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Arimaa >> Events >> 2010 World Championship
(Message started by: Fritzlein on Jan 3rd, 2010, 11:01am)

Title: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 3rd, 2010, 11:01am

on 01/01/10 at 13:22:48, Tuks wrote:
We have 16 players so its going to be another 5 rounder this year.

and by the looks of things, this year has stronger competition so its going to be that much harder to make the final 8, Good Luck Everyone!

I agree, Tuks.  There's going to be quite a fight to get into the top eight, as the field this year is deeper than it was in 2009.  I'm especially curious how 99of9 and PMertens, perennial contenders who now may be out of practice, will do against you and other rising stars.  We would definitely be turning a page in Arimaa history if those two veterans were kept out of the finals by young guns.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 3rd, 2010, 3:44pm
Yes, I'm sure the average rating of the players this year is higher than ever before. I'll be lucky to make it to the finals :-)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 3rd, 2010, 4:55pm

on 01/03/10 at 15:44:18, omar wrote:
Yes, I'm sure the average rating of the players this year is higher than ever before. I'll be lucky to make it to the finals :-)

To be precise, the average gameroom rating of the sixteen entrants is 2010, and their average WHR is 2014.  When I started playing Arimaa, there were only three players in the world rated over 2000...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Jan 5th, 2010, 6:18am

on 01/03/10 at 11:01:17, Fritzlein wrote:
I'm especially curious how 99of9 and PMertens, perennial contenders who now may be out of practice, will do against you and other rising stars.

Me too.  I think this could make the spectator contest more interesting than last year.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 5th, 2010, 8:32pm
And the first-round games are set!  I predict one upset out of the eight games (not me, of course ;-)).

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Jan 6th, 2010, 6:31am
Happy new year to everyone ; success in the arimaa WC and hapiness in other matters to all :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by PMertens on Jan 6th, 2010, 6:49am
well well ... I guess I share Fritzleins curiosity ;-)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 9th, 2010, 11:13pm
Good luck to everyone. I am looking forward to watching some interesting games.

I am also going to broadcast some of the games on ustream.tv with live commentary. I'll make an announcement in the gameroom about a day or two before I do. Also I will announce it shortly before the game using twitter.

I am looking for a couple more people to join me with the live commentary. If you are interested send me a message.

Almost forgot to mention that our sponsors have added a link on their main page to the Arimaa WC.

http://zmangames.com/
http://www.boardgames4us.com/

If anyone can help with signing up more sponsors for next year, please send me a message.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 10th, 2010, 9:01am

on 01/09/10 at 23:13:06, omar wrote:
http://zmangames.com/
http://www.boardgames4us.com/

Omar, that second link goes to a Web hosting page because the domain registration has expired.  I hope your sponsor didn't go belly-up in the middle of the tournament!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Jan 10th, 2010, 9:13am

on 01/10/10 at 09:01:36, Fritzlein wrote:
Omar, that second link goes to a Web hosting page because the domain registration has expired.  I hope your sponsor didn't go belly-up in the middle of the tournament!

I can see the website fine.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 10th, 2010, 10:21am

on 01/10/10 at 09:13:37, aaaa wrote:
I can see the website fine.

That's odd, I can see it fine now too.  Perhaps they neglected to pay a bill, but paid it in a hurry once they got cut off?  In any case, I'm glad the sponsor still exists!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 11th, 2010, 9:16am
During the:
   fritzlforpresident vs omar
game it seems there was a problem with the DNS server for arimaa.com. Several people reported not being able to access the arimaa.com site temporarily. Also the bots were behaving abnorally; such as bot_OpFor2008P1 abandoning the game and bot_clueless opening 5 simultaneous games, but not being present at them.

The load on the arimaa.com server during this time was normal.

The arimaa.com DNS server is a separate host than the arimaa.com server. So if it goes down temporarily or is unable to answer DNS queries it is possible for some end users to have trouble accessing the arimaa.com while others who have already cached the IP for airmaa.com to be able to access the arimaa.com server just fine.

During the game I did not notice any problem. Although before the game I got a 'host not found' message when trying to login to the arimaa.com site. Upon reloading the page it worked fine. This is indicative of an intermittent DNS server problem.

After the game I tried to ask John if he had any problem on his end, but did not receive any reply. Karl also tried to contact John by phone, but has not gotten through to him yet. So at present we don't know if he timed out because the thought too long and didn't hit the 'Send' button or if he tried to send the move but it did not reach the server because his DNS cache expired and needed to query the DNS server before sending the move.

This is all the information I have at present. Will post more if we hear from John.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 11th, 2010, 9:43am
There's enough evidence, including my need to reload this game twice, that the server could be at fault here.  I would like John's version of events to get posted here to determine if he sent a move that got ignored or did not send a move before time expired.

The rules provide for a continuation of the game from the position at the point of the server fault.  In this case, John can elect to decline a continuation and accept the loss.  If declining continuation, it would save confusion if players would post that decision to this forum.

Based on the available information, it's John's version that determines if the result stands or the game continues.

TD

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 11th, 2010, 10:14am

on 01/09/10 at 23:13:06, omar wrote:
I am also going to broadcast some of the games on ustream.tv with live commentary. I'll make an announcement in the gameroom about a day or two before I do. Also I will announce it shortly before the game using twitter.

I think it would be very cool to listen to live game commentary, and I would also enjoy giving live commentary, but it isn't clear to me how we can do it without compromising the integrity of the tournament.  Even chatting about the game in progress seems risky, because someone who is logged in to chat could relay move suggestions to one of the players, but at least for chat we know who all is logged in to hear it.  For a live broadcast, how would we know that the players themselves were not tuned in?

Yes, I realize there is already no security against a player getting live help from a computer or from another player, but the former is not critically important at the moment, and the latter requires a partner in deceit.  I would hate to be the one single-handedly making it easy to cheat via a live radio feed of my suggestions.

I am glad that the prize money is down this year, reducing one of the incentives to cheat, but if we move more and more to a completely "on your honor" system, I wouldn't mind seeing the money prizes disappear completely, making the on-line World Championship only for fun and glory.  Eventually, if we want the World Championship to be robust to cheating, it will simply have to become a face-to-face tournament. :-X

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 11th, 2010, 4:17pm
For the record, in Hippo vs PMertens, PMertens entered the game early and then went afk and missed the start time.  Hippo could have claimed the win on time, but Hippo requested that the game be restarted.  I allowed this and the game was played.

TD

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Jan 11th, 2010, 5:34pm

on 01/11/10 at 10:14:01, Fritzlein wrote:
Even chatting about the game in progress seems risky, because someone who is logged in to chat could relay move suggestions to one of the players, but at least for chat we know who all is logged in to hear it.

One can always get the latest from the chat without being logged in simply by repeatedly fetching the archive. We shouldn't kid ourselves that the Arimaa community is still mostly governed by an honor system. One unfortunate measurement of the success of this game will be how much this needs to be toned down in the future.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by PMertens on Jan 12th, 2010, 2:11am
I am under the impression, that archive-fetching does log you into the gameroom for a second and logs you out again.
In addition I believe the time is usually better spent pondering the situation for yourself than on window-switching and comment-reading ;-)

apart from those details I agree that there is basically only an honor system in place ...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Jan 12th, 2010, 3:45am
You can stay logged off and fetching ... I don't see it does log you in. There would be bad solution ... to (server) disable fetching current day(or two) or during the WC game. But that would be rather distracting as this is what/when you usually fetch most. And there is better solution ... to log fetching archives (during the games) ... it can be easily tested who fetched ... but there are anonymizers. And if that fails there are frend accounts ... and (skype/ICQ/...) so the safest is to discuss lost possibilities ex post ... If the possible gain may be more valuable than the honor path.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by novacat on Jan 12th, 2010, 5:38am
If the concern about cheating becomes large, there is a rule in place.  "The director may require any player to have a web-cam turned on for monitoring during the games. Also the director may send a representative to be present with any player during the games. A player who does not comply will lose by forfeit. "

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 12th, 2010, 9:05am
Oh, I forgot about chat-archive fetching.  If I had remembered that I would have commented on the 99of9-Simon game even though Simon was still logged into chat.  I guess it already is super-easy to cheat, and we are already totally on the honor system.  I guess we just have to hope it lasts as long as possible without the suspicion (or, heaven forbid, the reality) of cheating.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 12th, 2010, 9:09am

on 01/12/10 at 05:38:14, novacat wrote:
If the concern about cheating becomes large, there is a rule in place.  "The director may require any player to have a web-cam turned on for monitoring during the games. Also the director may send a representative to be present with any player during the games. A player who does not comply will lose by forfeit. "

A web cam would still leave lots of on-screen loopholes.  If it comes to sending representatives out to all the players, it might be easier to instead gather all the players together for a face-to-face tournament.  I wonder how many more years Arimaa has before a face-to-face World Championship becomes a necessity.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 12th, 2010, 9:16am

on 01/05/10 at 20:32:43, Fritzlein wrote:
And the first-round games are set!  I predict one upset out of the eight games (not me, of course ;-)).

As it happened, there were two upsets instead of one in the first round, and a couple of exciting games that weren't upsets.  I was going to predict one upset in the second round as well, but since that got moved forward to the first round, I will now predict zero upsets in the second round.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 12th, 2010, 10:49am
i predict one upset, maybe two with a little slanted luck for the underdog

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Jan 12th, 2010, 11:09am

on 01/12/10 at 09:16:15, Fritzlein wrote:
I will now predict zero upsets in the second round.

I'm going to have to disagree with that prediction!  Underdogs Unite!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 12th, 2010, 8:36pm
I've begun the 2010 World Championship Wiki pages.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_World_Championship

I have the standings up and some preliminary information, but I haven't gotten to the game reports yet.  Those should all be completed in the next few days, and I'll try to update round 2 daily results on the weekend.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 13th, 2010, 8:15am
Thanks for doing the event reporting, Adanac.  It is a lot of work, I know, but it is very nice to have the historical record as well as an excellent status page while the tournament is ongoing.  Thank you for your wonderful gift to the community.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Jan 13th, 2010, 4:02pm
I have a question about rules ... the WHR rating as a tiebreaker. ... It seams it is not the initial, but actual WHR rating. Is it true?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 13th, 2010, 10:01pm
no, we used actual WHR for initial seeding but a new one (using only WC games and acting as all rounds were played at the same time, will be used as a tiebreaker)

it makes for a very accurate ranking, but fritz's system makes sure that people with a 3-2 win ratio get through rather than a 2-3 win ratio which is a potential in the WHR ranking

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Jan 13th, 2010, 11:21pm
Tuks: Yes, if I understand it well ... it's the first tiebreaker. I am speaking about the 2nd one.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2010, 8:55am
I am pretty sure that the second tiebreaker is the tournament seed, or equivalently the WHR at the start of the tournament.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 14th, 2010, 10:18am
i second tiebreaker would never happen

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2010, 1:17pm

on 01/14/10 at 10:18:47, Tuks wrote:
i second tiebreaker would never happen

There are fewer ties in the first tiebreaker with the formula I proposed and Omar implemented than there are with the simple sum of scores as first tiebreaker.  The most likely way for the second tiebreaker to happen this year would be two players with the same record whose opponents all had the same records.  If it does come to a second tiebreaker, I sure hope it isn't between eighth and ninth place!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 14th, 2010, 9:46pm
but why don't we use the WHR for just the WC then

instead of the initial WHR, wouldnt that make more sense?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 15th, 2010, 5:39am

on 01/11/10 at 09:16:53, omar wrote:
During the:
   fritzlforpresident vs omar
game it seems there was a problem with the DNS server for arimaa.com.
...
After the game I tried to ask John if he had any problem on his end, but did not receive any reply. Karl also tried to contact John by phone, but has not gotten through to him yet. So at present we don't know if he timed out because the thought too long and didn't hit the 'Send' button or if he tried to send the move but it did not reach the server because his DNS cache expired and needed to query the DNS server before sending the move.

This is all the information I have at present. Will post more if we hear from John.


For the record, I have not seen any report about what happened from John's perspective.  I gave it until Wednesday making a good faith attempt to contact him.  Therefore, the game result stands as a win for Omar.

TD

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 15th, 2010, 6:22am

on 01/14/10 at 21:46:36, Tuks wrote:
but why don't we use the WHR for just the WC then

instead of the initial WHR, wouldnt that make more sense?
It makes some sense, but also there is some strangeness that the in-tournament WHR can reverse the ranking by order of wins.  Why do we trust it as a tiebreaker but not as the ranking per se?  Also it was a relatively late suggestion, so we didn't have time to work through all the details such as handling byes and forfeits.  Traditionally byes and forfeits add to the total score but not to the tiebreak, which means someone with the benefit of a free win gets the penalty of a poor tiebreak.  However, with the way woh was calculating it, a bye or forfeit win gave the benefit of a free win without any penalty.

Maybe we will use in-tournament WHR in the future, but this year we didn't think it through enough ahead of time to become comfortable with it.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 16th, 2010, 9:51am
Sometimes I really enjoy checking how one game can alter the scenarios for the following round in this unpredictable "SoS" ranking system.  For example, if Fritzlein had been correct about no upsets in round 2 then round 3 would have had these top two pairings:

[1] Fritzlein vs. [3] Adanac
[2] chessandgo vs. [4] Tuks

However, the first game of the round has already caused reverberations.  If there are no additional upsets out of the next 7 games, then round 3 will have these pairings instead:

[1] Fritzlein vs. [3] Tuks
[2] chessandgo vs. [4] Adanac

But if Hippo wins an upset game then it becomes:

[1] Fritzlein vs. [3] chessandgo
[2] Tuks vs. [4] Adanac

And if all 8 games are upsets then Omar becomes top dog (top elephant?):

[1] omar vs. [3] Simon
[2] PMertens vs. [4] Nombril

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 16th, 2010, 12:43pm
Nice, the various pairing scenarios give me even more reason to pay attention to games outside my own.  My high school chess tournaments, where Swiss pairing was done on record first and seed second, had much less volatile pairing than ours based on record first, SoS second, seed third.

One advantage of the greater randomness we have is that it prevents anyone from trying to rig the pairings in advance.  For example, if the pairing were totally predictable and the seeds the day before tournament begin had been

1. Fritzlein
2. chessandgo
3. Adanac
4. 99of9

and if I had foreseen highly probable third round pairings of Fritzlein vs Adanac, chessandgo vs. 99of9, I might have rushed to lose a pre-tournament game to chessandgo to get the pairings of Fritzlein vs 99of9, chessandgo vs Adanac instead.  (Not because 99of9 is not a fearsome competitor, but because he hasn't played since the last tournament.)  The greater unpredictability of the current pairing system, though, would thwart any such attempt at jiggering the pairings via pre-tournament losses.


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 18th, 2010, 1:35pm

on 01/12/10 at 09:16:15, Fritzlein wrote:
I was going to predict one upset in the second round as well, but since that got moved forward to the first round, I will now predict zero upsets in the second round.

As it turns out, there were two upsets in the second round as well, so my prediction was even wronger than it had been in the first round.  For the third round, Swiss pairing takes us into territory where the favorites are no longer obvious, and the only thing certain is lots of exciting games.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 18th, 2010, 7:04pm
Omar:  Can you explain what the Strength of Schedule formula is for this year's tournament?  I want to make sure it's accurate on the Wiki.

Also, on the topic of the Wiki, can you please create a link from the "Championship > 2010 World Championship" Official Rules on the arimaa.com homepage to the Wiki 2010 WC article: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_World_Championship

Thanks!!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Jan 19th, 2010, 1:34pm

on 01/12/10 at 09:05:55, Fritzlein wrote:
If I had remembered that I would have commented on the 99of9-Simon game even though Simon was still logged into chat.

In my opinion that's taking it too far as it would increase the risk of accidental exposure. It's still better to have a clear barrier to cheating that can only be bypassed with deliberate intent.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 19th, 2010, 3:48pm

on 01/18/10 at 19:04:48, Adanac wrote:
Omar:  Can you explain what the Strength of Schedule formula is for this year's tournament?  I want to make sure it's accurate on the Wiki.


