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(Message started by: Fritzlein on Jan 4th, 2012, 10:34am)
Title: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 4th, 2012, 10:34am
Now that registration has closed, it is time to switch from the format discussion thread to the tournament discussion thread.  Tomorrow I will be back home from the holidays.  Apparently I now play Harren in the first round, thanks to hanzack's last-minute registration.  Is there a place to enter times in the scheduler, or do we have to wait for the pairing e-mail to do that?

The tournament promises to be thrilling this year; I for one am made nervous by the money riding on every game.  It's not like last year's format where losses in the qualifier were forgiven before the final.  Not that I have high hopes anyway given my scant training time.  :P
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 7th, 2012, 11:58am
I'll be sending out an email with the link to the time page soon. For me as a spectator, it makes the games more interesting to watch knowing the stakes are high and that the players have some skin in the game :-)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 8th, 2012, 10:18am
Thanks for the scheduling link.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Jan 8th, 2012, 10:59am

on 01/04/12 at 10:34:29, Fritzlein wrote:
The tournament promises to be thrilling this year; I for one am made nervous by the money riding on every game.  It's not like last year's format where losses in the qualifier were forgiven before the final.  Not that I have high hopes anyway given my scant training time.  :P


I think you are still fine ;). Adanac didn't trained that much this year and your postal mixer games shown how strong you are strategically. Just be carefull not to panic at the endgames;).

Yes this year the field is very strong. I wonder how strong would hanzack be this year after one WC appearence. Harren and Nombril are still rapidly improving, let us see, what will Tuks and rabbits show.

I cannot guess, how strong chessandgo is. It seems to me you have (psychologically) bad matchup with him, but he could be surprised by our black horses (as was by rabbits last year).

Yes that would be exciting WC and I am looking forward for it (even just as spectator).
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 8th, 2012, 11:46am

on 01/08/12 at 10:59:58, Hippo wrote:
Just be carefull not to panic

Easier said than done, especially with the larger prize pool.  The money aspect works to my disadvantage.  It makes it harder for me to think about playing instead of thinking about winning and losing.  The games haven't even started and I am already nervous.  :-/
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Jan 8th, 2012, 12:19pm

on 01/08/12 at 11:46:04, Fritzlein wrote:
Easier said than done, especially with the larger prize pool.  The money aspect works to my disadvantage.  It makes it harder for me to think about playing instead of thinking about winning and losing.  The games haven't even started and I am already nervous.  :-/


Just don't consider arimaa WC to be your job ... play for fun and play your best. Be happy with the final gain, but don't count it till the end of the WC ;).
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Jan 8th, 2012, 8:43pm
I think Fritz is just trying to convince everyone to not take him as a serious contender so we don't prepare enough for our game(s) against him.  ;D

I'd like to confirm if there are any changes in the rescheduling policy this year.

2011 and 2012 rules both state that game times couldn't be changed after Tuesday night.

In 2011, if both players both agreed to a new time after Tuesday night, the game time was allowed to be rescheduled.

The email sent out to the players is very specific that due to inconvenience to observers' and commentators' plans, rescheduling will not be accepted after Tuesday night.  So will the rule will be enforced this year?   Even to the point of a forfeit game occurring because a reschedule will not be allowed?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 8th, 2012, 10:39pm
I, too, would like clarification on the "no scheduling changes after the second scheduler run" rule.  Either enforce it absolutely (including a forfeit when one player has an emergency and the other player is willing to postpone the game time by a day) or take the rule off the books.  I hate rules that are not enforced, because they penalize people who try to abide by them and reward people to don't abide by them.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Jan 9th, 2012, 12:00pm
Just now I have noted 99of9 have not registered as well.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by The_Jeh on Jan 9th, 2012, 12:12pm
What I sort of want to know is... When are we going to start!?

Release the beasts!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 10th, 2012, 2:15pm

on 01/08/12 at 10:59:58, Hippo wrote:
I think you are still fine ;). Adanac didn't trained that much this year and your postal mixer games shown how strong you are strategically. Just be carefull not to panic at the endgames;).

Yes this year the field is very strong. I wonder how strong would hanzack be this year after one WC appearence. Harren and Nombril are still rapidly improving, let us see, what will Tuks and rabbits show.

I cannot guess, how strong chessandgo is. It seems to me you have (psychologically) bad matchup with him, but he could be surprised by our black horses (as was by rabbits last year).

Yes that would be exciting WC and I am looking forward for it (even just as spectator).


nombril has improved in postals, but what about real-time :) I'm hoping not so much, haha, because if its according to postal i have no chance.

and you are right about harren, can't deny that after i lost to him recently
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Jan 10th, 2012, 10:13pm
Don't worry about me, I'm timing out too often to be a serious threat.  And I thought I was getting worse at postal speeds - I lost my first ever postal games during the mixer.  ::)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 10th, 2012, 10:23pm

on 01/08/12 at 20:43:45, Nombril wrote:
I'd like to confirm if there are any changes in the rescheduling policy this year.

2011 and 2012 rules both state that game times couldn't be changed after Tuesday night.

In 2011, if both players both agreed to a new time after Tuesday night, the game time was allowed to be rescheduled.

The email sent out to the players is very specific that due to inconvenience to observers' and commentators' plans, rescheduling will not be accepted after Tuesday night.  So will the rule will be enforced this year?   Even to the point of a forfeit game occurring because a reschedule will not be allowed?


Yes, there will not be any changes to the scheduled game time after it is finalized. We've said that in the past but did not really enforce it. I think we should start enforcing it so that everyone is on the same page. I think it will work out better that way. It could mean a game is lost due to forfeit, but that's part of strictly following rules. I will run the scheduler shortly after the last game of the round is over. That way players know sooner what their game time will be and have more time to contact their opponent.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 10th, 2012, 10:25pm

on 01/09/12 at 12:12:45, The_Jeh wrote:
What I sort of want to know is... When are we going to start!?

Release the beasts!


Round one games have been scheduled. Let the games begin !!!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by MerlokDD on Jan 11th, 2012, 2:53am
Dear all,

is somewhere a link to the actual schedule?
All I found is related to the 2011 WC or pre-tournament announcements...

