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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Player of the Month
        
(Message started by: mistre on Jul 1st, 2008, 10:57am)
Title: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 1st, 2008, 10:57am
Quote from Fritzlein in my new player retention post:

"I agree that Player of the Month has outlived its usefulness, and the money could be better spent otherwise.    I'm leery of rewards based only the on the best of something (e.g. only for setting a bot-bashing record) since that is as prone to being won by the same people over and over as is the PotM.  At the time PotM was changed to its current rules, we wanted to promote HvH games, but I think a tournament manager would do that better, and the contest money should be aimed at newcomers instead.  Omar has suggested a payout for anyone who completes the bot ladder, which I think is a great idea, because it is specifically targeted at newcomers."

Any thought on what we can do instead?  Now that Arimaa is going to be published, I would think the time to make a change to this would be now.

I am also interested in knowing more about the "tournament manager" that Fritzlein is referring to.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 1st, 2008, 11:32am

on 07/01/08 at 10:57:49, mistre wrote:
I am also interested in knowing more about the "tournament manager" that Fritzlein is referring to.

A tournament manager is something like the Tomato account at the Internet Chess Club.  There they implemented the tournament manager as a user account, a sort of bot that you can talk to.  You tell tomato to create a tournament, ask it what tournaments are available, tell it you want to join a specific tournament, etc.  Tomato automatically handles the game pairings, instantiates the games, handles forfeits, and keeps score.

For the Arimaa server, a tournament manager would not have to be completely automated; it could instead be an aide to a human who wanted to run a tournament.  Also it would not have to be fully-featured.  Humans could handle most of the work at first.

The minimal feature for running a non-live tournament is the game scheduler.  A human TD could keep score and make the pairings, but there is no substitute for automated scheduling of the game times like we have in the World Championship.  We have tried to have human-run tournaments in the past, and the games never finish because the participants can't schedule a mutually agreeable time.  Without an automatic scheduler, there is no way to determine whose fault it is that the game didn't happen (i.e. no way to forfeit a player).

Other features could be added individually later.

For running a live tournament, no automated tournament manager would even be necessary, but it sure would be nice to have a scoreboard, automatic pairings, and a way to handle forfeits/withdrawing.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 1st, 2008, 2:40pm
By the way, lest we think events don't matter, I checked the stats here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/growth/players).  For the months of January, February, and March, we averaged 45.5 unique humans logging in per day.  For the months of May and June we averaged 29.9 unique humans logging in per day.  Apparently more people participate when something is going on.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 16th, 2008, 8:21am
Well, so much for the "summer slump".  After the low numbers of logins in May and June, I was digging in for a long period of decreased activity, but just now I logged in and was one of twelve simultaneous users.  I'm trying to remember when I last saw such a busy gameroom when there was no event going on.

I guess I just can't predict the Arimaa server activity.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 16th, 2008, 10:16am
Back on topic:

No offense to ArifSyed, but he has now pocketing $210 in Arimaa winnings just by having an inordinate amount of time on his hands and playing every beginner that happens to wander on to the site.  He is the only player to win Player of the Month in all of 2008 and he is well on his way for winning in July too.

To me, this contest is the most broken thing on the site and should be changed immediately.  At the very least make it so that someone that wins one month is then ineligible to win for another 5 months, so it can spread out to more players and encourage player vs player games (which I think was it's original intent).   As it is now, this contest is not fun at all and is a foregone conclusion who will win by the 5th of the month.

Omar, you might as well just end the contest and pay Arif $30 a month on the side for constantly playing Arimaa.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 16th, 2008, 10:28am
I went back to the beginning of 2008 and saw who would win POTM if you could only win once every 6 months (beginning Jan 08 ).

Jan - ArifSyed (71 pts)
Feb - Arimaa_Master (39 pts)
Mar - LAbiuso (36 pts)
Apr - Arimabuff tied with RonWeasley (18 pts)
May - Woh (9 pts)
Jun - BilalQ (17 pts)
Jul - ArifSyed (71 pts) would be eligible again.

If this rule was in place, I guarantee the winning totals for Apr, May, and Jun would have been much higher as their would have been a fun incentive to play more human vs human matches.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 16th, 2008, 10:50am

on 07/16/08 at 10:16:27, mistre wrote:
Back on topic:

No offense to ArifSyed, but he has now pocketing $210 in Arimaa winnings just by having an inordinate amount of time on his hands and playing every beginner that happens to wander on to the site.  He is the only player to win Player of the Month in all of 2008 and he is well on his way for winning in July too.

To me, this contest is the most broken thing on the site and should be changed immediately.  At the very least make it so that someone that wins one month is then ineligible to win for another 5 months, so it can spread out to more players and encourage player vs player games (which I think was it's original intent).   As it is now, this contest is not fun at all and is a foregone conclusion who will win by the 5th of the month.

Omar, you might as well just end the contest and pay Arif $30 a month on the side for constantly playing Arimaa.

Maybe the winner should give some proof that he has a busy schedule.

/sarcasm

Sorry mistre but I won't follow you there. Whatever his motives, Arif promotes the original intent of the contest, that is inciting people, sometimes new to this game room,  sometimes not, to play against other people and therefore he fully deserves the reward.

I may dislike some of Arif's "initiatives" but winning that contest is definitely not one of them.


