 for not forfeiting of resigning
-$20 for registration

Will the 3rd-place tiebreaker, if it happens, be included in the spectator betting with a prize of $15, just like the second-place tiebreaker? I suppose it should. If all games are coin flips, then there is a 50% chance a third-place tiebreak game will be necessary, a 25% chance a second-place tiebreak game will be necessary, and a 25% chance 1-2-3 will be clear with no tiebreak games.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by PMertens on Dec 8^th, 2007, 5:42pm

looks like the preliminaries might be rather short ;-)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 9^th, 2007, 10:09am

Well, we still have four weeks of registration, and Omar hasn't yet sent out his mass mailing to inform everyone of the tournament. I still think we have a decent chance of beating last year's record of 20 participants.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Dec 15^th, 2007, 2:26pm

I share Paul's fear as regards to the number of participants. It's been more than 2 months that Omar opened the registration, and only 8 players are in ... If I'm not mistaken, the tourney will start in 3 weeks. Maybe it would be a good idea to send the mass mail to the community ? Even though with the link in the gameroom, I guess most players were aware of the tourney anyway ... Maybe a good campaign of intensive teasing through the comments on the games of the "less-active" players will induce them into participating :)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by mdk on Dec 15^th, 2007, 2:46pm

I really would like to play the problem for me is the time commitment. I don't have a large number of time slots consistently available where I know I will be able to play an entire game. I'm worried that if I try and play in the tournament I'll end up having to forfeit games because I won't be able to show up to the scheduled time slot which is not very fun for me or my opponent.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Dec 15^th, 2007, 6:10pm

on 12/15/07 at 14:46:26, mdk wrote:

I would be extremely happy if you changed your mind before the deadline :) ... especially since you've shown great things in the games you've played so far, and thus have a shot at the top positions.
Be sure that I'll be sending you teasing messages on a daily basis to try to make you decide to play ;-)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by froody on Dec 17^th, 2007, 8:28am

I might play if I think I'm good enough to offer a respectable challenge. Depends how much practice I get, I might be ready.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Adanac on Dec 17^th, 2007, 1:35pm

on 12/15/07 at 14:46:26, mdk wrote:

I have the same worry, but this tournament is very exciting and it's worth any inconvenience such as waking up at 4am to squeeze in a tournament game (been there, done that twice :) ). Count me in for this year's championship and I plan to play in the Postal as well.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Dec 17^th, 2007, 1:45pm

on 12/17/07 at 13:35:41, Adanac wrote:

great !

Froody, I hope you'll be in too. Last year's lowest rated player, IdahoEv, made a great tournament, finishing 2-2 against 4 top rated players. Please don't worry about the challenge you might offer to your opponents, but rather wonder how you'll crush them :)

Enjoy anyway ;)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Janzert on Dec 19^th, 2007, 11:32am

Nice to see another location listing the championship.

http://iago-news.blogspot.com/2007/12/2008-arimaa-world-championship-joins.html

Janzert

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 19^th, 2007, 11:56am

I read some of the postings in the IAGO discussion forums. They seem caught up in disagreeing over what "abstract game" even means, and how to know who has won their World Tour when it is over, assuming people actually play in it. Those are important discussions to have, but generally if you are organizing a competition it helps to have the rules set before the competition actually starts. I'm not running out to play in the IAGO World Tour until it gets a little bit organized. By the same token, I'll be surprised if we get any registrations from IAGO World Tour players joining the Arimaa World Championship.

Still, it can't hurt that we are linked on their page and they are linked on ours. I wish IAGO the best of luck attracting players and promoting abstract games. In the mean time, any exposure of Arimaa to a new audience is a good thing.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 19^th, 2007, 4:44pm

on 12/19/07 at 11:56:22, Fritzlein wrote:

By the same token, I'll be surprised if we get any registrations from IAGO World Tour players joining the Arimaa World Championship.