Thx a lot.

MerlokDD
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 11th, 2012, 3:53am
go to the "scheduled games" tab down at the bottom of the main gameroom screen, just scroll down, it will show you the times of the matches of round one, round two hasn't been scheduled yet (the players can only be paired after round 1) alternatively, click on wiki on the right then on events then WC 2012 and there should information about the wc, losses/wins of players etc. etc.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by MerlokDD on Jan 11th, 2012, 4:24am

on 01/11/12 at 03:53:53, Tuks wrote:
... click on wiki on the right then on events then WC 2012 and there should information about the wc, losses/wins of players etc. etc.


Perfect!!! Thank you!

MerlokDD
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 11th, 2012, 3:17pm
There is one round per week.  Each round is scheduled Tuesday night.  After the games are scheduled, you can see the time by logging in to the game room.  This week the games seem to be clustered on Saturday morning (U.S. time).
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 13th, 2012, 8:21am
I've updated the links in the gameroom menu to point to the 2012 events now. If you still see the old links, you might have to click on the 'Refresh' link in the top right corner of the gameroom.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2012, 6:24pm
It looks like I missed a lot of excitement, including the hanzack vs. rabbits game of the day.  Congrats, hanzack, on a wild win!  I see from the chat archives that there were 49 simultaneous logins and 28 simultaneously in chat.  Did anyone notice the number of peak radio listeners, or were there too many problems with radio for an audience to accumulate?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Jan 14th, 2012, 11:11pm
How does the radio count work - with multiple games - if you have two event games open do you count as 1 or 2 listeners?

I saw over 20 while I was playing, maybe 24 or 26.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2012, 11:15pm

on 01/14/12 at 23:11:20, Nombril wrote:
How does the radio count work - with multiple games - if you have two event games open do you count as 1 or 2 listeners?

As far as I know, there can't be multiple radio broadcasts.  If there is a radio broadcast, that is what you hear no matter which game you open.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 22nd, 2012, 11:25am

on 01/14/12 at 23:11:20, Nombril wrote:
I saw over 20 while I was playing, maybe 24 or 26.

We eked past that with 27 peak listeners for your game against chessandgo, plus about 4 in TeamSpeak.  The number of people in the game room and chat however, didn't match the high from the first round.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Jan 22nd, 2012, 1:26pm
doesn't that count inculde all people who have the game window open, even if they have hit "pause" because they listen to TS?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 22nd, 2012, 4:40pm

on 01/22/12 at 13:26:49, chessandgo wrote:
doesn't that count inculde all people who have the game window open, even if they have hit "pause" because they listen to TS?

I don't think it counts people who have the radio on pause, which is why I mentioned the +4 for TeamSpeak.  It should be pretty easy to test my hypothesis by pausing and unpausing, refreshing the number of listeners in between, to see whether you can make it go up and down by one.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 28th, 2012, 9:56am
Hanzack's upset of chessandgo vaults hanzack up to #4 on the WHR rating list, with a rating of 2405.  True, this rating is still extremely volatile, as it is based on only twelve games, but I when I am trying to decide how scared to be, I tend to trust objective measures like WHR more than my subjective impressions of how well someone is playing.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 28th, 2012, 3:09pm
During my game with rabbits we set a new tournament high with (as near as I saw) 30 peak radio listeners plus two in TeamSpeak.  Also I saw 45 in the game room and 19 in chat, but those aren't even tournament records.  Kudos to Arimabuff and Simon for entertaining commentary to keep the audience engaged!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 29th, 2012, 4:22pm
I thought I basically understood the pairing algorithm, but seeing the pairings for round 4 confuses me.  The standings are:

1   hanzack     3  0   2.9561       
2   Fritzlein   2  0   2.0535     
3   Adanac .    2  0   1.5778     
4   chessandgo  1  1   1.1078
5   Nombril     2  1   0.0718     
6   rabbits     1  2   0.2643     
7   ocmiente    1  2  -0.6772
8   Harren .    1  2  -0.8913
9   Tuks   .    1  2  -1.0161       
10  Simon  .    1  2  -2.3749
11  woh    .    0  3  -3.8786       

A Swiss tournament at this point would be paired hanzack vs. Fritzlein, Adanac vs. chessandgo, Nombril vs. rabbits in order to minimize the crossing between boundaries (i.e. to have the lowest player in a category play the highest player in the next category down).  I could see needing to violate this in order to avoid repeat pairings, but here not only those three pairings haven't happened yet, but also ocmiente vs. Simon and Harren vs. Tuks haven't happened either, and could complete the pairing.

The reason for the pairing I propose being disfavored compared to the pairing the algorithm chose must be buried somewhere in pairing principle 10, but (assuming there is no error in the code), I think pairing principle 10 needs to be reconsidered.  "Based on a ranking of the non-eliminated players primarily by least number of losses, secondarily by tournament performance rating and thirdly by seed, maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses minus the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses. "
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 29th, 2012, 5:27pm
Oh, yeah, now I remember that I actually proposed pairing principle 10 myself.  I didn't understand what the consequences would be, but now that I see it in action I realize that it is wrong.  It should be split like this:

10. Minimize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses.
11. Maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses.

That is to say, they shouldn't be combined in one formula; the difference in border crossings should be minimized first, and only then should be players within each category be optimally paired.

Obviously we shouldn't change the algorithm for this year's tournament (as much as I would like to avoid chessandgo this round ;)), but I propose we change it for 2013.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Jan 29th, 2012, 5:54pm
Next week will clearly be the best week to play me, I have no idea right now when I'll be available :( Btw, is it ok for you if we shift the game time one hour earlier? I forgot that there'll be a one hour difference in France, midnight would be a bit late.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 29th, 2012, 7:04pm

on 01/29/12 at 17:54:49, chessandgo wrote:
Next week will clearly be the best week to play me, I have no idea right now when I'll be available :( Btw, is it ok for you if we shift the game time one hour earlier? I forgot that there'll be a one hour difference in France, midnight would be a bit late.

