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        Arimaa >> Events >> 2008 Mid-Year Open
        
(Message started by: The_Jeh on Mar 14^th, 2008, 10:18am)

Title: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 14^th, 2008, 10:18am

Omar has given me permission to conduct a tournament in June, so I give you the 2008 Arimaa Mid-Year Open.

Format: Single-Elimination Bracketed (w/ Consolation, the extent of which is to be determined)

Time Control: 60s/5m/75/0/4h/4m R

Scheduling: Scheduling will be conducted approximately the same as for the 2008 World Championship. Players will play no more than one game per week. The entire tournament will last no longer than five weeks. Tournament play starts Wednesday, June 4.

Seeding: Players will be seeded by p8 rating as of the current supplement at the registration deadline. Ties will be broken by regular rating. Ties will be further broken by overall win percentage. Ties will be further broken randomly.

Colors: First-week colors will be assigned randomly. After the first week, the player who has the longer streak of playing the same color will play the opposite color. If two players have the same streak, the higher-seeded player will play the opposite color as the preceding week.

Eligibility: All players are eligible to register. However, participation is limited to the first 32 who register. A waiting list will be created if more than 32 players register.

Registration: Players wishing to participate should send their gameroom name and e-mail address to johnherr13@hotmail.com before the registration deadline of 11:00 P.M. GMT (6:00 P.M. CDT) May 25. There is no registration fee.

Hopefully, I'm not biting off more than I can chew. I hope that the do-or-die format will provide for extremely exciting games. If an insufficient number of people register because the (northern hemisphere) summer is a bad time or because of interference with the Postal Mixer, I may try September instead.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by nbarriga on Mar 14^th, 2008, 6:13pm

on 03/14/08 at 10:18:28, The_Jeh wrote:

Eligibility: All players are eligible to register. However, players must have a Rating Uncertainty (RU) of 60 or less as of the most current p8 supplement at the registration deadline, or they will be dropped. In addition, participation is limited to the first 32 who register. A waiting list will be created if more than 32 players register.

Just curious: why the RU <= 60 restriction?

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 14^th, 2008, 8:25pm

on 03/14/08 at 18:13:47, nbarriga wrote:

Just curious: why the RU <= 60 restriction?

Because p8 ratings for established players are readily available. Also, because registration is free, it is a small indicator that the registrant is involved with Arimaa enough that he will actually play.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by omar on Mar 15^th, 2008, 12:39am

If you give me the list of players shortly before the start of the tournament, I can generate the P8 ratings of the players for you. So you might want to raise that RU restriction or even remove it.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 15^th, 2008, 4:45pm

Thanks, Omar. I guess I'll remove the restriction. Hopefully, there will be few forfeiture problems.

Just a question: How can you generate p8 ratings of some players without generating them for all players?

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by omar on Mar 16^th, 2008, 9:54am

I have a script which I run manually passing it the username and it returns the P8 rating of the player.

The script just uses the regular ratings that are stored with the game when it needs to get the opponents rating. To generate true P8 ratings would take a very long time.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by aaaa on Mar 16^th, 2008, 3:03pm

Why single-elimination?

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 16^th, 2008, 6:09pm

on 03/16/08 at 15:03:14, aaaa wrote:

Why single-elimination?

I would have done a double-elimination bracket, but that would mean eleven rounds as opposed to five, and the winning players would play far fewer rounds than the losers. And I want to try a bracket rather than a floating or Swiss for various reasons, among which are the fact that it hasn't been done for a long time and that it is easy to conduct. And I like the pressure created because every game is do-or-die.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by aaaa on Mar 19^th, 2008, 6:15pm

Don't you think people will be less motivated to go through all the trouble of registering if they might very well end up playing only one time? It seem to me that given the lack of any registration fee, you have the great opportunity here of bringing about lots of interhuman games, if only the tournament system is chosen wisely. This just screams Swiss style to me, but even if you decry the manipulability of that, surely floating n-tuple elimination would have to be much more preferable than single elimination.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 19^th, 2008, 6:55pm

One complaint about both elimination and Swiss is the number of mismatches. In the World Championship preliminaries, Mistre was disappointed that his six rounds were three players significantly higher ranked and three significantly lower, and he didn't get to play any of the people who also finished 3-3, which would have been the most interesting games.