The formula I used was:
P = wins[this_player]
foreach op in list_of_opponents[this_player]
 O = wins[op]
 T = 1/(1+10^(4*(P-O)/(N+1))  
 TieBreaker += T

I'll try to post the code here so it can be checked. Even if the formula is right, the implementation could still be wrong :-)


Code:
# this creates the following global hashes with the usernames as keys:
#   %score - 2*games won + 1*games drawn
#   %sos - sum of opponents score
#   %played - count of games played between a pair of players;
#             key is both usernames, like: "$first $second"
#   %byes - count of how many byes the player has received; forfiets are considered byes

sub calcScore{
 my(@g, $g, $p1, $p2, $won, $why, $k, $v);
 my($p, $o, $t);

# go through the games and calculate the score for the players
 @g = $ev->getGamesBeforeRound($round);
 foreach $g (@g){
   ($p1, $p2, $won, $why) = ($g->{1}, $g->{2}, $g->{won}, $g->{why});

# count the pairings
   $played{"$p1 $p2"} += 1;
   if ($p1 eq '-BYE-'){ $byes{$p2} += 1; }
   if ($p2 eq '-BYE-'){ $byes{$p1} += 1; }
# win by forfiet also considered a bye
   if ($why eq 'f'){
     if ($won == 1){ $byes{$p2} += 1; }
     if ($won == 2){ $byes{$p1} += 1; }
   }

# Use this if the tournament does not allow dropping out and late joins
   if (! $allowDropJoin){
     if ($won == 1){ $score{$p1} += 2; }
     if ($won == 2){ $score{$p2} += 2; }
     if ($won eq 'd'){ $score{$p1} += 1; $score{$p2} += 1; }
   }

# Use this if the tournament will allow dropping out and late joins
#   basically it adds 1 point to the score for rounds in which the players
#   did not play; as if they had a draw
   if ($allowDropJoin){
     if ($won == 1){ $score{$p1} += 1; $score{$p2} -= 1; }
     if ($won == 2){ $score{$p2} += 1; $score{$p1} -= 1; }
   }
 }
 if ($allowDropJoin){
   while(($k,$v) = each(%score)){
     $score{$k} = $v + ($round - 1);
   }
 }

# set the score of the -BYE- player to zero, so that it does not get added to sos
 $score{'-BYE-'} = 0;

# go through each game and calculate sum-of-opponent-score (sos)
#   as proposed by Karl Juhnke; see this thread for details; particularly Nov 13th, 2009 postings
# http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=events;action=display;num=1255748924
 foreach $g (@g){
   ($p1, $p2, $won) = ($g->{1}, $g->{2}, $g->{won});
# calc tie breaker for p1
   $p = $score{$p1};
   $o = $score{$p2};
# $round already is one more than number of rounds played, so don't add 1 to it as
#   given by Karl's formula
   $t = 1.0/(1.0+10**(4*($p-$o)/($round)));
   $sos{$p1} += $t;
# calc tie breaker for p2
   $p = $score{$p2};
   $o = $score{$p1};
   $t = 1.0/(1.0+10**(4*($p-$o)/($round)));
   $sos{$p2} += $t;
 }
}



Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 19th, 2010, 7:15pm

on 01/19/10 at 15:48:01, omar wrote:
The formula I used was:
P = wins[this_player]
foreach op in list_of_opponents[this_player]
 O = wins[op]
 T = 1/(1+10^(4*(P-O)/(N+1))  

Hmmm, I think there is a problem with implementation, hopefully not the missing end parenthesis above ;).  According to the pairing page, chessandgo has a tiebreaker of 0.002.  Chessandgo has a record of 2-0, while his opponents naveed and PMertens have records of 0-2 and 1-1 respectively.  I calculate chessandgo's tiebreaker according to the above formula to be

1/(1+10^(4*(2-0)/(2+1))) + 1/(1+10^(4*(2-1)/(2+1)))
= 1/(1+10^(4*2/3)) + 1/(1+10^(4*1/3))
= 1/(1+10^(2.666)) + 1/(1+10^(1.333))
= 0.002 + 0.044
= 0.046

It is suspicious that one term of the equation is 0.002.  If you had an extra factor of two stuck in the exponent somewhere, then the first term would go near zero and the second would drop to 0.002, equaling the listed tiebreaker.

The factor of 4 in the formula simulates a rating range of 1600, which was reasonable for past years, but this year the rating range is closer to 1000 points, which would make it better if we used a factor of 2.5 instead of 4.  So there is a parametrization issue that is my fault as well as the implementation issue that isn't my fault.  :P

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 19th, 2010, 7:18pm
I think I've got it working properly in the Wiki.  Would anyone mind checking a couple of these rows to make sure the revised SoS is correct?

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_Open_Classic_Round_3#Round_3_Standings

The SoS is the sum of these 3 values for each player:

Fritzlein          0.0909 0.0909 0.5
chessandgo         0.0099 0.0909 0.5
Adanac             0.0099 0.0909 0.5
99of9              0.5000 0.0909 0.5
Tuks               0.0909 0.0909 0.5
ChrisB             0.9091 0.9091 0.5
omar               0.0909 0.9091 0.5
PMertens           0.5000 0.9091 0.5
The_Jeh            0.9091 0.0909 0.5
naveed             0.9901 0.9091 0.5
woh                0.9901 0.9091 0.5
Simon              0.5000 0.9091 0.5
Nevermind          0.9091 0.0909 0.5
Nombril            0.0909 0.9091 0.5
fritzlforpresident 0.9091 0.9091 0.5
Hippo              0.5000 0.0909 0.5


on 01/19/10 at 15:48:01, omar wrote:
The formula I used was:
P = wins[this_player]
foreach op in list_of_opponents[this_player]
 O = wins[op]
 T = 1/(1+10^(4*(P-O)/(N+1))  
 TieBreaker += T

I'll try to post the code here so it can be checked. Even if the formula is right, the implementation could still be wrong :-)


Code:
# this creates the following global hashes with the usernames as keys:
#   %score - 2*games won + 1*games drawn
#   %sos - sum of opponents score
#   %played - count of games played between a pair of players;
#             key is both usernames, like: "$first $second"
#   %byes - count of how many byes the player has received; forfiets are considered byes

sub calcScore{
 my(@g, $g, $p1, $p2, $won, $why, $k, $v);
 my($p, $o, $t);

# go through the games and calculate the score for the players
 @g = $ev->getGamesBeforeRound($round);
 foreach $g (@g){
   ($p1, $p2, $won, $why) = ($g->{1}, $g->{2}, $g->{won}, $g->{why});

# count the pairings
   $played{"$p1 $p2"} += 1;
   if ($p1 eq '-BYE-'){ $byes{$p2} += 1; }
   if ($p2 eq '-BYE-'){ $byes{$p1} += 1; }
# win by forfiet also considered a bye
   if ($why eq 'f'){
     if ($won == 1){ $byes{$p2} += 1; }
     if ($won == 2){ $byes{$p1} += 1; }
   }

# Use this if the tournament does not allow dropping out and late joins
   if (! $allowDropJoin){
     if ($won == 1){ $score{$p1} += 2; }
     if ($won == 2){ $score{$p2} += 2; }
     if ($won eq 'd'){ $score{$p1} += 1; $score{$p2} += 1; }
   }

# Use this if the tournament will allow dropping out and late joins
#   basically it adds 1 point to the score for rounds in which the players
#   did not play; as if they had a draw
   if ($allowDropJoin){
     if ($won == 1){ $score{$p1} += 1; $score{$p2} -= 1; }
     if ($won == 2){ $score{$p2} += 1; $score{$p1} -= 1; }
   }
 }
 if ($allowDropJoin){
   while(($k,$v) = each(%score)){
     $score{$k} = $v + ($round - 1);
   }
 }

# set the score of the -BYE- player to zero, so that it does not get added to sos
 $score{'-BYE-'} = 0;

# go through each game and calculate sum-of-opponent-score (sos)
#   as proposed by Karl Juhnke; see this thread for details; particularly Nov 13th, 2009 postings
# http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=events;action=display;num=1255748924
 foreach $g (@g){
   ($p1, $p2, $won) = ($g->{1}, $g->{2}, $g->{won});
# calc tie breaker for p1
   $p = $score{$p1};
   $o = $score{$p2};
# $round already is one more than number of rounds played, so don't add 1 to it as
#   given by Karl's formula
   $t = 1.0/(1.0+10**(4*($p-$o)/($round)));
   $sos{$p1} += $t;
# calc tie breaker for p2
   $p = $score{$p2};
   $o = $score{$p1};
   $t = 1.0/(1.0+10**(4*($p-$o)/($round)));
   $sos{$p2} += $t;
 }
}



Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 19th, 2010, 7:34pm

on 01/19/10 at 19:18:48, Adanac wrote:
I think I've got it working properly in the Wiki.  Would anyone mind checking a couple of these rows to make sure the revised SoS is correct?

Yes, it looks correct, although it also looks weird to be using 3 for the round number while everyone still has only 0, 1, or 2 wins.

And if it isn't too much like changing the rules mid-tournament, I really would advocate changing the 4 in the exponent to a 2.5.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 20th, 2010, 7:56am
I didn't think carefully enough about the factor of 4 in the exponent of my SoS formula, so let me think about it a little bit more out loud.

Last year there were 18 players registered for the World Championship, with game room ratings ranging from 1066 to 2476, and averaging about 1800.  My SoS formula with 4 in the exponent simulates approximately these ratings for given records after five rounds:

5-0 = 2467
4-1 = 2200
3-2 = 1933
2-3 = 1667
1-4 = 1400
0-5 = 1133

That seems about right for last year's field.  But this year's field was much tougher, with whole history ratings ranging from 1581 to 2568 and averaging about 2000.  Now my formula with the parameter 4 simulates the various records as

5-0 = 2667
4-1 = 2400
3-2 = 2133
2-3 = 1867
1-4 = 1600
0-5 = 1333

which is too high on the high end and too low on the low end.  The actual field is not that spread out this year.  Changing the parameter to 3 would make the simulation

5-0 = 2500
4-1 = 2300
3-2 = 2100
2-3 = 1900
1-4 = 1700
0-5 = 1500

which seems about right for this year's field.  I suggested 2.5 in my previous post, but that actually squeezes it a bit too much, so I am (re)changing my recommendation to 3.

One way to make the parameter automatic based on the players who actually register rather than eyeballed by me after the fact would be to set it to

0.5 + ([highest rating] - [lowest rating])/400

a formula which works both for last year and this year.  Last year it would have been 4.025, and this year 2.9675, i.e. basically 4 then and 3 now as I am recommending.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 20th, 2010, 8:59am

on 01/20/10 at 07:56:18, Fritzlein wrote:
One way to make the parameter automatic based on the players who actually register rather than eyeballed by me after the fact would be to set it to

0.5 + ([highest rating] - [lowest rating])/400

a formula which works both for last year and this year.  Last year it would have been 4.025, and this year 2.9675, i.e. basically 4 then and 3 now as I am recommending.


What if we have a strong tournament next year (2100 average rating) except we have 1 new player with a 1400 rating?  Should we base the parameter upon (highest rating - lowest rating), or is it better to use standard deviation to avoid the outlier effect?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Janzert on Jan 20th, 2010, 10:10am
I was quite confused reading this at first, and quite probably I still am, since it appears to me that the published rules never received this change in pairing and still list the simple "sum of opponent scores" as the first tiebreaker. Specifically in rule 6 of the swiss preliminary pairing algorithm.

Janzert

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 20th, 2010, 11:38am

on 01/20/10 at 08:59:24, Adanac wrote:
What if we have a strong tournament next year (2100 average rating) except we have 1 new player with a 1400 rating?  Should we base the parameter upon (highest rating - lowest rating), or is it better to use standard deviation to avoid the outlier effect?

You are right, the standard deviation is probably more robust than the range.  For 2009 I calculate a standard deviation of 433 and for 2010 I get 297.  So perhaps the exponent could be set to stdev/100.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 20th, 2010, 11:42am

on 01/20/10 at 10:10:19, Janzert wrote:
I was quite confused reading this at first, and quite probably I still am, since it appears to me that the published rules never received this change in pairing and still list the simple "sum of opponent scores" as the first tiebreaker. Specifically in rule 6 of the swiss preliminary pairing algorithm.

Uh oh.  Tournament Director?!!?!!?

The good news is that the pairings of rounds 1, 2, and 3 will always be the same under the old SoS and new SoS, so it hasn't made any difference so far.  But it could make a difference for pairing rounds 4 and 5, as well as influencing the final standings.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 20th, 2010, 12:25pm

on 01/20/10 at 10:10:19, Janzert wrote:
I was quite confused reading this at first, and quite probably I still am, since it appears to me that the published rules never received this change in pairing and still list the simple "sum of opponent scores" as the first tiebreaker. Specifically in rule 6 of the swiss preliminary pairing algorithm.

Janzert


Yes, I mentioned in the forum that the change Karl suggested for computing SoS looked simple enough that I could do it this year. I was going to update the rules page after implementing it, but forgot to. Maybe it turned out to be a good thing since my first implementation of the SoS formula was not quite right and a more general version of the SoS formula has been suggested now. So I'll update the rules page now.

But before I do I'll fix my implementation (forgot to divide the score by 2; I used win=2 points) and also use the more general formula with the factor in the exponent computed as: 0.5 + stdev(player ratings)/100.

Fortunately the rule change would not impact anything so far.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 20th, 2010, 12:30pm

on 01/20/10 at 12:25:05, omar wrote:
and also use the more general formula with the factor in the exponent computed as: 0.5 + stdev(player ratings)/100.

There is no +0.5 any more, just stdev(player ratings)/100.

The exact "curvature" of the SoS calculation doesn't matter as much as the fact that it is curved.  The whole point is to have differences near one's own strength count for more than differences far from one's own strength, and any exponent will do that.  But as long as we are curving it at all, we might as well try to get the curvyness as close to correct as we can.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 20th, 2010, 1:15pm
I updated the implementation.

The stdev is 288.516
The exponent factor is: 3.385

The new SoS values can be seen here:
   http://arimaa.com/arimaa/events/showGames.cgi?e=2010wc

chessandgo now has a SoS value of 0.075 in round 3.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 21st, 2010, 6:35am

on 01/20/10 at 13:15:03, omar wrote:
I updated the implementation.

The stdev is 288.516
The exponent factor is: 3.385

The new SoS values can be seen here:
   http://arimaa.com/arimaa/events/showGames.cgi?e=2010wc

chessandgo now has a SoS value of 0.075 in round 3.

From the previous discussion it looks like the 0.5 offset is still in the implementation and should not be.  Exponent factor should be 2.885.  I'm approving the stdev/100 exponent for the remainder of the tournament.

TD

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 21st, 2010, 1:59pm
Thanks for the approval Ron and also noting the problem. Karl had also notified me about it. Should be fixed now.

Good thing we got this corrected and approved now. If we think of any other improvements after round 3, it will have to wait until next year.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 24th, 2010, 8:40pm
Standings after 7 games of round 3:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_Open_Classic_Round_3#Round_3_Standings

Disclaimer:  These pairings are not official and depend upon whether my interpretation of the asterisk pairings below are correct

If 99of9 wins tomorrow

Chessandgo vs. Adanac
Tuks vs. 99of9  (*)
Fritzlein vs. Nevermind
The_Jeh vs. Nombril
Simon vs. Omar
PMertens vs. Naveed (**)
Woh vs. Hippo
ChrisB vs. fritzlforpresident

If Omar wins tomorrow

Chessandgo vs. Adanac
Fritzlein vs. Nevermind
Tuks vs. The_Jeh
Omar vs. Nombril
PMertens vs. Naveed (**)
Simon vs. Hippo
Woh vs. 99of9 (***)
ChrisB vs. fritzlforpresident

(*) The pairing 3 vs. 6 would be Tuks vs. Nevermind but they have already played.  And 3 vs. 7 would be Tuks vs. Nombril, but they’ve already played too.  So Tuks vs. 99of9 represents a 3 vs. 8 pairing, which should force a 4 vs. 6 and 5 vs. 7 in the other two 2-1 games.

(**) PMertens would normally be scheduled against Hippo but because they’ve already played he is re-scheduled against Naveed in both scenarios.

(***) Uh oh.  This pairing has already occurred, and the program will not be able to create a legal pairing.  See the discussion below.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Jan 25th, 2010, 5:20am
In your Omar wins scenario, you've got me playing Woh, but we've already played.  Does that change it?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 25th, 2010, 6:30am

on 01/25/10 at 05:20:57, 99of9 wrote:
In your Omar wins scenario, you've got me playing Woh, but we've already played.  Does that change it?

It appears that in the "omar wins" scenario, the pairing algorithm will break.  For the preliminary tournament, we are not using the "global optimum floating elimination" pairing.  Instead we are using relatively straightforward Swiss pairing which makes one pass through the players trying for a good pairing, and therefore may fail to produce any pairing at all.

If I understand the "omar wins" scenario, the algorithm will have successfully paired all players except 99of9, woh, ChrisB and fritzlforpresident.  It will then try to pair 99of9.  Since 99of9 vs. woh has already happened, it will skip that, and pair 99of9 vs. ChrisB.  But then it is left with only woh and fritzlforpresident, who have already played each other.  I believe then it exits with failure.

Any human TD confronted with the problem of 99of9 vs. woh being a repeat would not cross score boundaries to create two 1-2 vs. 0-3 pairings.  A human TD would backtrack one step to undo Simon vs. Hippo, and then complete the pairing with Simon vs. woh, 99of9 vs. Hippo, and ChrisB vs. fritzlforpresident.