One hour earlier, i.e. slot 71, is as good for me as 72.  I will mark slot 71 as my only top priority to implement the agreement.  I do want to win, but even so I hope you don't have to forfeit.  :-/
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by chessandgo on Jan 30th, 2012, 3:28am
Thanks a lot, I've put slot 71 as my top slot as well!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Tuks on Jan 30th, 2012, 6:25pm
me and harren have agreed to play 4 hours later than out time slot now selected

and omar, my local time is wrong, which is part of the reason why i was late to my game against adanac.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 30th, 2012, 7:41pm

on 01/30/12 at 18:25:59, Tuks wrote:
me and harren have agreed to play 4 hours later than out time slot now selected

and omar, my local time is wrong, which is part of the reason why i was late to my game against adanac.

Last year Omar instituted a new policy to save himself from having to manually change the times of many games: If the players want to agree to a time, they need to both select that time slot as their top preference so that the scheduler automatically assigns that time to their game.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Jan 30th, 2012, 10:36pm

on 01/30/12 at 18:25:59, Tuks wrote:
me and harren have agreed to play 4 hours later than out time slot now selected


Please select the time slot which you have agreed to play as your 1st preference with everything else being 2nd or 3rd preference.


Quote:
and omar, my local time is wrong, which is part of the reason why i was late to my game against adanac.


Select 'Setting -- Time Zone' and change the value there and click the 'Refresh' link in the top right corner of the gameroom until the times look right.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 2nd, 2012, 12:26pm
Silver has had a good tournament so far, going 11-4 over the first three rounds.  I calculated the apparent Elo advantage of playing Silver, i.e. the number of rating points you would have to add to the rating of everyone playing Silver in order for an 11-4 record to be expected.  I used game room ratings with hanzack artificially set to 2200, and the Silver advantage works out to be 192 rating points.  If we set hanzack to 2400 rating, the effect is slightly less pronounced, since he has played Silver twice and Gold once, but it still comes out to a 181 Elo advantage for playing Silver.

Herein lies yet another cautionary tale about drawing inferences from a small data set!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2012, 6:02am
The rules say, "Recognition of second and third place will be done based on number of games won. Ties for second and third place will not be broken with additional games and all players that tied for these positions will be recognized."  I would dislike the asymmetry of suddenly having to recognize four players in the roll of champions here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/), or even having to list two players tied for second-third.  The "internal performance rating" gives an obvious second tie-breaker after the number of wins, because we are already calculating it for the purpose of pairings.  Why not use that to prevent ties for second and third?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 3rd, 2012, 8:44pm
I'm actually very confused why there is any discussion about the number of wins any where in the rules.  I would not support it as a tie breaker.  (Even though I'm currently ahead of C&G by that metric, since he had a bye !)

Number of wins will be different from others with the same number of losses only because of a difference in byes, right?

With the very small sample of games, I also don't see how performance rating really will be that accurate either.

If we want to differentiate, I would suggest that a tie breaker game be played - either as an official game or as a casual game...  (Yes... I know one game isn't significant either - but that is the whole point of having a tournament - to decide rankings in a crucial game, under pressure, on the board - not by a mathematical calculation...)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 3rd, 2012, 9:59pm

on 02/03/12 at 20:44:21, Nombril wrote:
If we want to differentiate, I would suggest that a tie breaker game be played[...]

I also like the idea of tiebreaker games; my suggestion to use performance rating (after wins) to break ties was merely to say that we don't have to put up with ties even if for some reason we dislike playing extra games.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Sconibulus on Feb 3rd, 2012, 10:27pm
I think the reason to avoid a tiebreaker game is to prevent the tournament from potentially dragging on an extra round. to differentiate between second and third. A lot of decisions this year seem to be focused on having fewer rounds to schedule.

Nombril, are you saying you'd want a 5-3 player to score the same as a 6-3 player if they both went out in round 9?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 3rd, 2012, 11:11pm
Yes, it is triple elimination.  5-3 and 6-3 have both lost the same number of games.  Wins having nothing to do with performance in this tournament structure.

If I understand correctly, bye's are more likely to go to a high seeded/ranked player ... so fewer wins means you have been rewarded a bye week for doing well.  It seems crazy that at the end of the tournament we would "reward" the person who did better at the beginning of a tournament with a worse final result.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by mistre on Feb 4th, 2012, 8:57am
Hmmm, as tournament director, I guess it is up to be to come up with a ruling on this.  Is that correct Omar?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Feb 4th, 2012, 9:13am
I was led to believe by Omar that there would no longer be any official recognition of runner-ups. That's what caused a problem when it was realized the screening games require a clear second place in the computer championship.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2012, 11:48am

on 02/04/12 at 08:57:04, mistre wrote:
Hmmm, as tournament director, I guess it is up to be to come up with a ruling on this.  Is that correct Omar?

I think the rules are reasonably clear as written.  I'm mostly explaining why I don't like the rules as written, and what I think they should be changed to for next year, but I don't much care for changing rules mid-tournament, except in cases where the rules a having an unintended consequence that is generally agreed to be destructive.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 4th, 2012, 7:44pm

on 01/22/12 at 13:26:49, chessandgo wrote:
doesn't that count inculde all people who have the game window open, even if they have hit "pause" because they listen to TS?

I experimented and I couldn't get the number of listeners to go up and down by one when I paused and restarted at various intervals, so I conclude that you were right.  We should only look at the number on radio; we will double-count if we add in TeamSpeak.

Anyway, we hit a tournament high of 35 radio listeners sometime during our game tonight.  The record of 44 set in 2011 is looking within reach!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Feb 5th, 2012, 10:21am

on 01/29/12 at 17:27:35, Fritzlein wrote:
Oh, yeah, now I remember that I actually proposed pairing principle 10 myself.  I didn't understand what the consequences would be, but now that I see it in action I realize that it is wrong.  It should be split like this:

10. Minimize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses.
11. Maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses.

That is to say, they shouldn't be combined in one formula; the difference in border crossings should be minimized first, and only then should be players within each category be optimally paired.

Obviously we shouldn't change the algorithm for this year's tournament (as much as I would like to avoid chessandgo this round ;)), but I propose we change it for 2013.