Your idea of disqualifying someone for 5 months after he won would have for obvious effect of neutralizing constantly 5 of the 6 most frequent players of the game room and therefore reducing the activity to almost zero!!!


Another brilliant idea like that and Omar may as well, shut down this site altogether.


Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 16th, 2008, 11:59am
Besides, what kind of message would Omar send if he started penalizing people for playing "too much" of Arimaa?
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 16th, 2008, 1:33pm

on 07/16/08 at 10:50:01, Arimabuff wrote:
Your idea of disqualifying someone for 5 months after he won would have for obvious effect of neutralizing constantly 5 of the 6 most frequent players of the game room and therefore reducing the activity to almost zero!!!



I completely disagree with this statement.  The POTM applies to only Human vs Human games which still make up a very small percentage of games on this site.  It has no effect on bot games and those would continue as normal.

My original point stands - the contest has lost all sense of purpose if the same person wins every month and in convincing fashion.  Arif knows that he can win every month and everyone else has given up even trying.  Therefore it is no longer a contest, but a free give away to Arif for playing Arimaa. If Omar wants to pay Arif $30 a month to play, then he should just do it on the side and shut down the Player of the Month altogether.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 16th, 2008, 1:35pm

on 07/16/08 at 11:59:16, Arimabuff wrote:
Besides, what kind of message would Omar send if he started penalizing people for playing "too much" of Arimaa?


I said nothing about penalizing anyone.  Just not rewarding someone for playing the most games.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 16th, 2008, 1:46pm
Promotion is a tricky thing.  The behavior we get isn't always what we expect, or what we wanted to promote in the first place.  One unexpected feature of the Player of the Month contest is that it isn't a contest.  It hasn't been a contest in months.  Not that it was always hotly contested, but there used to be suspense more often than there is now.

Another unexpected feature is that it has given ArifSyed an incentive to intentionally lose games to lower his rating.  He has discovered that the lower his rating is, the more likely newcomers are to accept his invitations, because they think they will be getting a game with someone near their own level, not a game with a ringer.  Thus the Player of the Month contest is encouraging ratings distortion.

(Note that rating manipulation by intentional losses can't be handled by any mathematical system.  We can tweak the ratings to prevent amassing a huge rating via bot-bashing, but there is no way to prevent someone from driving their own rating arbitrarily low.  There must be a social solution to sandbagging, either by banning people who intentionally lose rated games, or (better) by removing rewards for having a low rating.)

But anyway, the question in my mind is not whether the Player of the Month contest is a good thing or a bad thing.  Overall it has been a net positive for the Arimaa community, and probably would continue to be in the future.  The question in my mind is this: if we have $30 per month to hand out as an incentive, is there a way to dole it out that is more beneficial to the community?  It was precisely that question that led to revamping Player of the Month and totally changing its rules in April 2005.  Three years later, the question hasn't changed, but the community has changed, so the answer has changed as well.

It seems clear to me that the promotion dollars, however they are distributed, should not target players who are going to play all day anyway.  There is no point in making contest that I am going to win, because it won't change my addicted status.  I don't need any more incentive than my deep love of the game.  The players that we should be targeting with promotions are relative newcomers who need our help to get to the addicted stage.

One problem I can see up front with prizes for which only newcomers are eligible is that people will have an incentive to set up new, phony accounts in order to make themselves eligible.  There is a definite practical hurdle to be overcome if we want to exclude old-timers.  Mistre, your suggestion of six-month ineligibility faces the same issue of duplicate accounts.  But if the prize money really is going to spur growth, we have to get around the duplicate account issue somehow.  Perhaps the prize could only be paid out upon production of identification.

Once we have a means for excluding phony accounts, however, just about any contest becomes promotional by adding the rule that it can only be won once ever per person.  The same scoring for the current contest could be used, or a plethora of other possibilities.  For example, every month we could start a new game-per-week single-elimination tournament, scheduled like the World Championship, open only to those who haven't won in the past, with the $30 prize going to the winner.

I don't buy the argument that it is counter-productive to exclude our most accomplished and most active players from the promotion.   First, the exclusion of past winners would mean that the contest stays a contest, so people don't get demoralized and stop playing.  We don't want an exclusive circle of highly-motivated players, we want to draw everyone in over time.   Second, the core people of the community are going to stick around regardless, but there are some people who will drift away somewhat without a little extra motivation to keep them active.  These are the people a promotion can and should engage.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 16th, 2008, 4:51pm
Excellent post, Fritzlein.

If the $30 is truly meant for promotion and promotion only, then limiting it to newcomers would be ideal. Here is an idea. A player is only eligible to win the player of the month within the first 3 months of joining. However, that player can only win the prize once.

If we want to award longevity on the site and give incentive for all players to play human vs human games, how about a system where you accumulate your POTM points and redeem them for Arimaa stuff once you reach certain levels.  

Here is an example:

Challenge Match game - worth 10 pts
Arimaa Championship game - worth 5 pts
Computer Championship game - worth 5 pts
Arimaa Postal Tournament game - worth 3 pts
Human vs Human game (postal or live) - worth 1 pt

Redeem your points for prizes -
Arimaa TShirt - 75 pts
Arimaa Boardgame - 150 pts
Fritzlein's Arimaa Book - 1,000,000 pts!