I think we may have an appeal to RonWeasly brewing unless omar can pull out the loss today.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 25th, 2010, 7:09am

on 01/25/10 at 06:30:39, Fritzlein wrote:
It appears that in the "omar wins" scenario, the pairing algorithm will break.  For the preliminary tournament, we are not using the "global optimum floating elimination" pairing.  Instead we are using relatively straightforward Swiss pairing which makes one pass through the players trying for a good pairing, and therefore may fail to produce any pairing at all.

If I understand the "omar wins" scenario, the algorithm will have successfully paired all players except 99of9, woh, ChrisB and fritzlforpresident.  It will then try to pair 99of9.  Since 99of9 vs. woh has already happened, it will skip that, and pair 99of9 vs. ChrisB.  But then it is left with only woh and fritzlforpresident, who have already played each other.  I believe then it exits with failure.

Any human TD confronted with the problem of 99of9 vs. woh being a repeat would not cross score boundaries to create two 1-2 vs. 0-3 pairings.  A human TD would backtrack one step to undo Simon vs. Hippo, and then complete the pairing with Simon vs. woh, 99of9 vs. Hippo, and ChrisB vs. fritzlforpresident.

I think we may have an appeal to RonWeasly brewing unless omar can pull out the loss today.


Yes, I double-checked the results and 99of9 would be in 11th place with an SoS of 1.8753 and Woh would be in 14th with 1.6048.  I thought matching the 1-2 and 0-3 players superceded repeat pairings but I was wrong.  Fritzlein's interpretation above is the correct one.

This is hypothetical because, *statistically*, this is the less likely of the two scenarios but...We're fortunate that woh vs. fritzlforpresident has already occurred because that breaks the algorithm and would allow RonWeasley to manually create a more logical pairing.  If woh vs. ffp had not previously been paired, then there would be a debate about whether to invoke this disclaimer from the bottom of the tournament rules.

"The director will also make the final decision on matters of pairing and color assignment. However, the pairings and color assignments are done as much as possible using a program and the need for intervention should be rare."

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 25th, 2010, 10:12am

on 01/25/10 at 07:09:16, Adanac wrote:
We're fortunate that woh vs. fritzlforpresident has already occurred because that breaks the algorithm and would allow RonWeasley to manually create a more logical pairing.  If woh vs. ffp had not previously been paired, then there would be a debate about whether to invoke this disclaimer from the bottom of the tournament rules.

It may be that Omar has extended the pairing algorithm to backtrack until it finds at least one legal pairing, albeit not the global optimum.  I think he mentioned working on such code.  In that case the algorithm might undo 99of9 vs ChrisB, pair 99of9 vs. fritzlforpresident and ChrisB vs. woh, and exit with success.  If that happens, I will appeal the pairing, since there is a simple change that does not cross score boundaries.  (and incidentally would be the second legal pairing discovered by a backtracker)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 25th, 2010, 10:31am

on 01/25/10 at 06:30:39, Fritzlein wrote:
Any human TD confronted with the problem of 99of9 vs. woh being a repeat would not cross score boundaries to create two 1-2 vs. 0-3 pairings.  A human TD would backtrack one step to undo Simon vs. Hippo, and then complete the pairing with Simon vs. woh, 99of9 vs. Hippo, and ChrisB vs. fritzlforpresident.


Thank you for seeing this in advance.  If this happens, based on the current consensus, I approve the suggested pairing for Round 4.

TD

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 25th, 2010, 2:52pm
I’m happy that the scheduler worked for round 4.  Apparently, though, I still have misconceptions about how the process works.   When I look at the players with 2-1 records they are:
(3) Tuks
(4) Fritzlein
(5) The_Jeh
(6) Nevermind
(7) Nombril
(8 ) 99of9

Normally the pairings would be 3-6, 4-7, 5-8 but due to the no-repeat-matchup rule it checked 3-6, 3-7, 3-8 until it found a legal pairing.  So far, so good:

(3) Tuks vs. (8 ) 99of9

Next I expected 4-6 and 5-7 which are both legal matchups:

(4) Fritzlein vs. (6) Nevermind
(5) The_Jeh vs. (7) Nombril

Instead, it kept the 4-7 pairing from the original assumptions and then filled in 5-6 as the final pairing.  So it’s a good thing I added a bold disclaimer to my previous post because Nombril  and Nevermind now have much different pairings than I anticipated.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 26th, 2010, 11:23am
The new strength of schedule kicks in for the standings after round 3, and it is having the desired effect.

For the 1-2 players, naveed's opponents have 3, 1, and 0 wins, while omar and Hippo each faced opponents of 2, 1, and 1 wins.  In the old SoS, those would be considered equally tough schedules, but the new SoS considers naveed's schedule weaker.  Intuitively it is because naveed faced one stronger, one equal, and one weaker opponent, whereas omar and Hippo each faced one stronger, two equal, and no weaker opponents.  The classification of stronger/equal/weaker is more relevant than how much stronger or weaker.

By the same token, 99of9 at 2-1 has faced a weaker schedule than Nombril, The_Jeh, and Nevermid who are also at 2-1.  The latter three each faced opponents of 2, 1, and 0 wins, while 99of9 faced opponents of 1, 1, and 1 win.  In the old SoS they all would be tied at 3 points, but the new SoS recognizes that 99of9 faced three weaker opponents, whereas the others each faced one equal and two weaker opponents.

So far the new SoS has only broken ties that the old SoS would have left intact.  The new SoS has not reversed any rankings where the old SoS would have put one player higher than another.  I expect, however, that in the final tournament standings there will be at least one reversal between the two SoS calculations.  It will be a true test of the new SoS to see whether we like what it does in the case where it makes the biggest difference.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by woh on Jan 26th, 2010, 3:55pm

on 01/26/10 at 11:23:44, Fritzlein wrote:
By the same token, 99of9 at 2-1 has faced a weaker schedule than Nombril, The_Jeh, and Nevermid who are also at 2-1.  The latter three each faced opponents of 2, 1, and 0 wins, while 99of9 faced opponents of 1, 1, and 1 win.  In the old SoS they all would be tied at 3 points, but the new SoS recognizes that 99of9 faced three weaker opponents, whereas the others each faced one equal and two weaker opponents.


WHR however, puts 99of9 between those 3 players, just ahead of The_Jeh.

1. Adanac 1763
2. chessandgo 1742

3. Tuks 1648
4. Fritzlein 1609
5. Nombril 1561
6. Nevermind 1554
7. 99of9 1535
8. The_Jeh 1530

9. Simon 1493
10. PMertens 1461
11. woh 1422
12. Hippo 1406
13. omar 1400
14. naveed 1395

15. ChrisB 1255
16. fritlforpresident 1225

Looking at their opponents ranking
99of9         The_Jeh
1493          1609            ~ -120
1400          1406                  ~ =
1422          1225                  ~ +200
Overall the opponents of 99of9 are a bit stronger.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 26th, 2010, 4:18pm
One advantage of using in-tournament WHR for the SoS is that there are already no ties after three rounds!  I didn't think of this ahead of time.  My new SoS has fewer ties than the old one, but there are still plenty at the end of round 3.

I note that, other than this one reversal between The_Jeh and 99of9 (by five whole rating points), the only difference between the new SoS and in-tournament WHR is breaking more ties.  Looks very good so far.

By the way, you are rating all in-tournament games equally, right?  i.e. not entering dates for a changing rating and just reporting the final rating?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Jan 26th, 2010, 7:19pm

on 01/26/10 at 16:18:11, Fritzlein wrote:
I note that, other than this one reversal between The_Jeh and 99of9 (by five whole rating points), the only difference between the new SoS and in-tournament WHR is breaking more ties.

... the WHR puts me at 5th place while the SOS puts me at 7th place.  Unless I'm missing something?

Not that it makes *that* much of a difference to me - either way I'm looking for another upset!  ;)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Jan 26th, 2010, 9:57pm

on 01/26/10 at 19:19:24, Nombril wrote:
... the WHR puts me at 5th place while the SOS puts me at 7th place.  Unless I'm missing something?

Not that it makes *that* much of a difference to me - either way I'm looking for another upset!  ;)


That was bizarre.  My computer shows an SoS of 0.6945043921 for the three players ranked #5-7. And yet it somehow thought that yours was bigger than theirs  ???  Oh well, I found a solution and now the standings are in the right order.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by woh on Jan 26th, 2010, 9:59pm

on 01/26/10 at 16:18:11, Fritzlein wrote:
By the way, you are rating all in-tournament games equally, right?  i.e. not entering dates for a changing rating and just reporting the final rating?


That is correct, Fritzlein. The time factor is ignored. All games are asumed to occur at the same moment. Just one rating per player is calculated.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 27th, 2010, 6:22am

on 01/26/10 at 19:19:24, Nombril wrote:
... the WHR puts me at 5th place while the SOS puts me at 7th place.  Unless I'm missing something?

SoS has you in a three-way tie for 5th-7th, so when the WHR places you 5th it isn't disagreeing, just breaking the tie.

The only time WHR is disagreeing with SoS rather than just breaking a tie is raising 99of9 from 8th to 7th and lowering The_Jeh from a tie for 5th-7th to 8th.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 7:17am
The upsets just keep coming.  Adanac's win over chessandgo from 400 rating points down (and from a totally lost position) is comparable to Simon's win over 99of9 in the first round.  It sure makes for a more unsettled, exciting feel than we had in last year's World Championship.  I like it. ;D

Although woh and Hippo haven't played yet, I believe the top pairings for the final round are fixed at Adanac vs. Fritzlein and chessandgo vs. The_Jeh.  99of9 will play down against the top 2-2 player he hasn't played yet, but he has already played both Tuks and Simon, the top two.  I believe 99of9's opponent will be woh if woh wins, and PMertens if Hippo wins.

The rest of the pairings for the final round look complicated, and may require human intervention to sort out if the pairing algorithm fails to return a legal pairing.

If I manage to beat Adanac in the last round of the preliminaries, we would have a three-way or four-way tie at 4-1, and the strength of schedule is currently close enough that any of the top three seeds for the preliminary could end up with the advantageous top seed for the finals, depending on how all the other games of the round go.  Of course, if Adanac beats me he gets the top seed into the finals outright, while I drop to the #4 or #5 seed.

I will wait for the last-round pairings to be finalized before I even go into the scenarios for the top 2-3 player qualifying or the bottom 3-2 player not qualifying. :-X

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Feb 1st, 2010, 9:33am
The use of floating point scores is problematic insofar as genuine ties can be missed and no further tiebreakers will kick in.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 1st, 2010, 12:47pm

on 02/01/10 at 07:17:15, Fritzlein wrote:
 I believe 99of9's opponent will be woh if woh wins, and PMertens if Hippo wins.

woh and I have already played.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 4:04pm

on 02/01/10 at 12:47:18, 99of9 wrote:
woh and I have already played.

Oops.  I was trying to figure out why the algorithm paired you with Nevermind instead.  Thanks for clearing that up!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 4:20pm
The pairings for Round 5 are up, and IMHO, we couldn't have asked for more intriguing matches.  In the life-death matches we have 99of9 vs. Nevermind, PMertens vs. Tuks, and Simon vs. woh.  All three games pit veterans against up-and coming players, so we can get a great read on how far the new wave has come.  I can't wait for the games to begin!

The games that determine whether we have seven, eight, or nine players at 3-2 or better are 99of9 vs. Nevermind and Hippo vs. Nombril.  Specifically:

nine if Nevermind and Nombril both win
eight if one of Nevermind and Nombril win
seven if neither Nevermind nor Nombril wins

I'm afraid that Nevermind and Nombril each have to root for the other to lose, because if Nombril loses, Nevermind could also lose and perhaps still sneak into the finals as the best 2-3 player, whereas Nombril can win and still perhaps get left out of the finals as the lowest 3-2 player if Nevermind wins.  By the same logic, all the other 2-2 players will be rooting for both Nevermind and Nombril to lose.  Hippo and 99of9 have just earned themselves an automatic cheering section.  :)

Adanac will have to put his scenario generator to work to determine which players are most likely to be left out even if they finish 3-2, and which players are most likely to be included even if they finish 2-3.  I can only guess that the way strength of schedule works will leave all of us hanging on the outcome of every game.  Let the fun begin!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 1st, 2010, 4:51pm

on 02/01/10 at 16:20:35, Fritzlein wrote:
Adanac will have to put his scenario generator to work to determine which players are most likely to be left out even if they finish 3-2, and which players are most likely to be included even if they finish 2-3.  I can only guess that the way strength of schedule works will leave all of us hanging on the outcome of every game.  Let the fun begin!


This table is similar to the ones from the past two years.  The first 2 numbers show the best and worst possible rank after a win (taking into account all 256 permutations).  The last 2 numbers show the best and worst possible rank after a loss.  The most unusual lines are for PMertens, Nevermind or Woh:  Nevermind, for example, can finish between 4-9 with a win but between 8-11 with a loss.  It seems bizarre that he can advance with a loss or get eliminated with a win but both scenarios are extremely unlikely, at opposite ends of the SoS possibilities.  In virtually all scenarios Nevermind will control his own destiny.  PMertens and woh need a bit more help than Nevermind, but will advance with a win in the vast majority of scenarios.

Fritzlein           1  3  3  5
chessandgo          1  3  3  7
Adanac              1  1  1  3
99of9               2  4  5  9
Tuks                4  6  8 10
ChrisB             12 14 14 16
omar               10 14 13 15
PMertens            5  9  8 13
The_Jeh             2  3  4  8
naveed             12 14 14 16
woh                 5  9  8 12
Simon               4  8  8 11
Nevermind           4  9  8 11
Nombril             7  9  9 14
fritzlforpresident 14 16 16 16
Hippo              10 13 13 14

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 5:58pm
Thanks for generating this, Adanac.  It is truly bizarre that each of three players has an opportunity to qualify despite a 2-3 record or be eliminated despite a 3-2 record.  What a crazy tournament!  I note that even 99of9 can still be eliminated if he loses, so only the present top four are safely in to the finals.  On the other side, though, the bottom five are out, as Hippo can't end up as the top 2-3 player even with wins by himself and 99of9.

I take it that since Nevermind, PMeterns, and woh all control their own destiny except for corner cases, the brunt of not being in control falls mostly on Nombril.  Even if Nombril wins, he needs either Nevermind to lose, or needs some help in strength of schedule.  But despite being the most out of control, Nombril should still be rather better than 50% to make the finals with a win.

I would be much obliged, Adanac, if you would re-run the scenario generator again as the early games of the round finish.  It makes for great drama!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 1st, 2010, 7:25pm

on 02/01/10 at 17:58:51, Fritzlein wrote:
I would be much obliged, Adanac, if you would re-run the scenario generator again as the early games of the round finish.  It makes for great drama!


I'll be visiting my wife's family this weekend so I won't be able to watch games or keep the Wiki standings and reports up-to-date.  But I notice that 3 games are tentatively scheduled prior to my departure, so at least I can re-run with only 32 scenarios remaining  (actually 4 games, down to 16 scenarios if Omar-ChrisB finishes in 1 hour or less).

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 7:31pm
I did the post-round-4 WHR ratings in order to compare them with the actual tournament standings using W-L first and SoS second.  Thank you, woh, for making this easy-to-use tool available.

The tournament standings have one tie left, namely between woh, Nombril, and Nevermind; WHR breaks this tie.  The only changes in rank caused by WHR are putting 99of9 ahead of The_Jeh, and putting Omar ahead of Hippo.  Both of these changes seem reasonable.

The eventuality that would be most controversial is putting a player with more wins behind a player with fewer wins.  That hasn't happened yet this tournament, but Tuks at 2-2 is only 17 rating points behind The_Jeh at 3-1 according to WHR.  It seems possible that by the end of round 5 there would be some inversion, most likely between the top 2-3 and the bottom 3-2.  We'll see.

So far, however, I like WHR for breaking ties that the current format leaves intact, and the few small differences in ordering seem like they could be argued either way.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 8:28pm
I did the experiment with WHR that I proposed in another thread, namely I increased the weight of the prior to see what effect it would have on the order of the players.  My hypothesis was that as the strength of the prior approaches infinity, the ordering of the players approaches the ordering by wins first, sum of opponent wins second, i.e. the ordering we used in 2008 and 2009.

First, I tested my understanding of the tool by adding an anchor player with a fixed rating of 1500, giving that player one win and one loss against all other players, and calculating WHR-z.  This came out the same as WHR before I had input the anchor, so I apparently understood the tool.

Next, I input ten wins and ten losses against the anchor for each player, and recalculated WHR-z.  The order of the players didn't change!  So my hypothesis is bust, right?  Wrong!  I quickly calculated (by hand, so I may have goofed) the sum-of-opponents-wins for each player, and it agreed with the WHR ordering of players.  That is to say, for the current tournament results, WHR is equivalent to the old method of calculating SoS, except that ties are broken.