I don't see why the preference to maximize the differences in ranks of pairings within a loss bracket should have less weight than the one to minimize the rank differences between players in different brackets; from a fairness point of view they seem to be of equal desirability.

A strict hierarchy of priorities involving more than one formula like that would be a pain to implement. In order to have each rule strictly overrule all those below it, the scheduler goes through each rule in ascending order of priority, determining an upper bound of the complete range of possible total weights so far, so that the penalty given will be high enough so as to prevent there ever being a schedule that's so ideal according to the lower priorities that it would be best preferred at the expense of a higher priority. For a function with a large "resolution" (like the proposed rule 10) to come on top of another such function (rule 11) would mean that between each pair of possible outputs a penalty must be assigned that covers the entire range of values the lower rule can output. In conjunction with all the other priorities, this could lead to severe overflow problems.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by ocmiente on Feb 5th, 2012, 12:16pm
In my particular case, the pairings for this tournament were not as fair as they could have been.  The specific reason why I state this is that in round two I was paired outside of my loss bracket (I had one loss and my opponent had none), and again in round four (I had two losses and my opponent had one).  Once would be OK, and understandable.  Twice in four rounds is not.  Especially when there were five people in my loss bracket in round four from which to choose.  

If a player has been paired outside of their loss bracket before, that should be taken into account.  This applies when paired above and below their loss bracket.  It should be tracked as byes are tracked.  
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Sconibulus on Feb 5th, 2012, 9:20pm
Yeah, actually, as it stands, the scheduler seems to prefer pairing people outside their loss bracket multiple times. Seeing as the tiebreaker for ranking within brackets is based on opponent wins, having an opponent with one fewer wins or one more win than others within your bracket will tend to keep you in the high or low position.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 7th, 2012, 9:39pm
To break ties without additional games I would suggest just using the pre-tournament ranks. I think players are more in favor of breaking ties using game additional games, but I didn't want to extend the tournament longer.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 8th, 2012, 7:33am

on 02/07/12 at 21:39:12, omar wrote:
To break ties without additional games I would suggest just using the pre-tournament ranks.

Well, maybe that would encourage hanzack not to sandbag: he's certainly going to lose any tiebreak this year, as he is the lowest-seeded player remaining.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 8th, 2012, 11:59pm
Regarding fairness of the pairings (and a PS about places of the finalists):

In the context of winner take all tournament where we just crown 1st place finisher with no distinction between the rest:  fairness doesn't matter very much.  To get to the top you need to be able to win most of your games.

In the context of a "high" entry fee tournament where you get a payout based on how many games you win, it seems we should do a better job of having a fair schedule.  For how complex and convoluted the rules are, it seems there were a number of instances of intuitively unfair pairings.

Ocmiente's schedule is a good example, another lesser example was my round 2 game against C&G.  If there are no upsets in the top few players, why should the 1 and 3 seed play each other already in the 2nd round, especially since the 2nd see has the bye?

I don't have any suggestions for how to improve the algorithm, because I must admit I don't have the motivation to decipher it to understand it in the first place.  But I would suggest for next year:

a.  Update the format to have a clear 1, 2, 3 place finish.

b.  Update the algorithm to be more "fair" to address these issues, or just get rid of all the convolutions and use some straightforward transparent mechanism.

(PS: And yes, I don't see how we can recognize 2nd and/or 3rd place this year.  I'm with Fritz that the rules should not be changed unless there are dire consequences of inaction.)

(PPS: If I manage to get that close to the top - I'd be happy to play a "casual" game at an announced time to settle matters  :P )
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2012, 10:45am

on 02/08/12 at 23:59:31, Nombril wrote:
Regarding fairness of the pairings (and a PS about places of the finalists):

In the context of winner take all tournament where we just crown 1st place finisher with no distinction between the rest:  fairness doesn't matter very much.  To get to the top you need to be able to win most of your games.

I actually think fairness matters whether or not it is winner-take-all.  It is true that if you win every game, you are guaranteed to be champion, so everyone controls his own destiny, but that isn't enough to ensure fairness, as we learned in 2007.


Quote:
For how complex and convoluted the rules are, it seems there were a number of instances of intuitively unfair pairings.

The current convolutions are a result of the last time FXE was used in the human World Championship, namely 2007.  If you look at the six players who were still standing by round five, http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2007/showGames.cgi and compare the four games they each played to get there, I had by far the easiest path.  I had faced none of the other "finalists", but they all had had to play against each other before we even got to that point: omar, 99of9, and robinson once; PMertens twice; and chessandgo three times!  Fortunately chessandgo took control of his own destiny and won the tournament, but the unfairness rankled enough anyway that we changed the format.

The problem was that we set up pairing to reward higher seeds (as is appropriate) but the rewards kept on coming in later rounds until they seemed excessive.  After getting super-easy games the first two rounds as the top seed, I was rewarded with a bye for being undefeated, then rewarded again with another easy game in round 4.  This has been addressed by aaaa's clever idea of replacing pre-tournament seed by performance as the tournament progresses, thus spreading out the rewards of byes and easier pairings among people who earn them in-tournament rather than showering them all on the top seed.


Quote:
If there are no upsets in the top few players, why should the 1 and 3 seed play each other already in the 2nd round, especially since the 2nd see has the bye?

In that case the top seed was being punished for his bye the first round.  You are right that an innocent bystander (you) got an undeservedly tough pairing as a result, but this seems to have sort of evened out for you.  In fact, looking at the current top five in the standings, you are the only one to have just one pairing within the group.  Adanac, hanzack, and I have each had two, while chessandgo has had three!  (Will we see a repeat of the 2007 comeback?)  The only way your schedule has been tougher than ours is that you haven't had a bye yet, and if you get the bye in round 6 then the rest of us will rise to three and four pairings against each other while you stay stuck on one.


Quote:
Ocmiente's schedule is a good example

I see this as more of a fairness problem, because it didn't seem to even out across rounds for him in the way things evened out across the rounds for you.  Having a tougher pairing than the average of his group one round didn't translate into having an easier pairing than the average of his group the next round.


