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Title: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning Stage) Post by megajester on Jan 6th, 2011, 1:41am 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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jan 6th, 2011, 11:37am 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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Nombril on Jan 6th, 2011, 2:56pm on 01/06/11 at 11:37:12, Sconibulus wrote:
on 01/06/11 at 11:37:12, Sconibulus wrote:
on 01/06/11 at 11:37:12, Sconibulus wrote:
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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jan 6th, 2011, 7:59pm on 01/06/11 at 11:37:12, Sconibulus wrote:
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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jan 6th, 2011, 8:02pm on 01/06/11 at 14:56:54, Nombril wrote:
Totally agreed. To honor a unilateral time change request is to beg for abuse. Quote:
Also totally agreed. More games per team is better than more teams. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jan 6th, 2011, 8:17pm 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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jan 7th, 2011, 8:41am on 01/06/11 at 20:17:53, Sconibulus wrote:
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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jan 8th, 2011, 9:10pm 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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Jan 14th, 2011, 2:56pm on 01/06/11 at 11:37:12, Sconibulus wrote:
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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Feb 14th, 2011, 2:44pm 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 :D |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Adanac on Feb 14th, 2011, 3:23pm on 02/14/11 at 14:44:05, megajester wrote:
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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Feb 14th, 2011, 3:43pm on 02/14/11 at 14:44:05, 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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Feb 15th, 2011, 12:47am @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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Feb 15th, 2011, 9:41am on 02/15/11 at 00:47:59, megajester 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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Feb 15th, 2011, 9:51am on 02/15/11 at 09:41:58, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Nombril on Feb 15th, 2011, 10:43am Regarding WHR - did you happen to notice how far WHR moved over the course of the season? Seems fixing the rating for 3 games (6 weeks) would be fine, maybe even the whole season, but I didn't look for any data to support this impression. This would be a greater encouragement and advantage for newer players still on the steep part of the learning curve. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Feb 15th, 2011, 9:24pm FYI - Rabbits was 1451 at the beginning of the first AWL. He was 1917 at the end. Ocmiente began at 1478 and ended at 1760. The rest of the Atlantics stayed a lot closer to their starting value. While most people's ratings can probably stay fixed for a season, it is important to adjust for large changes. Thus, in the absence of automation, I am in favor of rounding in moderately large increments (I would prefer increments of 50 points or less). I was a little weary about rounding in the AWLS, but that turned out to work fine. As far as playing live matches, I think player availability will be an issue. The Atlantics had meetings in Teamspeak last year to discuss ideas and player availability, and it was hard to agree on a time that most of the team could attend (and this was for a half hour meeting!). However, this sounds like a great idea for a field day. Have one day in the middle of the AWL where all the teams storm the field of play and challenge each other. The games won't count toward the regular season (or can have a small prize, such as extra budget points), and there can be as many games as there are people to play. This way, everyone can plan to commit to a specific day, it encourages people interested in a one day event to join a team and maybe stick around longer, and it's just plain fun. We can even use this as a time where any interactive time control can be used. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Feb 17th, 2011, 4:16pm The current AWL rules have become quite complex in order to make sure everything is fair. Sometimes making sure things are fair gets in the way of fun. I tend to prefer simple, good and fun over complex, perfect and boring. One of the things that attracted me about the AWL was that it would create a team spirit among the players. But after playing in two seasons of AWL I still don't feel the team spirit. I don't know my team mates any better than I did before the AWL. There is something about being at the same place at the same time and discussing the same thing that helps build a sense of team spirit. Getting everyone together is difficult, but if I knew that by not showing up, I would let the team down, I would wake up in the middle of the night or rearrange my schedule to make it to the game. The team I was on tried to get everyone together once to just meet and chat in TS, but only a few players showed up. I think if it had been an actual game rather than just a get together more people would have come. My BILs play a lot of cricket and during cricket season they are traveling to other cities to play their games. I find it quite amazing how much time they devote to it. It uses up their whole weekend, but they manage. And it's not just my BILs, it a team of 12 people all devoting their