Or something like that.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 16th, 2008, 9:22pm
Karl, I didn't say that I approved of Arif's behavior, he definitely has no ethics whatsoever when it comes to Arimaa, as you said he keeps his rating extremely low (losing repeatedly against Arimascorep1 for instance so that newcomers think that he is one of them and play with him also it makes them think that he is rather weak and he can win an easy 3 points by a swift attack). What I didn't like is mistre disparagement of someone for having "too much time on their hands".  If someone wants to play Arimaa all day then we should encourage them not mock them the way mistre and a couple of others here do. As for Arif's "ideas", I definitely don't like them and I agree that things like "losing a game voluntarily" should be forcefully discouraged. On the other hand playing HONEST Arimaa for hours shouldn't be looked down upon by people like mistre. That was my point. I hope that you follow me on this.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 17th, 2008, 4:07am
In a nutshell, playing dirty tricks is reprehensible but playing lots of Arimaa isn't something people should be berated for, quite the contrary actually.

There are nuances that some around here don't seem to grasp.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by RonWeasley on Jul 17th, 2008, 5:26am
Another way of gaming the Player of the Month contest is to open new accounts, pose as other identities, and play games against the primary account to boost its score.  So you win a prize for playing with yourself.  I'm not sure this is happening yet, but it's another way to game the system.  This is another reason I don't like alternate accounts.

I think the situation we have here is a competition that can be exploited by undesirable behavior.  When that happens the competition needs to be changed or discontinued.  Ultimately it's up to Omar how he wants to use his own money to promote arimaa.  We can only offer commentary.  The PoTM contest may evolve into something that favors players with lots of time to play honest games, and the same player(s) always win.  That's okay with me even though I understand how such an extreme won't motivate the average player.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 17th, 2008, 5:39am

on 07/17/08 at 05:26:41, RonWeasley wrote:
Another way of gaming the Player of the Month contest is to open new accounts, pose as other identities, and play games against the primary account to boost its score.  So you win a prize for playing with yourself.  I'm not sure this is happening yet, but it's another way to game the system.  This is another reason I don't like alternate accounts.

I think the situation we have here is a competition that can be exploited by undesirable behavior.  When that happens the competition needs to be changed or discontinued.  Ultimately it's up to Omar how he wants to use his own money to promote arimaa.  We can only offer commentary.  The PoTM contest may evolve into something that favors players with lots of time to play honest games, and the same player(s) always win.  That's okay with me even though I understand how such an extreme won't motivate the average player.

I don't think you can "play against yourself" easily as it is only possible to be connected under one account at a time unless you dispose of several IP addresses and you'd have to win a lot of PoTM to reimburse the expense. It may not be impossible but the cost makes it impractical.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 17th, 2008, 5:46am

on 07/16/08 at 10:16:27, mistre wrote:
No offense to ArifSyed, but he has now pocketing $210 in Arimaa winnings just by having an inordinate amount of time on his hands and playing every beginner that happens to wander on to the site.



on 07/16/08 at 21:22:43, Arimabuff wrote:
What I didn't like is mistre disparagement of someone for having "too much time on their hands".

Speaking of nuances, Arimaabuff, there is a subtle difference between disparaging someone for having too much time on his hands, and disparaging a contest that rewards primarily quantity participation.  When it comes to spending an inordinate amount of free time on Arimaa, mistre is himself quite open to ridicule, as am I.  I don't think mistre's point is that too much Arimaa is a bad thing, because if he felt that way, he would need to cut back on Arimaa himself and get a life.

Read mistre's original statement again and see if it makes sense this way: it isn't silly to play Arimaa all day, it is silly that that's what the monthly prize money we use to promote Arimaa is used for.  Perhaps mistre should have phrased himself in a way to make it clearer that his point was not personal (about ArifSyed) but rather about the contest, but to my mind the distinction was quite clear, and your interpretation of the comments as a personal attack is actually missing mistre's main point.

Perhaps mistre himself can clarify whether he thinks it is ridiculous to play Arimaa all day; if that was part of his point, then I shouldn't take the words out of his mouth.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 17th, 2008, 5:49am

on 07/17/08 at 04:07:31, Arimabuff wrote:
In a nutshell, playing dirty tricks is reprehensible but playing lots of Arimaa isn't something people should be berated for, quite the contrary actually.

There are nuances that some around here don't seem to grasp.


I am sorry if you interpreted my concern with the POTM to be linked with spending a lot of time playing Arimaa.   That was not my concern and I probably should have left out the comment "has an inordinate amount of time" when describing Arif.  I play Arimaa more than most (I have almost 1000 games logged), so if you think that I have a "disparaged" frequent players, then I would also be doing it to myself.

Did you not see my longevity idea?  I have nothing but respect for people who stick with Arimaa, it can only be good for the community.  What I don't like is when people take advantage of loopholes in the system for their own personal gain especially when money is involved as it is not fair for others.

I was writing this post at the same time you were writing yours, Fritzlein.  Basically I confirmed everything you said.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 17th, 2008, 6:02am

on 07/17/08 at 05:46:13, Fritzlein wrote:
Speaking of nuances, Arimaabuff, there is a subtle difference between disparaging someone for having too much time on his hands, and disparaging a contest that rewards primarily quantity participation.  When it comes to spending an inordinate amount of free time on Arimaa, mistre is himself quite open to ridicule, as am I.  I don't think mistre's point is that too much Arimaa is a bad thing, because if he felt that way, he would need to cut back on Arimaa himself and get a life.