Quote:
b.  Update the algorithm to be more "fair" to address these issues, or just get rid of all the convolutions and use some straightforward transparent mechanism.

I'm all ears.  What straightforward transparent mechanism did you have in mind?  The whole motivation behind floating elimination was to address the great unfairness in the typical (transparent and straightforward) fixed-bracket double-elimination tournament, where a first round loser has to win twice as many games from then on to win the tournament as a first-round winner would.  At least in FXE we have a system wherein each player needs the same number of wins for the title (perhaps minus one for a bye) so it is only pairing fairness that we are still disputing.

As for adding further tweaks to the convoluted system, I wouldn't mind that either.  I think the FXE is much more fair than it was in 2007, but there is still room for improvement.

The source of the unfairness seems to come from pairing winners against winners and losers against losers.  That is the opposite principle from rewarding good performance with an easier pairing.  Yet pairing winners with winners isn't a principle we want to discard lightly; the alternative seems to be giving the top three seeds a round-robin against the bottom three seeds during the first three rounds while the middle seeds are having to fight for their lives against each other.  That returns to over-emphasizing the importance of pre-tournament seed relative to in-tournament performance.

The issue is what to do about edge-effects, where players who are from different score groups have to meet.  From Swiss tournaments I am conditioned to think that the lowest from the higher group should play the highest from the lower group.  But this is an artifact of a different fairness condition, namely giving players a good shot at tiebreaker points.  In FXE we have different issues.

Perhaps we should revisit the possibility (from the first incarnation of FXE) that the highest player in the higher group should play the lowest player in the lower group.  Of course we should still avoid cross-score pairings when possible, but when they inevitably happen, this may be the fairest way to deal with it.   The objection would be that the top seed is getting too much reward, as in 2007, but because there is now a mechanism for performance to replace seeds over time, it will tend to even out in way that the current cross-score pairing rule (witness ocmiente) doesn't even out.

In short, we changed two things from 2007 when perhaps it would have been fairer to only change one of them.  We could make a one word change to the current pairing rules:

"10. Based on a ranking of the non-eliminated players primarily by least number of losses, secondarily by tournament performance rating and thirdly by seed, maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses plus the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses."

Yes, I realize this is the opposite of what I proposed earlier in this thread.  I reserve the right to change my mind again.  :D

When someone at the top of a group gets to play down against the bottom of the next-lower score group, it will work like a mini-bye for him; the next round he will not be at the top of his score group.  Meanwhile the lower player who got rocked with a hard game will probably lose but will be compensated with an easier pairing next round as he will have risen within his score group thanks to relative performance rating.

Does this theory seem reasonable?


Quote:
(PPS: If I manage to get that close to the top - I'd be happy to play a "casual" game at an announced time to settle matters  :P )

Me too!  If we tie for second/third or third/fourth, consider this the handshake. :)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by ocmiente on Feb 9th, 2012, 1:01pm

on 02/09/12 at 10:45:04, Fritzlein wrote:
"10. Based on a ranking of the non-eliminated players primarily by least number of losses, secondarily by tournament performance rating and thirdly by seed, maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses plus the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses."
...
Does this theory seem reasonable?


Maybe.  The two concerns that come to mind are
  • Let's say a player ends up playing someone in a higher win/loss bracket, and that the next round every win/loss bracket has an even number of players.  In that next round, the two bottom players of the win/loss bracket might end up paired together because of the effect of the lowest rated player playing a highly rated player.  
  • How would this affect the final rankings?  This is not as much of a concern to me, but I do think it's worth mentioning.  On the WC 2012 wiki (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2012_World_Championship), my final rank matches my initial seed.  I did not play harren or Simon during the tournament, so the whole final rank is questionable at best, but I do think that given the information of the games played during the tournament along with the initial seed, the relative ranking of ocmiente, harren and Simon makes sense.  I would have preferred to have played a game against at least one of them to make the Rank mean more, but it is what it is.
    Anyway... my concern is whether having the lowest ranked player in a lower win/loss bracket playing the highest ranked player in a higher win/loss bracket might cause the lower seeded player to end up ranked higher than a higher seeded player, especially if they end up with the same win/loss record.  


I think that tracking the times a player was paired outside of his win/loss bracket may be better (leaving everything else the same) than changing criteria 10 - but I also think that simulations need to be run to validate or disprove our beliefs about how these things will work in practice.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 9th, 2012, 1:45pm
Is there an absolute requirement that we pair outside of the brackets, provided there are more then x players left in each bracket?  If crossing boundaries is the issue, is giving 2 (or more?) byes in a round feasible?

I certainly agree that my overall schedule has ended up relatively easy.  My point is that round 1 and 2 can be the most easily predicted for pairings, and if already in round 2 we have pairings that don't make sense... well...

Maybe the weight of the bye can be adjusted somehow?

I certainly appreciate the goal of minimizing the influence of initial seed.  But is in-tournament performance significant, with so few games played going into the number?  I don't like my opponents future performance having a strong affect on my results.

But as I admitted to start with, I don't understand the algorithm and don't have any experience with designing tournaments...I wish I had some concrete suggestion to offer.
Title: pairing rules
Post by Hippo on Feb 9th, 2012, 2:50pm
At the first sight maximizing the square difference in standings while minimizing the number of boundary crosses while giving bye to highest standing player among the players with minimal number of byes while minimizing the number of repeated pairings ... sounds well for me ;).

May be the question is why square in the standings difference and not in the value on which the standing is based. ... (equals the difference 1 in almost tied players to difference 1 on bracket boundaries? )

(Standings are given by minimal number of loses, maximal strength of schedule and maximal preturnament WHR in lexicographical order ... how to translate it well to one real number?).

Seems pairng across boundaries naturaly compensates in the SOS and therefore in future pairings. Of course I would prefer winnig to having better SOS after the third loss;).

I hope this is very close to the pairing proposed by Fritzlein.

OK I have finally read the current rules ;) ... I dont like bye assignment done after minimizing the cross boundaries. So I would shift rule 6 just before the rule 10.
And I like the simplified rule 10 with sum in all cases.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2012, 3:40pm

on 02/09/12 at 13:01:49, ocmiente wrote:
but I also think that simulations need to be run to validate or disprove our beliefs about how these things will work in practice.