Thus my hypothesis still stands unfalsified, and a new question is raised: under what circumstances will WHR differ from the old SoS (sum of opponents wins) except insofar as it breaks ties?  The plot thickens.  I know that woh said there was a difference last year, but then there were also forfeits messing things up, so I'm looking for a case without forfeits where the ordering is different.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 1st, 2010, 8:34pm

on 02/01/10 at 19:25:04, Adanac wrote:
But I notice that 3 games are tentatively scheduled prior to my departure, so at least I can re-run with only 32 scenarios remaining  (actually 4 games, down to 16 scenarios if Omar-ChrisB finishes in 1 hour or less).

That would be awesome.  Once 99of9 vs Nevermind is over, lots of the possibilities will collapse, because either the nine-players-3-wins-or-better scenario or the seven-players-3-wins-or-better scenario will be out of the picture.  By that time nobody will have those strange overlapping outcomes any more.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Feb 2nd, 2010, 5:55am
Report about my connection problems:
I have 3 methods of connection from my notebook. Mobile connection with integrated modem, wi-fi connection and of course classic cable one. With the last 2 I log to my local network connected by cable ... .
At the first round against Paul, I have used classic connection (with wi-fi pseudobackup), I had prepared backup computer for the case the notebook's accidental froze.
For the game with Naveed I was in mountains on mobile connection. I was scared of the connection here, but several test games didn't show a problem. WC game was OK. But after it I have tried instaling skype by this slow connection. The downloaded file was rather short, but after running it, it starts downloading a lot of data. The process was not successful, moreover, I have probably entered category of unfair users and the connection was slowed down for me.
After this skype installation attempt I had a lot of troubles in following games using the mobile connection (it worked fine before the mountain week).
I have played with The_Jeh in the same configuration as with Paul (even with mice backup).
As in the mountains my mobile phone start having big problems with making phone calls (with connection) I have bought a new one.
Yesterday, during students prepare time for examination I have played another training game with the mobile connection and I went to situation I didn’t received packets at all even after reboot and reconnection. I have tested playing and watching games on the new phone. It worked not the best, but worked.
For the game with Woh I have changed a configuration slightly as I didn’t have problems with wi-fi connection for a very long time, I have decided  to play from the armchair not in the room with the backup computer. I expected no problems at all. But when on 21g Who’s traffic light got yellow, I start be scared. It was difficult situation, but not so  much. When it got red, I wanted start another game window, but with no success. I have supposed it can be DNS problem reported earlier so I have written an e-mail to Omar. But there was problem with sending it. It may be the wi-fi one. I have run to the room with the backup computer (cable connected), and I was surprised even there was a problem with connection, but not only to Arimaa, but to entire net. At that time I have discovered this is my (local provider) fault. In 5 minutes the line modem again received connection, but the game was over. If I had watched my game on the cell phone, I would be able to go even through this obstacle. I will probably use this backup in the last game. But I have to limit playing on mobile connection or the mobile phone to avoid being on the black list. May be one can configure the game client not to download the stone pictures and animation all the time …
I had no problems with the local (cable) provider from the time I start playing Arimaa until yesterday.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Feb 2nd, 2010, 6:16am
I would fight with Nombril as if I had chance to advance ...

Just one question ... had the preturnament WHR affected the computed results or all were fully determined by turnament WHR?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 2nd, 2010, 6:29am

on 02/02/10 at 06:16:04, Hippo wrote:
Just one question ... had the preturnament WHR affected the computed results or all were fully determined by turnament WHR?

The in-tournament WHR has had no effect on anything.  We are considering using it starting next year instead of strength of schedule, but for this year we are not using in-tournament WHR at all.

For this year pre-tournament WHR was used as the second tiebreaker in the standings, i.e. first order by win/loss, then break ties by strength of schedule, and finally break remaining ties by pre-tournament WHR.  So this had some effect on assigning who would play against who.  However, by the end of the tournament, the effect of the pre-tournament WHR has become negligible compared to what games have been won and lost inside the tournament.  After round 4 the ratings only broke a tie between woh, Nevermind, and Nombril, and after round 5 there might not be any ties left to break.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 2nd, 2010, 4:53pm
My game time got changed from the preliminary time.  I didn't make any changes to my schedule, and Nevermind didn't contact me, does that mean that the scheduling program changed??

I prefer the preliminary time.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 2nd, 2010, 7:47pm

on 02/02/10 at 16:53:01, 99of9 wrote:
My game time got changed from the preliminary time.  I didn't make any changes to my schedule, and Nevermind didn't contact me, does that mean that the scheduling program changed??

Omar said he wouldn't change the scheduling program until next round, so presumably Nevermind changed his preferences.

Before the tournament, I privately argued with Omar that he should not run the scheduler twice, because it would allow someone to game the system into giving the opponent a less favorable time after gaining some insight into their preferences.  Presumably that is why Omar now includes a strongly worded message about not changing your preferences after the preliminary scheduling.  But is it a rule or just a suggestion?  If it is a rule that you may not change your preferences with out the opponent's consent, then what is the point of running the scheduler twice?  Why not run it once and have the first one be final?  But on the other hand, if it is just a suggestion not to change your preferences, what should you do if the first time you get scheduled for is terrible?  "Suggestions" have the effect of not actually being rules, so that some people get the advantage of not following the suggestion, while the people who feel bound by them get a disadvantage.  It's a way to hurt the conscientious people.

I didn't make a big fuss in public about what I considered a bad procedure, because I didn't want to increase the chances of it breaking by talking about it more.  Now, however, that there has actually been a problem, let me argue openly for my suggestion: only run the scheduler once, and have the time it produces be final.  That is the fairest thing to do, and it is difficult to game the system with dishonest preferences.  If you run the pairings twice to accommodate legitimate desires to change the preferences, then how can you ever distinguish legitimate changes from illegitimate ones?  What if Nevermind had contacted 99of9 about wanting a different time, and 99of9 hadn't wanted to change?  Would Nevermind have been allowed to change then?  What if Nevermind found out at the last minute that he would have to forfeit unless he changes his preferences?  On the other hand, what if somebody unscrupulous claimed that this was the case when it wasn't?

Running the scheduler twice is asking for trouble.  Just don't do it.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 2nd, 2010, 8:30pm
I'm not sure whether I agree with you or not.  In previous years when people set their preferences badly or their plans changed, they had to negotiate directly, which is a bit of a haphazard process.  On the plus side it was clear who had the veto, as either player could insist on the original timeslot.

A two step process helps a little in that you can set your preferences a little roughly the first time around, and 90% of the time that gets a good result for everyone anyway.  In the 10% of cases where someone is unhappy, I would suggest requiring communication, just a simple notification that preferences were being changed.  If I received such a notification, I would then be very careful about exactly which order of preference I put in, because I would know that our schedules didn't match easily, and this was the last chance.

Interestingly, I've just checked my preferences, and the new time (8am Sat) is actually a higher preference on my list than the preliminary time (10pm Sat).  Presumeably this means Nevermind has increased his flexibility, so I certainly have no reason to suspect he has done this cynically.  It just happens that since finding out my preliminary time, I've been asked to be on standby to help someone move house on Saturday, so would prefer to be available in the morning in case it's hot.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2010, 6:33am
I also like the flexibility of changing my preferences if the tentatively scheduled time comes out bad for me.  Unfortunately, it is open to abuse, and requiring communication wouldn't make it less open to abuse.

A stark example is when my schedule overlaps with my opponent only in two slots, one that is top for me and bottom for him, and one that is bottom for me and top for him.  The scheduler considers both of these equal, and arbitrarily chooses between them on the basis of which is best for spectators.  That's fair enough, and we are treated equally.

But what if, when I see that the selected slot was a bottom preference for me, make the required communication that I can't play at that time slot, and that I only had it in there for filler.  I remove it from my schedule, and put in a different bottom preference.  Yes, there is a small chance that my new slot will be selected, giving me an even worse time, but I have very little to lose, and fairly good probability of getting a slot that is better for myself and worse for my opponent.  In this case my change of preferences would actually switch the scheduled slot to a time that is top preference for me and bottom preference for my opponent.

I'm glad that the change gave you a higher preference slot, so that you have no reason to complain about how the scheduler worked, just about the reality of your schedule.  I am not suspecting  Nevermind of abusing the system, just saying that there would be no way to tell.

But I guess our whole community is fueled by trust.  We trust that people aren't getting help from computers in their tournament games, we trust that they don't listen in on commentary, and we trust that they don't manipulate the Challenge playoff with intentional losses or sockpuppet accounts.  In that context, trusting that people won't abuse the scheduler is a small additional burden.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Nevermind on Feb 3rd, 2010, 12:43pm
99of9: I just realized that I had not changed my game times for this week yesterday, and did so. I have different times that I can play each week due to a busy schedule. Also, I am unable to access the e-mail to which all arimaa later messages are sent to, so I wasnt even aware of any preliminary time. I decreased my flexibility though, instead of increasing it; this week is very busy for me. I was happy to see that the selected time was what it was, for this is a good time for me to play. Hopefully I have not caused major inconvinience for you! ;(

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 3rd, 2010, 1:55pm
Nevermind I'm sorry to hear about this. I wish you were able to access your emails. You might want to update your email address in your account (pick 'Settings' - 'Account' from the gameroom menu).

Shortly before you posted this I have (at 99of9's request) changed the game time back to what it was after running the scheduler the first time. I sent an email last night to you about 99of9 wanting to change the time and discussing it with him. I also sent an email after changing the time today. Since you are not able to access your emails you probably did not see it.

The email with the tentative time does state that:
"If this time will not work for you, please contact your opponent to discuss a new time before changing your preferred times. You should not change your preferred times without having agreed on a new mutual time with your opponent. If you do not contact your opponent then they should be able to assume that this tentative time is OK with you and will be the final time."

If you and 99of9 agree to a different time, let me know ASAP. I don't like to change the game times after they are finalized, but I had to make an exception since you changed your times after it was scheduled the first time without discussing it with your opponent.


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 3rd, 2010, 2:13pm

on 02/02/10 at 19:47:37, Fritzlein wrote:
Running the scheduler twice is asking for trouble.  Just don't do it.


I might have to resort to that. So far I thought it was working out pretty good. It was nice getting to see what time the scheduler would pick for me and if it was bad having 24 hours to contact my opponent and try to work out a better time. If I didn't succeed then it would be the same as if the scheduler was run only once.

I am glad at least that in the one case so far where it did not work it was not due to dishonest behavior, but rather because Nevermind wasn't able to access his emails.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Nevermind on Feb 3rd, 2010, 2:29pm
Well, I am unable to play at the scheduled time.

If the system requires communication between the participants to affect the preliminary time, why is it that I can change my preferences afterwards and affect the final game time that way? If I was required to communicate then I would not be able to do this, correct?

99of9 I hope that you find one of these times suitable for you, and that you could pick one, and let me and Omar know. They are the only times during which I can play this week. All times are Greenwich central times:

Friday: 19:00-22:00
Saturday: 19:00-22:00
Sunday: 19:00-22:00
Monday: 14:00 - 22:00

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2010, 2:46pm

on 02/03/10 at 13:55:21, omar wrote:
The email with the tentative time does state that:
"If this time will not work for you, please contact your opponent to discuss a new time before changing your preferred times. You should not change your preferred times without having agreed on a new mutual time with your opponent. If you do not contact your opponent then they should be able to assume that this tentative time is OK with you and will be the final time."

OK, my apologies.  That is clearer than I gave you credit for, based on the middle sentence only.  The first sentence suggests only that you ought to ("please") contact and discuss before changing times, not that you must agree.  Likewise the third sentence makes it sound like the issue is all about informing your opponent that you don't like the scheduled time, and once they are no longer assuming the scheduled time is OK with you, you can go ahead and change your preferences.  Only the middle sentence expresses what I now understand as your true intent, and even in that sentence the phrase "you should not" sounds like this is a suggestion, not a rule.  The perception that it is not a rule is reinforced by the first and third sentence, not to mention by calling it a "preliminary" time and running the scheduler again.


Quote:
...but I had to make an exception since you changed your times after it was scheduled the first time without discussing it with your opponent.

Even here in the forum you are making it sound like all you have to do is discuss before changing your preferences, not that it is mandatory agree to a new time before changing preferences.

How about instead:

"The scheduled time is final unless you and your opponent mutually agree on a new time.  You may not change your preferences except to implement a new time that you and your opponent have both agreed to.  The scheduler will be run a second time solely to permit mutual agreements between the players to be implemented."

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2010, 2:57pm

on 02/03/10 at 14:13:26, omar wrote:
I am glad at least that in the one case so far where it did not work it was not due to dishonest behavior, but rather because Nevermind wasn't able to access his emails.

I also am glad that the dual runs of the scheduler have caused only one problem so far, and that the one case where it didn't work out was due merely to miscommunication.  Even so, it will be sad if that miscommunication results in a forfeit.

In addition to communicating to the players after the first run of the scheduler that they may not change their time preferences, it would be good to communicate to the players before the "preliminary" run of the scheduler that they must have their final preferences implemented.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2010, 3:21pm

on 02/03/10 at 14:29:03, Nevermind wrote:
They are the only times during which I can play this week. All times are Greenwich central times:

Friday: 19:00-22:00
Saturday: 19:00-22:00
Sunday: 19:00-22:00
Monday: 14:00 - 22:00

Ah, this is terrible.  If we could run the scheduler, there would be a fair decision between two outcomes, namely (A) one of these twenty-one slots is not too bad for 99of9, so you get a preferred slot and (B) all of these times are bad for 99of9, so another slot from your thirty-nine non-preferred slots would be selected and you would have to forfeit.  But now the decision between (A) and (B) rests entirely on 99of9, so it can't be fair.  How does he know how much you are being demanding or accommodating?  How can he know how much it would be fair for himself to accommodate you or insist on his rights?  That is what the scheduler is for: it makes a level playing field.

I don't see a good solution, and I expect that you will forfeit.  :( :( :(  (Also, as Omar suggests, please update your Arimaa account to have an e-mail address that you read.)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by SpeedRazor on Feb 3rd, 2010, 3:35pm

on 01/11/10 at 09:16:53, omar wrote:
During the:
   fritzlforpresident vs omar


You mean:  Fritz isn't president?!  Maybe I should go back into a coma...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2010, 3:47pm

on 02/03/10 at 15:35:27, SpeedRazor wrote:
Fritz isn't president?!

Fritz wishes for a lot of things that Fritz can't have.  :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 3rd, 2010, 5:20pm

on 02/03/10 at 15:21:49, Fritzlein wrote:
How does he know how much you are being demanding or accommodating?  How can he know how much it would be fair for himself to accommodate you or insist on his rights?

I can get a sense of it from the fact that he is offering 21 slots out of the available 119, which doesn't sound particularly flexible.  But secondly on the nights he is available, he is offering to start between 9pm and midnight (his local time).  Personally, on available nights I had a 4 hour evening start-window, but had not offered go all the way to midnight.  So that shows some flexibility on his part.

The extra problem I have is that it is not me that this choice inconveniences.  I either inconvenience Nevermind, or I inconvenience the person who asked for my help on Saturday.  Nevermind made two mistakes (invalid email and late preference setting), the person who asked my help made none (two rounds of communication, one general far from the time, one more specific once the preliminary game times were set).  The main thing in my decision that Nevermind has going for him is that perhaps more rests on the WC game than exactly what time furniture gets moved (although some might say that reality beats games...).

Sorry to delay, but I will need to speak with the house-mover before deciding.

In the mean time, if you want to push your boundaries and open up more slots, that may give you a better chance of a game.  Especially relevant, what time are you willing to get up in the mornings to get a game out of the way before your daytime activities start? (Assuming you could go to bed at 9pm the night before :-) )

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Nevermind on Feb 4th, 2010, 3:51am
I am reluctant to admit that I have made a mistake, simply because the system allowed me to act as I did. Nevertheless, I understand your position on this matter.

Regarding the new game time, I am only able to extend the monday time, and only slightly. How does 8:00 Monday morning sound to you (Greenwich central time again)?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2010, 8:25am
Omar, as I read my posts from yesterday, I realize I was overly harsh.  I was frustrated because I had anticipated problems in advance that you didn't seem to think would matter.  But of course you might have been right, and the double-scheduling might have gone entirely without a hitch.  What would I have said then?  Lots of times you want to do something experimental, and it works out much better than I expect.  On the whole it is a very good thing that you keep tinkering and improving the server and the tournaments.  Don't let my "I told you so" rant stop you from innovating.

And on that note, here's a snippet from a recent article by Kasparov about AI and computer chess:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592

"Like so much else in our technology-rich and innovation-poor modern world, chess computing has fallen prey to incrementalism and the demands of the market. Brute-force programs play the best chess, so why bother with anything else? Why waste time and money experimenting with new and innovative ideas when we already know what works? Such thinking should horrify anyone worthy of the name of scientist, but it seems, tragically, to be the norm. Our best minds have gone into financial engineering instead of real engineering, with catastrophic results for both sectors."