Read mistre's original statement again and see if it makes sense this way: it isn't silly to play Arimaa all day, it is silly that that's what the monthly prize money we use to promote Arimaa is used for.  Perhaps mistre should have phrased himself in a way to make it clearer that his point was not personal (about ArifSyed) but rather about the contest, but to my mind the distinction was quite clear, and your interpretation of the comments as a personal attack is actually missing mistre's main point.

Perhaps mistre himself can clarify whether he thinks it is ridiculous to play Arimaa all day; if that was part of his point, then I shouldn't take the words out of his mouth.

You are right Karl, and I apologize. It so happens that someone on this board once accused me of "having too much time on my hands" to explain my numerous contributions to botbashing contests and at the time I found that kind of attack "petty" to put it mildly. mistre's remark triggered a response in me that was of Pavlovian nature relatively to this incident. I just wanted to emphasize the fact that to me Arif's foul ways is what irks me and NOT his intensive participation to the board. That latter part would be a quality although it hardly compensate for his disgraceful use of every loophole available. That we should discourage, but only Omar can do something about it. Maybe talk to the guy and reason with him would be the way.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 17th, 2008, 7:10am
Thanks, Arimabuff.  As fellow addicts, I think we all can salute each other for fanatical levels of participation.  :-)
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 22nd, 2008, 12:01pm
A few years back we had a discussion on improving the POTM contest.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1109283021;start=15

At the time the problem was that bot games counted for POTM and it was becoming very easy for someone with more time to win the contest by playing lots of bot games. We setup some new goals for the POTM and defined a new set of rules to meet them. The primary new goal was to encourage players to play against human players. I think the current POTM rules are doing a pretty good job of encouraging HvH games. However it did not fix the problem of someone being able to win if they had more time. So I now think the POTM rules are still flawed. I really appreciate the efforts of ArifSyed in demonstrating that the rules are flawed. Off hand I can't think of any easy fix; especially one that is immune to the duplicate account attack. Which is why I can't really do anything to fix this.


on 07/16/08 at 10:16:27, mistre wrote:
Omar, you might as well just end the contest and pay Arif $30 a month on the side for constantly playing Arimaa.


If I think of it as hiring someone to play HH games and paying them $30 a month for their effort, then what ArifSyed is doing is really a good deal for me. But I don't think that he would do it if there wasn't a contest. I think winning the contest means a lot more to him. Maybe someone will come along that also has lots of time and give him a challenge. Maybe one of our goals should be that player who have more time for the contest should not have an advantage, but off hand I don't see how that can be met while also trying to encourage more HH games.

Eventually I think I will eliminate the POTM contest and distribute the amount in other ways. Perhaps using it to encourage new players to climb the bot ladder. Also I would like to make it possible for others to setup their own prized contests and tournaments. This essentially means keeping a balance for each account and making it easy to transfer "points" between each other. This is the next major change to the site I want to focus on.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 22nd, 2008, 12:14pm

on 07/22/08 at 12:01:03, omar wrote:
A few years back we had a discussion on improving the POTM contest.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1109283021;start=15

Eventually I think I will eliminate the POTM contest and distribute the amount in other ways. Perhaps using it to encourage new players to climb the bot ladder. Also I would like to make it possible for others to setup their own prized contests and tournaments. This essentially means keeping a balance for each account and making it easy to transfer "points" between each other. This is the next major change to the site I want to focus on.


Those ideas sound great!  What did you think of my new point scheme and redemption of points idea I presented earlier in this thread?  Is something like that doable?

I think one thing that is discouraging with the current POTM is that once the month is up and you don't have the highest total, your points are worth nothing.  If there was a small incentive to accumulate points over a long period of time that could then be redeemed for something of value - I think you would see H vs H games rise dramatically.

I also like the idea of some matches being worth more than others to encourage people to participate in tournaments and other events.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 22nd, 2008, 12:56pm
If we had a system for players to hold an account balance, into which small amounts of prize money could be deposited, and if we had a scheduling tool, I would be happy to be director for a ongoing series of Swiss-paired tournaments formatted just like the preliminaries of the World Championship.   We could have one tournament after another throughout the off-season.  The prize money that currently goes all-or-nothing in Player of the Month could be distributed to all players like the points in Postal Mixer, i.e. $0.60 for a win, $0.XX for an XX move loss, and -$0.60 for not showing up.

This should encourage HvH games of players that don't normally play each other, encourage serious play, give players a chance to win something without winning it all, and have more even HvH games towards the later rounds when the pairing sorts out.  (Maybe we could add one to the WC formula for number of rounds, to give everyone an extra shot at an even game.)

In terms of what to do next for improving the site, I rank having a tournament scheduling tool right up there with having per-player accounts to hold micro-incentives for playing.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 22nd, 2008, 1:31pm

on 07/22/08 at 12:56:14, Fritzlein wrote:
In terms of what to do next for improving the site, I rank having a tournament scheduling tool right up there with having per-player accounts to hold micro-incentives for playing.