Yes, I also think we have to try things out to see how they work.  The difficult thing is not running simulations so much as it is coming up with some accurate measure for how "fair" an algorithm was in a given run.  If we could encapsulate fairness in a formula, we might design a better algorithm even before the simulations start.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 9th, 2012, 3:48pm

on 02/09/12 at 13:45:29, Nombril wrote:
I certainly agree that my overall schedule has ended up relatively easy.  My point is that round 1 and 2 can be the most easily predicted for pairings, and if already in round 2 we have pairings that don't make sense... well...

Maybe the weight of the bye can be adjusted somehow?

I wonder what the effect would be of eliminating the concept of seed entirely in favor of in-tournament performance, whereby performance is calculated from a extremely weak prior, say 0.1 draws against a player of one's pre-tournament rating.  For the first round there would be no effect; the second round a bye might not drop a player all the way to the bottom of the winner group.  The size of the drop might be related to the weakness of the prior.  Also it might be related to the dispersion of the field; playing someone rated 1200 points lower should be considered almost like having a bye.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 12th, 2012, 10:05pm
I can't remember who made some comment about games getting longer and longer, but across five rounds the lengths seem pretty typical: median 43 moves and average 45.6 moves.  In fact, see this forum post about how rated games between two humans who are both rated over 1900 have always been about this length.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1262974905;start=0#0
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 13th, 2012, 6:40am
Sorry to keep asking the same question over and over but this time it's important for my round 7 scheduling:

What will the next pairings be in the 4 possible scenarios from round 6?  Monday, February 27th is by far the most convenient day for me to play in round 7 but if my possible opponents can't play that day I'll have to move my schedule around in advance.  Thanks  :)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 13th, 2012, 7:21am
Hanzack, yes it is OK with me to move our game time 24 hours later.  I will make slot 89 my only top preference.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 13th, 2012, 7:31am

on 02/13/12 at 06:40:40, Adanac wrote:
What will the next pairings be in the 4 possible scenarios from round 6?

I don't know for sure, but my rough guess is that you play each of your four remaining opponents in one of the four scenarios.  How's that for unhelpful?

[edit]
Yep, rbarriera verifies here: http://pastebin.com/UNQsQSwN
You could play anyone next round!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 13th, 2012, 9:08am

on 02/13/12 at 07:31:39, Fritzlein wrote:
I don't know for sure, but my rough guess is that you play each of your four remaining opponents in one of the four scenarios.  How's that for unhelpful?

[edit]
Yep, rbarriera verifies here: http://pastebin.com/UNQsQSwN
You could play anyone next round!


Wow, in the statistically most-likely scenario I will be playing Jean again in round 7  :o  No pressure on me at all 8)

So hanzack needs me to lose for him to receive a round 7 bye and I need hanzack to win to avoid a 3rd straight round of Fritzlein-chessandgo-chessandgo or Fritzlein-chessandgo-Fritzlein.

And I notice that if Fritzlein & I both win this round the four survivors will all have a 4-1 record.  So nobody is assured at least a 3rd place finish yet?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 13th, 2012, 11:55am

on 02/13/12 at 09:08:11, Adanac wrote:
And I notice that if Fritzlein & I both win this round the four survivors will all have a 4-1 record.  So nobody is assured at least a 3rd place finish yet?

Yes, I guess I jumped the gun to say hanzack had at least third place wrapped up, although he could easily take third without winning another game.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 13th, 2012, 12:06pm
I think I'm going to enjoy having a week off while the rest of you play another game  :P

Adanac, I came to the same conclusion about guaranteed top 3 finishes...seems noone is guaranteed.  (But keep in mind our actual tournament only recognizes a first place finisher...it seems many are eager to recognize 2nd/3rd, so that should be a consideration for next year's format)

I noticed aaaa in the chat room mention that the TFE format has been receiving undue criticism.  I hope my comments can lead to constructive tweaks - I certainly like it better then a format where initial seeds always get the lowest remaining seeded player, etc.

(PS Adanac, I do have hours available later in the day on Feb 27th, in case we end up paired.)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 13th, 2012, 12:13pm

on 02/13/12 at 06:40:40, Adanac wrote:
Monday, February 27th is by far the most convenient day for me to play in round 7 but if my possible opponents can't play that day I'll have to move my schedule around in advance.  Thanks  :)

For the record, I can't play on the 27th, and have none of the slots checked even as an emergency lowest preference, so if it is looking like we will be paired, start scrambling.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Feb 13th, 2012, 12:16pm

on 02/13/12 at 12:13:56, Fritzlein wrote:
For the record, I can't play on the 27th, and have none of the slots checked even as an emergency lowest preference, so if it is looking like we will be paired, start scrambling.


OK, thanks for letting me know.  The silver lining is that I'll only encounter this particular dilemma after a victory.  And if hanzack & I both pull off upsets then I'll play Nombril who is free that day.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 19th, 2012, 12:44pm
Well, at least I put on a good show while going down in flames.  Hanzack's victory over me had 48 peak radio viewers, not only a record for the tournament, but a record for all time.  Also there were 32 in chat and 48 in the gameroom (not a record).
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by ginrunner on Feb 19th, 2012, 2:26pm
Hanzack is a relatively unknown player to people with a rating of less than 1900 (due to an artificially deflated rating) and so the fact that he is unbeaten while facing all of the "unbeatable" opponents is raising everyone's hopes that they can be #1 at some point. Also his play style seems to be very unique which is why I personally am eager to watch his games.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 19th, 2012, 3:35pm
Yeah, hanzack is a great story.  The mystery man, of unknown ability, signing up at the last minute, and in all three of his games against "unbeatable" players, coming back from a worse position to win.