Well, hush my mouth! Fisma just registered. It is quite unusual for someone to play in the World Championship who hasn't said anything in game comments or the forum. Could this be an IAGO-referred player?

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Janzert on Dec 19^th, 2007, 6:10pm

Ahh, I hadn't seen the link to IAGO. The blog post had just made into my google Arimaa alert. In my quick browse around the site I also didn't realize the world tour was an actual multi-game competition.

Janzert

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 21^st, 2007, 10:58am

Now 12 are registered! That means we'll have at least four preliminary rounds. :-)

Actually it seems most likely we will have five rounds (16 to 23 players), but I am holding out hope for a six-round preliminary (24 to 35 players).

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 29^th, 2007, 10:40am

16 registrants! Woohoo! We will have five preliminary rounds for sure, and it is definitely still within the realm of possibility that the last-minute registration rush will take us over 24 participants, and therefore up to six rounds.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by RonWeasley on Dec 29^th, 2007, 1:16pm

Here's an apology to the community. I know I should play the WC, given my inflated rating. I had thought I would play this year now that I have a computer at The Burrow with adequate speed. The problem now is that my disabled daughter has taken an interest in the internet and wants to surf frequently. This is one of few things that gives her enjoyment so I give her top priority. As a result, I can't maintain an hours-long uninterrupted session that a tournament game would require. Sometime before the next WC we're getting another computer, so I might be able to participate next year (and get a much deserved butt kicking).

I plan to maintain avid spectator status and wish the competitors good luck. I expect we'll see exciting games in all brackets.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Dec 30^th, 2007, 8:56am

Ron, any chance you might be able to serve as TD again. You don't need to be present at all the games, but just be readily available in case we need to settle an unusual situation.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by robinson on Dec 30^th, 2007, 11:13am

on 12/15/07 at 14:46:26, mdk wrote:

i have the same problem this year.
its absolutly true adanac.. this tourny ist very interesting and funny. but although i hate to do it but i have to prefer uni this time. ( playing the WC games werent all for me i would need some hard training lessons ;) )

anyway thanks for your invitation mails omar and jean
i hope you guys will have a great tourny and i will find time next year!

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 30^th, 2007, 11:43am

Test message. This thread seems to be malfunctioning on my screen.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by RonWeasley on Dec 31^st, 2007, 8:16am

on 12/30/07 at 08:56:40, omar wrote:

Ron, any chance you might be able to serve as TD again. You don't need to be present at all the games, but just be readily available in case we need to settle an unusual situation.

Yes, Omar, I can be TD this year. I know you considered rotating this honor to other people, but if you don't have another person available, I would be proud to serve.

I'm at a small disadvantage not being able to get into the new chat. You were considering using a third-party chat a few months ago and I was able to use that one. Otherwise, e-mail, phone, forum, and invite messages would work fine.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by omar on Jan 2^nd, 2008, 1:10am

Thanks Ron for accepting to be the TD for the WC this year.

I've changed the 'Chat' link in the gameroom so that it uses the 3rd party JS/Ajax chat. Only problem is that I will not be able to show how many people are logged into the chat room next to the 'Chat' link. But since it seems to work for more people, I'd rather use this for now.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 2^nd, 2008, 11:41am

Thanx for changing the chat, Omar.

Please clarify for me. What is the outcome of a tourament game if NEITHER player connects within 15 minutes of the scheduled start time? I propose that they both lose.

Here's another. Player A connects on time. Player B connects after the 15 minute limit. Player A wants to play the game anyway. Can Player A make this determination or must Player B lose? I propose to allow Player A to elect to play the tournament game if Player B is late. The game takes effect after move 1b has been submitted. I would even go as far as to allow the players to reschedule the game on their own as long as they play before the end of the week. Players rescheduling should announce this for the benefit of the spectators and get permission from the tournament director (or play the game without permission, to get the game played, and seek "forgiveness" from the tournament director). In general, I prefer games decided on the board, but I won't hold up the tournament if such a game isn't reasonably rescheduled. Players should not feel obligated to pardon a late opponent. Do so only if it's convenient and you feel especially generous. If you need a win to make the next round, the smart move is to take the win.