Actually I was hoping to setup a tool to submit scheduled games last week, but there was a lot of catching up to do and I didn't get to it. Hope to get it setup this week.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 22nd, 2008, 4:07pm

on 07/22/08 at 12:14:59, mistre wrote:
Those ideas sound great!  What did you think of my new point scheme and redemption of points idea I presented earlier in this thread?  Is something like that doable?


Yes, I saw that. It's is doable and is also along the lines of eliminating the POTM contest and using the money in other ways. However, I don't like the guaranteed return on every HH game played; it removes the element of risk and makes it less interesting.

I was thinking about the POTM rules and just had an idea that might provide a quick fix. The player who has the most points but is not more than 5 points above the next highest player win the contest. In other words if I am 6 or more points above the next highest player I will not be win POTM (even if I have the most points). I would need to make sure that I do not get more than 5 points above the next highest player. The next highest player will always have a chance to pass me up by winning two consecutive games. At least two players will always be contending for the prize.

I bounced the idea off of Naveed and he suggested a different proposal. When a player has more than 20 points they lose 3 points if they lose a game. Also when a player has more than 20 points and plays someone rated under 1600 they only receive 1 point for winning. Naveed's reasoning is that once you pass the 20 point threshold you should play better players to get 3 points for a win and should only get 1 point if you play easy games while at the same time risking the possibility of losing points if they lose the game.

We thought that both of these can be combined to create some interesting situations, but it probably would not be good. The second place player could chase the leader and then purposely lose points so that the 3rd place player wins the contest. So using both would not be good. But each of these independently could provide an easy to implement fix to the current POTM rules.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by aaaa on Jul 22nd, 2008, 4:10pm
I think Arifuddin definitely crossed the line with this game (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=79452). At least bots won't have their feelings hurt over being at the receiving end of PotM shenanigans.

Also interestingly, in the chatroom, his opponent in that game, Tuks, corroborated the point that was made about his sandbagging:

Quote:
why does he keep his rating so low...i dont want to play someone im probably going to lose to when their rating is even lower than mine
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by mistre on Jul 22nd, 2008, 5:17pm
Omar,

Here is another quick-fix idea:

Win vs player with <1600 rating = 1 pt
Loss vs player with <1600 rating = -1 pts

Win vs player with rating from 1600-1800 = 2 pts
Loss vs player with rating from 1600-1800 =0 pts (<40 moves) 1 pt (>40 moves)

Win vs player with rating from 1800-2000 = 3 pts
Loss vs player with rating from 1800-2000 = 1 pt (<40 moves) 2 pts (>40 moves)

Win vs player with rating 2000+ = 4 pts
Loss vs player with rating 2000+ = 2 pts (<40 moves) 3 pts (>40 moves)

I don't see any need to start this scoring system from 20.  Make it easy and just start from zero.  This would also discourage Arif from keeping his rating artificially low since other players would score fewer POTM points for playing him.

Comments?
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by aaaa on Jul 22nd, 2008, 5:32pm
Two more rated games deliberately lost against a human beginner with no PotM points being at stake, this time because he had maxed out already in the respective month:
  • game 78825 (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=78825)
  • game 79191 (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/comments.cgi?gid=79191)
Games in context. (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/pastrecord.cgi?id=7411&ra=1&oid=8375)

I'm calling for sanctions and a boycott. Instead of helping to popularize the game, winning the PotM at all costs may actually have resulted in the exact opposite of the whole intent of the contest; newcomers might have been discouraged by this sandbagging and stayed away as a result.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 22nd, 2008, 10:43pm

on 07/22/08 at 17:17:06, mistre wrote:
I don't see any need to start this scoring system from 20.  Make it easy and just start from zero.  This would also discourage Arif from keeping his rating artificially low since other players would score fewer POTM points for playing him.


I like that it encourages playing against stronger human players. But we also have to be careful about the contest becoming unattainable for weak players and possibly favoring strong players. We would not want the same strong player to keep winning either. Also have to be careful not to give points for losing quickly no matter how strong the opponent is. I would suggest amending the Loss part as follows:

Win vs player with <1600 rating = 1 pt
Loss vs player with <1600 rating = -1 pts

Win vs player with rating from 1600-1800 = 2 pts
Loss vs player with rating from 1600-1800 =2 pts >60 moves; 1 pt >40 moves; 0 pt >20; -1 pts otherwise

Win vs player with rating from 1800-2000 = 3 pts
Loss vs player with rating from 1800-2000 = 3 pt >60 moves; 2 pts >40 moves; 1 pt >20; 0 pt otherwise

Win vs player with rating 2000+ = 4 pts
Loss vs player with rating 2000+ = 4 pts >60 moves; 3 pts >40 moves; 2 pts >20; 0 pt otherwise
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 23rd, 2008, 8:29am
It has long been clear that the surest path to winning Player of the Month is beating lots of newcomers.  This hasn't bothered me in the past, because it seemed like a service to newcomers to have established players who are willing and eager to play.  Those games are part of what we are trying to promote.

Unfortunately, ArifSyed's behavior has been a disservice to newcomers.  Why is it that he can get more games by lowering his rating?  It is because many newcomers, perhaps most, don't want a game against someone much stronger than themselves.  Yes, there are a bold few who want to play the World Champion on their third game (why not try?), but the large majority aren't ready.  When I was trying to win Player of the Month, my invitations were declined by many a player who said I was too good.  Enticing newcomers to play with an artifically lowered rating is giving them something they dislike, something they would actively avoid if they had enough information.  How is that something we want to promote?