The best part is that while chessandgo, Adanac, and I were playing only sporadically throughout the year, hanzack was playing incessantly.  From this I infer:  (1) Hard work pays off.  (2) Playing against strong bots pays off, at least if you intentionally win with a variety of crazy styles like hanzack does, rather than relying on the same safe method to win over and over.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Swynndla on Feb 20th, 2012, 5:40am
From the chat archive (NZ time):
2011-11-07 19:35:36 froody last I saw it seems like c&g was untouchable
2011-11-07 19:36:17 Swynndla but Hanzack might beat him

... see I'm a talent spotter!  ;)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by mistre on Feb 20th, 2012, 7:45am

on 02/19/12 at 15:35:05, Fritzlein wrote:
Yeah, hanzack is a great story.  The mystery man, of unknown ability, signing up at the last minute, and in all three of his games against "unbeatable" players, coming back from a worse position to win.


Maybe it is time to revisit this thread?  http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=events;action=display;num=1323851616
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 20th, 2012, 10:51am

on 02/20/12 at 07:45:06, mistre wrote:
Maybe it is time to revisit this thread?  http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=events;action=display;num=1323851616

Haha.  Probably froody is going to show up and claim that he won his $100 bet with me, because it wasn't actually hanzack winning the World Championship, it was froody in disguise, or a cyborg hanzack/froody/computer team.

Of course, since froody didn't even register for the World Championship, he still owes me $1, but I've given up on collecting it.  I doubt we'll ever hear from him again.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 21st, 2012, 7:52pm
I've finalized the schedule for round 7. The time for Adanac vs Nombril is at 3pm EST on Monday. Is this really what the players wanted or was there a problem?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 21st, 2012, 8:34pm

on 02/21/12 at 19:52:30, omar wrote:
I've finalized the schedule for round 7. The time for Adanac vs Nombril is at 3pm EST on Monday. Is this really what the players wanted or was there a problem?

Judging from chat, they would have opted for an even later time on Monday, but it wasn't within the schedule window.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 22nd, 2012, 6:47am
Thanks for checking. That's going to be hard to cover, but I hope someone will provide commentary for it.

I've updated the spreadsheet. Please sign up if you can. Thanks.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Feb 22nd, 2012, 1:41pm
Yes, that is the correct time.  Greg needed to play on Monday, and was kind enough to plan for the time that worked best in my Monday schedule.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 25th, 2012, 1:51pm

on 02/19/12 at 12:44:18, Fritzlein wrote:
Well, at least I put on a good show while going down in flames.  Hanzack's victory over me had 48 peak radio viewers, not only a record for the tournament, but a record for all time.

And we eked out another record: 49 peak listeners for chessandgo's victory over me.  If we are already this high, who know how many we can attract for the final?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Feb 26th, 2012, 12:00am
With some promotion shortly be before the final game on other sites, we should be able to cross 50.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Feb 27th, 2012, 5:13pm

on 02/09/12 at 10:45:04, Fritzlein wrote:
When someone at the top of a group gets to play down against the bottom of the next-lower score group, it will work like a mini-bye for him; the next round he will not be at the top of his score group.  Meanwhile the lower player who got rocked with a hard game will probably lose but will be compensated with an easier pairing next round as he will have risen within his score group thanks to relative performance rating.

Does this theory seem reasonable?

It did seem reasonable, until I realized what that would mean for one of the two worst-seeded players in a tournament with 2 or 3 players modulo 4.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 27th, 2012, 9:20pm

on 02/27/12 at 17:13:37, aaaa wrote:
It did seem reasonable, until I realized what that would mean for one of the two worst-seeded players in a tournament with 2 or 3 players modulo 4.

I understand that with in-tournament ratings based on an everyone-is-equal prior, ties broken by seed (as at present), the bottom player stays at the bottom even after getting crushed by the top seed.  Under the current scheme he might not live long enough to be rewarded for tougher pairings than other players in the losers' bracket.  But would the bottom players have to "play up" multiple times in a row if the in-tournament performance rating were based on a weak prior equal to everyone's pre-tournament WHR?  I thought not, which is why I proposed two changes instead of just one.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 5th, 2012, 11:21am

on 02/08/12 at 23:59:31, Nombril wrote:
(PPS: If I manage to get that close to the top - I'd be happy to play a "casual" game at an announced time to settle matters  :P )

And it has come to that: Adanac and Nombril tie for 3rd/4th by getting eliminated with four wins each.  I, for one, would be happy to see a playoff game for the glory (i.e. for who gets listed here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/)) even though the extra game wouldn't affect the distribution of the prize money.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 5th, 2012, 11:39am
Hanzack now needs only one victory for the title, whereas chessandgo needs three straight.  If the current WHRH ratings are accurate (and we have no reason to believe they are :P) then chessandgo is ahead by 95 elo points, which gives him a 25% chance of winning three straight.  Not great odds, but if he pulls it off, he will have bounced back from losing two of his first three games to finish with seven straight wins.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Hippo on Mar 5th, 2012, 5:37pm
In either case nobody could won against hanzack in the bye's gathering race.

What were theoretical lower and upper bounds for the number of rounds for triple elimination for 11 players?

Are we already cut from the extremes?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Mar 7th, 2012, 7:35pm
Adanac and I are discussing playing a game for (unofficial?) 3rd place, probably Saturday morning.

After we settle on a time, should it be set as an official Event game?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 7th, 2012, 7:47pm

on 03/07/12 at 19:35:45, Nombril wrote:
Adanac and I are discussing playing a game for (unofficial?) 3rd place, probably Saturday morning.

After we settle on a time, should it be set as an official Event game?

I vote that it be marked as an event game so that it will be easy to find along with the other games.  Omar has made it clear that the game wouldn't count for prize money, but I doubt that the prize money is automatically calculated anyway, so it shouldn't mess anything up to designate the tiebreaker as belonging to the event.

Since there is no official tiebreaker for third place according the rules, I suppose Omar and mistre should put their heads together and make a ruling on whether to recognize the result of the game as meaningful, but I don't see any reason why not if both of the tied players agree that it should count.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Mar 8th, 2012, 1:00pm
Technically speaking, this game would have their players directly selected by hand, which would go against the premise of the event game label.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by mistre on Mar 9th, 2012, 9:29am
I like the idea of one additional game for determining 3rd place.  This should take place before the championship games as to not require an extra week.  This should be written into the rules for next year.