Based on that quote, Kasparov should be a big fan of Arimaa!  If I could find a mailing address for him, I would send him a copy of Beginning Arimaa.  :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 4th, 2010, 9:23am

on 02/03/10 at 14:46:04, Fritzlein wrote:
How about instead:

"The scheduled time is final unless you and your opponent mutually agree on a new time.  You may not change your preferences except to implement a new time that you and your opponent have both agreed to.  The scheduler will be run a second time solely to permit mutual agreements between the players to be implemented."


Thanks. I like this stronger wording better. It definitely makes it clear that you should not update the times without agreeing to a new time with your opponent. I'll use that in the next round.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 4th, 2010, 9:49am

on 02/04/10 at 08:25:06, Fritzlein wrote:
Omar, as I read my posts from yesterday, I realize I was overly harsh.  I was frustrated because I had anticipated problems in advance that you didn't seem to think would matter.  But of course you might have been right, and the double-scheduling might have gone entirely without a hitch.  What would I have said then?  Lots of times you want to do something experimental, and it works out much better than I expect.  On the whole it is a very good thing that you keep tinkering and improving the server and the tournaments.  Don't let my "I told you so" rant stop you from innovating.


No problem. There were probably more times when I didn't listen to you, tried out something and then changed it to what you said before :-) I value your suggestions (and everyone else) so keep them coming. In the end it's not about whether or not I listened to your suggestion, it's about finding what works. Our intuition helps to guide us on what might work, but only after experimenting will we really know. You can rest assure that I am not afraid of admitting mistakes and changing course if what I thought might work doesn't pan out.

BTW, I haven't closed the book on running the scheduler twice. It seems to be working pretty good, but it's too early to know for sure.


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 4th, 2010, 11:32am

on 02/04/10 at 08:25:06, Fritzlein wrote:
And on that note, here's a snippet from a recent article by Kasparov about AI and computer chess:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592

"Like so much else in our technology-rich and innovation-poor modern world, chess computing has fallen prey to incrementalism and the demands of the market. Brute-force programs play the best chess, so why bother with anything else? Why waste time and money experimenting with new and innovative ideas when we already know what works? Such thinking should horrify anyone worthy of the name of scientist, but it seems, tragically, to be the norm. Our best minds have gone into financial engineering instead of real engineering, with catastrophic results for both sectors."

Based on that quote, Kasparov should be a big fan of Arimaa!  If I could find a mailing address for him, I would send him a copy of Beginning Arimaa.  :)


Thanks for sharing this article.

"Perhaps chess is the wrong game for the times." -GK

That's kind of what I felt also after the 1997 match. Actually it started out with me feeling sorry for GK that IBM wasn't going to give him a rematch, but then thinking that even if they did he might not be able to win. It seemed to me that the root problem was chess and GK needed a different game that would allow him to show the depth of his "real" intelligence over artificial intelligence. Tweeking the rules of chess to make such a game seemed like it would be simple (knowing what I knew about how computers play chess). Little did I know what I was getting myself into :-)

It would be interesting to know what GK thinks about Arimaa. In a way Arimaa was designed for him so that he could use it to stay ahead of the computers. It would be nice if he at least knew about it :-)

I recently came across this page which suggests that the folks at IBM have at least heard about Arimaa:

https://www-927.ibm.com/ibm/cas/hspc/histProfiles.shtml#Newborn


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2010, 2:39pm

on 02/01/10 at 16:51:01, Adanac wrote:

Fritzlein           1  3  3  5
chessandgo          1  3  3  7
Adanac              1  1  1  3
99of9               2  4  5  9
Tuks                4  6
ChrisB             12 14 14 16
omar               10 14 13 15
PMertens    .    .    .   8 13
The_Jeh             2  3  4  8
naveed             12 14 14 16
woh                 5  9  8 12
Simon               4  8  8 11
Nevermind           4  9  8 11
Nombril             7  9  9 14
fritzlforpresident 14 16 16 16
Hippo              10 13 13 14

Tuks's win all but guarantees Adanac the top seed into the finals.  I can only get the top seed if I win and The_Jeh wins, or if I win and both Nombril and Omar win.  Chessandgo can't get the top seed at all, even if he beats The_Jeh and I beat Adanac.  Thus the top seed is very valuable because it will allow either me or Adanac to avoid chessandgo until the third round of the finals.  Adanac is on a course for a pleasurable second round of the finals in which he gets to play the #4 seed while watching chessandgo and Fritzlein beat each other up.  Indeed, if Adanac is really scared of me and chessandgo, he should at all costs avoid beating me tomorrow to knock me down to the #4 seed and have to meet me in round 2 of the finals anyway!

I can't work out all the cases, but I think that Tuks's win also guarantees 99of9 a spot in the finals even if 99of9 loses to Nevermind.  If I am right, that means that six spots in the finals are wrapped up (chessandgo, Fritzlein, Adanac, 99of9, Tuks, The_Jeh), plus the winner of Simon vs. woh to bring us to seven.  The eighth spot is divided between Nevermind, Nombril, and a lucky 2-3 player if both Nevermind and Nombril lose.

Probably I'm oversimplifying by missing some corner cases, such as woh, Nevermind, and Nombril all winning, but woh being left out anyway.  Oh, well. ::)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 4th, 2010, 3:23pm

on 02/04/10 at 14:39:46, Fritzlein wrote:
Tuks's win all but guarantees Adanac the top seed into the finals.  I can only get the top seed if I win and The_Jeh wins, or if I win and both Nombril and Omar win.  Chessandgo can't get the top seed at all, even if he beats The_Jeh and I beat Adanac.  Thus the top seed is very valuable because it will allow either me or Adanac to avoid chessandgo until the third round of the finals.  Adanac is on a course for a pleasurable second round of the finals in which he gets to play the #4 seed while watching chessandgo and Fritzlein beat each other up.  Indeed, if Adanac is really scared of me and chessandgo, he should at all costs avoid beating me tomorrow to knock me down to the #4 seed and have to meet me in round 2 of the finals anyway!

I can't work out all the cases, but I think that Tuks's win also guarantees 99of9 a spot in the finals even if 99of9 loses to Nevermind.  If I am right, that means that six spots in the finals are wrapped up (chessandgo, Fritzlein, Adanac, 99of9, Tuks, The_Jeh), plus the winner of Simon vs. woh to bring us to seven.  The eighth spot is divided between Nevermind, Nombril, and a lucky 2-3 player if both Nevermind and Nombril lose.

Probably I'm oversimplifying by missing some corner cases, such as woh, Nevermind, and Nombril all winning, but woh being left out anyway.  Oh, well. ::)


Your analysis is very accurate except about the part where 99of9 has already clinched.  There are still a few scenarios where he can be eliminated, for example, Nombril gets 4 opponent wins as shown below:

(it also confirms your shameful suggestion that I should avoid you and Jean by losing tomorrow  :-*  I dive for nobody, you're going down Juhnke :D)

{| cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 border=1
! Rank !! Participant !! Name !! WHR [Seed] !! Rd. 1 !! Rd. 2 !! Rd. 3 !! Rd. 4 !! Rd. 5 !! Wins !! SoS
|-
| 1 || Adanac || Greg Magne || 2319 [3] || G 11 W || S 6 W || S 4 W || S 3 W || G 2 L || 4 || 1.5953
|-
| 2 || Fritzlein || Karl Juhnke || 2568 [1] || G 5 W || S 15 W || G 3 L || G 7 W || S 1 W || 4 || 1.5316
|-
| 3 || chessandgo || Jean Daligault || 2561 [2] || G 13 W || S 10 W || S 2 W || G 1 L || S 5 W || 4 || 1.4453
|-
| 4 || Tuks || Daniel Scott || 2199 [5] || S 8 W || S 7 W || G 1 L || G 9 L || S 10 W || 3 || 2.5000
|-
| 5 || The_Jeh || John Herr || 1987 [9] || S 2 L || G 16 W || S 14 W || G 8 W || G 3 L || 3 || 2.1365
|-
| 6 || Simon || Simon Lambert || 1799 [12] || S 9 W || G 1 L || S 7 L || S 15 W || G 11 W || 3 || 2.0985
|-
| 7 || Nombril || Eric Momsen || 1753 [14] || S 12 W || G 4 L || G 6 W || S 2 L || S 14 W || 3 || 2.0985
|-
| 8 || Nevermind || Antti Laine || 1756 [13] || G 4 L || S 12 W || G 10 W || S 5 L || S 9 W || 3 || 1.9968
|-
| 9 || 99of9 || Toby Hudson || 2227 [4] || G 6 L || S 11 W || G 15 W || S 4 W || G 8 L || 3 || 1.8469
|-
| 10 || PMertens || Paul Mertens || 2004 [8] || S 14 W || G 3 L || S 8 L || G 13 W || G 4 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 11 || woh || Herve Dhondt || 1851 [11] || S 1 L || G 9 L || S 16 W || G 14 W || S 6 L || 2 || 2.7516
|-
| 12 || ChrisB || Christopher Bovee || 2095 [6] || G 7 L || G 8 L || S 13 L || G 16 W || S 15 W || 2 || 2.3501
|-
| 13 || naveed || Naveed Siddiqui || 1859 [10] || S 3 L || G 14 L || G 12 W || S 10 L || S 16 W || 2 || 2.2484
|-
| 14 || Hippo || Vladan Majerech || 1581 [16] || G 10 L || S 13 W || G 5 L || S 11 L || G 7 L || 1 || 4.0579
|-
| 15 || omar || Omar Syed || 2012 [7] || S 16 W || G 2 L || S 9 L || G 6 L || G 12 L || 1 || 3.7682
|-
| 16 || fritzlforpresident || John Hoody || 1658 [15] || G 15 L || S 5 L || G 11 L || S 12 L || G 13 L || 0 || 4.4213
|}

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 4th, 2010, 3:29pm
Nevermind, you're in luck.  Rain is forecast for Sydney on Saturday morning, so furniture moving has been delayed.

Omar, could you please bring the game forward by 14 hours once Nevermind sees this? (To the timeslot determined by the second run of the scheduler.)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2010, 4:21pm
Yay!  I'm so glad that the 99of9 vs. Nevermind game will happen after all.  Not only is miscommunication about how to use the scheduler a poor reason for a forfeit, but also the game itself is extremely consequential to the tournament standings, and will be symbolic of the extent to which the old guard has been usurped (or not).

To make the good news even better, I believe the changed time will make live commentary feasible.  I can hardly wait!

99of9, it is very good of you to agree to change the time when you could have insisted on the originally scheduled time, and especially when Adanac's scenario generator has shown you how you could still theoretically be eliminated by a loss.  I vote that we have a sportsmanship prize every tournament, just so that we can award it for behavior like this.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 4th, 2010, 5:14pm

on 02/04/10 at 15:29:44, 99of9 wrote:
Nevermind, you're in luck.  Rain is forecast for Sydney on Saturday morning, so furniture moving has been delayed.

Omar, could you please bring the game forward by 14 hours once Nevermind sees this? (To the timeslot determined by the second run of the scheduler.)


I've move the game back to 14 hours earlier. I hope Nevermind sees this in time. I've sent an email also.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Eltripas on Feb 4th, 2010, 6:02pm
I'm curious, under what scenario PM is able to qualify?

Thanks in advance if someone minds to answer

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 4th, 2010, 6:11pm

on 02/04/10 at 18:02:29, Eltripas wrote:
I'm curious, under what scenario PM is able to qualify?

Thanks in advance if someone minds to answer


Here's an example.  It's actually a 4-way tie for 8th but the final tie-breaker is higher WHR.

{| cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 border=1
! Rank !! Participant !! Name !! WHR [Seed] !! Rd. 1 !! Rd. 2 !! Rd. 3 !! Rd. 4 !! Rd. 5 !! Wins !! SoS
|-
| 1 || Adanac || Greg Magne || 2319 [3] || G 9 W || S 6 W || S 5 W || S 3 W || G 2 L || 4 || 1.5953
|-
| 2 || Fritzlein || Karl Juhnke || 2568 [1] || G 7 W || S 12 W || G 3 L || G 11 W || S 1 W || 4 || 1.4453
|-
| 3 || chessandgo || Jean Daligault || 2561 [2] || G 14 W || S 8 W || S 2 W || G 1 L || S 7 W || 4 || 1.4453
|-
| 4 || 99of9 || Toby Hudson || 2227 [4] || G 6 L || S 9 W || G 12 W || S 5 W || G 10 W || 4 || 0.7922
|-
| 5 || Tuks || Daniel Scott || 2199 [5] || S 10 W || S 11 W || G 1 L || G 4 L || S 8 W || 3 || 2.2484
|-
| 6 || Simon || Simon Lambert || 1799 [12] || S 4 W || G 1 L || S 11 L || S 12 W || G 9 W || 3 || 2.2484
|-
| 7 || The_Jeh || John Herr || 1987 [9] || S 2 L || G 16 W || S 13 W || G 10 W || G 3 L || 3 || 2.0348
|-
| 8 || PMertens || Paul Mertens || 2004 [8] || S 13 W || G 3 L || S 10 L || G 14 W || G 5 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 9 || woh || Herve Dhondt || 1851 [11] || S 1 L || G 4 L || S 16 W || G 13 W || S 6 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 10 || Nevermind || Antti Laine || 1756 [13] || G 5 L || S 15 W || G 8 W || S 7 L || S 4 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 11 || Nombril || Eric Momsen || 1753 [14] || S 15 W || G 5 L || G 6 W || S 2 L || S 13 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 12 || omar || Omar Syed || 2012 [7] || S 16 W || G 2 L || S 4 L || G 6 L || G 15 W || 2 || 2.9015
|-
| 13 || Hippo || Vladan Majerech || 1581 [16] || G 8 L || S 14 W || G 7 L || S 9 L || G 11 W || 2 || 2.7516
|-
| 14 || naveed || Naveed Siddiqui || 1859 [10] || S 3 L || G 13 L || G 15 W || S 8 L || S 16 W || 2 || 2.2484
|-
| 15 || ChrisB || Christopher Bovee || 2095 [6] || G 11 L || G 10 L || S 14 L || G 16 W || S 12 L || 1 || 3.2548
|-
| 16 || fritzlforpresident || John Hoody || 1658 [15] || G 12 L || S 7 L || G 9 L || S 15 L || G 14 L || 0 || 4.4213
|}

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2010, 6:20pm
Hmm... that makes it look like PMertens needs all seven remaining games to fall out just right.  That suggests an expansion of the current scenario generator (in your copious free time between writing amazing game reports!):

Count the number of scenarios for each placement of each person.  So there are 128 scenarios left, and PMertens' row might look like:

PMertens  2 8th, 15 9th, 87 10th, 24 11th

Does that make sense?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by PMertens on Feb 5th, 2010, 2:08am
I certainly do not feel like I earned a place in the finals ....
especially since this kind of weird luck would not help me there  ;)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 5th, 2010, 5:15am

on 02/04/10 at 18:20:17, Fritzlein wrote:
Count the number of scenarios for each placement of each person.  So there are 128 scenarios left, and PMertens' row might look like:

PMertens  2 8th, 15 9th, 87 10th, 24 11th

Does that make sense?


I'll add that next year to my final-round analysis.  I won't have time today because the next 10 hours will be very hectic...and then I'll use the next 2 hours to get ready for a big game ;)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Feb 5th, 2010, 8:14am

on 02/04/10 at 14:39:46, Fritzlein wrote:
 Indeed, if Adanac is really scared of me and chessandgo, he should at all costs avoid beating me tomorrow


I used the wording "psychological warfare" about what you wrote in the past Karl, but I'd never have thought I'd witness you talking your opponent into intentionally losing to you :p

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by woh on Feb 5th, 2010, 8:40am

on 02/04/10 at 18:20:17, Fritzlein wrote:
Count the number of scenarios for each placement of each person.



                                   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16
1 Fritzlein                       40  16  36  32   4   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
2 chessandgo                       0  40  28  24  28   7   1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
3 Adanac                          88  40   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
4 99of9                            0  14  18  32   2   8  28  22   4   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
5 Tuks                             0   0   0  32  72  24   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
6 ChrisB                           0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0  28  20  24  46  10
7 omar                             0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   4  14  27  27  24  32   0
8 PMertens                         0   0   0   0   0   0   0   1  16  31  61  18   1   0   0   0
9 The_Jeh                          0  18  46   8  12  15  23   6   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0
10 naveed                           0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   4  44  20  28  32
11 woh                              0   0   0   0   0  11  31  20  15  28  20   3   0   0   0   0
12 Simon                            0   0   0   0   8  30  22  12  34  22   0   0   0   0   0   0
13 Nevermind                        0   0   0   0   2  33  15  31  27  20   0   0   0   0   0   0
14 Nombril                          0   0   0   0   0   0   8  36  32  19  21  12   0   0   0   0
15 fritzlforpresident               0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0  20  22  86
16 Hippo                            0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   4  12  36  36  40   0   0


The scenario posted by Adanac is the only one where PMertens qualifies.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 5th, 2010, 10:47am
That's awesome, woh.  Thank you for calculating this!  So PMertens does indeed need all seven remaining games to go his way in order to qualify as the top 2-3 player.