The way ArifSyed has abruptly resigned games in the middle when he realized no Player of the Month points were at stake, as aaaa has documented, is a further disservice to newcomers.

These two ways that ArifSyed is hurting the community come on top of the ratings distrortion that ArifSyed is causing, and which I have talked about elsewhere.

One way to stop the damage is to disqualify ArifSyed from winning Player of the Month until the behaviors stop.  We can tell him how he is hurting the community: perhaps he can understand what is wrong with rating manipulation, deception, and unsporting behavior if we explain to him.  But even if he doesn't understand, we can take away the prize, which seems to be his sole motivation, and expect his behavior to stop for that reason.

I say this because, although I think the new scoring Omar has just proposed will make it more difficult to win Player of the Month by exploiting newcomers, the incentives for ArifSyed's misbehavior are still there, still unpunished, and it may be that the changed rules mean that in order to win he just has to do more of what we don't want.  If he has an artificially low rating, the new rules don't discourage other people from playing him unless they are trying to win Player of the Month themselves, and unless they know his rating is artifically low.  Neither of these apply to newcomers; they will still be duped, so it will continue to be advantageous for ArifSyed to sandbag.

Furthermore, the new scoring would make it much less a participation contest.  Consider that two legitimate newcomers playing each other under the proposed scoring get a net of zero points for playing: one of them will gain a point and the other will lose a point.  The new rules would clearly make the contest more elitist.  We would be promoting some kind of HvH games, true, but I thought we wanted to tip the use of the prize money more towards newcomers, not tip it more towards established players.

I return to my idea of swiss-paired HvH tournaments with participation prizes.  We don't want to just promote raw quantity of HvH games, but also quality.  The Swiss pairing (in later rounds of each tournament) eventually gets us the kind of games we want, i.e. not sharks beating up the fish, but relatively even games against a variety of opponents.  We want to see more of sharks playing sharks and fish playing fish.  It's more fun for everyone.

Furthermore, even games are not just what we promoters want to happen, it's what players themselves want.  The most important function of ratings, apart from being a marker of personal progress, is to allow people to find games against people near their own level.  Since the current rules are promoting sandbagging to fool people into thinking they are getting games near their own level, let's take ratings out of the equation entirely, and give people even games based on progressive pairing based on W-L record.

In fact, here's an improvement over my previous idea.  Instead of a series of prize tournaments, we have one rolling prize tournament that anyone can join or drop out of at any time.  Pairing would be based on the number of wins in one's previous five rounds, so people joining midstream (probably newcomers) will have zero wins and start by playing others with zero wins (probably other newcomers).  The Swiss prohibition on playing the same opponents twice only goes back five rounds, i.e. eventually you can start playing the same people again if they stay near your level in W-L record.

Every week players would accumulate points for winning or losing slowly, so there would be no incentive for sandbagging.  When someone had accumulated enough points, say $20, they could withdraw their winnings by PayPal.

This seems to me like a way to reward participation, serious participation, while creating the type of games we want to see, and not giving all the money to a single person from the small circle of elite players that has a chance to win it all.  Furthermore I'd be happy to stay out of this tournament myself so that I could be an impartial tournament director.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by PMertens on Jul 23rd, 2008, 11:55am
why reward money at all ?
I only tried to win the PotM once upon a time so I had enough on my Paypal to be able to pay for the WC-entry ;-)

no honestly, put that money into servers or give send t-shirts.
I really liked the idea with "reward-points" that could be changed into items instead of money.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 23rd, 2008, 1:19pm

on 07/23/08 at 11:55:25, PMertens wrote:
no honestly, put that money into servers or give send t-shirts.
I really liked the idea with "reward-points" that could be changed into items instead of money.

Yeah, sorry mistre, I like reward points too.  I was just focusing on how to give out those points.  Omar's concern that obsessed players could pile up points indefinitely is addressed by the rolling tournament idea, because everyone has only one chance per round to rack up points.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 23rd, 2008, 2:51pm
It will probably be a while before I get things setup to allow monthly tournaments. Until then I am going to try the quick fix Naveed suggested.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Tuks on Jul 23rd, 2008, 3:31pm
why dont you make it so one person can only win once in a year...then Arif will win once and stop

could you make Arif's rating where its supposed to be...at 1800 or 1900s  and then make all his games unrated so that everyone will know what rating he truly is? that would be more difficult ide expect
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 23rd, 2008, 8:53pm
For now I decided to add just this rule to the existing POTM rules: Once a player has more than 10 points, winning or losing against a player rated under 1600 does not earn any points.

The new rules will take effect starting in August.

I think this will reduce the incentive to lower ones rating to play against new players.

It doesn't fix the problem of players with lots of time having an advantage. But since I will be eliminating POTM I didn't want to spend too much time trying to fix that. Hopefully the negative side effect the contest was having on new players will be eliminated.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 23rd, 2008, 9:09pm

on 07/23/08 at 15:31:54, Tuks wrote:
why dont you make it so one person can only win once in a year...then Arif will win once and stop

mistre had also suggested not allowing the same person to win for 6 months. However, someone could create new accounts just to win the POTM.


