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Topic: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning Stage) (Read 20020 times) |
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megajester
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AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning Stage)
« on: Jan 6th, 2011, 1:41am » |
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Greetings to all,
This is the thread for everybody and anybody to post their impressions and comments from the 2010 Arimaa World League and the Sequel, and any suggestions for this year. With the community's input I'm sure it'll be even more of a success this year.
Thank you.
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Sconibulus
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #1 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am » |
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I think it was a lot of fun, but have a few suggestions for rule changes to make it even better next time.
1) Remove the restrictions on substitutions, and change the penalty to 2xnewrating-oldrating or 150 points, whichever is higher. (numbers up to debate, I just noticed that some players last year had nobody that could sub for them at any penalty in case something went wrong.
2) Change the rules so that a timeout is no longer a forfeit, it was sad to see hard-fought games that were still up in the air turn into 0 points for a side.
3) Much less drastic, possibly not even desirable, but potentially interesting. Vary the time controls through the season, perhaps a round at 30s/move a round at 1min/move, and a round at either blitz or a minute thirty, depending on what the majority of players desires.
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Nombril
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #2 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 2:56pm » |
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on Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am, Sconibulus wrote:1) Remove the restrictions on substitutions, and change the penalty to 2xnewrating-oldrating or 150 points, whichever is higher. (numbers up to debate, I just noticed that some players last year had nobody that could sub for them at any penalty in case something went wrong.
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I agree that it was a problem that some folks hit a rating point that prevented substitutes. But I would be concerned about not having a ceiling on how much higher the new player could be. Not that I expect people to purposely substitute in order to get an 'easy' game, but it seems we have formal rules for this league and should keep some sort of limit here. I would support increasing it from 100 points to 150 or 200.
on Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am, Sconibulus wrote:| 2) Change the rules so that a timeout is no longer a forfeit, it was sad to see hard-fought games that were still up in the air turn into 0 points for a side. |
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Even though this benefited my team, I agree a timeout should be given 1 point. I suggest fewest time-outs be used as the first tie breaker, and budget be used as the second tie breaker.
on Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am, Sconibulus wrote:| 3) Much less drastic, possibly not even desirable, but potentially interesting. Vary the time controls through the season, perhaps a round at 30s/move a round at 1min/move, and a round at either blitz or a minute thirty, depending on what the majority of players desires. |
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I personally prefer the 1min games, but would be willing to consider other times. I also wonder if we would need to do 3 rounds at one time control, and the next 3 rounds at a different one? (Assuming we still have 4 teams.) I was also wondering about having an extra game each round be at a different time control, but I guess this would mess with getting 'even' match ups for the ratings.
4) Forfeit Timeframe
Previously, if an opponent didn't show up, it was up to the discretion of the other player how long they would wait past 15 minutes before claiming a forfeit. I think a forfeit should just happen automatically after 15min. Otherwise it puts the player in the awkward position of having to make a decision that will affect the entire team. From last year's thread, I had an example and further justification: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=2010awl;action=display ;num=1258135580;start=192#192
5) Rescheduling a game time:
I don't like that an opponent can unilaterally change their preferences and get a new game time after they see the first one. I prefer the WC method of requiring both players to agree to a new time before a change is made.
6) If turn out is high enough, I would suggest more games per round rather than adding teams. I hope this would lead to fewer lopsided match ups.
When will the league start? Personally, I'd prefer some time to allow a few of the Postal Mixer games to finish.
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Fritzlein
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #3 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 7:59pm » |
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on Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am, Sconibulus wrote:| 1) Remove the restrictions on substitutions, and change the penalty to 2xnewrating-oldrating or 150 points, whichever is higher. (numbers up to debate, I just noticed that some players last year had nobody that could sub for them at any penalty in case something went wrong. |
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I agree that there should be no ceiling on how high you can substitute. The penalty I originally suggested still seems adequate to me: Pay the rating of the player who actually plays the game plus the difference in the ratings. For example
Field 1700, substitute 1400, team is charged 1700
Field 1700, substitute 2000, team is charged 2300.