Also we see by counting scenarios who is least in control of his own fate among the 2-2 players:

Nombril 44
woh 62
Simon 72
Nevermind 81

So both Nevermind and Simon have more chance of qualifying in spite of losing than they have of failing to qualify despite winning.  For woh and Nombril it is the reverse.  There is some justice there, given that Nevermind gets the "unlucky" pairing of having to play up while Nombril get the "lucky" pairing of playing down.  There is some karmic compensation in strength of schedule.

Of course, counting up scenarios is flawed because not all are equally likely.  I was rejoicing to see that I finish first in 40 out of 64 scenarios where I beat Adanac, until I remembered that 32 of those require The_Jeh to beat chessandgo, and only 8 are when chessandgo beats The_Jeh.  :P

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 5th, 2010, 11:36am
I thought I'd offer a suggestion for next year...it seems there are a lot of references to luck as to who will qualify for the 8th spot.  I find it a bit ironic in an abstract game tournament that luck is turning into such a factor.

It seems the open portion of the tournament is serving two purposes.  1. selecting the top 8 players,  and 2.  seeding the double elimination tournament.

Now, being just a bit biased from my viewpoint at the middle of the pack ;) , I think selecting the top 8 is more important than seeding them.  If all of the 2-2 players would have played each other, there would be no ambiguity for the top 8.  Yes, that means that one of the 3+ win players either has a bye or a lopsided matchup.  But we wouldn't have chance of the 8th place being chosen by the luck of strength of schedule (or WHR, as is being discussed for next year.)

I'm not sure how such a mechanism would be codified, or how often this situation shows up with different numbers of participants.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 5th, 2010, 12:28pm

on 02/05/10 at 11:36:25, Nombril wrote:
Now, being just a bit biased from my viewpoint at the middle of the pack ;) , I think selecting the top 8 is more important than seeding them.

That is a very reasonable thought, which has also occurred to Scrabble players.  In the Scrabble World Championship there is quite a bit of luck in each game, so they need more rounds than we do to seed the finals, but whenever a player has clinched a spot in the finals, he is from then on paired against the highest players who have been eliminated from the finals, whereas the players who are on the bubble are paired against each other.

An important difference with Scrabble, however, is that they have a built-in tiebreaker after W-L record, namely cumulative score differential, so they don't have to resort to strength of schedule.  We have no such tiebreaker, so we either have to use strength of schedule at some point or play extra games.  


Quote:
If all of the 2-2 players would have played each other, there would be no ambiguity for the top 8.

As you mention, this will only be true when there are exactly sixteen entrants.  In other years there may be an odd number of 2-2 players, or ten players that finish 3-2 or better, etc.

When we focus the energies of the pairings on determining which of players 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 are above the line and which are below the line, we also have to take into consideration the luck that went into putting those people on the bubble while making #5 safe and eliminating #12.  I can imagine cases where we feel that player #12 should have still been in the running and given a chance to prove himself, and cases where we feel #5 lucked into a safe spot and probably would lose if forced to play another risky game.  Conversely there will be times when we think that #6 has already proven himself and shouldn't be required to play again, or think that #11 hasn't done enough to prove that he belongs in the bubble group.

Our current format isn't perfect, but in only five rounds it allows everyone to have a fair shot of making it to the finals.  It provides a decent sort-order of the players without relying much on pre-tournament ratings.  The amount of luck involved in separating eighth place from ninth place is indeed a valid concern, but if that's the worst flaw of the World Championship procedure, we're doing pretty well.

The usual tradeoff in reducing luck is playing more games.  If, however, someone can propose a pairing/scoring system that consistently reduces the luck element (not just in the present scenario), then I'm all for it.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Eltripas on Feb 5th, 2010, 2:12pm
In my opinion, while in fact there is some luck in the way the tournament is now and some strong players are left out while some not so strong players may go to the finals, the real contenders to the title of champion qualify anyways without problem (or maybe a little but qualify in the end), which in my view is the important most thing.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by fritzlforpresident on Feb 6th, 2010, 9:15am
I am not sure if there was a server problem or not, but I won on time today after the first move in my game against Naveed.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Feb 7th, 2010, 5:49am

on 02/04/10 at 11:32:43, omar wrote:
Thanks for sharing this article.

"Perhaps chess is the wrong game for the times." -GK

That's kind of what I felt also after the 1997 match. Actually it started out with me feeling sorry for GK that IBM wasn't going to give him a rematch, but then thinking that even if they did he might not be able to win. It seemed to me that the root problem was chess and GK needed a different game that would allow him to show the depth of his "real" intelligence over artificial intelligence. Tweeking the rules of chess to make such a game seemed like it would be simple (knowing what I knew about how computers play chess). Little did I know what I was getting myself into :-)

It would be interesting to know what GK thinks about Arimaa. In a way Arimaa was designed for him so that he could use it to stay ahead of the computers. It would be nice if he at least knew about it :-)


Thanks Karl for this link! I love your GK quote Omar :) I'm wondering whether I could put it in my book (I guess not).  At least I can send an email the NY review of books to ask them, do you guys think there's any chance?

It'd be so awesome to have GK know about arimaa ... :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:32am

on 02/07/10 at 05:49:56, chessandgo wrote:
I love your GK quote Omar :) I'm wondering whether I could put it in my book (I guess not).  At least I can send an email the NY review of books to ask them, do you guys think there's any chance?

I think quoting GK definitely falls under "fair use", so that you have a right to do so with or without permission.


Quote:
It'd be so awesome to have GK know about arimaa ... :)

The problem with that quote is that GK is talking about poker, not Arimaa, as a substitute for chess.  Still, you might be able to work it in to good effect.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 8:09am
We have three games left, and thus only eight scenarios.  That's a small enough number that I will try to parse it by hand, but large enough that I will probably get it wrong.

Winners    .    .    .    Qualifiers
----------------------    ----------
Nombril, Simon  .    .    Nombril, Simon
Nombril, woh    .    .    Nombril, woh
Hippo, Simon, chessandgo  Simon, PMertens
Hippo, woh, chessandgo    woh, Simon
Hippo, Simon, The_Jeh     Simon, Nevermind
Hippo, woh, The_Jeh  .    woh, Simon


So Nombril, Simon, and woh all control their own fate.  If Nombril wins, then Simon vs. woh is totally straightforward, with the winner in and the loser out.  However, if Hippo beats Nombril, then Simon has clinched a spot whether or not he beats woh!  It was a big help to Simon that 99of9 and Omar won this round.  (But this analysis is not to be trusted; Simon had better try to win his final game regardless.)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 8:23am
One of the more interesting cases in which to compare WHR with the SoS is in determining the top 2-3 player in case there are only seven players with 3 or more wins.

Winners    .    .    .    Top 2-3 Fritz  Top 2-3 WHR
----------------------    -------------  -----------
Hippo, Simon, chessandgo  PMertens  .    woh
Hippo, woh, chessandgo    Simon     .    Simon
Hippo, Simon, The_Jeh     Nevermind .    Nevermind
Hippo, woh, The_Jeh  .    Simon     .    Simon


Note that the only time they disagree is the first line, and that was the case when the Fritz SoS produced a four-way tie that PMertens won based on higher pre-tournament ranking.  WHR breaks that tie differently, using only in-tournament information.

This is another confirmation of my growing impression that WHR isn't better than Fritz SoS except by virtue of tiebreaking.  In the cases where there is a simple disagreement of ranking, it is arguable which ranking is better, and I might even have a slight preference for the Fritz SoS.  But when there is a tie in the rankings according to Fritz SoS, I am not happy that it should be broken by pre-tournament ranking, so in those cases I prefer WHR.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Feb 7th, 2010, 9:39am
These are not good chances for Paul as Simon with woh are playing the last match and could easily agree on advancing even if it would be the Paul's case.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 10:07am

on 02/07/10 at 09:39:37, Hippo wrote:
These are not good chances for Paul as Simon with woh are playing the last match and could easily agree on advancing even if it would be the Paul's case.

If we had players who didn't care about playing their best, I can understand why woh would agree to get a free win, but why should Simon agree to let woh advance?  It gets Simon a worse seed in the finals to qualify as the best 2-3 rather than the worst 3-2.

Anyway, Hippo, with your implied assumptions about what motivates players, Nombril will have a free win today because you can't advance anyway, so you and Nombril can easily agree to let him win.  Why should you play to win when nothing is at stake?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by PMertens on Feb 7th, 2010, 1:38pm
ah yes ... thanks for winning for me, Hippo ;)
since I obviously could not do it myself  ::)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Feb 7th, 2010, 1:55pm
I have definitely not want to end with 1-4 record.
I hoped for LWWWL record or at least LWLWW.
If Simon has no chance to fight with woh early in the double elimination there is really nothing to motivate him to lose (suppose he expects Paul be tougher opponent).

But I really expect him to play his best.

P.S.: I really hope he have played his best ...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 7th, 2010, 6:08pm
Here are the final standings after round 5.

Adanac 8, 1.592, 2319, 14981327
Fritzlein 8, 1.442, 2568, 5740510
chessandgo 8, 1.442, 2561, 85081596
99of9 8, 0.787, 2227, 57429415
Tuks 6, 2.247, 2199, 34425107
The_Jeh 6, 2.034, 1987, 83071905
woh 6, 2.034, 1851, 25689908
Simon 4, 3.558, 1799, 36616487
PMertens 4, 3.155, 2004, 50101893
Nevermind 4, 3.155, 1756, 35632797
Hippo 4, 3.005, 1581, 49719646
Nombril 4, 2.903, 1753, 90361130
omar 4, 2.650, 2012, 50285839
naveed 4, 2.247, 1859, 69578537
ChrisB 2, 3.258, 2095, 52777368
fritzlforpresident 0, 4.489, 1658, 74558390

Wow, I must say that the competition has definitely gotten very strong this year. At one time Naveed and I were among the top players; now we seem to be falling farther and farther behind each year.

To the players who didn't make it into the finals, thanks for playing; I hope you enjoyed the tournament and will be back again even stronger  next year. To the finalists, congratulations and best of luck in the finals.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 6:44pm
Omar, how did I just get informed of my game time (which we have now clarified to be final barring mutual agreement with my opponent) when the first run of the scheduler isn't supposed to be until Monday night?  I can play at my scheduled time, but since changes are not allowed, running the scheduler earlier than you say you will can cause people some nasty surprises.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 7th, 2010, 6:56pm
Perhaps you should run the scheduler 3 times this round, with the second run being the official run - on time?

Note that I am not saying whether my time was good or bad, because Fritz thinks that would be giving out too much information that my opponent could exploit :-).  However if anyone reads the archives, they will find that I just got my preferences in early enough :-).

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:08pm
From the chatroom archives we can see that 99of9 did get indeed get his changes in under the wire, but also we see that I wasn't the only one expecting to have more time:

07:11:57 99of9 I've just remembered to update my preferences
07:12:30 Tuks ill do it tomorrow...well today, but later

I interpret Tuks' comment to mean that he would sleep before updating his preferences, but then realized that since it was past midnight his local time, it was already tomorrow.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:13pm
yes, i wasn't expecting the finalization and would like a redo if possible... i have different time slots that i would prefer over the current one


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by The_Jeh on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:16pm
Just for fun, I thought I'd see how the Bradley-Terry Model (each player 1-2 against the anchor) ranks the players. Here are the results:

1. Adanac 2.27
2. Fritzlein 2.04
3. chessandgo 2.03
4. 99of9 1.60
5. Tuks 1.10
6. woh 0.96
7. The_Jeh 0.95
8. Simon 0.66
9. PMertens 0.56
10. Nevermind 0.54
11. Nombril 0.52
12. Hippo 0.51
13. omar 0.43
14. naveed 0.35
15. ChrisB 0.16
16. fritzlforpresident 0.08

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:19pm
Tuks, I acknowledge that I have seen your communication that you may change your preferences before the next scheduling is run  (i.e. you have my permission - even though it's now against the rules ;)).

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:28pm

on 02/07/10 at 19:16:59, The_Jeh wrote:
Just for fun, I thought I'd see how the Bradley-Terry Model (each player 1-2 against the anchor) ranks the players.

So, the same rank-order except that woh edges out The_Jeh.  I note that by the current tournament SoS the two are tied and The_Jeh only finishes ahead by virtue of pre-tournament ranking.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:33pm
Let me second Omar's sentiment that we have had a great World Championship so far.  We have never had so many games without a forfeit.  Hippo's lost connection was unfortunate, as are all technical problems, but to have only one game damaged by technical issues is also better than usual.

In addition, there were some fantastic games and stunning upsets.  I don't think the preliminaries have ever been this interesting before.  Thanks to all for making it so!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 7th, 2010, 7:46pm

on 02/07/10 at 19:19:23, 99of9 wrote:
Tuks, I acknowledge that I have seen your communication that you may change your preferences before the next scheduling is run  (i.e. you have my permission - even though it's now against the rules ;)).

Without permission from either woh or Omar, I have updated my time preferences to reflect the fact that, for this week only, Saturday is marginally better for me than Sunday.  But if this is ruled invalid and I have to keep the currently scheduled time, no problem, because it is a second-best even on my changed preferences.  In fact, even if Omar rules that he will re-run the scheduler at the normal time, woh can use the information I have just imparted to unilaterally insure that the scheduler picks the same time on the next run.  :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 8th, 2010, 11:05am
Woh contacted me offline and we agreed to time slot 70, so all is well!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Simon on Feb 8th, 2010, 5:09pm
I have unilaterally changed my preferences too. I tried emailing Adanac but got no response, and for all I know (without further information from Adanac) the only reason the game wasn't scheduled on the weekend could be that he has forgotten to update his times from being away the previous weekend.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 8th, 2010, 6:08pm

on 02/07/10 at 18:08:13, omar wrote:
Here are the final standings after round 5.

Adanac 8, 1.592, 2319, 14981327
Fritzlein 8, 1.442, 2568, 5740510
chessandgo 8, 1.442, 2561, 85081596
99of9 8, 0.787, 2227, 57429415
Tuks 6, 2.247, 2199, 34425107
The_Jeh 6, 2.034, 1987, 83071905
woh 6, 2.034, 1851, 25689908
Simon 4, 3.558, 1799, 36616487

It's interesting that the top 6 qualifiers were all in the top 7 last year (and only differ because arimaa_master did not enter this year).  Woh only just missed out last year, after placnig 9th in the preliminaries (having been 7th in 2008).  So Simon is the lone finals representative of the non WC-veterans.  Even in a year where we saw so many newcomers to the server and indeed the tournament.

This suggests a lot more stability than some speculated about in anticipation of the release of the sets and book.  I guess it goes to show that arimaa theory already has a significant depth to it, and that even the most brilliant newcomers have to put in the study/hours to competitively take on our brilliant current and past world champions.  Personally I'm very glad of the fact that arimaa experience doesn't expire too rapidly :-).  My optimistic aim is to come 4th again this year.  If that happens I'll be putting the hard word on those of you who say that humans are still advancing rapidly, because I find it hard to believe that I've advanced much (subconsciously?) since last playing in the 2009 WC.

Nevertheless, it was very refreshing to see so many committed newcomers in the Open Classic this year.  I agree with Fritz that the lack of forfeits, and oodles of close games, make it a very respectable tournament, and fun to take part in.  Thanks everyone.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 8th, 2010, 7:50pm

on 02/08/10 at 18:08:17, 99of9 wrote:
My optimistic aim is to come 4th again this year.  If that happens I'll be putting the hard word on those of you who say that humans are still advancing rapidly [...]

You make a good point about the amount of continuity from last year to this year.  I tend to agree that Arimaa has already built up quite a bit of depth that must be assimilated over time by newcomers, such that asking someone who only learned of the game at the time of its release in August to have risen to the top by now is unrealistic.  There is too much to learn in six months, which is a good thing for Arimaa's prestige and staying power as a game.

Nevertheless, I will still stake my claim as one of those who says that Arimaa theory is still advancing rapidly, something like 100 Elo points per year.  I was less sure of this a month or two ago than I am today, but this tournament has increased my confidence that we are still running forward.

Given the wide spread of ratings at the top of the scale, such a great change in skill need not produce a change in ranks.  If the current gameroom ratings are accurate, I could gain 100 points without passing chessandgo, and Adanac could likewise gain 100 points without passing me.  Arimaa ratings are not compressed at the top like chess ratings where twenty-five active players are within 100 points of the top-rated player.