Quote:
could you make Arif's rating where its supposed to be...at 1800 or 1900s  and then make all his games unrated so that everyone will know what rating he truly is? that would be more difficult ide expect

I really hate to manually intervene and police the site. I much prefer changing the rules that are causing the problem. Hopefully the recent changes to the POTM rules will help eliminate the problem.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by PMertens on Jul 23rd, 2008, 10:05pm
How about you do give players an emotional rating that can be seen in the gameroom as well.

Like a green light for Fritzlein with 10 community point (for explaining lots of things in detail to new players i.e.)and a red one for Said with -10 points (for not even saying "hello" and doing some things mentioned above and around)

The points would be given from other community members.

I would think twice before playing against a red-light player ;-)
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by RonWeasley on Jul 24th, 2008, 1:18pm

on 07/23/08 at 22:05:13, PMertens wrote:
How about you do give players an emotional rating that can be seen in the gameroom as well.

Like a green light for Fritzlein with 10 community point (for explaining lots of things in detail to new players i.e.)and a red one for Said with -10 points (for not even saying "hello" and doing some things mentioned above and around)

The points would be given from other community members.

I would think twice before playing against a red-light player ;-)


EBay does this with some success.  At first this idea worried me because a personal dispute between two individuals could result in an attempt to blackball each other.  But it's been really easy for the community to weigh the evidence in the past and lots of us would simply add/change our ratings to the disputing individuals and the average (that gets displayed) would show the consensus.  This works if players enter one rating of each other and it is not cumulative.  On the other hand, I'm worried about all of us trying to earn a highest rating and feeling hurt if we don't get it.  This could lead to a lot of discord.

On sandbagging, if the new rule works, then the only way to effectively sandbag is to play people better than you so you lose more often.  This behavior is legitimate and in some ways desireable.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 24th, 2008, 2:45pm

on 07/23/08 at 21:09:53, omar wrote:
I really hate to manually intervene and police the site.

I think we are seeing that people want the site to be policed.  I have always wanted you to be a benevolent dictator, Omar, but if that's not a role you want to take on, I think folks would welcome at least some level of peer-based social regulation.  Ultimately that would scale better than dictatorship anyway.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by aaaa on Jul 24th, 2008, 3:11pm

on 07/23/08 at 20:53:35, omar wrote:
For now I decided to add just this rule to the existing POTM rules: Once a player has more than 10 points, winning or losing against a player rated under 1600 does not earn any points.

Although I'm wary of further dependencies on the rating system, this does seem like a somewhat reasonable fix, although it does lower the chances of a beginner to win it even further. Perhaps we should call it the "fishing quota" rule (get it?).
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by PMertens on Jul 25th, 2008, 8:24am

on 07/23/08 at 20:53:35, omar wrote:
For now I decided to add just this rule to the existing POTM rules: Once a player has more than 10 points, winning or losing against a player rated under 1600 does not earn any points.


I really do dislike that rule.
It is no cure to the problem but just trying to reduce the symptoms ...
The collateral damage is imho higher than the outcome.

It is not about trying to make people avoid unmatched games, but about to avoid people trying to gain advantage by doing something that can be considered fishy ...

If a higher rated player is playing with a beginner then this is imho rather healthy for the community and should be rewarded.

I clearly prefer some "ethics" that should be followed.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by chessandgo on Jul 25th, 2008, 8:58am

on 07/25/08 at 08:24:35, PMertens wrote:
I really do dislike that rule.
It is no cure to the problem but just trying to reduce the symptoms ...
The collateral damage is imho higher than the outcome.

It is not about trying to make people avoid unmatched games, but about to avoid people trying to gain advantage by doing something that can be considered fishy ...

If a higher rated player is playing with a beginner then this is imho rather healthy for the community and should be rewarded.

I clearly prefer some "ethics" that should be followed.


I agree with this. The nice effect of the PoTM contest is to get regulars players to play with newcomers, this new rule seems to take away the spirit (and the benefits) of the contest.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 25th, 2008, 10:48am
My objection to having low-ranked opponents not count is that Player of the Month becomes less winnable for an enthusiastic amateur; now it will have to be an enthusiastic player of reasonable strength.  We're moving in the wrong direction.

Oddly enough, though, I am less disturbed by this than by the illogic of the cutoff at ten points.  If I get 10 points against newcomers and then 35 points against established players, while PMertens gets 40 points against established players and then 10 points against newcomers, he loses despite have done more of what the promotion is trying to promote.  What difference does it make whether the low-rated opponents came earlier or later?  Are we trying to promote playing newcomers for the first week of every month, but not promote it after that?

My desire to have a logical scoring system is so strong, I would rather have games against players under 1600 not count at all, not even during the first ten points, even though that makes the contest yet slightly more elitist.  Isn't it weird how I value consistency?  Just call me Spock.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Tuks on Jul 25th, 2008, 11:12am
i like the emotional rating

i dont think Ron's concerns would apply because those with high scores wouldn't be petty enough to feel hurt about something so trivial
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by PMertens on Jul 26th, 2008, 12:09am

on 07/24/08 at 13:18:40, RonWeasley wrote:
On the other hand, I'm worried about all of us trying to earn a highest rating and feeling hurt if we don't get it.  This could lead to a lot of discord.