In general, if the game site causes a scheduling error, I will insist on rescheduling.

A third. If the game site crashes during a game, I propose the game be restarted at the position reached at the time of the crash. The clocks will be set as close to the clocks at crash time as the tournament coordinator can provide.

OK, I have three proposals on the table. Debate is welcome. I think Omar has the final say.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by ChrisB on Jan 3^rd, 2008, 10:43am

RonWeasley's three proposals all look good to me.

I especially like how the first one (option to reschedule) is worded. I think it has the right balance of (1) having games decided over the board as much as possible, (2) not holding up the tournament and (3) providing the least inconvenience for players who show up on time when their opponent does not.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by chessandgo on Jan 4^th, 2008, 4:19am

Rob, it's too bad that you can't play :( Best of luck with your studies.

I agree with Ron's proposals ; Ron's word is gold to me anyway :)

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 4^th, 2008, 8:32pm

Tee hee! Now that Omar's entire extended family has signed up, we have twenty-six players, and therefore six rounds of preliminary tournament by rule.

Omar tells me that he has been too busy with work and visiting family to run the HvH p8 ratings, so we will use game room ratings to seed the tournament again this year. It is clear that the game room ratings can be abused, but the seedings turn out to be approximately reasonable, and in any case don't matter nearly as much with a six-round preliminary to determine the seeding for the finals.

Here's how many players should be left with each record by the end of round six.

record players
------ -------
6-0 0.4
5-1 2.4
4-2 6.1
3-3 8.1
2-4 6.1
1-5 2.4
0-6 0.4

Since there will be 8.9 people with four or more wins, 0.9 of them will not advance to the finals. Or to put it another way, four wins will probably get you into the finals, but not necessarily; Probably there will be nine players with four or more wins, and the four-win player who faced the weakest opposition will not advance due to poor tiebreakers.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by 99of9 on Jan 5^th, 2008, 12:21am

I've just selected my times for the first week of the WC. Hopefully this year my timezone is correctly registered - thanks omar for your troubleshooting last year!

My next request is this. Please please please can we have hourly timeslots rather than two-hourly? On workday evenings, my ideal slots are limited to 7pm and 9pm, but if we were allowed to go hourly, then I'd have 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm. I think that would allow for greater overlap with northern hemisphere opponents. Thanks for your consideration Omar.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 5^th, 2008, 9:53am

on 01/05/08 at 00:21:07, 99of9 wrote:

Please please please can we have hourly timeslots rather than two-hourly?

In the past I mostly considered hourly time slots a rounding error, but with the time control of 60 seconds per move, most of the games will not even last two hours. The average game will be an hour and a half, and probably a few will finish in an hour. In this context especially, it makes sense for the slots to be hourly.

If doubling the number of slots means that slightly more than double are good slots, then it's worth introducing the extra granularity. I find that I can pick 28 slots without great pain (instead of the 30 needed) but if I had been able to choose among 119 slots, I would have been able to choose an extra slot each day (like 99of9), for a relatively painless 60.

I have never had to play on a third-choice slot in three World Championship tournaments, so when I put in a few midnight or early morning slots to fill out my schedule, I don't worry too much, but still it seems a simple way to make the scheduling smoother is all to the good.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by ChrisB on Jan 7^th, 2008, 11:44am

Were we supposed to receive a web form (by e-mail?) to indicate our preferred times? So far nothing has come my way, athough I did receive a confirmation e-mail from Omar when I registered (so my e-mail address seems to be OK).

Or is there another way to access the web form?

In short, the only times I'm unavailable this week are weekdays from 8 am to 6 pm CST (2 pm to midnight GMT). Also, weekdays work a bit better for me than this coming weekend.