When you took fourth last year, you were rated a bit more than 100 points ahead of arimaa_master, the fifth-place finisher then.  If you would like to forward a fourth-place finish by yourself as evidence that Arimaa theory has not advanced much in the past year, then you would have to grant that a fifth-place finish by you proves that theory has advanced every bit as much as I claim.  How sure are you that you are still ahead of Tuks?  ;)  

But it is a bit silly to stake so much on the outcome of a single tournament.  Last year you lost to arimaa_master in the preliminaries but finished ahead of him in the finals.  This year you might finish behind Tuks in the finals after having beaten him in the preliminaries.  We will be basing the performance of each of you on approximately nine games; a very small sample.

Consider instead that last year when you played chessandgo in the 2009 finals, you were rated 262 points behind him, whereas presently you are rated 346 points behind.  If you want to argue that Arimaa theory hasn't advanced by those 84 rating points, you would have make the case that his rating is artificially high.  Yet there are no signs that the system as a whole has undergone rating inflation in the past year, and chessandgo's rating in particular has been established against human opposition, not inflated by bot-bashing.  I regard your distance from the top to be at least as reliable an indicator as your placement in the World Championship tournament.

Note that I'm not claiming that I personally am 100 points better than I was last year.  I rather think my own pace of improvement has slowed down.  But hopefully even as I tiptoe into my forties I can still hang on to the #2 ranking for a while to come.  Like you, I'm hoping that I don't instantly become obsolete.  :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 8th, 2010, 9:14pm
I don't trust the stability of the ratings anywhere near enough to measure this year upon year. You say there's no evidence of ratings inflation, but is there evidence that there's none?  If there's none amongst the top players as a group, then ratings do not show that we've advanced our understanding??  So you sort of require inflation and no-inflation (amongst different populations) to prove your point with ratings.

I agree with you that the sparsity at the top makes it hard to measure anything except the order in a short tournament.  However this particularly applies at the very top.  To get a good measure of "humanity", it's not good to use Jean as your metric. If your claim is that "Jean has advanced by 100 points of understanding", I'll concede that this may be true, but Magnus Carlsen probably also has/is.  Young players are bound to gain while they are active, but at some point they leave the game (e.g. arimaa_master?) or get old, so if we're talking about an overall population effect, it's a very sawtooth/noisy measure if you just use a gap or rating for the top player.

4th position is better, but admittedly not much better.  I'd rather use around 8th.  It's just that our other non-learning standards (bots) are so far out of the league that we can't use them to measure this at all (and suffer from the predictability-inflation effect).

Regarding your ratings argument about arimaa_master (if we're going to talk ratings): Last year going into the finals there were two humans within the 100 points below me (just), so a straightforward 100 point advance would most likely place me 6th not 5th.  Further, the reason my methodology doesn't work when negated is that it's a reasonable assumption to make that I have not improved, but it's not quite as reasonable to assume that I have not gone backward with ten months off.

Regarding Tuks: I have no idea, we'll find out this week ;).  But that's why my plan to give you a hard time is only going to come into effect if I actually achieve 4th! (although since you wanted to start early, I'm happy to indulge :P)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 8th, 2010, 9:28pm

on 02/08/10 at 19:50:35, Fritzlein wrote:
Consider instead that last year when you played chessandgo in the 2009 finals, you were rated 262 points behind him, whereas presently you are rated 346 points behind.  If you want to argue that Arimaa theory hasn't advanced by those 84 rating points, you would have make the case that his rating is artificially high.  

As an example of how unreliable arguments using ratings are, going into the finals last year (the corresponding point) I was rated 329 points behind.  My official rating uncertainty is almost 120!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Manuel on Feb 8th, 2010, 11:46pm
I thought that final games are played on a 90s time scale, but I notice they are scheduled as 60s games. I guess that is a mistake?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 8th, 2010, 11:54pm

on 02/08/10 at 21:14:49, 99of9 wrote:
So you sort of require inflation and no-inflation (amongst different populations) to prove your point with ratings.

Yes, the non-inflation is going on with the fixed-performance bots.  In fact, the last time I measured (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1065901453;start=150#150), they had deflated significantly because we had nailed down ArimaaScoreP1 to 1000 rating and had started newcomers at 1300.  Because of that measured deflation, we bumped up the ratings of newcomers to 1400.  I haven't measured again since, but my rough impression is that the fixed-performance bots are now near their 2005 level, i.e. before the inflation/deflation cycle.  But this reminds me that the end of 2009 is a good time to repeat my measurement rather than relying on rough impressions.

If it is true that the ratings of fixed-performance bots are relatively stable, then it would suggest that any increased ratings among top players reflect a genuine increase in skill.


Quote:
However this particularly applies at the very top.  To get a good measure of "humanity", it's not good to use Jean as your metric. If your claim is that "Jean has advanced by 100 points of understanding", I'll concede that this may be true, but Magnus Carlsen probably also has/is.

The flaw in your analogy is that Jean was already the top-rated Arimaa player before his 100-point advance, whereas Magnus Carlsen was not the top-rated chess player until after his 100-point advance.  The rating of the top chess player has made a jagged graph indeed, but slowly rising, and only including the last few points of Carlsen's advance.  The rating of the top Arimaa player is probably even more jagged, but nevertheless shows a much more rapid advance, including Jean's huge rise this year.


Quote:
Young players are bound to gain while they are active, but at some point they leave the game (e.g. arimaa_master?) or get old, so if we're talking about an overall population effect, it's a very sawtooth/noisy measure if you just use a gap or rating for the top player.

Yes, I agree it is noisy to just measure the rating of the top player, mostly because of the inaccuracy of ratings.


Quote:
4th position is better, but admittedly not much better.  I'd rather use around 8th.

I'm curious why the skill level of the 8th-best player in the world is a better indicator of the state of the art than the skill level of the best player.  By your measure Jean and I could learn arbitrarily much about Arimaa without advancing Arimaa theory at all!  I'm not sure why improved skill should only count if it is among players below your own rank.


Quote:
Further, the reason my methodology doesn't work when negated is that it's a reasonable assumption to make that I have not improved, but it's not quite as reasonable to assume that I have not gone backward with ten months off.

Hmmm...  Does it happen in science that an experiment that comes out positive strengthens a hypothesis when that same experiment coming out negative doesn't weaken the hypothesis at all?  I guess if one can design such one-way experiments, it's the best type to get funded, because they can never fail!

It is telling that you don't mention PMertens' failure to qualify as evidence that the general level of play has risen.  Yes, it is a plausible explanation that he is merely rusty, but it is also a plausible explanation that fire is caused by phlogistin moving from the wood into the air.

Rustiness, however, is not a very plausible explanation for why Omar has just had his worst World Championship finish ever, because Omar has played reasonably actively in the past few months.  Should we not cast a broader net for evidence than just your own final ranking?


Quote:
Regarding Tuks: I have no idea, we'll find out this week ;).  But that's why my plan to give you a hard time is only going to come into effect if I actually achieve 4th! (although since you wanted to start early, I'm happy to indulge :P)

Well, it's good to start giving each other a hard time early, so we can consider various outcomes on an equal footing.  What will you say if you take 3rd this year?  Will it prove that the rest of us have gotten worse at Arimaa?  I would submit that if you came in 3rd you would explain it by saying there is a fair bit of random variation in a short trial, e.g. you got a lucky win over Adanac.  (And by the way, I don't take Adanac's #1 seed in the final as much evidence that he has passed up Jean and me in skill.)  But why would the "random variation" explanation apply only to a 3rd place finish and not to 4th place or a lower finish?


Quote:
As an example of how unreliable arguments using ratings are, going into the finals last year (the corresponding point) I was rated 329 points behind.  My official rating uncertainty is almost 120!

Ah, that's a very good point.  Your rating has fluctuated 118 points just within this year's tournament!  That effectively blows apart my argument by rating gap between you and Jean.  This year you were briefly rated about 500 points below him.  I should perhaps have argued instead from the absolute increase in Jean's rating, coupled with an argument that ratings in general are not inflating.

It is always so much easier to pick apart an opposing position than to make a coherent positive case.  If I may say so, you have done a much better job of arguing for the meaninglessness of ratings than for the meaningfulness of the placement of a single player (you) in a single tournament.  :)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 8th, 2010, 11:56pm

on 02/08/10 at 23:46:51, Manuel wrote:
I thought that final games are played on a 90s time scale, but I notice they are scheduled as 60s games. I guess that is a mistake?

Nice catch.  This is indeed a mistake.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Feb 9th, 2010, 12:00am
The stability was not so obvious I thing. I still hope I could win the game with woh and Nombril could win the last game (playing anybody). But I agree the human x human games training will help much. I started play humans on the end of december ...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by PMertens on Feb 9th, 2010, 7:41am

on 02/08/10 at 23:54:54, Fritzlein wrote:
It is telling that you don't mention PMertens' failure to qualify as evidence that the general level of play has risen.  Yes, it is a plausible explanation that he is merely rusty, but it is also a plausible explanation that fire is caused by phlogistin moving from the wood into the air.


I wonder what you want to say here ;-)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2010, 8:22am
I guess it complicates my debate with 99of9 that I have a very fuzzy notion of what I mean by "humanity" advancing by 100 points in Arimaa skill.  Obviously some players will not have advanced that much, or even have gotten worse due to layoffs.  Other will have advanced more, such as Tuks (the most active HvH player) improving by over 200 rating points, and Simon improving by over 300.  Some players will have dropped out of the field while other have joined in, making unmeasurable ratings changes.

My main thought in assessing the advancement of "humanity" is our ability to defend the Arimaa Challenge against steady advances in the strength of computer players.  For this purpose the most relevant gains are at the very top of the scale.  Ultimately it will come down to just one player who is strong enough to beat back the bots, and at that time nothing but his playing level matters.  In the mean time, however, it is very important how large the Arimaa community is, and how deeply Arimaa knowledge permeates that community, because Jean could at any moment get tired of Arimaa and drop out forever.

For measuring the depth and strength of the potential future bot-beating community, it does seem relevant that this year's World Championship pool of participant is stronger and more serious than ever.  I do grant that if 99of9 finishes fourth this year, just like last year, after having been inactive for a whole year, it is some evidence that the field is not stronger than ever.  But likewise if he finishes lower than 4th it would be some evidence that we are making headway.  However strong the evidence is in either case is debatable; I would say in both cases it is not as strong as evidence from ratings.

The ratings of bots in general (both fixed performance and variable performance) deflated over the course of 2009, while the ratings of top active humans increased.  This is rather indirect evidence given that the best humans lead the best bots by more than a rating class, but it is evidence nonetheless, and I think the most solid evidence we have.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2010, 8:40am

on 02/09/10 at 07:41:39, PMertens wrote:
I wonder what you want to say here ;-)

Apparently you conceded yourself that opening theory had advanced, at least to the extent that you adopted an unbalanced setup.  :)  But you were inactive for two years rather than one, which both gave you more time to get rusty and gave more time for the Arimaa community as a whole to move forward.  Both explanations are stronger due to your long layoff.

My guess is that even if you were "in form" you would be on the bubble of the top eight qualifiers, making it to the finals more often than missing, but still in that range.  Adanac has gotten palpably better than he was when you were trading punch for punch with him, to say nothing of Tuks et. al.

What I'm really hoping for is not that you disappear again and next year come back early enough to get in form, but rather that you take up Arimaa seriously enough to improve to levels above your previous best.  I miss your unique and creative approach to Arimaa, and as fun as it is to have you back for two months of the year, it would be far more fun to have you back year-round.  That's "what I want to say here". ;)

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2010, 10:18am

on 02/08/10 at 21:14:49, 99of9 wrote:
[...] so if we're talking about an overall population effect, it's a very sawtooth/noisy measure if you just use a gap or rating for the top player.

That measure, admittedly very noisy, has risen 400 points in the last five years.  At the beginning of 2005 you were the top player, rated around 2200, and now Jean is rated around 2600.  Of course, even if that noisy number reflects "humanity" having risen by 400 points in playing strength, which is arguable, it doesn't say how much of the 400-point rise occurred in the last six months since the release of Arimaa sets.  Furthermore, it suggests the trend is a bit under 100 points per year.  But thanks to fixed performance bots, I do think we can at least say ratings in 2010 are about on the same scale they were in 2005.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by PMertens on Feb 9th, 2010, 11:45am

on 02/09/10 at 08:40:11, Fritzlein wrote:
What I'm really hoping for is not that you disappear again and next year come back early enough to get in form, but rather that you take up Arimaa seriously enough to improve to levels above your previous best.  I miss your unique and creative approach to Arimaa, and as fun as it is to have you back for two months of the year, it would be far more fun to have you back year-round.  That's "what I want to say here". ;)


no promises, but I do miss arimaa and the community myself ...

tactically I was clearly stronger before ... but my main problem this year was that I was strategically clueless ... so I guess I mostly agree with your reasoning ...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 9th, 2010, 2:49pm

on 02/08/10 at 17:09:46, Simon wrote:
I have unilaterally changed my preferences too. I tried emailing Adanac but got no response, and for all I know (without further information from Adanac) the only reason the game wasn't scheduled on the weekend could be that he has forgotten to update his times from being away the previous weekend.


Simon, sorry about that.  I've sent an e-mail to Omar requesting the game time be re-scheduled 1 hour sooner.  But with the game scheduled to begin only 28 hours from now, I'm not sure if he would want to do that...?

EDIT:  I didn't realize the game times were still tentative.  I've switched the 9pm time slot to the highest priority.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2010, 7:19pm

on 02/09/10 at 11:45:54, PMertens wrote:
no promises, but I do miss arimaa and the community myself ...

Sometimes it's tough having to choose between real-life commitments and on-line fun.  But the way I figure it, if your real life is so good it pulls you away from Arimaa, you must be a happy man!  :)  Peace and Joy to you, on and off the board.  --Fritz

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 10th, 2010, 7:21pm

on 02/07/10 at 18:44:24, Fritzlein wrote:
Omar, how did I just get informed of my game time (which we have now clarified to be final barring mutual agreement with my opponent) when the first run of the scheduler isn't supposed to be until Monday night?  I can play at my scheduled time, but since changes are not allowed, running the scheduler earlier than you say you will can cause people some nasty surprises.


Arrrrg, you're right. I thought I was doing a good thing by letting the players know earlier when their games will be, but I forgot to consider that maybe someone had not updated their preferences for next week yet. OK, I'll have to be careful to only run the scheduler at the specified times regardless of if the round finished early or not.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 15th, 2010, 4:11pm
I hope all those in the spectator contest will keep in mind that I am the gameroom ratings favourite against adanac  :-/.  Of course since he is seeded first, this is also clear proof that humanity has been backpedalling for the past year, and that the 1-4 gap is now negative :D.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 15th, 2010, 4:36pm

on 02/15/10 at 16:11:44, 99of9 wrote:
I hope all those in the spectator contest will keep in mind that I am the gameroom ratings favourite against adanac  :-/.

Heheh.  So says the man with the 112 RU.  :)  But anyway, I noticed in the first round of the spectator contest that the underdogs had fewer backers than what I considered their true odds to be.  Therefore, I am backing all the underdogs in the second round, including, of course, Adanac.


Quote:
Of course since he is seeded first, this is also clear proof that humanity has been backpedalling for the past year  :D.

I considered your second straight victory over Tuks a sure sign...  that you would give me grief in the forum.  ;D  Congratulations on striking a blow for the status quo!

It comes back to me suddenly that when I finished off the podium in 2006 I considered it proof that I was washed up and that all the new players had passed me.  I'm glad that my judgment isn't always on target; it would make life so boring...

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 99of9 on Feb 15th, 2010, 7:34pm

on 02/15/10 at 16:36:28, Fritzlein wrote:
I noticed in the first round of the spectator contest that the underdogs had fewer backers than what I considered their true odds to be.

I'm not sure it is supposed to line up with the true odds.  Wouldn't that only be if there was only one prize for the winner of each prediction?  But there is the additional 1 point for everyone backing the winner that tips us toward backing the favourites.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 16th, 2010, 5:19am
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this before, but I think it would be great if there were an additional tie-breaker for the spectator contest.  The luck of being logged in at the moment the next round is open for predictions can make all the difference if two people both makes perfect predictions.  I think that a more fair tie-breaker would be any one of the following:

- predict how many pieces (gold + silver) are still on the board at the end of the game
- which move # does the first capture occur (0 = no-capture prediction)
- other possibilities that I don't like quite as much are winning method (g, t, n, etc.) or total game length in minutes.

