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Title: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 3rd, 2009, 7:04pm We have 18 players registered, and thus five preliminary rounds. On average, you would expect 9 players to finish with a winning record (3-2 or better) and 9 players to finish with a losing record (2-3 or worse). If it turns out this way, there will be one 3-2 player who does not qualify for the finals, based on having the weakest opponents of all 3-2 players. However, if a couple of players drop out (as happened last year) then perhaps there will be only 8 players with a 3-2 record, and all will qualify for the finals. Returning players this year are rated, on average, 15.5 rating points higher than they were last year. This is a major change from previous years, where the year-over-year rating gain of returning players was always about 100 points. This is probably due to the deflationary effect of starting new players at 1300 rather than 1500, and also the deflationary effect of fixing the rating of ArimaaScoreP1 to 1000. Good luck to all! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 4th, 2009, 5:32pm A warning regarding selecting times... I usually use a bookmark to select my availability: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/selectTimes.cgi But Omar just sent an email saying to use: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2009/selectTimes.cgi (with some authorization keys after it) And they have a different set of preferences stored for me. So, just in case anyone else uses a bookmark to find their time preferences, be careful! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 5th, 2009, 6:02am I accepted Omar's invitation to be tournament director again this year. Good luck to everybody and I will try to be as fair as possible. Please review the tournament rules. In general, players are responsible for having good connections, connecting on time, and playing good moves. If the game site has technical problems or the coordinators make mistakes, we will do our best not to penalize players for events beyond their control. In the past, pairing algorithm results occasionally didn't meet the published criteria and human correction was required. The published criteria will continue to take precedence. Make sure your game time offsets from GMT are correct. This way you will connect at the right time. The current rules don't explicitly state how a partially finished game is handled if the site goes down in mid-game. This happened in the past and I believe the best response is to continue the game from the position and clock settings when the site went down. Otherwise the posted rules have evolved to handle things pretty well. Have a great tournament! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 5th, 2009, 6:12am This is great news, Ron. Thank you so much for agreeing to be Tournament Director once again this year. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 5th, 2009, 10:20pm Just want to give a big thanks to Ned for accepting to take on the TD role this year; and for the great job he has done in past years. Believe it or not the tension of something going wrong during the tournament feels more manageable to me knowing that Ned is there as a safety net to make sound decisions. Hopefully things will go smoothly and we will have another enjoyable tournament with some spectacular games :-) Karl were you planning on covering the games. If so maybe you might need help in the early rounds since there are many games. I could volunteer to help you with a couple games each week, but my level of analysis is not very deep. I hope others can also volunteer to help if needed. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Jan 6th, 2009, 4:39am Thanks a lot Ron! We definitely believe you Omar as for the relief of having our preferred Tournament director officying :) Looking forward to having you play next year hopefully though :p |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Jan 6th, 2009, 7:13am on 01/05/09 at 22:20:06, omar wrote:
I can also help with a few games each week. And because the tournament format is similar to last year's I can generate the standings on a weekly basis with the code I created last year. Deep analysis is not required for the Open Classic summaries. Last year most of the recaps were only 1 or 2 short paragraphs. Only a few complicated or marathon games had long, detailed summaries -- and Fritzlein usually covers those games ;) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by grey_0x2A on Jan 6th, 2009, 2:00pm Are the match times going to be publicly announced this year? This would be convent for those of us wanting to watch the games. -- Chris |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 6th, 2009, 4:13pm on 01/06/09 at 07:13:59, Adanac wrote:
I was feeling less inspired to cover the games this year than I was last year, in part because I want to devote a healthy chunk of my Arimaa time to the Mob game, but given the offers of help, I can hardly refuse. Also there will be only nine games per round, as opposed to thirteen per round last year. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 6th, 2009, 5:11pm on 01/06/09 at 14:00:49, grey_0x2A wrote:
Yes, but the games are scheduled on Tuesday nights this year instead of Monday nights. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 6th, 2009, 9:40pm Sorry about the delay in getting the games scheduled for the 1st round. I ran into some unexpected issues. They are fixed now and the players should have received an email with their game times. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 7th, 2009, 6:53am i have a question, is the rating fix just once or is it every week (before pairing) because the registered players shows the rating always fluctuating |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 7th, 2009, 8:41am on 01/06/09 at 21:40:00, omar wrote:
No problem. As long as we keep tweaking the format, there will be glitches. I notice that the game times are nearly evenly distributed throughout the weekend. Did you change the scheduling code to encourage that, or did we just get lucky? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 7th, 2009, 10:07am on 01/07/09 at 06:53:24, Tuks wrote:
The ratings were fixed on Jan 3rd, just that the program to list the registered players was always using gameroom ratings. I've changed it to show the fixed ratings now. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 7th, 2009, 10:08am on 01/07/09 at 08:41:54, Fritzlein wrote:
It was just luck. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 7th, 2009, 4:55pm Ben and I would like our game shifted back by 2 hours due to an unexpected commitment arising for Ben. Thanks Omar. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by arimaa_master on Jan 10th, 2009, 6:26am Ron, LevB had some connectivity problems. Hopefully our first game (number 93730) will be not counted as 2009 Arimaa Open Classic game. Instead we played another one (number 93733) with the same time control. Thanks in advance for counting 93733 game instead of game 93730. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 12th, 2009, 6:01am on 01/10/09 at 06:26:14, arimaa_master wrote:
If taken literally, the current rules do not allow this. However, it is early enough in the tournament that we can address this issue. Because of this game and the three forfeits in the first round, I am considering a proposed standard rule change to cover replacement games. Here is the proposed rule: In the event of a game won by forfeit or a connection loss before gold's move 3 is registered, the winner may elect to invalidate that game and play a replacement game within 24 hours of the original games start. The winner of the original game has no obligation to offer a replacement game. If a replacement game is not played within 24 hours, the outcome of the original game takes precedence. Scheduling of the replacement game is the responsibility of the two affected players. Once move 1 of a replacement game has been registered by silver, the original game is invalidated and the replacement game becomes the official tournament game. I would propose to apply this retroactively to the beginning of the tournament. Comments are invited. In fairness to all contestants, if any current contestant objects to this proposal, even without providing any reason, I would reject the proposal. This is because all contestants entered the tournament with the current rules and without foreknowledge of this proposal. The advantage of this proposal is that more outcomes may be decided by arimaa games rather than connections and forfeits. One worry I have is that forfeit or early connection winners would feel obligated to play a replacement game. I don't want there to be any social pressure to negate a win like this, especially if there's money or a title on the line. Also there's the spectator contest to think about. I would like to make a final ruling before the next round, so please comment. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 12th, 2009, 6:40am fine by me |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 12th, 2009, 7:17am I like this rule. I have an extra reason to support it: without it I would not have won the 2005 World Championship! BlackKnight and I could barely get our game started, and (if I remember correctly) I timed out on the first move. He generously offered to try again the next day, and almost won anyway. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 12th, 2009, 8:31am Ron I like this rule because it allows more games to be completed. Though there is potential for this to be abused and potential that someone will be short changed, I think it is worth giving it a try and hope for the best. Technically it is a bit of a mess for me since I have to manually change fields in the database when this happens, but I can deal with it. Does anyone know what happened in the camelback vs Emaad game? It seems like neither player entered the game and so the game was eventually deleted without creating a forfeit. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Jan 12th, 2009, 9:03am on 01/12/09 at 08:31:32, omar wrote:
Omar, camelback was in the chatroom last night but Emaad didn't show up in the gameroom at all. If camelback didn't officially "sit" at the table, that could explain why the forfeit wasn't recorded. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Jan 12th, 2009, 9:29am I like the new rule as well. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 12th, 2009, 9:41am Apparently thefrankinator, Amina, and Emaad all forfeited. According to the rules a "player who forfiets a game is automatically removed from the tournament and will not play in future rounds unless the tournament directors accepts the appeal". Ron, have any of the players appealed to you to continue the tournament? My feeling is that just asking to continue is enough reason for an appeal to be accepted, but the rules clearly leave it to the discretion of the Tournament Director whether or not to allow forfeiting players to continue. If we have only fifteen players, I believe that Sana gets a bye next round. The tiebreaker points have not been explicit, but my understanding is that byes and forfeit wins should earn zero tiebreaker points, no matter which round they occur in. Suppose I am 3-1 heading into the final round, and I am paired with another 3-1 player who doesn't show up, so I win by forfeit. Should I get three tiebreaker points for that win? I say that I should get zero tiebreaker points, because I didn't have to earn my win. Compared to another 4-1 player, I will probably end up lower in the standings, and I should, because he actually won four games over the board, whereas I only won three. My strength of schedule is genuinely weakened by winning a forfeit. Does this make sense? It isn't spelled out in the tournament rules one way or another, but it should probably be clarified somewhere. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by woh on Jan 12th, 2009, 2:40pm I also think the new rule is a good idea. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 12th, 2009, 3:14pm on 01/12/09 at 09:41:40, Fritzlein wrote:
Does that mean they should also give zero tiebreaker points (to other players who've previously or subsequently beaten the winner-by-forfeit)? That would make the calculations quite complex. I agree this is an important issue to nail down. I think there are theoretical reasons for either choice, and neither makes the situation perfect, but it is absolutely essential to settle on one version or other before too many people have a stake in the issue. My memory is that last year forfeits did count in the normal way for tiebreakers, and I suspect we should preserve that until the next set of rules is written. You also need to be careful of the slippery slope. By your argument perhaps someone winning by disconnection-timeout from a losing position may not have "earnt" the tiebreaker points associated with the win. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Jan 12th, 2009, 5:06pm on 01/12/09 at 09:41:40, Fritzlein wrote:
Right now, the problem is that winning by forfeit usually hurts the winning player. Unless thefrankinator rejoins the tournament I'll receive a 0 SoS from him for the remainder of the tournament. Obviously I'd have been better off playing someone who didn't forfeit. I don't want to make any changes that further penalize players for winning by forfeit. Granted, your example is at the other extreme, where a forfeit actually benefits the winner in the later rounds. I made a proposal last year that I still think is more fair than the current system: You receive the SoS for your opponent for all games up to the current round, but none thereafter. That way you still receive SoS for a difficult schedule but don't get penalized if your opponent later withdraws from the tournament. That happened to me last year as PMertens withdrew from the tournament and I only received 2 points from him -- despite playing him when he had a 2-0 record! The advantage to this proposed system is that a player who starts 0-2 and then wins 3 straight will always have a lower SoS than a player who begins 3-0 and then loses two in a row against the top players. Note that's not necessarily the case in the current system where you could theoretically win your first 3 games but receive little SoS if your opponents later withdraw. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 12th, 2009, 5:48pm I'm not sure if I like your proposal or not, but I think it would be very unwise to implement it now. It has a very large effect on those who have to play the #1 or #2 in the first or second round... they basically don't get any credit for what someone in a later round will get a lot of credit for. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 12th, 2009, 8:38pm on 01/12/09 at 17:06:40, Adanac wrote:
But you are discounting the chance of losing. Yes, playing woh will get me better tiebreak points than you will get for your forfeit, but I also survived a chance that I wouldn't even get the win. Quote:
There are definitely fairness issues with the current system. On the other hand, at least in the current system when two people play the identical opponents they will have the same tiebreaker points. If I understand your proposal, playing the same opponents in a different order results in a different strength of schedule. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by camelback on Jan 12th, 2009, 9:55pm on 01/12/09 at 09:03:20, Adanac wrote:
Thanks Adanac ;). I did sit on the table and it displayed "waiting for opponent". I waited for 20 minutes then I went to chatroom. I like the new rule, it would be a good idea to add a comment on the replacement game, so that it can be easily identified. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Jan 13th, 2009, 5:03am on 01/12/09 at 20:38:13, Fritzlein wrote:
Imagine, though, that you had lost a tough 1st round game and then your opponent withdrew from the tournament in the next round. Then you'd get 0 wins and only 1 SoS tie-breaker point despite having been paired up with a difficult opponent. That's where the current system is very unfair, and that has been known to happen in the past. Or, what if it's the final round of the tournament and you're tied for the eighth spot with another player. The tie-breaker will be decided in the final game of the tournament between a pair of 1-3 or 0-4 players. But maybe the player you need to win doesn't bother to show up because it's a "meaningless" game for him. Or perhaps that player shows up knowing the stakes involved, but wilts under the pressure/obligation. Not everyone likes to be placed in that situation. With my proposal you already know your SoS and the games that affect your final standing will generally involve games between 2-2 and 3-1 players heading into the fifth round. The current system is excellent if we can know for sure that every player will play every game without forfeit (and always to the best of their ability in the final round). The wild unpredictability going into the final round can even be thought of as an advantage. But with all of the forfeits plaguing the past 2 Open Classics, it just seems too unfair to punish people for being paired against players that forfeit -- especially if the forfeit occurs later in the tournament. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 13th, 2009, 5:31am on 01/12/09 at 09:41:40, Fritzlein wrote:
So far, I haven't received any appeals. If players are confused about how to do this, a forfeiting player could send me a private message in this forum, ask Omar for my e-mail through the game site, or even post a message on this forum. If this is too hard, post a message in this forum that you are trying to contact me. What I'm looking for is an assurance that the player will make a good-faith attempt to play the remainder of your games. First offenders will tend to get off easy. But if the player doesn't appeal, I must assume that player has abandoned the tournament. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 13th, 2009, 6:11am on 01/12/09 at 09:41:40, Fritzlein wrote:
When I read the current rules, they tell me that a forfeit is scored as a normal game with the forfeiting player losing. If a player leaves the tournament, that player's score (number of wins) is used in the sum of scores for that player's opponents. If that player plays no more games, there is still a score for that player. I don't see any language about receiving a zero for that player's score. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but I see the rules describing the tie breaker as the sum of the opponents' scores. In spite of the weaknesses of this procedure that have been described, we won't change this procedure unless a compelling alternative is presented. By that I mean indisputable evidence that the alternative is better. That hasn't happened. I support discussing an improved way to account for withdrawals and would consider a change in this tournament if a timely proposal is made. Realistically, I expect this discussion to have an effect on next year's rules. One objection I have to getting a zero for a forfeit is that it simply increases the penalty one gets for being unlucky enough to have that opponent. It's bad enough the that opponent might leave the tournament and not increase his score. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13th, 2009, 7:34am on 01/13/09 at 06:11:01, RonWeasley wrote:
I don't think anyone is proposing that. A forfeit win is worth one point. What we are discussing is purely how the forfeit win affects one's strength of schedule. Quote:
I'm comfortable with that. The discussion can pertain to next year. Quote:
Increases the penalty? What penalty? If there is no difference between a forfeit win and a regular win, in terms of strength of schedule, then the luckiest you can be is to get a forfeit win in every round. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13th, 2009, 7:39am on 01/13/09 at 05:03:26, Adanac wrote:
Yes, the current tiebreakers become unfair when someone withdraws in the middle of the tournament. I don't really have a good solution for that. But I do think it is better than giving different people different tiebreaker points for playing the same opponent. In any case, my proposal was about changing the way tiebreaker points are given that for forfeit wins, which I think is a slight improvement even though it doesn't address the problem of tournament withdrawals. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 13th, 2009, 9:17am on 01/13/09 at 07:34:27, Fritzlein wrote:
The current penalty is that of a forfeiting player being likely to also leave the tournament, or to forfeit again. This means that player's contribution to strength of schedule may be less, but never greater, than it would have been because that player gets no more wins. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by grey_0x2A on Jan 13th, 2009, 9:29am The problem of tie-breaks, is always a major issue in swiss tournaments. Every game than I have played seriously has this issue. Esp. in these small 8-32 player size where you can play every game well and still get hooped by the system. Once there where two players with one lost at the end of the turnament but I came second to the player I beat, my first round pairing played poorly. In larger tournaments getting done in by tie-breaks is less of an issue if you are at the top in my experience, and if your on the bubble luck is a major factor either way so who cares. BTW if SOS is the first tie break what is the second and third? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Jan 13th, 2009, 10:08am on 01/13/09 at 07:39:05, Fritzlein wrote:
I don't believe the "common opponents" would make a difference in practice: If player A's W/L by round are: L-W-W-L-W and player B: W-W-L-L-W then by my proposed system player B should have a slightly better Strength of Schedule, usually by an SoS score of 7-5 **. In fact, player B should win by that same margin regardless of whether or not they had any common opponents, or which order they faced their common opponents. On the other hand, suppose player B's first round opponent withdrew in the next round. Now, player A may pass ahead of player B even though he followed the path of lesser resistance and player B was punished for events out of his control. My system doesn't address the unfair advantage of winning and yet receiving the same credit as a player that had to fight for a win. But that's out of our control, much like winning because the opponent disconnected in a close game and shouldn't be penalized in any way. ** the scores may differ if either player got bumped or down in any round due to an odd number of players. But if so, that change in SoS score is deserved. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 13th, 2009, 11:25am couldn't you do something with the initial ranks like: Points scale: (ill make it with 10 players) when adding up wins: #1 = 10 #2 = 9 #3 = 8 #4 = 7 #5 = 6 #6 = 5 #7 = 4 #8 = 3 #9 = 2 #10 = 1 When subtracting loses #1 = 1 #2 = 2 #3 = 3 #4 = 4 #5 = 5 #6 = 6 #7 = 7 #8 = 8 #9 = 9 #10 = 10 we could make forfeits worth half the points because they didn't fight for it but it shouldn't be too much of a hindrance examples: Player 1: Beats #8,6,10 Loses against #1,4 Score: 3+5+1-1-4 = 4 Player 2: Beats #10,9,4Loses against #2,6 Score: 1+2+7-2-6 = 2 this approach seemed to favor the person with stronger opponents in the loss section although i haven't tested very much |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 13th, 2009, 3:52pm on 01/12/09 at 21:55:02, camelback wrote:
Bizarre why that game didn't get saved as a forfeit like the other ones; there may still be some bugs I have to stamp out. But thanks for confirming this, camelback. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 13th, 2009, 4:24pm on 01/13/09 at 11:25:28, Tuks wrote:
Interesting proposal Tuks. This helps with the forfeit issue, but one could say that it puts too much weight on the initial ranks and the current system tried to minimize the dependence on the initial ranks. Perhaps you might want to consider modifying it to rank the players based on their performance with ties broken by initial ranks and then apply your scoring method on that ranking of players rather than the initial ranking. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 13th, 2009, 4:27pm on 01/13/09 at 09:29:28, grey_0x2A wrote:
Pre-tournament ratings and then random. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by grey_0x2A on Jan 13th, 2009, 5:36pm So the lower pre-tournament player gets in right. After all they are the better player "today". IMHO |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13th, 2009, 5:47pm on 01/13/09 at 09:17:03, RonWeasley wrote:
Got it. If the winner by forfeit would get no tiebreak points, that would be greater than the penalty of getting potentially reduced tiebreak points. on 01/13/09 at 10:08:58, Adanac wrote:
OK, you totally lost me. I understand that it is unfair in the current system when your strength of schedule is reduced because an opponent you beat later dropped out of the tournament. But I don't understand why common opponents are irrelevant. Just to clarify, if Player A scores L-W-W-L-W and Player B scores W-W-L-L-W, you think that Player B should have better tiebreakers, even if the two players played exactly the same five opponents? To me it seems that if two players play exactly the same five opponents, and your tiebreaker ranks one above the other, then your tiebreaker can't be called strength of schedule. In fact, your tiebreaker is very close to what we used to call "cumulative wins" in chess tournaments. As I understand it, that's how swiss-paired chess tournaments used to break ties in the 1970's (at least in Kansas) until the system was displaced by "sum of opponent's wins", which was generally regarded as being more fair. However, it may be that live chess tournaments don't have as much trouble with people withdrawing mid-tournament as the Arimaa World Championship does. Quote:
Yes, this is unfair. If possible, I would like to separate that fairness issue from the issue of whether a win by forfeit should receive any tiebreak points. It is possible that, without addressing the unfairness caused by withdrawals, my proposal would make the current system fairer. Quote:
Wait, are you saying that fairness is not the standard for how rewards should be assigned, and the standard is rather what is within a player's control? Or are you saying that it is less unfair to reward a player for something out of his control than it is to penalize him for something out of his control? The latter distinction makes no sense to me, because an unfair reward to one player is equivalent to an unfair penalty to all the other players. My thought is that we try to do the fairest thing possible under adverse circumstances. Giving credit for a win the player did nothing to earn is an unfair reward, while giving the winner no chance at tiebreak points is an unfair penalty. Perhaps it balances out. on 01/13/09 at 11:25:28, Tuks wrote:
That proposal is equivalent to adding the seeds of your opponents, and saying that lowest tiebreak is best. A similar approach would be to say that the tiebreak is the sum of the ratings of ones opponents, with highest being best. I am a huge fan of strength of schedule for the tiebreaker. The trouble is accurately measuring strength of schedule. I submit that "wins of opponents" measures strength of schedule better than "cumulative wins", even given the problem of people withdrawing mid-tournament. However, it may be that "sum of seeds" or "sum of ratings" would measure strength of schedule more accurately than either Adanac's proposal or mine. It seems like a question of which source of unfairness we least abhor. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 13th, 2009, 7:36pm on 01/13/09 at 17:47:59, Fritzlein wrote:
The problem is, your proposal makes the unfairness caused by withdrawals worse (as you've agreed with Ron). So you can't really split up the two issues. In my opinion the question is whether making your change gives an overall increase in fairness. I agree that it might in a tournament with forfeits but without withdrawals. But in a tournament with forfeits and withdrawals (especially in a tournament where forfeit implies withdrawal...), it is far from clear. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13th, 2009, 8:44pm on 01/13/09 at 19:36:56, 99of9 wrote:
Not at all. Having forfeits give zero tiebreak points to the person winning the forfeit doesn't change the way withdrawals affect anyone. People who withdraw from the tournament presently unfairly hurt the tiebreak points of people who have played them in previous rounds. What I agreed with Ron about was that the winner of a forfeit gets a penalty of fewer tiebreak points than at present. I think such a penalty makes it more fair, in order to offset getting a free win. It just doesn't make sense to me to include an opponent in your strength of schedule if you never played them. How does the ability of the person who forfeited to you say anything about the magnitude of your in-tournament achievement? If you and I both end up with a 4-1 record, but I won four of those games over the board and you only won three of those games over the board, then I should almost automatically have a claim to the stronger schedule. The only exception would be if your forfeit win was a an early-round walkover. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 13th, 2009, 9:32pm we could use the initial rankings and add onto the score every time that player beats a supposedly stronger ranked player and have that stronger player lose an initial ranking, that would put into consideration the changing of strength but to a small degree because i still put a lot of value on the initial rankings (players may have problems on just one day or make one serious blunder that loses them the game). then in the scorings, use the new values for each player...ide put an example, but ide have to figure out a whole scoreboard because everyone effects the end scoring |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 14th, 2009, 6:20am on 01/12/09 at 06:01:02, RonWeasley wrote:
The community seems to agree with this proposal, so I'm going to approve it. Consider this paragraph to be part of the tournament rules. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Bildstein on Jan 18th, 2009, 4:30pm Hi Ron, I e-mailed you this yesterday, but 99of9 let me know I needed to post it here (thanks Toby!). So now it's an open letter :) I forfeited my last Arimaaa World Championship preliminaries game. I've been offline for about a week, because of a karate seminar I've been attending, and it meant I didn't know about the latest game until a few hours ago. Anyway, Fritzlein told me (in reply to my comment on the game) that I'll be removed from the preliminaries unless I petition you (as the tournament director). I have no excuse for missing the previous game - karate is just a higher priority for me than Arimaa, and this was the biggest event on the annual karate calendar. But more importantly, I'm back online now, and I'll be able to make the rest of the games. Will you please allow me to continue in the preliminaries? Regards, Ben. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 18th, 2009, 4:45pm on 01/18/09 at 16:30:28, Bildstein wrote:
Ah, sorry Ben, I didn't realise that you'd already emailed Ron - I'm sure he also accepts direct emails! I'm very glad to hear you can continue - if only to prove that our tough game last week was not only on account of me being rusty. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Jan 18th, 2009, 7:02pm Omar, even before Bildstein rejoined the tournament I believe the pairings for round 3 were incorrect. Specifically, the last 4 games should have been: Omar vs. woh The Jeh vs. soldier arimaa_master vs. Sana Tuks vs. Bildstein* LevB (bye)* * Bildstein's re-entry only affected these last 2 pairings. Participant Wins SoS Fritzlein 2 2 chessandgo 2 1 Adanac 2 1 99of9 2 1 camelback 2 0 naveed 1 3 omar 1 3 The_Jeh 1 2 arimaa_master 1 2 woh 1 2 soldier 1 1 Sana 1 1 Tuks 0 4 Bildstein 0 3 LevB 0 2 |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 18th, 2009, 7:44pm Agreed, Adanac. It looks almost like a game result got entered incorrectly, because Omar has two games of 0-2 versus 1-1. (LevB vs Sana and Tuks vs. soldier) According to the pairing rules, you might get one category crossover, but you will never get two. (unless you are trying to to avoid a repeat pairing, which isn't the case here) The 1-1 must play each other and the 0-2 must play each other. I wonder if the problem here is the code incorrectly handling byes? That wouldn't have shown up last year, because we never had a bye then, although we did have plenty of forfeits. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Jan 18th, 2009, 7:57pm Quote:
I think this is the key reason for our differing views. You are thinking mostly of late round forfeits where players are roughly evenly paired. I am thinking mostly of first-round matchups with p_win>0.99 (because that is where I expect the majority of forfeits to occur). on 01/13/09 at 20:44:49, Fritzlein wrote:
I think I accept this. So, going back to an early round walkover... Let's assume all the ratings were accurate enough that it really was a high probability walkover. Even so, in a swiss tourney, the loser still has an expectation to win just under half of their remaining games (if they do not withdraw). Which is worth more, reducing the 1% chance of losing to 0%, or 2 tiebreak points? I personally would prefer the 2 tiebreak points. I share your high opinion (quoted below) of strength of schedule, and agree that this comes down to a question of how best to measure it. My argument above suggests that points obtained from walkovers are not representative of genuine strength, and so are currently overvalued compared to points obtained later. Adanac's proposal reduces the value of these games, so may have some merit. But if we were to go that way, perhaps when pairing, those on equal tiers should be folded rather than slid up, to ensure that seed #1 is not punished for having a high ranking with a strong first round opponent that cannot count for SoS anyway! Quote:
I would prefer to resort to external measures (such as ratings or seedings) as little as possible. Brainstorming for a second... since we're mainly interested in differentiating between the top half of the entrants, perhaps the SoS should be the sum of games won by only the opponents you have lost to? That covers forfeits quite neatly, and removes the withdrawal problem... I think. I think sliding would be better than folding in this system, to ensure that those higher up in a category get to play higher-caliber opponents. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 18th, 2009, 9:16pm on 01/18/09 at 19:57:21, 99of9 wrote:
Yes, that really is the key. In a late-round pairing between two players who are 2-2, the free win instead of a 50% chance of losing is worth much more than the two tiebreak points. To give the full point and the tiebreak points seems manifestly unfair. But in the case of an early-round forfeit, even one tiebreak point is probably worth more than small the chance of losing. The problem with strength of schedule generally is mismatches. For people at the bottom of the standings, it doesn't make much difference to their strength of schedule if they played the top seed or the fifth seed, but to the third seed there is a big difference between having to play the top seed or the fifth seed. Similarly at the bottom of the standings, the players may all look like the same to folks at the top, but there are big differences in skill when they play each other. But the strength of schedule measure is one size fits all. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 19th, 2009, 4:48am on 01/18/09 at 16:30:28, Bildstein wrote:
Bildstein is reinstated. A private e-mail to me is fine for appeals. TD |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 19th, 2009, 6:16am Here is Ken Massey (one component of the BCS computer rankings) talking about the difficulty of computing strength of schedule: http://www.mratings.com/theory/sched.htm Unfortunately, Massey's solution (unlike sum of opponents wins) can't be implemented by pencil and paper. But if it could be implemented it would exactly solve the early-round-forfeit-problem. Beating a much lower ranked player gives one almost no boost in the Massey strength of schedule, so getting no tiebreaker credit for a forfeit win is a very small sacrifice, i.e. a sacrifice of the right size. And since "a team's schedule is judged primarily by the 'peers' that appear on its schedule", getting no tiebreaker credit for a late-round forfeit win is a largish penalty to strength of schedule, as it should be. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 19th, 2009, 9:35am on 01/18/09 at 19:02:39, Adanac wrote:
Thanks Greg, I've include Bildstein back in and ran the pairing algorithm again. Seems to match with your pairings now. http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2009/oc/showGames.cgi |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 19th, 2009, 10:47am wouldnt want to give me a weaker one after losing my first two would we! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Janzert on Jan 20th, 2009, 7:31am I see round 3 has been paired. Have the games not been scheduled yet or is the time just not showing up in the gameroom? Janzert |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 20th, 2009, 8:54am The games will be scheduled tonight around 6pm central time. There is a 24 hour period to allow players to update their preferred times after sending the reminder. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Janzert on Jan 20th, 2009, 1:15pm Ahh, sorry. I had been expecting the schedule to go up Monday night. Janzert |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 25th, 2009, 1:40pm Just for the record, omar offered to continue his game against woh after woh timed out on move 12. woh's client didn't receive omar's move. The modified rules in this case (see earlier in this thread) are clear that after silver sends move 2, the game can only be continued if there is a problem with the server. So I denied omar's appeal to continue. Both players impressed the spectators with their good sportsmanship. TD |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 25th, 2009, 9:18pm Round 4 pairings are up. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 26th, 2009, 5:00am omar, im not sure this is right, im pretty sure camelback should be playing adanac because he is the top rated 2 win person(adanac) and camelback has three wins! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 26th, 2009, 7:05am Based on opponent wins 99of9 is ranked higher. Here is what the pairing algorithm thinks. * player rankings * name rating wins opponent-wins * chessandgo 2475 3 5 * Fritzlein 2454 3 5 * camelback 1951 3 2 * 99of9 2212 2 5 * arimaa_master 2092 2 5 * Adanac 2263 2 4 * The_Jeh 2144 2 4 * omar 1968 2 4 * naveed 2069 1 6 * Tuks 1919 1 6 * woh 1847 1 6 * Sana 1246 1 4 * LevB 1359 1 3 * soldier 1315 1 3 * Bildstein 1480 0 4 |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Jan 26th, 2009, 7:41am Assuming that there are no more withdrawals, and all remaining games are coin flips, I calculate the following odds: The bottom 3-2 player doesn't qualify: 3/8 Exactly the 3-2 players qualify: 1/2 The top 2-3 player does qualify: 1/8 But don't trust these numbers until Adanac runs his simulations. :) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Jan 27th, 2009, 9:15am Maybe for next year there is an issue of players floating down. I seem to recall a WC (floating double elim) where the top seed kept floating down, and in this swiss tourney, camelback kept floating down just as well. Wouldn't it be "more fair" if a player who has already floated down would be defavorized to float down in the next rounds with respect to those who haven't? This is admitedly a very minor issue :) Jean |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 28th, 2009, 6:50am omar, can you move my match back an hour? LevB agreed to it already, you can see that in the commented games section |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 29th, 2009, 11:06am on 01/28/09 at 06:50:35, Tuks wrote:
Sure. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 29th, 2009, 12:48pm thank you and im sorry for being an inconvenience... if LevB agrees then i would appreciate it being move 2 hours instead of one...ill post again tomorrow if he does |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 30th, 2009, 12:04pm ok omar, could you change our match time to either 2 hours before or after 4 o clock (my Time) or move it to sunday? It would be really appreciated, im sorry for this constant moving |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 30th, 2009, 5:55pm on 01/30/09 at 12:04:35, Tuks wrote:
OK, moved it back one more hour. So it is now 2 hours earlier than the original time. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Jan 30th, 2009, 11:32pm thank you very much! ill send LevB an email to make sure he is coming |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Jan 31st, 2009, 4:21pm In soldier vs woh, woh timed out after move 9. However, several people logged into the game site experienced lost connections at the same time. Therefore, the best explaination is that the ISP was at fault. Because of this evidence, I am ruling that woh's connection was not at fault and the game will be continued. The continuation will be at the position and clock settings, as near as can be approximated, at the time of the fault. Omar, soldier, and woh are scheduling the continuation. TD |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Jan 31st, 2009, 8:50pm I spoke to soldier a little while ago. He will not be able to play tomorrow and does not want to delay the tournament schedule. So he would like to award the victory to woh. It should also be mentioned that woh had offered to accept the lose even though the connection problem was not his fault. I am highly impressed by the admirable sportsmanship of our players; they deserve to be commended. Please give them a virtual pat on the back next time you see them in the chatroom :-) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by woh on Feb 1st, 2009, 1:50am I would feel very uncomfortable when awarded a win in that way. It is punishing soldier in a situation where he has no fault. I think it is better to keep the result as it was over the board and award the win to soldier. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2009, 6:09am Ha, both soldier and woh want to give the win to the other player. I have never seen such graciousness in a sporting event. Of course we can't force the two of them to play, but I for one think the tournament should be delayed by a week to accommodate a replay and not give either player a loss "off the board". If enough of the tournament participants say they would prefer this outcome, perhaps soldier and woh can be persuaded that they will be doing good rather than harm to play out their interrupted game to completion. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Feb 1st, 2009, 6:36am I have nothing against delaying the tournament. In general, the feeling is that it would be good to have a game continued when it's been interupted due to server issues, and it's very understandable that the game sometimes cannot be rescheduled in time for next round. I hope soldier-woh will get decided on the board in the end! Jean |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by arimaa_master on Feb 1st, 2009, 7:19am I am fine with postponing tournament for one week. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Feb 1st, 2009, 1:21pm I would prefer a delay and see this game continued. Omar, please inform me if this can't happen. TD |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2009, 2:25pm During The_Jeh vs. arimaa_master, I counted a peak of 22 people logged in and 11 people in chat. The Arimaa community is thriving! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 1st, 2009, 4:40pm on 02/01/09 at 01:50:11, woh wrote:
woh, if the game was re-scheduled would you show up to play? If the answer is yes, then I think we can continue as if you won. I have proceeded based on the assumption that your answer to this question would be yes. Last night I met soldier at a birthday party and spoke to him in person. The gist of our conversation was that I told him the TD decided that the game must be replayed since there was a problem with the server and we would have to play it tomorrow or delay the tournament and play it next week. He basically said that's OK, I would have lost, I don't want to delay anything, I'll just let him win. Keep in mind that he also does not have internet at home since his family is in the process of moving and he would have to ask his dad to drive him somewhere to get an internet connection. I told him that was very nice and considerate of him to do this and he was being a good sport. His face lit up with a big smile. Sorry woh I didn't send you all this details earlier. I think your response was valid since my previous post makes it sound like soldier still wants to play if we delayed the tournament. I hope this clears up the situation and you will accept the win without feeling bad about it. Any matters that we can resolve without delaying the tournament buys us time to be able to delay the tournament later for matters which absolutely can't be resolved without delaying the tournament. Ron, I think the course of action I have taken still preserves your decision that the game should be replayed. I have assumed that from soldiers personal statements to me it is equivalent to him forfeiting the next game with woh and requesting to still continue the tournament. I have also assumed that woh would not forfeit such a game. Please let me know by email if you would like me to take different actions. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Feb 2nd, 2009, 5:55am Recent discussions have determined that soldier is unable, for logistical reasons, to continue the interrupted game with woh. Soldier can't reasonably get access to the internet to support continuation of the game. Soldier has submitted a forfeit request and has appealed to be reinstated into the tournament. While I intended to delay the tournament to allow the game to be completed, I feel compelled to honor soldier's right to forfeit based on extenuating circumstances. Note that I view the extenuating circumstances to be an important element in this case and they differentiate this forfeit request from other scenarios. Therefore, I am reluctantly accepting soldier's forfeit and awarding the game to woh. Soldier's appeal to be reinstated is accepted. I would like to recognize soldier's and woh's sportsmanship, each offering to concede the game for the benefit of the tournament and the other players. Soldier's request takes precedence since he is unable to reasonably continue the game that he would otherwise be required to play. TD |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 2nd, 2009, 9:15am on 02/01/09 at 14:25:39, Fritzlein wrote:
I did a Forum search, and couldn't find any references to more than 21 people logged in at the same time, and that was from the 2008 World Championship. So I'm going to tentatively claim that 22 is the record until someone contradicts me, or until we break that record in future rounds. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 3rd, 2009, 8:39am Ron, thank you very much for your prompt decision on the soldier-woh game. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 3rd, 2009, 8:44am on 02/01/09 at 14:25:39, Fritzlein wrote:
I added a counter to display the number of players online; that should make the counting easier :-) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Feb 3rd, 2009, 9:47am Similar to last year, I ran a simulation of all the possible outcomes in the final round of the Open Classic. By example, 99of9 1 4 4 6 means that 99of9 will finish somewhere between 1st and 4th with a win (first two numbers) and between 4th and 6th with a loss (last two numbers). chessandgo 1 1 1 2 Fritzlein 1 2 4 5 Adanac 2 4 4 8 99of9 1 4 4 6 The_Jeh 6 8 9 11 arimaa_master 2 4 4 8 naveed 6 9 9 11 omar 5 8 9 11 camelback 2 4 6 8 Tuks 5 8 9 11 woh 8 9 10 12 Bildstein 12 14 14 15 LevB 12 14 14 15 soldier 12 14 Sana 11 14 14 15 It's a simpler table than last year as most players have a clear control over their destiny as to whether or not they finish in the top 8. The only exceptions are Naveed, who is very likely to advance with a victory and Woh who needs to win, and also needs a specific pattern of results (including a Naveed victory) if he hopes to advance. Woh has many ways to tie for 8th, but if I understand the tie-breakers correctly the higher-seeded player wins the tie-break. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2009, 11:02am Thanks for the simulations, Adanac. If I understand correctly, you are saying that Naveed is the only player that woh can possibly beat on tiebreakers, and even that is unlikely? I see that the other three 2-2 players are in/out with a win/loss. This means that at least one of the top eight pre-tournament seeds is out (omar or The_Jeh) and possibly Naveed will also be out. Meanwhile all 3-1 players are automatically in even if they lose, albeit sometimes just barely. This means that at least camelback will get in despite being seeded out of the top eight. Possibly Tuks or woh will get in as well. Tuks expressed some frustration in the chat room that he had a much harder road to qualify than woh, but it turns out now that if Tuks and woh both win their final games, Tuks is automatically in and woh is automatically out. That must be at least some compensation for having a tough row to hoe. ;) 99of9 vs. arimaa_master is an intriguing match-up in part because it didn't happen in last year's preliminaries. Tiebreakers gave arimaa_master 4th seed into the finals ahead of 99of9's 5th seed. In the finals, even though 99of9 beat arimaa_master in a marathon in the first found, the lower seed came back to haunt 99of9 in the form of a tougher pairing in the third round of the finals. In short, although both 99of9 and arimaa_master are both in the finals automatically, and in the finals they will both start with a clean slate, the seeding they are fighting for has important consequences. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Feb 3rd, 2009, 11:58am on 02/03/09 at 11:02:23, Fritzlein wrote:
For woh to advance, all 6 of these players must win their final game: woh Fritzlein Chessandgo LevB Omar Naveed (99of9 vs. arimaa_master has no impact) In that situation, Woh will have 12 Strength of Schedule and Naveed will have 11. There are many ways Woh can tie with another player with 11 or 12 SoS, but if I understand the tie-breakers correctly, woh loses all tie-breakers as the lower pre-tournament seed. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by woh on Feb 4th, 2009, 4:36am Soldier, a big congratulation for your sportsmanship. In a situation where you have no fault, you're able to set aside your personal interest for the benefit of the tournament. I am very impressed by it, especially considering your age. I am looking forward to meet you again over the board and I hope we then can conclude our game to a normal end. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by naveed on Feb 4th, 2009, 5:11pm Since this tournament is so close I wouldn't mind playing another round (tiebreaker) so that the finalist may be decided by the performance and not so much by SOS Naveed |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Feb 4th, 2009, 8:04pm i would agree to that |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Feb 4th, 2009, 8:27pm It doesn't make sense to change the tournament format at this stage. It's not even clear to me that anything has gone wrong, or that one more round would fix the problem. It's almost guaranteed that another round would lead to plenty of players tied on 3/6, and the line would need to be drawn through them. If this is about woh's opportunity to place in the top 8, it seems clear to me that his results to date do not warrant that place. In particular, he lost to omar, who is himself only on the borderline between making and not making the 8. Jeh will also be out if he loses to omar. The fact that his entire tournament result was basically decided by that one game is disappointing, but others have also had make or break games. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 5th, 2009, 7:55am on 02/04/09 at 17:11:50, naveed wrote:
It's generous of you to offer a playoff game, since it appears that woh is the only player who will have three wins and be eliminated on tiebreakers, whereas you may be the player who makes it 8th place on tiebreakers and could be eliminated by a playoff. But are you talking about everybody playing another round, or just the #8 and #9 players playing another round? If it is just the #8 and #9, then it will be tiebreaker points determining which of the 3-2 players have to play that extra game, while #6 and #7 who are also 3-2 don't have to risk anything because they have better tiebreak points. This seems to defeat the purpose of trying to rely on W-L only while taking SoS out of it. As 99of9 pointed out, if instead everybody has to play another round, then some players who have lost three times will be eliminated while other players who have lost three times will qualify on tiebreakers, again defeating the purpose. If we want a perfectly fair way to discriminate 8th place from 9th place, we are almost forced to play a round-robin before the finals have even begun. The way we structure the preliminaries now is definitely a nod to practicality. Yes, there is a fair bit of luck in the current format, enough to move people around several seeds from their objective strength. At the same time, however, everyone is control of his own destiny and everyone has a reasonably fair shot of making the finals. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Feb 5th, 2009, 10:13am Just a reminder that this format change discussion really applies to future WC tournaments. We're committed to the current rules unless something fundamentally unfair is discovered. This year it seems we've simply discovered that seeds 7-10 have to play well and get some luck to make the finals. We knew that before we started. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by naveed on Feb 5th, 2009, 4:03pm I meant only #8 and #9 players playing another round. Naveed |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 8th, 2009, 2:31pm on 02/01/09 at 14:25:39, Fritzlein wrote:
The_Jeh sure knows how to draw a crowd. During his game with Omar (the last game of the preliminaries) there were 24 people in the game room and 16 people in chat. Critical mass, here we come! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by woh on Feb 9th, 2009, 4:18am Congratulations to the 8 qualifying players! Best of luck in the finals. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2009, 10:01am Congrats especially to the newcomers in the finals: The_Jeh, Tuks, and camelback! It's nice that three of the pairings in the first round of the finals didn't happen in the preliminaries. It's just luck that it worked out that way, but since it was camelback vs. Fritzlein and Tuks vs. chessandgo in the preliminaries, I am glad that it is Tuks vs. Fritzlein and camelback vs. chessandgo in the finals. Also Adanac vs. 99of9 should happen at least once per World Championship. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2009, 11:01am on 01/27/09 at 09:15:20, chessandgo wrote:
Camelback certainly benefited from "floating down" in Round 2 and Round 3 this year, because he got to play a weaker schedule than omar, who was just one seed higher. On the other hand, camelback did get wins against Tuks and naveed. If things had worked out just slightly differently, camelback might have ended up with three wins but in ninth place on tiebreakers instead of eighth, and might have felt mistreated by the pairing system which kept denying him a chance to prove himself. Note that in Round 5 it was woh who floated down, and this cost woh a chance at a vital tiebreaker point. Note also that when camelback floated down in Round 4 it didn't get him a win but did cost him a tiebreak point. I think this is basically an issue with how much luck there is in the order of finish in the middle of the pack of a five-round tournament. This year camelback was lucky while omar was unlucky, but next year the person who floats down may feel unlucky. What if camelback had lost to Tuks in Round 2? And even this year woh has a reason to feel unlucky for floating down. Similarly floating up can cut both ways. Tuks can feel unlucky that he floated up against camelback in Round 2, but 99of9 probably felt lucky to float up against camelback in Round 4, because all the 2-1 players were higher seeds than 3-0 camelback was. If there had been an upset (or forfeit/disconnection) in Round 1 like there was in Round 3, then floating up in Round 2 would have been lucky for Tuks too. Ordering #8 and #9 within a five-round tournament is a hard problem when we can't rely on game-room ratings. My own feeling is that the luck introduced by having a short tournament is truly a problem, but that problem is offset by having the outcome depend almost entirely on in-tournament results, and very little on game room ratings. Yes, naveed was seeded #7 compared to camelback at #9 and Tuks at #10. But he lost to both of them. In that sense the tournament did a fantastic job of deciding who should be above the line and who should be below it. If you look at the game histories, naveed's rating comes almost entirely from BombBlitz and BombLightning. I would rather not use that source of information to decide whether or not he is on the bubble. Meanwhile woh was seeded #11, but he had a chance comparable to the chance Tuks and camelback had; if woh had beaten omar he would have gotten stronger pairings the last two rounds, with a better chance to prove himself. Maybe some day we will have some form of reliable ratings, and we can use those ratings to directly seed the finals, doing away with the preliminary. Until that day, however, there is an egalitarian element to the open Swiss that should not be discarded lightly. Certainly not everyone had an equal path to the finals, but everyone had at least a reasonable path. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2009, 1:29pm I have thought more about the strength of schedule tiebreaker problem. I believe the root of evil is that differences in winning percentages don't correlate to difference in in SoS points. It is just like Kenneth Massey described. Let's consider six players A through F, who I will give imaginary ratings and tournament results: A, 2500, 5-0 B, 2260, 4-1 C, 2020, 3-2 D, 1780, 2-3 E, 1540, 1-4 F, 1300, 0-5 Let's use these players as a benchmark for strength of schedule. If I play against A & F, I get 5 total tiebreak points, and if I play against C & D, I also get five total tiebreak points. So it should be the same to me which pair I play against, right? Wrong. If my own rating is 2500, I have a 50% chance to beat player A and a 99.9% chance to beat player F for a total of 1.499 expexted wins. Meanwhile I have a 94.1% chance to beat player C and a 98.4% chance to beat player D, for a total of 1.925 expected wins. For me, playing C&D is a much easier schedule than playing A&F. By the same token a player rated 1300 could expect 0.501 wins against A&F, while they could only hope for 0.075 wins against C&D, so for that player A&F is much easier schedule for them than C&D. That player has exactly the opposite preference that I do! Neither of us think that five SoS points is equal to five SoS points in the current system. The solution is to have the strength of schedule depend on the number of wins of the player for whom you are calculating schedule strength. This is fair because SoS is only a tiebreaker between players with equal wins. Players who are 3-2 will use the same formula as each other, even though it is a different formula than the one the 4-1 players are using. Let R be the number of rounds played and W be the wins of a player under consideration, and O be the number of wins of the opponent whose strength we are trying to calculate. Then calculate the strength S of that opponent incorporating the Elo formula as: S = 1/(1+10^((W-O)*3/R)) Let me apply this formula to the tiebreakers for 3-2 players in the current tournament. The actual tiebreakers were 99of9: 15 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 Adanac: 13 = 0 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 5 The_Jeh: 13 = 0 + 2 + 2 + 4 + 5 Tuks: 13 = 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 5 camelback: 12 = 0 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 4 woh: 11 = 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 4 By my proposed conversion formula, for a 3-2 player 5 -> 0.94 4 -> 0.8 3 -> 0.5 2 -> 0.2 1 -> 0.06 0 -> 0.02 So the SoS converts to 99of9: 2.5 Adanac: 2.16 The_Jeh: 2.16 Tuks: 1.9 camelback: 2.02 woh: 1.46 I think my formula is generally pretty fair. In the specific case of our tournament it has a nice side benefit of mitigating a first-round win over a player that withdraws. Adanac, The_Jeh, and camelback were the three players who took a hit to strength of schedule when their first-round opponent withdrew. Tuks, on the other hand, got helped by playing chessandgo, which is a "sure loss" for any 3-2 player, but helped his SoS disproportionately. So it makes sense to me that Tuks falls out of a tie with Adanac and The_Jeh for SoS, and actually falls behind camelback. In my formula playing someone who withdraws is still punished relative to playing someone who goes on to win one game, but the difference in SoS for someone who finishes 3-2 is negligible. Indeed, for someone who finishes 3-2, playing one 3-2 player plus one 0-5 player is a tougher SoS than playing two 2-3 players. What do people think? Is this a reasonable way to keep pre-tournament ratings out of the picture, while still relying on strength of schedule for the tiebreaker? Does it mitigate the first-round-withdrawal unfairness? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Feb 10th, 2009, 1:06am on 02/09/09 at 11:01:39, Fritzlein wrote:
Not saying whether floating down is good or bad, just pointing out that we might slightly twist the rules to make it so that the same player would have an incentive not to float down twice. Well, or rather that if we can do so, it should make it even "more fair". But no big deal. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by aaaa on Feb 10th, 2009, 4:02pm Would it be too much of a distortion if the seeds were to be variable in the finals, being based on all the games played so far in both tournaments? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 10th, 2009, 8:05pm on 02/10/09 at 16:02:42, aaaa wrote:
Can you explain how that would apply? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by aaaa on Feb 10th, 2009, 8:09pm Simply by continuing to update the standings of the Swiss tournament. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 11th, 2009, 6:50am So you are proposing that the World Championship continue to be paired like a Swiss tournament throughout, except that some people have been eliminated after Round Five? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by aaaa on Feb 11th, 2009, 7:11am Not exactly. The rule set of the finals would remain as it is now, but the seeds would continue to change after each round, being based on what the standings in the Swiss tournament would have been if the new games were also taken into account. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 11th, 2009, 7:20am Omar, would you be so good as to change my game time with Tuks to Monday 13:00 my local time? That's 19:00 GMT, 20:00 Tuks' local time. Tuks had a conflict with tennis that he didn't factor into to his time preferences this week. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Tuks on Feb 11th, 2009, 7:24am Yes, 20:00 my time on Monday is much better, i didnt factor in tennis because my coach tends to tell me during the week before Saturday when he is scheduling me in for a game |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 11th, 2009, 7:29am on 02/11/09 at 07:11:36, aaaa wrote:
What about strength of schedule? Would people who made it to the finals keep earning tiebreak points for their previous opponents, while people who didn't make it to the finals didn't earn points? Also, what is the rationale for this complexifying change? Is it that the current setup is too hard on the low seeds in the finals? I actually think the current setup is quite generous to the low seeds in the finals by forgiving their losses. And although chessandgo gets the easiest road this year, it's not as much of an advantage as it would have been for him to have an extra life because he hasn't lost yet. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 12th, 2009, 9:05pm on 02/11/09 at 07:20:06, Fritzlein wrote:
Game time has been changed; please double check it. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 13th, 2009, 7:29am It looks perfect. Thanks, Omar! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 18th, 2009, 10:07am It seems the color assignments for Round 2 of the finals are incorrect. I played Gold the first round while arimaa_master played Silver, but now that we are paired against each other I am playing Gold again and he is playing Silver again. I recall that we determined at one point that the algorithm that pairs the finals doesn't consider color assignment. Was that omission ever corrected? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 19th, 2009, 9:49pm It was fixed for the preliminary games, but not the finals. It should be OK now for the finals. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 20th, 2009, 9:00am Thanks for fixing it! It would have been tragic if arimaa_master's stunning upset of me had been invalidated by incorrect colors. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by arimaa_master on Feb 21st, 2009, 10:19am on 02/20/09 at 09:00:40, Fritzlein wrote:
;D |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 21st, 2009, 11:22am After fixing the color problem. I did not notice until today that the predictions already entered had become invalid on the two games where the colors were switched. Some people had noticed and updated their predictions and other had not. For those who updated it, you will still get the same time for entering the predictions on these games as your time for the switched game. For those who did not notice your prediction for the switched game will be used. Sorry about that. I have to be more careful next time about getting the colors right. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by camelback on Feb 22nd, 2009, 8:54am Hi Omar, Is it possible to reschedule the WC game 99of9 vs camelback game delayed by 48+5 hours from the original time. Sorry for the late request. If it is too much trouble then I'm ok with the forfeit. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 22nd, 2009, 10:27am I think I misunderstood this when I first read it. If it is OK with 99of9 and the TD I will try to reschedule it. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 22nd, 2009, 6:19pm This would fall outside the window of time for the round 2 games. I'll try to get in touch with the TD to see what he says about your request. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 22nd, 2009, 8:28pm Toby informed me that the new time was discussed in the game comments here: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=97343 I checked with the TD and got approval to extend this game into next week. This game has been rescheduled and the games for round 3 have been postponed to next week. In the future though I would like to ask the players not to extend the game outside of the time setup for the current round. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 22nd, 2009, 9:31pm I confess I am unhappy with the precedent of delaying the tournament. Next time someone can't make their scheduled game time, and the two players can't reschedule within the week, how can we not delay the tournament for a whole week to accommodate them too? It would be unfair to do something different next time. Indeed, the present ruling already makes an awkward contrast to the preliminaries when we didn't delay the tournament for a week to correct for a server error. The only consistent thing between the two rulings seems to be that the rules are just suggestions. I guess in our little circle where we are all friends it works out fine. It's no great hardship for me to have to wait another week to get pummeled by chessandgo, and there is merit in having 99of9 vs. camelback be decided on the board rather than by forfeit. Nevertheless I believe that in the long run a pattern of circumventing the rules can't help but end in hard feelings. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by camelback on Feb 22nd, 2009, 10:07pm Thank you for rescheduling the game. I never thought about the repercussions of my request. I thought just the scheduling would be postponed by a day not the whole tourney. I apologize to the community for this delay. Is it absolutely neccessary to postpone the tourney? Just delaying the scheduling for the next round not possible? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Feb 23rd, 2009, 12:30am For my own game I'd be delighted not to have to play at midnight after a travel, but like Karl I'm surprised that the finals are delayed to accomodate a player while the prelims were not after a server problem. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Feb 23rd, 2009, 4:46am on 02/22/09 at 20:28:05, omar wrote:
It was either that or a forfeit. I didn't give camelback the choice of another slot within the round (because I couldn't). So in this instance "the players" didn't really have the possibility of doing as you ask. It's up to the rules and the TD whether the proposal gets accepted. That's why I referred camelback to the TD, as I realized it was going outside the bounds. Perhaps I should have made that clearer. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by ChrisB on Feb 23rd, 2009, 6:03am on 02/22/09 at 22:07:38, camelback wrote:
I'm confused why the tournament would need to be delayed. Couldn't the round three games be scheduled for this week, say on Tuesday evening (i.e., by early Wednesday GMT)? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Feb 23rd, 2009, 6:22am on 02/22/09 at 21:31:30, Fritzlein wrote:
Maybe I don't have all the facts straight, but here's the situation as I know it. There was confusion by the tournament coordinator (Omar) in the rescheduling requests for the 99of9 vs. camelback game. Because camelback's request was rather late, I did not feel we were compelled to honor it, so 99of9 had the right to claim the win by forfeit. Instead 99of9 elected to reschedule to Tuesday, according to the replacement game provision posted earlier in this thread. Because Tuesday is close enough to the weekend associated with round 2, this is not an unacceptable delay for a round 2 game. Therefore I'm approving it. The game in the preliminaries, woh vs soldier, was interrupted by a server error and the tournament would have been delayed to allow this game to be continued. However, soldier elected to forfeit, citing personal circumstances, so I approved the request. Note that the precedent for delaying the tournament for server and scheduling errors would have been applied. I believe the tournament rules were applied correctly in both of these cases. I'm not understanding how the scheduling of 99of9 vs camelback is a delay in the tournament. I expect round 3 games to take place next weekend (2/28) as originally planned. I've been assuming the scheduler can be run very soon after the results of this game are known. Is this not enough lead time? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 23rd, 2009, 8:17am Both cases are difficult, and I am not saying that the ruling in either case was unreasonable. The was merit in not delaying the tournament before, and there is merit in letting 99of9 and camelback decide their game over the board. I do believe, however, that neither ruling is strictly in accordance with the written rules. That is not to say there is no benefit in being somewhat flexible with the rules, but I think there is also an eventual cost to flexibility. on 02/23/09 at 06:22:24, RonWeasley wrote:
Maybe I read the replacement game provision incorrectly at the time, but fortunately it is still there: on 01/12/09 at 06:01:02, RonWeasley wrote:
The rule clearly gives a 24-hour time window, but in the present case there is a delay of over 48 hours, so it doesn't fit the rule, correct? Or am I misreading it? Quote:
I suppose the pairing and scheduling doesn't have to be done on the schedule that Omar has used in past rounds, and that it could be compressed between Round 2 and Round 3 of the finals. But my point is not that the ruling is bad because a delay is horrendous; my point is that if we make an exception now it will be unfair not to make an exception later. For example, in Round 3 chessandgo and I have no time that is a good time for both of us within the 119 given time slots. The upshot is that the game will start at midnight for him, and will we stay within the constraints of the tournament schedule. But what if he and I did have a good common time on Tuesday even though we had no good common time within the scheduler? Would we be allowed to play on Tuesday instead? If not, why not? |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Feb 23rd, 2009, 8:47am The decisions Ned takes as TD are always right by definition unless I'm mistaken. on 02/23/09 at 06:22:24, RonWeasley wrote:
on 02/22/09 at 20:28:05, omar wrote:
On the other hand it'd would be good for us players (err for me at least) to know as soon as possible if the games will take place this week or next week (to know how I will have to handle my travel). |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Feb 23rd, 2009, 9:46am At the heart of this issue is that scheduling is inherently very difficult. We're in different time zones and we have commitments outside the tournament. Current tournament rules attempt to address this difficulty. We're finding that they are not satisfying everybody in all situations. As TD, I have some authority to make things happen the way "we" want them to if the rules seem to be failing to do what "we" intended. Part of the problem of being TD is that I have to estimate what this "we" means and wants. My interpretation is a tournament where winners are decided over the board as much as is practical, with scheduling being the hardest practicality. Fritzlien is correct that I am deviating from the written rules and that doing that capriciously is bad for the integrity of the tournament (think about future tournaments here). My expectation is that scheduling rules will be changed in the future to better represent what "we" want. My current rulings are an attempt to anticipate those changes to make the current tournament closer to the future ideal. on 02/23/09 at 08:17:55, Fritzlein wrote:
Fritzlein quotes correctly. This case makes me believe that the 24 hour limit is too arbitrary and too short. An absolute deadline seems more appropriate, but it's not clear what the deadline should be. End of the day Tuesday? Later? Earlier? This depends on scheduling logistics for the next round. More debate required, apparently, but I'd like to see this resolved by next year's WC. For 99of9 vs camelback, a Tuesday morning 4:00am EST seems reasonable right now. For the Fritzlein vs chessandgo game, if the players propose a reasonable game time outside the defined time window, my first inclination would be to approve it. This goes for any game. The automatic scheduler is a tool, not a master. Finally, thanx to those participating in this debate. While the TD gets the final say, it's healthy for the community to bring issues to the front so we get a chance to make things better for everyone. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 23rd, 2009, 11:17am Sorry about the delay guys; it's due to my programs. Once the time for the start of slot 1 has passed it aligns slot 1 to the same time next week. I was thinking of doing it manually, but this week I also have to get the second server setup for the bot tournament. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 23rd, 2009, 11:25am on 02/23/09 at 09:46:41, RonWeasley wrote:
I agree that an absolute deadline makes more sense than a 24-hour window. A natural choice for the absolute deadline is for it to be the same as the last time slot offered by the scheduler. Quote:
The problem with allowing reasonable times outside the scheduler is that it is not well-defined. If "reasonable" is the rule, then we can't be sure what the rule is. Yes, that has the advantage of insuring that the scheduler is a tool, not a master. On the negative side, when the scheduler's decisions are not binding it makes the tool less effective, and it invites the players to create situations which are problematic for the Tournament Director to rule on. Knowing that 04:00 EST Tuesday is a reasonable time invites everyone to feel that 10:00 EST Tuesday is a reasonable time as well, and to feel that the Tournament Director is being unreasonable if he does not allow it. And if he does allow it, expectations adjust that even further into Tuesday is acceptable, until at some point in some future tournament, someone feels cheated. It seems that the only way to avoid this conundrum is to have a well-defined rescheduling window. And if it is well-defined, I don't see any benefit from having a re-scheduling window different from the scheduling window. Having more slack for re-scheduling than for scheduling creates an incentive for re-scheduling as a matter of course when a later time seems appealing. Quote:
The case for bending the rules mid-tournament would be stronger if we all agreed that we wanted the future rules to be the way we are bending them in the present. I, for one, don't want the future rules to accommodate times outside of the scheduler. Scheduling is hard enough as it is, and I can't think of a more clean and fair solution than what we have now. Quote:
Thank you for embracing an open discussion. From your previous posts in this thread (quoted below) it is clear that you understand that failing to abide by the literal rules, even when it is done for a good reason, has an associated cost. I recall you also demonstrated this commitment in your ruling from the 2007 World Championship that I would not be allowed to resume my game with chessandgo although we both wanted it to be decided on the board rather than by Internet connection difficulties. Although I would have made a different decision in both of the recent cases, I respect your decisions and your right to make them. I certainly don't consider your decisions capricious. Thank you for your continuing contribution in the role of Tournament Director. on 02/05/09 at 10:13:07, RonWeasley wrote:
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Feb 23rd, 2009, 11:31am on 02/23/09 at 11:17:49, omar wrote:
I think people are suggesting that you do the scheduling Tuesday night as usual. If the scheduling is not delayed, it just means we lose the normal one-day gap between pairing and scheduling, because the pairing and scheduling would both have to occur on Tuesday. I think that Ron is saying that of three choices (camelback's forfeit stands; we delay the tournament a week; we compress the pairing/scheduling) the last choice is best. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Adanac on Feb 23rd, 2009, 1:19pm on 02/23/09 at 11:17:49, omar wrote:
We could save you the headache by discussing the best game times with our opponents in the chat room or on this forum. Then once we agree on a time & date, we can e-mail you and Ron. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by RonWeasley on Feb 23rd, 2009, 1:19pm on 02/23/09 at 11:31:53, Fritzlein wrote:
It's been a challenge to keep up with this situation, but Fritz is correct here. To be even more specific, if I had been presented with these choices earlier, Saturday for example, I would choose in this order: 1) play the replacement game, compress the pairing/scheduling 2) have the forfeit stand 3) play the replacement game and delay a week The prospect of delaying has been something of a surprise to me. Like a bludger. If the automated scheduler can't be made to work, we should try to schedule manually. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 23rd, 2009, 1:42pm I was thinking the game time was beyond when I normally run the scheduler (Tuesday evening), but it's not so it should work out fine. So round 3 will be this week, just that the pairing won't be done until Tuesday morning. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 99of9 on Feb 25th, 2009, 4:51am Don't forget to run the scheduler! |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by omar on Feb 25th, 2009, 8:13am I got so busy working on the WCC servers yesterday and forgot to run the scheduler until Karl reminded me just now. Sorry about that. Fortunately all the games are on Sunday. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Mar 15th, 2009, 1:58pm on 02/08/09 at 14:31:06, Fritzlein wrote:
My second game against Adanac in the finals just saw 17 in chat and 31 in the game room according to multiple witnesses. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Simon on Mar 16th, 2009, 9:38am There was briefly 31 in the gameroom during your game, but I don't think the number in chat got above 14 or so until after the end of the game. It seems that it did get to 17 afterwards though. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Mar 16th, 2009, 12:21pm Thanks for the clarification, Simon. Also thanks to Arimabuff for pointing out that we passed the 100,000 game mark while Adanac and I were playing, although none of the 14 people in chat noticed at the time. :) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by woh on Mar 22nd, 2009, 2:05pm Congratulations, chessandgo, with your second World Champion title! And a big thank you to both chessandgo and Fritzlein for the great fight they put up. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Mar 22nd, 2009, 2:28pm Congratulations, chessandgo. That final game was loads of fun. What say we do it again next year? ;) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by 722caasi on Mar 22nd, 2009, 4:41pm Good job Chessandgo! A question about the end of the final game: on move 65 b, could chessandgo have won with Db2s eb3s rc3x Rc2n Rc3x eb2e? (win by elimination) |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Mar 22nd, 2009, 11:56pm Thanks Karl for the good game. I'm not sure what your "What say we do it again next year?" means, I guess this is an english idiom that I don't understand. Do you mean that you hope it'll be somehting like "2010, the return of the revenge is back?" :) Thanks Woh and 722caasi! Yes 722caasi, indeed :( Looking forward to the postal tournament for more fun. I have to say the ehh-m setup, that I considered "bad" before the tourney, is now impressing me very much. For the moment I'm not yet to the point where I'd play it as gold, but I certainly will start playing it as silver routinely. Had you set up a standard 99of9 in the final game, I'd almost have answered with Toby's ehh-m although I had almost never played it before. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Mar 23rd, 2009, 7:25am I just wanted to echo here what aaaa noted in chat, that Silver had a great finals. Overall Silver scored 11-4, and in games among Adanac, Fritzlein, and chessandgo, Silver scored 5-0. That's probably a statistical fluke, but is quite ironic given that aaaa called into question the results of last year's Championship because I won three times against chessandgo as Gold. Some day, perhaps, we will know whether it is better to play as Gold or as Silver, but in the mean time we don't have the color-advantage problems that bedevil chess and other games. |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by chessandgo on Mar 23rd, 2009, 7:40am I still prefer gold, and I agree that those results are probably a statistical fluke. Especially when we consider how many times all of those games rocked back an forth ... |
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Title: Re: 2009 World Championship Post by Fritzlein on Mar 23rd, 2009, 11:04am on 03/23/09 at 07:40:47, chessandgo wrote:
Yes, the end results seemed to have only a very tenuous connection to the openings. There is so much drama in Arimaa and so many turning points that the last moves happen in a different universe from the first moves. I think I still slightly prefer to play Silver, but I realize that has more to do with my psychology than with Arimaa theory. I have gotten comfortable with a flank camel as Silver whether or not it is sound. I am not yet comfortable with the flank camel as Gold, because it seems to give Silver too much flexibility to respond in Silver's opening setup. It will get more difficult to justify your preference for Gold, Jean, if it turns out in the long run that you favor an opening setup for Silver that you think Gold can't afford to play. That discrimination would show that the second setup is at least worth something, albeit not necessarily worth as much as the first move. On the other hand, it could turn out that the unbalanced setup is actually less sound for Silver than responding to symmetry with symmetry. It could also turn out that the unbalanced setup is sound for both Gold and for Silver. If either transpires it will be hard for me to keep claiming that the second setup is valuable at all, never mind claiming that it is more valuable than the first move. We should keep trying to balance colors in tournaments, not because we believe it does make a measurable difference, but rather as insurance against the outside chance that it might. |
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