Thanks! Looking forward to the tournament!

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 7^th, 2008, 12:32pm

on 01/07/08 at 11:44:02, ChrisB wrote:

You were supposed to get an e-mail telling you that you will be playing Gold against Adanac in round one. That e-mail would have had a link to the web form, along with an authorization code, so you could fill out your preferred times without logging into the game room.

Quote:

Or is there another way to access the web form?

Yes, if you can't find that e-mail in your spam folder, you can find the web form here
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2008/selectTimes.cgi
but since there is no authorization code in that link it doesn't work unless you are logged into the game room.

I'm glad you are psyched to be taking part. I can hardly wait myself.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Adanac on Jan 7^th, 2008, 1:02pm

on 01/07/08 at 11:44:02, ChrisB wrote:

In short, the only times I'm unavailable this week are weekdays from 8 am to 6 pm CST (2 pm to midnight GMT). Also, weekdays work a bit better for me than this coming weekend.

Thanks! Looking forward to the tournament!

Chris, I'm playing you this week and I've set my highest priorities for weekday mornings (6am your local time), evenings (6pm your local time except Thursday/Friday) and Sunday afternoon. If your highest-priority time slots coincide with mine, I believe that it will choose the one that is latest in the week. So if you place any checks in the far-left box on Sunday we're quite likely to get that one. Use the middle and right boxes for the weekend and we should get a weekday game.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by ChrisB on Jan 8^th, 2008, 11:29am

Thanks, Fritzlein and Adanac, for the helpful information. I see that one of my top priority choices (Friday 1200 GMT) was selected for my first game.

Yes, it does appear that the latest time is chosen when two or more times have equal priority. Most of the first round games are scheduled for Saturday or Sunday.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by leo on Jan 8^th, 2008, 3:24pm

Just to be sure, Saturday 12:00 am is not Saturday night at midnight but Friday night, right? The am/pm system confuses me sometimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13^th, 2008, 12:40pm

Hmmm, after the two first-round forfeits, I sense a looming problem. What if someone never shows up for any games? It stinks for six different opponents to have to sit there waiting for a no-show. It's especially silly if two players win by forfeit; a better pairing would leave out the two players who have withdrawn from the tournament, and end up with one more game actually played.

I propose that if a player forfeits two consecutive games, he should be automatically withdrawn from the tournament and not paired in any future rounds. (Of course you could also withdraw by informing the tournament director, which is more courteous than not showing up, but I'm thinking more about the absentees at the moment.)

I know, this would be a rule change mid-tournament, which is generally frowned upon, but listen to the people who have waited in vain for an opponent to hear how dissatisfying it is. Part of the idea of the idea of the Open Classic was to give everyone six good games; if you have to sit across from and empty chair for one, you only got five.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by Adanac on Jan 13^th, 2008, 1:40pm

on 01/13/08 at 12:40:17, Fritzlein wrote:

I agree completely. Many chess Swiss-tournaments disqualify you after *one* forfeit, unless you speak to the tournament director in person and ask for permission to re-enter. With so many forfeits and late arrivals in the first round, I definitely think this issue should be addressed very soon.

In future years, hopefully only enthusiastic players join the tournament. I'd hate to have a repeat of this next year.

Title: Re: 2008 World Championship Format
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 14^th, 2008, 9:04am

on 01/13/08 at 12:40:17, Fritzlein wrote:

At least right now, we have to proceed as if all players intend to play their games. We have no way to distinguish between a player with extenuating circumstances and one with no excuse. It would be nice to hear a "Sorry about that" from the no-shows, but the tournament does not require it. A two-and-out rule for next year seems like a popular suggestion.

I'm hoping that the first round no-shows have not left for good without telling anybody. If you intend on withdrawing from the tournament, posting here or communicating privately with me or Omar would be the polite thing to do.