I would prefer spending the extra 30 seconds on 4 extra drop-down selections over feeling that I must submit my predictions the nano-second they are available.  I was quite pleased to see 38 participants in the 2010 Spectator Contest!  I hope we have more every year but the current tie-breaker system certainly was not designed to handle large numbers of players.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Eltripas on Feb 16th, 2010, 6:53pm

on 02/16/10 at 05:19:23, Adanac wrote:
- which move # does the first capture occur (0 = no-capture prediction)


+1

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 17th, 2010, 6:25am
I agree with Adanac about the spectator contest.  The time of entry is a poor tiebreaker.  Last week Elmo entered her predictions as soon as she got the e-mail saying it was time to predict.  On the chessandgo vs. The_Jeh game, she predicted 37 moves, just like rabbits, the prediction winner for that game.  Rabbits won the tiebreaker because he entered his prediction two minutes and twenty-one seconds earlier.  That's a little bit silly: how can you do better than entering predictions immediately?

Of your proposed alternative tiebreaks, the move of first capture appeals to me most.  That information is pretty easy to extract from the movelist, and it does display some knowledge about the playing style of the combatants, e.g. whether they like to trade, like to race, like to advance rabbits, like to wrestle, etc.  It would provide a layer of discrimination that is based on predictive power.

It could still end tied, though, in which case I guess one could fall back on the time of entry for second tiebreak, especially since it is already coded.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 17th, 2010, 9:23am
Thanks for the suggestion Greg. I like number of moves to first capture also. I've made a note to add this next year.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 17th, 2010, 10:03am

on 02/17/10 at 09:23:18, omar wrote:
Thanks for the suggestion Greg. I like number of moves to first capture also. I've made a note to add this next year.

Thanks Omar!  Not only would a tie-breaker prediction improve fairness but it would also provide more interesting data.  How strong is the correlation between predicted winning move # and predicted first capture # for various styles of play, for example?

I realize that there was a flaw in my No-Capture Game = 0 assumption.  The player with the lower tie-breaker prediction shouldn’t win the prize.  If there had been a Spectator Contest for the Omar-Simon game (silver in 35 moves with all 32 pieces still on the board at the end).

Suppose Elmo predicted Simon in 35 with first capture at 34
and rabbits predicted Simon in 35 with first capture at 9

In this hypothetical example I think it’s clear that Elmo’s prediction is more accurate and so maybe the winning tie-breaker score should be 36, one more than the winning move number (rather than 0).

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 17th, 2010, 1:17pm

on 02/17/10 at 10:03:38, Adanac wrote:
[...] maybe the winning tie-breaker score should be 36, one more than the winning move number (rather than 0).

That sound like a good convention for measuring who is closest without being exactly right.  When there is no capture the move of first capture is defined to be one more than the number of moves in the game.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 28th, 2010, 10:49am
I'm looking for some technical assistance with the Wiki:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_World_Championship_Finals%2C_Rounds_3%2B

Question 1: How do I force a carriage return in the sentence "Position after 24g Ec5e Ed5n Rh3n Rh4n.  SILVER to move" at the bottom of the diagram below?  Sometimes it will not put the two sentences on the proper row.

[arimaa diagram|=
|tleft
|Diagram 1:  Juhnke vs. Magne
|=
8 |rs|  |  |  |rs|rs|rs|rs|=
7 |rs|hg|ds|rs|ds|rs|cs|hs|=
6 |hs|es|  |eg|  |  |ms|dg|=
5 |  |  |  |  |  |mg|  |rg|=
4 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |=
3 |dg|  |  |  |  |  |cg|  |=
2 |rg|cg|rg|  |  |rg|  |rg|=
1 |rg|  |rg|  |  |rg|  |  |=
|Position after 24g Ec5e Ed5n Rh3n Rh4n.  SILVER to move.
]

Question 2:  Using "!!" will bold and center an entire row in a table such as the one below.  However, is there a way to only bold rather than getting both?

{| cellspacing=0 cellpadding=3 border=1
! Seed !! Rank !! Participant !! Name !! WHR !! Rd. 1 !! Rd. 2 !! Rd. 3 !! Rd. 4 !! Rd. 5 !! Wins !! SoS
|-
| 1 || 2 || Fritzlein || Karl Juhnke || 2568 || G 9 W || S 7 W || G 2 L || G 14 W || S 3 W || 4 || 1.4453
|-
| 2 || 3 || chessandgo || Jean Daligault || 2561 || G 10 W || S 8 W || S 1 W || G 3 L || S 9 W || 4 || 1.4453
|-
| 3 || 1 || Adanac || Greg Magne || 2319 || G 11 W || S 12 W || S 5 W || S 2 W || G 1 L || 4 || 1.5953
|-
| 4 || 4 || 99of9 || Toby Hudson || 2227 || G 12 L || S 11 W || G 7 W || S 5 W || G 13 W || 4 || 0.7922
|-
| 5 || 5 || Tuks || Daniel Scott || 2199 || S 13 W || S 14 W || G 3 L || G 4 L || S 8 W || 3 || 2.2484
|-
| 6 || 15 || ChrisB || Christopher Bovee || 2095 || G 14 L || G 13 L || S 10 L || G 15 W || S 7 L || 1 || 3.2548
|-
| 7 || 13 || omar || Omar Syed || 2012 || S 15 W || G 1 L || S 4 L || G 12 L || G 6 W || 2 || 2.6499
|-
| 8 || 9 || PMertens || Paul Mertens || 2004 || S 16 W || G 2 L || S 13 L || G 10 W || G 5 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 9 || 6 || The_Jeh || John Herr || 1987 || S 1 L || G 15 W || S 16 W || G 13 W || G 2 L || 3 || 2.0348
|-
| 10 || 14 || naveed || Naveed Siddiqui || 1859 || S 2 L || G 16 L || G 6 W || S 8 L || S 15 W || 2 || 2.2484
|-
| 11 || 7 || woh || Herve Dhondt || 1851 || S 3 L || G 4 L || S 15 W || G 16 W || S 12 W || 3 || 2.0348
|-
| 12 || 8 || Simon || Simon Lambert || 1799 || S 4 W || G 3 L || S 14 L || S 7 W || G 11 L || 2 || 3.5547
|-
| 13 || 10 || Nevermind || Antti Laine || 1756 || G 5 L || S 6 W || G 8 W || S 9 L || S 4 L || 2 || 3.1531
|-
| 14 || 12 || Nombril || Eric Momsen || 1753 || S 6 W || G 5 L || G 12 W || S 1 L || S 16 L || 2 || 2.9015
|-
| 15 || 16 || fritzlforpresident || John Hoody || 1658 || G 7 L || S 9 L || G 11 L || S 6 L || G 10 L || 0 || 4.4850
|-
| 16 || 11 || Hippo || Vladan Majerech || 1581 || G 8 L || S 10 W || G 9 L || S 11 L || G 14 W || 2 || 3.0032
|}

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 28th, 2010, 11:20am
Thanks to aaaa for the quick responses to my questions.  The Wiki is now updated.  And thanks doublep for the tips in the chatroom.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 22nd, 2010, 9:50am
I have found a computer from which to play the match today, and I have successfully played a test game, but I am apparently unable to join the chat room.  I hope the game proceeds without technical difficulties.  I apologize in advance that I will not be able to join TeamSpeak or the chat room after the game.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2010, 5:38pm

on 03/22/10 at 09:50:57, Fritzlein wrote:
I have found a computer from which to play the match today, and I have successfully played a test game, but I am apparently unable to join the chat room.  I hope the game proceeds without technical difficulties.  I apologize in advance that I will not be able to join TeamSpeak or the chat room after the game.


Thanks for letting us know Karl. I am glad to see that you didn't have any technical problems during the game. Hope you have a fun and safe trip.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2010, 7:13pm
What an exciting finish to an incredible tournament this year.

Congratulations Jean on winning the 2010 Arimaa World Championship title. Someone who sets up clever false protections and foresees sacrificing a camel to gain a winning position deserves to win. I keep forgetting to tell everyone this, but I recently found out that Jean used to play in the under 12 world chess championships.

Congratulations Karl on placing 2nd in perhaps the toughest field of players we've ever had. After never having been able to beat you online or offline, it's good to know that you are not invincible :-)

Congratulations Greg on placing 3rd. This is the 3rd time now in 3 years you've placed 3rd and you did place 2nd in 2006; so one of these time I think you will snatch the title.

Toby you definitely deserve an honorable mention for playing this strongly after not having played for a year. If you practiced even half as much as I did during the year, I think you would be much more dangerous.

Thanks everyone for participating in this years tournament. You helped to make this an exciting tournament and you have become part of Arimaa's history. You names will appear on the commemorative T-shirts.

Thanks also to the sponsors who supported this years events; Z-Man Games and BoardGames4Us. You can show your support for both of them by purchasing an Arimaa set from BoardGames4Us.com. Don't forget to use the discount code posted in the announcements. Also many thanks to the members of the Arimaa community for contributing to the Arimaa prize fund and showing your support for the players.

A special thanks to Greg and everyone who helped him with the event coverage in the Wiki. It's been a pleasure reading the game summaries. Your efforts are helping to make Arimaa's early history the most well recorded of any abstract strategy game.

I have been totally amazed at the excellent commentators we have in our community. As usual I had no idea of what I was getting into, but had a gut feel that it would be interesting to have live commentary during the games. Fortunately for me, Karl, Greg, Ned, Eric, John, Vladan and Joel stepped up to provide commentary and make the games so lively and entertaining to watch. Thanks so much guys, I don't think I can go back to watching a silent game anymore :-)

Also thanks to Brian, Ivan and Joel for helping with the recording and providing a safety net for me. I definitely have to experiment more with making better quality recordings of the games (while keeping the size down).

Last by not least I want to thank Ned for being the tournament director this year. Fortunately we didn't run into many problems in this year's tournament. But it was comforting for me to know that Ned was just a phone call or email away if I needed his decision urgently on anything.

This has definitely been the most successful year so far for the world championship tournament. Not only was the tournament very successful but even the spectator contest turned out to be quite interesting. Congratulations to Simon for winning three games back to back. We know your strategy now, so it probably won't work next year :-)


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2010, 7:27pm
I've sent the prizes and registration deposits by PayPal. If you didn't get yours it's because I don't know your email address with PayPal. Please send me a message through the contact page to let me know what it is.
  http://arimaa.com/arimaa/contact/

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 23rd, 2010, 8:08pm
At one point in the final game, I saw 34 people logged into the game room, a new record that is impressive particularly for occurring during the North American business day.  I might, however, have missed the high-water mark due to concentrating on the game.  Did anyone see more simultaneous users?

I want to echo Omar's remarks that this was the best Arimaa World Championship ever, for the reasons he gave plus one more: Arimaa strategy continues to evolve to new levels.  The unbalanced setup that ultimately persuaded even chessandgo contains a commitment to attacking with the camel that has been absent from previous strategic world views.  I have no idea where this new evolution will take us.  What an exhilarating feeling!

The game of Arimaa keeps offering up more and more strategic depth.  Chessandgo's WHR is now 2745, not a "financial bubble" as he earlier opined, but vindicated against all comers during the tournament.  The possibility that the Arimaa community will produce a 3000-level player seems less hypothetical and more inevitable than ever.  Arimaa shows no signs of running out; on the contrary the future is wide open as far as the eye can see.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Mar 24th, 2010, 8:08am
Thanks again Omar for organizing another great World Championship.  We’re already indebted to you for inventing Arimaa but all the work you’ve put into the site over the years has been equally amazing.  The new-and-improved chatroom in 2008 was great [I’ve forgotten who did the excellent work on this – it’s hard to find in the forum archives due to the huge number of posts with the word “chatroom”] and then the Arimaa.com Wiki was introduced in 2009.  But the live commentary in 2010 has taken the enjoyment to a whole new level.  And I think the timing was perfect:  this tournament, far more so than any other, has seen the opening theory evolve considerably *during* the tournament.  And, as mentioned in the earlier posts, the overall quality of games has been much higher this year than in the past.  So, if we were ever going to introduce live commentary, this was the best year to do so!

I truly believe we’re on the brink of a huge explosion in popularity for Arimaa.  Maybe by 2012 or 2013, but hopefully even sooner.  We have an annual World Championship, Computer Championship, Challenge Match, Postal Mixer plus Official Sponsors, Prize Funds, live commentary, a chatroom, a Wiki, beautiful game boards, published books, interesting forum discussions, mob games, etc.  And thanks to megajester’s efforts we’ll soon have an official World League.  It all lends a very professional feel to Arimaa.  With all of these things in place, new players might think that we have already have a community numbering in the tens of thousands.  But we’ve done it all with a very devoted game inventor and a very small but enthusiastic community!  I don’t know the stats but it seems as if we’ve been attracting more new players in 2010 and that the percentage of new players that stick around for the long term is higher than ever.


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 24th, 2010, 10:33am
The video of the final game is now online:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/video/go/wc2010Final.htm

It turned out excellent. A must see. Thanks so much Joel for being the moderator and recording the video. Absolutely beautiful.

I caused a bit of dead air at one point while trying to put on my headphones and missed that Joel was addressing me.


Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by megajester on Mar 24th, 2010, 10:55am
A pleasure, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I was concerned that I sounded like one of those tennis presenters who moderates the chat before the game, who barely knows what he's talking about and so calls on the expert sitting next to him to do most of the talking. :) Oh well, if it's good enough for Wimbledon...

But seriously I would be very interested to hear any tips you guys might have for next time.

I know everybody's said it, but congratulations Omar on a phenomenal year. I'm sure you can remember playtesting this game with your little boy only a few years ago and, well, look where it is now. "My, how it's grown!"

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 24th, 2010, 12:25pm

on 03/24/10 at 10:33:37, omar wrote:
The video of the final game is now online:

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/video/go/wc2010Final.htm

It turned out excellent. A must see. Thanks so much Joel for being the moderator and recording the video. Absolutely beautiful.

I keep getting stuck at the 20:10 point when I try to view it.  The position indicator jumps all the way to the end.  I can move it back anywhere before 20:10 and resume playing, but nowhere after.  Has anyone else had such a problem?

The video and audio quality are excellent, and the commentary is engaging and insightful.  I think I must have been playing in a haze, because several times in just the first eight moves I failed to see things the commentators immediately picked up on.  In retrospect I am surprised I still had a playable position all the way until I failed to put my horse on c4 on 21g.  There can be no worry about the commentators not being able to keep up with the players, or at least with this player.  I only wish I could have listened in to the commentary before playing my moves!  :P

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Mar 24th, 2010, 2:50pm

on 03/24/10 at 12:25:36, Fritzlein wrote:
I keep getting stuck at the 20:10 point when I try to view it.  The position indicator jumps all the way to the end.  I can move it back anywhere before 20:10 and resume playing, but nowhere after.  Has anyone else had such a problem?


I'm at the 30:00 mark of the broadcast right now and I've had no problems at all.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 25th, 2010, 8:05am
OK, I listened to the commentary on a different computer with no trouble.  Very insightful and entertaining stuff, guys.  Thanks!  I'm really kicking myself, though, because as megajester alluded to, I could have activated my camel on move nineteen with something like 19g E>M^HdD>, with a very nice-looking position, at least in my opinion.  Somehow I would rather know that I was in the game and blundered it away, as opposed to having been dominated wire to wire. :D

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by camelback on Mar 25th, 2010, 12:31pm
Congrats to everybody for such an amazing tournament. It was great to see new strategies evolving just when many new players are coming in. Thank you Fritz for being instrumental on this.

No other championship tournament had the winner with 2 losses. I was stunned to see Greg coming so close to winning couple of games but couldn't make it. I can see how tough it was.
Congrats Jean for becoming the first back to back champion.

I can see that it is going to be more tougher and more exciting in the coming years.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by 722caasi on Mar 25th, 2010, 4:15pm

on 03/25/10 at 12:31:49, camelback wrote:
No other championship tournament had the winner with 2 losses.

Incredibly enough, I believe this year also featured the first two loss computer champion.

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Mar 27th, 2010, 11:42am
maybe the video/audio commentaries of the WC games should be linked in the "videos" page linked in the arimaa.com homepage to reach a wider audience?

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Mar 27th, 2010, 12:17pm

on 03/27/10 at 11:42:47, chessandgo wrote:
maybe the video/audio commentaries of the WC games should be linked in the "videos" page linked in the arimaa.com homepage to reach a wider audience?


That's a good idea.  Some people may also be unaware that each broadcast is included in the appropriate game report on the Wiki site:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2010_World_Championship

Also a note for anyone interested in using the boardgames4us.ca Canadian site rather than boardgames4us.com.  I found that the higher shipping costs made it too expensive to use the .com site but I wasn't able to use the Arimaa discount or 3rd place gift certificate on the .ca site.  I asked Dave at boardgames4us and he's now enabled us to use the discount codes at both websites.  This is only a benefit to Canadians, who will save a surprisingly large amount of money on the shipping costs!

Title: Re: 2010 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 31st, 2010, 6:49am

on 03/27/10 at 11:42:47, chessandgo wrote:
maybe the video/audio commentaries of the WC games should be linked in the "videos" page linked in the arimaa.com homepage to reach a wider audience?


Yes, I've been meaning to do that. Thanks for the reminder.




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