The anti-championship pairing is to try to give everyone six fairly equal games. The way the Postal Tournament used to be paired works pretty well for this. Put the players in a loop, even seeds on one side and odd seeds on the other, and have everyone play the three players clockwise and the three players counterclockwise. So for 13 players the loop would be

. 1 2
3 . 4
5 . 6
7 . . 8

9 . . 10
11 . 12
. 13

and (for example) 11 would play agianst 5, 7, 9, 13, 12 and 10.

Another anti-championship pairing would be like the McMahon pairing they use in European Go tournaments, or like the ladder/level tournament discussed in another thread.

It all depends on what you are trying to do. The objectives of determining a champion and giving folks even games are somewhat in conflict with each other. Obviously the guy running the tournament gets to decide what kind of tournament he would like to have. :)

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by mistre on Mar 19^th, 2008, 7:33pm

How about a World Cup style tournament? You start with 4 player divisions and you play each other once. The top 8 teams advance to a single elimination bracket. The losers in the single elimination get to play a 7th, 5th, and 3rd place game. This would guarantee everyone at least 3 games and for everyone one who makes it to the 2nd part, at least five games. And you still get to have a Champion :D

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 20^th, 2008, 1:15pm

on 03/19/08 at 18:15:45, aaaa wrote:

It sure is a lot of trouble - maybe a minute tops. :)

You tournament purists from the chess and Go circles will have to forgive me, but I am an infamous bracketologist, and I would very much like to host a tournament that can be discussed in a bracketological way. It offers a dynamic that Swiss and floating lack. Please humor me.

1. I promise that all players will play more than a single game by way of consolation.
2. I desire and promise that the tournament last no longer than five weeks, while still awarding a title.
3. The idea is that the matchups will become increasingly close each week. I never said my goal was to create immediately even games.

I think Janzert would like to enter OpFor, so I'm going to open eligibility to bots, as well. Then, after all registration, I think I'll add bots to the tournament until a power of two is reached. With a power of two, my idea of consolation will be possible. I know, I know .... you think it undermines the point of maximizing human-human games. My goal is only to run a tournament, providing anyone a venue to show what he's got. If you want to play a live human game, there is a button in the game room for scheduling one. Well, there used to be. I think Omar forgot to include it in the new gameroom.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 20^th, 2008, 9:19pm

Omar has said that bots would be too complicating, so I'll forget the bots. However, if you would like to enter your own bot and run it from your own computer, these bots will be accepted.

I don't want to discourage players with a poor tournament format. So, I might still be persuaded to make it a five-round Swiss.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by chessandgo on Mar 21^st, 2008, 3:46am

on 03/20/08 at 21:19:08, The_Jeh wrote:

I don't want to discourage players with a poor tournament format.

As far as I can tell, this will be the first "official" tournament (besides those organized by Omar) using the scheduler and everything ; so I'm sure it'll be great, whatever the format :) count me in in any case.

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by woh on Mar 21^st, 2008, 8:31am

It is great that we have another opportunity to play in a live tournament.

Thanks, The_Jeh, for making it possible!

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by ChrisB on Mar 21^st, 2008, 11:51am

Any format is fine with me too. If I had to choose between bracket and swiss, I guess I would go with bracket (with some consolation games) simply because we recently had a swiss and it would be interesting to try something new.

I probably won't decide whether I'll participate until late in the registration period, once I have a better idea of my schedule during the time of the tournament. I would prefer a short tournament to a long one. Four to five weeks seems about right.

Thanks, The_Jeh, for organizing a new tournament!

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by chessandgo on Mar 21^st, 2008, 3:35pm

yeah, thousand of thanks for organizing this, The_Jeh. You're making the community life even more intense with all your nice ideas :)

Title: Re: 2008 Mid-Year Open
Post by The_Jeh on Mar 21^st, 2008, 5:18pm

Well, I don't know what to say except thank you and you're welcome. :)