Such is life ....
If you make the maximum rating the default and let people give you negative ratings that lose some weight over time then I am pretty sure only those who actively annoy someone will get slammed.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 26th, 2008, 5:31pm
I talked to my uncle about not sandbagging since it is messing up the rating system. He said he was doing that because the new players were not accepting invites if his rating was high. When we lowered the initial rating of the new players from 1500 to 1300 it made it worse and he had to lower his rating more. He also said that he just doesn't try to play the new players but even the high rated player, but that most of the time the regular players decline the invites and just play bots instead. I know I am guilty of that cause I've been wanting 15 or 30 second games and particularly against Bomb.

Anyways, since the POTM will be going away, let not worry about trying to fix it more. I really would rather use my Arimaa time to work on other areas of the site.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Fritzlein on Jul 26th, 2008, 6:40pm
Thanks for talking to him, Omar.  I know it is very socially awkward, and I appreciate your courage in facing the issue, especially since I have a guess of your odds of persuading him to change his behavior voluntarily.


on 07/26/08 at 17:31:58, omar wrote:
He said he was doing that because the new players were not accepting invites if his rating was high.

I think this explanation is not news.  We didn't think ArifSyed was acting randomly with no motivation or logic to his behavior.  The question is not why he does it, but whether is OK for him to trick people into giving him the games he wants.  Does he think his desire to score points in the contest is more important than the desires of newcomers not to play too strong an opponent?

I don't at all like it when people intentionally distort the ratings, but I think in this case the rude surprise he gives to unsuspecting newcomers is an even more important problem.  Deception is a big deal to me.  I am glad that he at least knows that the community is not happy with his behavior, but it would be a bonus if he knew the biggest reason why.

I feel the same as you in that I also would rather that you use your time on other areas of the site than fixing Player of the Month, and I am glad the contest is going away because I am confident its replacement will be an improvement.  Thank you for all the time you spend trying to make things better.  Arimaa.com is already a great place to have fun, and I expect the future is going to mightily outshine the past.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by 99of9 on Jul 26th, 2008, 10:01pm
Yes, I agree with Fritz.  Although this was framed as "Arif is unfairly winning POTM", I am much more concerned with "Arif is tricking newcomers into wallopings".
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by aaaa on Jul 27th, 2008, 6:13am

on 07/25/08 at 10:48:40, Fritzlein wrote:
Oddly enough, though, I am less disturbed by this than by the illogic of the cutoff at ten points.  If I get 10 points against newcomers and then 35 points against established players, while PMertens gets 40 points against established players and then 10 points against newcomers, he loses despite have done more of what the promotion is trying to promote.  What difference does it make whether the low-rated opponents came earlier or later?  Are we trying to promote playing newcomers for the first week of every month, but not promote it after that?

My desire to have a logical scoring system is so strong, I would rather have games against players under 1600 not count at all, not even during the first ten points, even though that makes the contest yet slightly more elitist.  Isn't it weird how I value consistency?  Just call me Spock.

This illogic can be fixed by keeping a separate tally of the points accumulated against sub-1600 players that is then limited to a certain amount.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by omar on Jul 27th, 2008, 9:38am
Thanks for this suggestion aaaa. That is a good way to fix it.

But, I think for now I will just put a hold on POTM after the end of this month. That will force me to start thinking about some of the other totally different alternatives sooner.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by aaaa on Jul 29th, 2008, 2:06pm
If it's not too late, I think I may have found a way to salvage the Player of the Month contest.

First, toss the last change to the contest, the one that makes a player's rating matter.

If someone wins the PotM in one month, then next month his point total starts with one minus what his margin of victory was (except when it was won on account of the tiebreaker, then it's 0). For the purpose of determining this margin, the starting point total is not taken into account. This has the effect that for someone to prolong his winning streak, he has to maintain at least the same winning margin as last time (or win the tiebreaker if it's one less), with the result that every month, it's always a contest between at least two players.

This, of course, doesn't solve the problem of playing with duplicate accounts, but I think it would look pretty obvious if someone were to go down that route.
Title: Re: Player of the Month
Post by Arimabuff on Jul 29th, 2008, 3:14pm

on 07/29/08 at 14:06:03, aaaa wrote:
If it's not too late, I think I may have found a way to salvage the Player of the Month contest.

First, toss the last change to the contest, the one that makes a player's rating matter.

If someone wins the PotM in one month, then next month his point total starts with one minus what his margin of victory was (except when it was won on account of the tiebreaker, then it's 0). For the purpose of determining this margin, the starting point total is not taken into account. This has the effect that for someone to prolong his winning streak, he has to maintain at least the same winning margin as last time (or win the tiebreaker if it's one less), with the result that every month, it's always a contest between at least two players.

This, of course, doesn't solve the problem of playing with duplicate accounts, but I think it would look pretty obvious if someone were to go down that route.

There is an obvious loophole to that rule. If I want to win every month, I can play everyday only to be slightly ahead of the second and readjust my score the last few days of the month. That way a stakhanovist like Arif can last an entire year without much problem.

Frankly, I don't know how others feel but I'd rather this contest to be totally done away with and the money used for the Continuous Tournament which seems a lot more promising and equalitarian.

Let bygones be bygones.


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