Note that in the latter scenario, the team loses an additional 600 points from their budget relative to the original. That cannot be good for the team unless their original player was going to forfeit. If the original player can even show up and play, the team will get 1 league point plus the possibility of winning and getting 3. Subbing in a stronger player to try to get 3 league points instead is a bad percentage play. It costs 1.7 league points relative to the budget, which means that you need to raise your winning percentage by 85% to justify it. There is no conceivable opponent against whom a 2000 player has a winning chance 85% above a 1700 player's winning chance. The optimum opponent for this substitution is a player rated 1850, against whom a 1700 player wins 29.7% and a 2000 player wins 70.3%, for a net gain of 40.6%. Therefore the gain in league points from the sub will be, on average, less than half the cost to the team relative to their budget.
The times that a substitution would still make sense percentage-wise are only the times when it prevents a forfeit. To pay that 600 extra points to have a 2000 player take the field when the 1700 player would otherwise forfeit, the 2000 player only needs a 57% chance of winning, and thus should play anyone rated up to 1951 rather than letting the game be a forfeit.
My proposal doesn't penalize a team for subbing in a weaker player. The penalty is built in. There is no reason for a team to substitute weaker players for any monkey business, because the lower-rated player could have been fielded in the first place for fewer budget points.
It seems to me my simple formula for a substitution penalty eliminates any incentive to use substitutions to gain unfair advantage. Instead it maximizes the opportunity for games to be played rather than forfeited when some player is a no-show for whatever reason. Having a ceiling in addition to this penalty is superfluous. Having a larger penalty is also superfluous. I guess if we really don't like substitutions, we can have caps and/or higher penalties, but I personally don't mind substitutions as long as we have set the budget penalty high enough to make planned substitutions unprofitable.
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Fritzlein
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #4 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 8:02pm » |
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on Jan 6th, 2011, 2:56pm, Nombril wrote:5) Rescheduling a game time:
I don't like that an opponent can unilaterally change their preferences and get a new game time after they see the first one. I prefer the WC method of requiring both players to agree to a new time before a change is made. |
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Totally agreed. To honor a unilateral time change request is to beg for abuse.
Quote:| 6) If turn out is high enough, I would suggest more games per round rather than adding teams. I hope this would lead to fewer lopsided match ups. |
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Also totally agreed. More games per team is better than more teams.
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Sconibulus
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #5 on: Jan 6th, 2011, 8:17pm » |
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Fritz, my problem with that formula is that it doesn't really provide a penalty for subbing near-equal players. For example, Nevermind and I could be interchanged at the cost of less than five points (assuming the ratings at the start of the WC prelims), and the two of us both have players in our rating range we're particularly strong or weak against, for example, I'm something like 0-10 against Nombril.
That's the reason I imposed the minimum penalty, but other than that I like your formula.
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Fritzlein
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #6 on: Jan 7th, 2011, 8:41am » |
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on Jan 6th, 2011, 8:17pm, Sconibulus wrote:| That's the reason I imposed the minimum penalty, but other than that I like your formula. |
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Oh, OK. So my formula with a 100-point minimum would look like this:
Field 1700, substitute 1400, team is charged 1700
Field 1700, substitute 1693, team is charged 1793
Field 1700, substitute 1708, team is charged 1808
Field 1700, substitute 2000, team is charged 2300.
I can see the logic for imposing a minimum penalty on a substitution of nearly-equal players.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 7th, 2011, 8:42am by Fritzlein » |
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aaaa
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #7 on: Jan 8th, 2011, 9:10pm » |
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Like I suggested earlier, I propose that the first tiebreaker be the total number of moves played in all lost games minus that of all won games. That would naturally provide a slight disincentive against timing out and resigning, both which would then no longer need to be penalized explicitly, reserving that only for forfeitures. As a bonus, that would also encourage players to, respectively, dispatch and draw out won and lost games (but not too much so that it would distort the nature of the game).
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| « Last Edit: Jan 8th, 2011, 9:17pm by aaaa » |
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novacat
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #8 on: Jan 14th, 2011, 2:56pm » |
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on Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am, Sconibulus wrote:
3) Much less drastic, possibly not even desirable, but potentially interesting. Vary the time controls through the season, perhaps a round at 30s/move a round at 1min/move, and a round at either blitz or a minute thirty, depending on what the majority of players desires. |
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This could be fun (especially for people who enjoy faster games), but it may require more participants than we currently have. Quite a few people, including myself, are not comfortable playing at faster time controls, so captains would have fewer players to choose from for those tables.