Since there has always been a 3rd place finisher listed here - http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/ - then shouldn't there be a sole 3rd place finisher this year? Has their never been a tie for 3rd before?

As for this year, I guess the question is should the unofficial game of Nombril-Adanac decide the 3rd place finisher?  Also, what about Fritzlein who though he had only 3 wins, had a higher internal performance rating than Nombril?
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 9th, 2012, 12:14pm

on 03/09/12 at 09:29:53, mistre wrote:
Also, what about Fritzlein who though he had only 3 wins, had a higher internal performance rating than Nombril?

Performance rating has never had any role in determining place; it has always been number of wins.  I think that it would be a big stretch to deviate mid-tournament from number of wins determining place of finish.  This is in contrast to tiebreaker games which are an established tradition.  I'm not entirely clear on why the tiebreaker game was eliminated, but my best guess was that Omar didn't want the extra game to be part of prize money or spectator contest considerations.  If that's the only reason, then there is a simple solution: say explicitly that the extra game doesn't count for prize money or the spectator contest.  :)

I hope the Adanac-Nombril tiebreaker game happens whether or not it has any official sanction; I want to see it simply as a spectator.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by aaaa on Mar 9th, 2012, 12:54pm
Because it's theoretically possible with triple elimination to need up to 3 rounds of tiebreaker games for a strict podium, Omar simply decided to do away with them altogether (source (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?action=display;board=events;num=1295473432;start=15#20)).
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Mar 9th, 2012, 4:20pm
Adanac and I will play at time slot 62, tomorrow morning, it is 7AM central time for me.

I disagree that we have "selected by hand" since I declared weeks ago that I was willing to have a tie breaker game with anyone who was eliminated during the same round as me.  But I don't care either way for the WHRE - my main motivation was to hope the game would be scheduled in the gameroom so spectators could be aware of it.

(Daylight savings is later in the weekend, I recall some confusion on when different scheduled times changed in different time zones last year, so I hope the game Monday morning is OK!)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 9th, 2012, 10:58pm
I've setup the game for 3rd place.  Seems there is popular demand to determine 3rd place. It's easy enough this year. I don't what we would do if 6 players tied for 3rd.

I'll be there to record it if anyone wants to commentate.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by mistre on Mar 9th, 2012, 11:49pm

on 03/09/12 at 22:58:59, omar wrote:
I don't what we would do if 6 players tied for 3rd.


There is an easy fix.  If two or more players are tied for 3rd (same number of wins), than the two players with the highest performance rating play for 3rd place.

2nd place is also easy - it is whoever loses last to the champion (regardless of number of wins) and therefore there can be no ties.

Similarly, all places below 3rd are first based on wins, then performance rating.  No ties required!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Mar 10th, 2012, 9:05pm
Personally, it feels like performance rating over a short tournament can be useful for setting up pairings - but I'm very hesitant to support using them for anything more important.  

I was wondering about having an extended number of "lives".  After losing n games (3 this year for triple elimination) you play other players (as they become available) that also have lost n games.  Eventually, only 1 person will have just n losses, and will be the second place finisher.  Same for n+1 losses, to decided the 3rd place finisher.

I guess it is essentially a single elimination tournament outside of the first place tournament, starting with players who get knocked out first.

A side benefit is to have an opportunity for additional closely matched games towards the middle and end of the tournament.

It seems at most it could extend the tournament by 1 week?  (In the case there is one person waiting and 2 out of the last 4 people are eliminated in the same week.)  (Oh - maybe another week to decide 3rd place...)
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by mistre on Mar 10th, 2012, 9:32pm
So, kind of like a consolation bracket?  Not a bad idea because these games could be played while the other games are still going on and would not have to extend the length of the tournament.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Nombril on Mar 11th, 2012, 9:51pm
Yeah, consolation bracket is a much better way to say it!  Nested 2 deep to get 2nd and 3rd place.

It would extend the tournament length if the last remaining person in the consolation bracket will play the person knocked out of the final game against the champion.

But yes, the majority of the extra games would be parallel to the primary games.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Adanac on Mar 12th, 2012, 11:17am
We could keep the Open Classic/World Championship format, guarantee everyone a minimum number of games, and effectively make the equivalent of a quadruple-elimination Open Classic.  For example, a 10-round Swiss system in which everyone with 7 or more wins advances to the finals.  Follow that with a single-elimination folding bracket World Championship Finals.  

Or maybe an 8-round Swiss followed by a double-elimination Finals for everyone with 6 or more wins.  That would make the Open Classic a triple-elimination.  I think either system could easily accomodate 64 players within a reasonable period of time.  I like the idea of having a preliminary Swiss that anyone can join for the right to participate in the Finals, and everyone has a shot at the coveted #1 seed.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 19th, 2012, 4:15pm
Just so that the record can be searched here as well as in the chat archive:  For the final game there were 83 peak radio listeners and 41 players logged into chat (without me :'().  What an amazing success!
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by rbarreira on Mar 20th, 2012, 11:01am

on 03/19/12 at 16:15:59, Fritzlein wrote:
Just so that the record can be searched here as well as in the chat archive:  For the final game there were 83 peak radio listeners and 41 players logged into chat (without me :'().  What an amazing success!


Amazing, and good to know that the server can handle that many people streaming commentary audio.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by Manuel on Mar 20th, 2012, 11:10am

on 03/20/12 at 11:01:53, rbarreira wrote:
Amazing, and good to know that the server can handle that many people streaming commentary audio.


Well, actually it couldn't. When the number of radio listeners came above 80, the sound went weird and the voices were not understandable anymore...
But amazing numbers indeed.
Title: Re: 2012 World Championship
Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2012, 9:26am

on 03/20/12 at 11:10:46, Manuel wrote:
Well, actually it couldn't. When the number of radio listeners came above 80, the sound went weird and the voices were not understandable anymore...
But amazing numbers indeed.


Sometimes that happens even when we don't have many listeners and I just need to restart the radio relay program to fix it. I was impressed that the server handled the load with much problems.

Overall it's been a very smooth year for the WC and WCC events without any games needing to be restarted or situations arising that require the TD to intervene.

A big thanks to everyone who helped to make the events so successful this year.


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