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megajester
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #9 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 2:44pm » |
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OK I'd like to get your thoughts on this idea...
LIVE matches!
Last year the League worked as follows: You get picked for the roster several days in advance. You enter the times you're available. The program matches you with your opponent and picks a time for you. You turn up. You play. You leave. Maybe somebody watches.
What if this year we did it like this: Everybody who thinks they might like to play this week in each team enters their times in the scheduler. The scheduler compares the entered times for everybody in both teams and picks ONE TIME that most people should be able to make. We advertise that ONE TIME as "the big all-American derby, ATLANTICS vs. ROCKIES" Both captains (or designated replacements) turn up on the day and make team selections on the fly. No budgets, no substitutions. Everybody plays together, spectates together. It works fine just so long as we don't have to deploy riot police to split up the supporters in the chatroom 
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Adanac
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #10 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 3:23pm » |
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on Feb 14th, 2011, 2:44pm, megajester wrote:OK I'd like to get your thoughts on this idea...
LIVE matches!
Last year the League worked as follows: You get picked for the roster several days in advance. You enter the times you're available. The program matches you with your opponent and picks a time for you. You turn up. You play. You leave. Maybe somebody watches.
What if this year we did it like this: Everybody who thinks they might like to play this week in each team enters their times in the scheduler. The scheduler compares the entered times for everybody in both teams and picks ONE TIME that most people should be able to make. We advertise that ONE TIME as "the big all-American derby, ATLANTICS vs. ROCKIES" Both captains (or designated replacements) turn up on the day and make team selections on the fly. No budgets, no substitutions. Everybody plays together, spectates together. It works fine just so long as we don't have to deploy riot police to split up the supporters in the chatroom |
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Most teams are heavily concentrated in a few nearby time zones, so that could work. However, the Ring of Fire has players scattered across the globe and that would make it difficult. Perhaps Saturday 19:00-21:00 GMT would be a small window where everyone is awake at the same time, but there aren't many other good time slots. I'm happy with the current system of scheduling games according to each player's personal preference.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 14th, 2011, 3:24pm by Adanac » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #11 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 3:43pm » |
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on Feb 14th, 2011, 2:44pm, megajester wrote:
Without a budget, I foresee two problems.
(1) There is nothing to equalize teams. I'm going to sign up for chessandgo's team if those are your rules. Why not? I will get all the playing time I want and I will be on the winning team. Team spirit will matter less to success in AWL than having a core of a few strong players.
(2) There is no reason that lower-rated players will get playing time. I mean, if chessandgo is available, why would the captain ever bench him and let someone else play? AWL will become more elitist and less participatory, unless the captains don't play to win.
The are a lot of other rules in AWL that I can see experimenting with, but the budget rule is the core rule that makes AWL what it is.
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megajester
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #12 on: Feb 15th, 2011, 12:47am » |
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@Adanac: I'm thinking we could ask Omar to have a dry run with the scheduler, ie. take the times everybody has entered into the scheduler (perhaps we could get people to update their times) and see what times it would spit out for matches with each of the other clubs. We could definitely tell if the RoF would be disadvantaged by this system and try something else if needs be.
@Fritzlein: Thank you for crystallizing the subject. I agree with you. However I feel like we need to streamline the current budget system because it's a pig to administer. All I can think of is, either we round everybody's rating up/down to the nearest 100, or we fix a person's rating at the start of the tournament... Do you have any other ideas?
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Fritzlein
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #13 on: Feb 15th, 2011, 9:41am » |
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on Feb 15th, 2011, 12:47am, megajester wrote:| However I feel like we need to streamline the current budget system because it's a pig to administer. All I can think of is, either we round everybody's rating up/down to the nearest 100, or we fix a person's rating at the start of the tournament... Do you have any other ideas? |
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Automation? Although I guess this is hard to do in the absence of an API that can fetch the WHR for anyone at any given time. 
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megajester
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Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St
« Reply #14 on: Feb 15th, 2011, 9:51am » |
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on Feb 15th, 2011, 9:41am, Fritzlein wrote:
Automation? Although I guess this is hard to do in the absence of an API that can fetch the WHR for anyone at any given time. |
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Woh made a page that automatically refreshes every week. That helped a lot but updating the wiki each week was a hassle. I'm a copy-paste freak but I'm no programmer.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 15th, 2011, 9:52am by megajester » |
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