weekend to this. And it's not just a few teams, it's a league with like 20 teams. What makes them so devoted? Without enough players they won't be able to play and the team loses due to not having enough players. The thought that they would be letting their team down if they didn't go keeps them going. So the whole team has to go, otherwise the guys who are going start calling the guys who aren't. As difficult as the schedule may be, it adds a sense of "hey I'm wanted, the team needs me". The AWL currently doesn't feel too much different than playing in the WC. Just that my performance adds to my teams points. I like the idea of live games with the whole team being there at the same time. I know I would try my hardest to be at the games. I would even suggest that instead of having multiple individual games there be just one game with all the team members discussing the same game; like the team game we had during the Arimaa Online Festival. The team can discuss and decide on a move and the captain can make it on the board. The teams will have to figure out how best to communicate and organize themselves to select the move. I can see teams getting together to split up and practice this. Perhaps the best teams are not the ones with the strongest players but the ones that work together well to decide on good moves. For the scheduling I think the team captains (who must be present) should negotiate a time and just go with that. If a minimum of say 3 players don't show up then the team can't play and loses by forfeit. If the time is bad for you, tough luck; your going to have to wake up in the middle of the night or take a few hours off from work, skip a class or something because your team needs you. As for what team you can play on I think the LD should assign players to the team based mostly on proximity. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Feb 17th, 2011, 5:45pm on 02/17/11 at 16:16:55, omar wrote:
Awesome! Since you don't feel any particular loyalty to the Atlantics, come on back to the Rockies where you belong! I mean, seriously, look at the map. You are clearly closer to the mountains than the sea... |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Feb 17th, 2011, 6:01pm I felt some team spirit, did my best to show up to cheer my team on and such, even when I wasn't playing. I would like to do team-matches, but I don't think that can be the only thing, otherwise, well, it seems like top-players would dominate the discussion and newer players wouldn't really have much of anything to contribute. As to teams being geographically based, I wouldn't really have a problem with that, and it probably would help teams organize a little better. WHR, it probably wouldn't be too hard to automate a grab each week, would it? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Feb 17th, 2011, 10:52pm on 02/17/11 at 16:16:55, omar wrote:
on 02/17/11 at 16:16:55, omar wrote:
Sorry Omar, I guess I should have tried harder. As captain, I got to talk to everyone, but I didn't really bring everyone together. I do feel team spirit for the Atlantics, mostly from hanging out at random times in the chat room with a few of the teammates. I often have a pessimistic approach (something I am trying to work on), but I am actually pretty laid back and will happily try something new. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Feb 18th, 2011, 3:12pm on 02/17/11 at 17:45:24, Fritzlein wrote:
I think I was originally on the Rockies, but at one point the Atlantics were short on players, so I had switched. I won't mind switching teams between seasons; it would help me get to know more people. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Feb 18th, 2011, 3:17pm on 02/17/11 at 22:52:34, novacat wrote:
I think you did make a good effort. Just that coming together to chat and spar isn't as critical as coming together for a team game. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Feb 18th, 2011, 5:05pm on 02/17/11 at 18:01:55, Sconibulus wrote:
If I was captain, I would allow the players to discuss the position and then rotate who gets to decide the final move. Sure the top players could dominate and play the whole game, but in actuality I think they would just suggest moves and the captains would moderate and keep all the players involved. Grabbing WHR values isn't hard, but I was hoping that the format could be changed to bring the players together at the same time and discussing the same game. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Feb 19th, 2011, 9:56am You're right that the stronger players need not necessarily dominate. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of those who participated in the collaborative matches in the Festival last year. One concern I have, is that I think that the weaker players in the team might not feel it was so important for them to turn up, compared to a situation where they are given sole responsibility for one of several games. Another idea I had, separate to the live games, would be to have a separate postal league that would function in a similar way to the Mob vs. The One matches. Each team is a "mob" and debates their moves in protected threads. This could also help to develop team spirit in a similar way to the collaborative match idea. We could do it whether or not we implement a collaborative match format. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Adanac on Feb 20th, 2011, 7:37am on 02/19/11 at 09:56:46, megajester wrote:
Let's give it a try. I'd still like to play World League matches with the same that we used last year. Adding these collaborative postal matches would be icing on the cake. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Feb 20th, 2011, 9:25pm on 02/19/11 at 09:56:46, megajester wrote:
The weaker players would gain the most by being present at the games. So I am sure the ones who are interested to improve will turn up even if they are not yet contributing as much. The nice thing about this format is that everyone who wants to be involved can be, whereas with separate games the number of players that can be involved is limited by the number of games. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Feb 20th, 2011, 9:30pm on 02/19/11 at 09:56:46, megajester wrote:
Yes, a Mob vs Mob game would be good. The Mob vs One games have taken well over a year to complete and the game can be very grueling on whoever is playing the One. So a Mob vs Mob format might be better. Also the Mob has won both games so it's about time for a Mob vs Mob game. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by leo on Feb 26th, 2011, 5:47am Haha, Mob vs Mob looks awesome! Team members would discuss more and get to know each other better and build that elusive team spirit taller. And the live merry mess meetups sound real fun in spite of the Earth being spherical and people not being awake at the same hours. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Apr 7th, 2011, 9:59am Good news! Omar put together a Best Times calculator (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/bestTimes.cgi). This would be useful to the captains for planning those collaborative league games we were talking about. I entered all the names of the current members of the Rockies and the Ring of Fire (the two teams most likely to present problems for scheduling), deleting the ones who have not entered their times into the scheduler. It found a time that was the second-to-third choice of 12 of the 13 names. Re-sult! 8) (You can play around with the tool all you want with the Membership list (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Club_Membership).) So I'm thinking we should have a dry run. After the Challenge, two teams ready and willing to give it a try could volunteer. Each would put forward 3-5 names. All those players would then enter their preferred times into the scheduler. Then the captains would use the Best Time tool to negotiate a match time. When the match time came they would use the Gold and Silver rooms in Teamspeak, the rest of us could provide commentary in Teamspeak and/or the chatroom. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by omar on Apr 21st, 2011, 11:09am We are getting close to the end of the challenge match. Perhaps the captains can contact Joel to get this rolling. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Apr 23rd, 2011, 4:03pm I just figured out that I should not put a ; in between players. ::) How does the calculator handle empty slots? EDIT: I was not looking at the correct select times page. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Apr 25th, 2011, 1:52pm Seeing as in the new League each match will consist of one game, and there are no draws in Arimaa, the current points system lends itself to a tie. Therefore I'd like to propose that we revamp the points system to reward speedy wins. It could run as follows: Forfeit 0 points (other team 6 points) Loss 2 points Win on or after move 40 5 points Win on move 30-39 6 points Win on move 20-29 7 points Win before move 20 8 points |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Apr 25th, 2011, 2:05pm on 04/25/11 at 13:52:12, megajester wrote:
Eh? I thought consultation games were being considered as a supplement to the format from last year. I didn't realize the head-to-head games were being scrapped entirely. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Apr 25th, 2011, 2:12pm on 04/25/11 at 14:05:29, Fritzlein wrote:
Well it's kind of either-or. I don't think we've got enough puff for everything. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Apr 25th, 2011, 2:19pm OK, no problem. I'm personally not as interested in consultation games as in head-to-head matches, but presumably other people feel the reverse, and are looking forward to the change in format this year. I'll be curious to see how it works out! |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 20th, 2011, 1:21pm Following the results of the survey (see my post in the "pilot match" thread (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=2011awl2;action=display;num=1303726704;start=18#18)), I think collaborative matches will have to be something that's organized separately. Maybe we can have a special event later in the year, or as part of the Festival. I apologize about the delay in getting this year's League off the ground. If everybody's up for it we can set a start date for the first full week in July, week commencing July 4. There are a couple of things I'd like to just mention:
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jun 20th, 2011, 4:16pm on 06/20/11 at 13:21:13, megajester wrote:
No worries; thanks for doing it at all. I notice nobody had the initiative to fill your shoes, so you can take satisfaction in knowing there would be no AWL whatsoever without you. Quote:
Great change. Quote:
How many points for a forfeit win? What about wins on time or resignation? Quote:
I can help some, but my availability will be sporadic and unreliable. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Eltripas on Jun 20th, 2011, 8:07pm on 06/20/11 at 16:16:18, Fritzlein wrote:
I suggest Loss on time 1 point Win on time or resignation after move 30 5 points Win on time or resignation move 20-29 6 points Win on time or resignation before move 20 7 points Loss on resignation is a forfeit, loss on time should't be a forfeit because sometimes the time just passes by without noticing and is not bad sportmanship or anything wrong so is better than resignation, I'm aware that some players may lose on time to get the point when they are really just resigning but lets hope this doesn't happens to often (even if it happens it is still better than a forfeit by not arriving to the game). |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by ChrisB on Jun 20th, 2011, 11:06pm on 06/20/11 at 13:21:13, megajester wrote:
Starting the week of July 4 may be too early. At least two active members of my team (the Rockies) will be on vacation then. Other members have not been at the site recently. Hopefully we can get old members to return or new members to join, but at this time it seems safer to delay the start by two weeks or so. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by mistre on Jun 20th, 2011, 11:17pm on 04/25/11 at 14:19:23, Fritzlein wrote:
I am trying to follow this thread and it doesn't make sense. Are we doing head-to-head or collaborative? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jun 21st, 2011, 12:29am on 06/20/11 at 23:17:47, mistre wrote:
Megajester took a poll and it came out in favor of head-to-head (results posted elsewhere), so it will be basically the old format. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jun 21st, 2011, 12:36am Suggestion: I think we should forbid team-hopping midseason, but I recommend allowing it up to the first week, or even the second week for folks who didn't play the first week. I am afraid that teams will have players returning unequally from past seasons, which could mean too little playing time for those on the crowded teams (Europa and the Atlantics?) and forfeits for the sparse teams (Ring of Fire and the Rockies?). |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 21st, 2011, 1:06am Wow! Great response! OK I'll try to answer the points one by one: THE POINTS SYSTEM I suppose Eltripas is right that a possible 8 points is perhaps too much. However I'm not sure about the exact move numbers that should be assigned to each level. I agree that a forfeit because of failing to show up should be treated differently to a forfeit on time. So the revised points system would be as follows: Forfeit (through being absent) 0 points Loss on time or resignation 1 point Loss through play 2 points Win by forfeit 6 points Win on or after move 41 5 points Win on move 21-40 6 points Win before move 21 7 points Note: A "win" is a win whether it's through play, opponent resignation or on time. START DATE Is everybody happy with the week commencing July 18? TRANSFERS How about we say that once a player has played a league game he can't change teams? PS: Mistre, I had linked to the survey results in my opening post, just click on the coloured text (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=2011awl2;action=display;num=1303726704;start=18#18). |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by mistre on Jun 21st, 2011, 9:21am on 06/21/11 at 00:29:04, Fritzlein wrote:
Duh, I should have checked the date of your post Fritz (Apr 25) which is before the poll took place. I was confused because I read your comment as if it happened after the poll. I am also on vacation right now and will be back in time for a July 18 start date. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by mistre on Jun 22nd, 2011, 6:11am On the point system: What was used last year? First off, I really like that the partial points for losing on time and through play vs forfeiting. That might give extra incentive to show up and play the game to conclusion. However, the amount of points given is slightly too low when compared to wins. Also spread out the range a bit. I don't think you should get fewer points until the game goes over 60 moves. The average length among human games is 45 if I had to guess. I would recommend: Win before move 30 6 points Win by forfeit or move 30-60 5 points Win on or after move 60 4 points |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 22nd, 2011, 8:56am The points system before was simply 3 for a win, 1 for a loss and 0 for a forfeit ( = losing in any way other than losing in the actual game). In a way, my latest proposal is like saying that a loss because of time should be 0.5 points and not 0, and that there should be a three-tiered points system for winning: 2.5, 3, and 3.5. And then I'm just multiplying everything by two so we don't have half-points. I don't think we should reduce the difference in points reward between winning and losing. Let's not forget, we're rewarding losses not draws. Although there is a good rationale for it, namely giving people an incentive to keep fighting in an apparently lost position, losing should usually mean losing. Nul points. In a points system where just losing can win you a whole 2 points, wins should be rewarded all the more to compensate. IMO. As for the move numbers, I'd like to hear what other members of the community think as well. I'm sure we'll find a happy medium. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Nombril on Jun 23rd, 2011, 3:44pm I don't like awarding points based on how long the game takes. Some people fight to the end, others make a hopeless reckless attack, some resign, etc. It seems the length of game depends strongly on: a. the difference in skill between the opponents, b. playing style, and c. "loosing" style. I'm not sure any of these things are good to award points for. Besides pushing for a faster paced, high scoring game for the spectators to watch, is there another reason for basing points on the number of moves? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jun 23rd, 2011, 4:19pm My position has been clear on this: I don't want to see the primary score be affected by the length of games; it should only be determined by whether a game was won, lost over the board in any way, or forfeited. In order to mildly discourage timeouts and resignations and encourage drawing out lost games, I've already proposed cumulative move difference (cf. goal difference) as the first tiebreaker. To really squeeze out the toothpaste here, it could even be half-moves, so that Gold, when losing, would still be better off letting Silver make the winning move. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Eltripas on Jun 23rd, 2011, 5:39pm At first I didn't want the score to be affected by the length of the games, but thinking about it I realized that it will encourage the players to fight to the end, plus it can make the things really interesting in the last round if winning margin is small between the leading teams, also if a player makes a big blunder he is not hopeless anymore, he now can change his goal to be resist long enough to prevent the other player from taking more points. I would recommend: Win before move 25 6 points Win by forfeit or move 25-50 5 points Win on or after move 50 4 points |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jun 23rd, 2011, 6:01pm The idea of points based on game length seems like a bad idea. It penalizes sharper, more aggressive play on the part of the losing player. As you said, if a player makes a blunder, their goal becomes to turtle, to me, the more exciting response to a blunder is a flurry of aggression that dangerously sharpens a position and can lead to major material gains or losses, or even a quick goal. Why should we reward that response less when it is more exciting both for the players and for the spectators? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by ocmiente on Jun 24th, 2011, 11:06am The penalty for losing by timing out was too high. I would prefer that the score for a loss is the same as the score for timing out. I don't have any preference either way with respect to resignations - but I don't think there should be any difference for that either. Resigning by pressing the 'R' button, rather than killing one's own pieces, or pushing/pulling the opponent's rabbit to goal is not really much different except for the time it takes. Even top players seem to let the game terminate early rather than fighting to the brutal end when the game seems clearly lost, so why penalize a team for someone pushing a button? The timeout issue was brought up at the end of the previous season. (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?action=display;board=2010awl;num=1258135580;start=180#187) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by mistre on Jun 24th, 2011, 11:42am Thanks for the link, Ocmiente. I agree with Nombril's suggestions - put resignations and time-outs in the 1 point category and only award no points for no-show forfeits. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 29th, 2011, 11:39am on 06/23/11 at 18:01:11, Sconibulus wrote:
I take your point. on 06/23/11 at 16:19:17, aaaa wrote:
Sorry aaaa, would you mind explaining again what you mean by "cumulative move difference"? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jun 29th, 2011, 2:11pm I mean sum of lengths of all lost games minus sum of lengths of all won games (where I now propose length is measured in half-moves); the higher this number, the better. Even if timeouts and resignations end up not being penalized as much as forfeits, I would still not like to see them be so influential such that they affect the main score. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 29th, 2011, 2:39pm I see, so if move numbers are going to be taken into account, you want it done as a tiebreaking measure... But surely under that system if all teams have won exactly the same number of games, the ones that drew out the losses and won quickly rank higher than teams that lost games quickly and won only after long drawn-out games. Which theoretically would still discourage losing players from trying crazy stunts to try to get back in the game... Actually, I'm not convinced that the points system such as what I proposed earlier really does discourage sharp play from a losing player. It doesn't penalize the loser for a quick loss, it rewards the winner for a quick win. There is a difference. If I'm losing, I don't gain more points simply because I draw the game out. Whether I lose on move 10 or move 100, I get 2 points. Only if my position is utterly completely beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt lost might I have the motivation to draw it out as long as possible just to spite my opponent. But if the position's that far gone, chances are it's out of my hands anyway. In a position where I'm in a two-dogs-down kind of lost position, I might still have some chances. I'm gonna get 2 points anyway, so I've got nothing to lose. My choice is between waiting around to be crushed, or taking my chances to try for 5, 6, or more points. And the longer I leave it to take those chances the greater the likelihood of them slipping away. My guess is that these factors will weigh much, much more on a player's mind than making sure his opponent gets 5 points instead of 6, or whatever. Edit: Just to answer an earlier question from Nombril, the reason why I feel a need to spice up the points system is because when you have a game with only two possible outcomes (win or loss, no draw), four teams in a round robin tournament is a perfect recipe for a dead draw. I just feel like slapping a tiebreaking scheme on to that dead draw won't be quite as exciting as adding some colour to the points system itself. And I think it should be more about rewarding skillful wins, instead of punishing players who don't turn up. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jun 29th, 2011, 2:53pm Opponent gain is equivalent to player loss, in every situation except when the opponent's team is mathematically removed from contention. There is no value to a point except that it makes you closer to having more points than your opponent, so the only thing you're playing for (in the league, as opposed to a regular game) is to maximize the net difference between your score and your opponent's, thereby earning your team a better chance to win. I don't really have a problem with aaaa's idea, because tiebreakers are rather unlikely to make a difference, so players won't be as intent on maximizing them, although possibly after rating cap remaining. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 29th, 2011, 3:03pm on 06/29/11 at 14:53:41, Sconibulus wrote:
Surely being in a league changes everything. In a regular game +1 for my opponent means -1 for me, but in a league game +1 for my opponent means -1 for me divided by the number of rival teams. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jun 29th, 2011, 3:45pm Why is it divided by the number of rival teams? Your opponent is still that much ahead of you, and if they're ahead of you, then you're that much further away from winning the league. The only time it doesn't break this way is when someone is back far enough that they're not in contention, or wouldn't be in the event of a loss. (not necessarily mathematical, I overstated the case earlier, psychological is quite sufficient.) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jun 29th, 2011, 4:41pm on 06/29/11 at 15:45:05, Sconibulus wrote:
Imagine I take a gamble seven times over the course of the season. The first six times I fail (twice to each opposing team), giving +1 to the opponent and -0 to me. The seventh time I succeed, meaning -3 to the opponent and +3 to me. If you add it up carelessly, you could say that compared to baseline I have given away net three points and gained net three points, for no net benefit. But taking it team by team we see: My team vs Team A: +3 vs. -1 My team vs Team B: +3 vs. +2 My team vs Team C: +3 vs. +2 It doesn't net out to zero: My team has gained on all of the other teams! on 06/29/11 at 15:03:48, megajester wrote:
No, it doesn't change everything. It just means that the reward for prolonging a loss is less than it first appears, so relatively speaking a desperate attempt at a comeback it still fairly worthwhile. This won't please a purist because it still means that sometimes it will be correct to trade away a small chance of winning for zero chance of winning but a large chance of drawing out the game. It's a question of degree, but the objection remains in principle: you have de-emphasized winning by adding the objective of prolonging the game. I can see both sides. I generally don't like resignations, whether by timeout, not trying, intentionally bad moves, or clicking the resign button. Changing the scoring system brings the various types of resignation closer to par with each other. On the other hand, there are rare cases where I feel resignation is appropriate, so that I wouldn't always want to reward prolonging the game, but I would always want to reward winning. Also I am not sure that a slow, steady control win should count for less than a wild, bloody, attacking win. I don't really care about this issue as much as I care about the budget mechanisms, so I'll go with whatever the consensus is. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jun 29th, 2011, 5:33pm Thank you Fritz for explaining what I had trouble expressing. I too can see the purist position, but in practice I doubt we would actually see a player artificially prolong a game just to deny his opponent 1 point instead of mixing up the position to try to create chances to gain 3 or more points himself. As you demonstrated in your calculation, an aggressive strategy has a greater chance of paying off. How about if we increase that chance by multiplying everything by 2 again and just have a variation of 1 point for wins for each game length bracket? That way the incentive for losing players to artificially prolong games gets even smaller, and we still have a system that's varied enough to avoid ties. So for example: Forfeit (through being absent) 0 points Loss on time or resignation 2 points Loss through play 4 points Win by forfeit 11 points Win on or after move 50?? 10 points Win on move 30-50?? 11 points Win before move 30?? 12 points |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by ocmiente on Jun 29th, 2011, 11:05pm I'm on the side of not awarding points based on the length of the game. That would make the league scoring system more interesting, but do you think that it would increase the quality of the games themselves? I tend to agree with other comments in this thread, that it might do the reverse by leading to unnecessarily aggressive or conservative (to draw out games that are clearly lost) play. The only scoring change I really want to see is that timeouts and resignations should count the same as a loss by playing out the game. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Jun 30th, 2011, 5:56am on 06/29/11 at 23:05:50, ocmiente wrote:
I agree |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jun 30th, 2011, 9:46am on 06/29/11 at 23:05:50, ocmiente wrote:
Just to be clear, you think a resignation on move five should score as many point as a game fought to the finish and lost on move forty? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jun 30th, 2011, 10:04am Ahh, I wasn't considering it to be repeated many times, I was considering it on an individual, case by case basis. In each individual situation the net change relative to the opponent is the same, but over the season the distribution of risk would be a relative benefit, although I'd still rather the length of the game had no effect. on 06/30/11 at 09:46:03, Fritzlein wrote:
I'd say this depends on the scenario, after all, you, one of the top players in the game, resigned about ten moves into one of the games of the 2010 World Championship, because you'd lost your elephant, and therefor couldn't put forth a credible game. I'd suggest that in the event of an early resignation a panel (quite possibly the Legislators Committee suggested in another thread) might, if requested, vote to declare the game a forfeit. I'd say that this would only an option on games that end before move twenty, and would require a complaint to be brought. If they agree that the resigner's position was severely compromised, then the game would be scored as a forfeit on the part of the resigning player. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jun 30th, 2011, 12:58pm on 06/30/11 at 10:04:54, Sconibulus wrote:
Yes, I think that losing an elephant in the opening is a legitimate time to resign, because it will be hard to make the game interesting or challenging for the player in the lead, yet the game isn't just a few moves from over. If the remaining moves would either be tense, instructive, or few, I would feel that something had been lost. I would be uncomfortable with a committee expressing an opinion on whether or not a given resignation is legitimate. It's a can of worms to write a judgement call like that into the rules. I would, on the other hand, be comfortable with my team being penalized because I lost on move 14, and would not protest if the penalty was increased because I lost by timeout rather than goal. If the feeling of the league is that the spectators were ripped off because they didn't get to watch a good fight, I would agree: they didn't get to watch a good fight. This is independent from my feeling that it was an appropriate time to resign. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by ocmiente on Jun 30th, 2011, 1:59pm on 06/30/11 at 09:46:03, Fritzlein wrote:
Yes. A player could simply say that their internet connection went down. It is pretty much impossible to distinguish between timeouts and resignations. I don't think we can make the system bulletproof, so we shouldn't try. I can think of other reasons having to do with motive, the probability that this sort of thing will be a problem in actual play, and whether the team should be penalized for the act of an individual for whom there was no vetting process. However, I hope the previous paragraph is a sufficient reason. Keep it simple. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 1st, 2011, 12:53am OK, the purists win ;) So we're back to the 3-1-0 points system then. (Perhaps we should make it 4 or 5 points for a win, because in scoring systems like this the "1" in the middle there is usually to reward a draw, not a loss.) A "loss" is a loss through defeat, time or resignation. The tiebreaker would be the "move difference" as proposed by aaaa. Total number of half-moves in lost games minus total number of half-moves in won games. Or do we need to be using averages instead of the total? I reckon not, because the only time the tiebreaker's ever going to be used is when two teams have won and lost the exact same number of games. Are there any objections to this proposal? If it's not too early to change the subject, I'd like to ask if people think we need to tweak the budget system or if we can just stick with last year's. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 1st, 2011, 4:16pm The question of how many points a win should be worth, provided a regular loss is worth 1 and a forfeit 0, is "isomorphic" to the question of how many wins a forfeit should cost. Forfeit penalties of, respectively, 1, 0.5 and x wins correspond to 2, 3 and 1+1/x points for a win. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 1st, 2011, 4:29pm on 07/01/11 at 16:16:17, aaaa wrote:
Right, which is why I want to increase the number of points for a win. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 1st, 2011, 4:34pm Why would you want to lessen the penalty for forfeits? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 1st, 2011, 4:42pm on 07/01/11 at 16:34:03, aaaa wrote:
Eh? Losses surely. Lessen the penalty for losses? Surely increasing the reward for a win means rewarding losses less, thereby increasing the relative penalty for losing, isomorphically speaking... |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 1st, 2011, 4:57pm Rescale your point system by an offset such that regular losses are 0 points and then see what happens. Hint: inflation. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 1st, 2011, 5:19pm Oh ok I think I understand you. Well as I explained earlier, I think we should be rewarding wins more than we are. 3 losses should not equal 1 win. IMO. So I'm proposing we increase the number of points for a win. Which would also mean that the penalty for a forfeit is less than it was relative to a loss, you are right. It's not that I "want" to do that, it's just that doing one causes the other. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by ocmiente on Jul 1st, 2011, 5:59pm Instead of a 3-1-0 system, a 2-0-(-1) system could be used, so losses would never add up to a win. There is really no difference in those two systems other than perception. I agree with aaaa that increasing the points for winning a game only decreases the penalty for forfeits. on 07/01/11 at 00:53:34, megajester wrote:
No objection. I agree with that. I have no preference with respect to the use of averages in the tie breaker, but I think that it might be possible for two teams to tie without having lost exactly the same number of games if the team that won more games had some forfeited games. I suspect that is OK though, since it would (I think) harm the team with more forfeits. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 2nd, 2011, 10:43am Determining how many regular losses should equal one win only makes sense if you start with a baseline of having only forfeits, and surely that can't be the idea. Rather, a forfeit should be considered a violation of the norm, which is penalized by what amounts to a (de facto) point reduction, even if it's hidden by an offset. If rather the starting point is that one normally expects players not to forfeit their games, then, again, you merely need to answer the question how severely to punish forfeits in terms of wins, in order to determine the number of points to give for a win. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 2nd, 2011, 11:18am OK so do you actually have a proposal or are you just redefining the wheel? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 2nd, 2011, 11:35am Having a forfeit cost half a win looks about right to me. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 2nd, 2011, 11:47am I see. So to give a practical simulation, a team that wins 3 games, loses 1 and forfeits 2 should rank the same as a team that wins 1 game and loses 5? Whether you call it rewarding losses or penalizing forfeits, this is what it comes to. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 2nd, 2011, 12:01pm on 07/02/11 at 11:47:15, megajester wrote:
No, the former would be ahead by one net win or, equivalently, 2 points. The teams would be even if a forfeit cost a whole win. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 2nd, 2011, 12:08pm Quite right. How foolish of me. Still, a team with 3 wins, 1 loss and 2 forfeits would rank equally with a team with 2 wins and 4 losses. Of course this is nowhere near as preposterous a proposal as I made it appear with my earlier post. If others agree that it would be logical then we can go with it. Just to make a comparison, if we said wins were worth 3 points instead of 2, the first team would be 1 point ahead of the second team. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 7th, 2011, 1:58am I've been mulling this all over and I think that either a 2/0/-1 or a 3/0/-1 points system (for win/loss/forfeit) is logical and will receive the most support from the community. Please feel free to chip in on which of the two you feel is better, bearing in mind mine and aaaa's recent comments. However we still have the tiebreaking issue. I'm not convinced that tiebreaking based on move difference (?average? number of half-moves in lost games minus ?average? number of half-moves in won games) will work out all that differently to my idea of awarding a different number of points for a win depending on how long the win took. Therefore I propose that in the event of a tie we have a playoff for the title. In the event of a three- or four-way tie, I propose that move difference be used to seed the teams. So in a four-way tie, 1st team by move difference would play the 3rd team while the 2nd would play the 4th, with the winners of each match going through to the final. In a three-way tie, the 2nd and 3rd teams by move difference would play one match to decide who plays the 1st team for the title. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jul 7th, 2011, 9:39am A playoff would serve to make the season longer, so anyone in contention would either have to hold cap in reserve, or, if the cap were abolished for the playoff, it'd be the top three players who are available. I don't really see a problem with any of the current proposed tiebreaks, although I'm going to suggest an order for them now, including a few that haven't been mentioned yet but seem reasonable. The reason Move Differential is more fitting as a tiebreak than as a point value is this, imagine a team that goes 8-4 in 80 move games, that would have 96 points at last proposal, right? Compare that with a team that goes 7-3-1-1 with all the wins coming in 20 moves, even though they have a forfeit and a loss on time, and one fewer win, they still have 98 points, and would win. 1. Most Wins 2. Head-to-Head Record 3. Move Differential 4. Remaining Budget 5. Fewest Timeouts/Resignations 6. Fewest World League Games by Player with most. 7. Fewest World League Games by Player with second most. ... N. Flip a coin. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 7th, 2011, 9:58am on 07/07/11 at 09:39:50, Sconibulus wrote:
I didn't get this part. 8-4 vs. 7-3-1-1? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jul 7th, 2011, 10:06am That was supposed to represent 8 wins at 80 turns(at 10 points), 4 losses (at 4 points), versus 7 wins at 20 turns (at 12 points), 3 losses (at 4 points), 1 timeout (at 2 points), 1 forfeit (at 0 points) Sorry I wasn't clear. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 7th, 2011, 10:48am Running the same simulation with the 2/0/-1 system, 8 wins at 80 turns gets 16 points. If the 4 losses are all 80 moves as well then we have to decide whether we calculate the move difference based on averages or totals. Totals would wind up with -320, going with averages turns up 0. Averages makes much more sense IMO. The other team with 7 wins at 20 turns gets 14 points, but loses 1 point for the forfeit. The timeout depends on which move it occurred on. Let's assume that happened on move 20 as well, so we've basically got 4 losses. Going with totals gives us a move difference of -60, averages give us 0. I think we're agreed that the simple points system is the best. However if the season ends in a draw, I don't like the idea of the League Champion being decided by a simple move difference or any other statistical tiebreaker. OK, with a playoff you have an extra round, but what a round! |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 14th, 2011, 5:20am Seeing as how it's the last week before the tourney begins, I'd like to make one last proposal: awards. The Legislators Committee or another panel will be responsible for awarding these prizes (actually titles). Some of them may be subject to a community vote. The ideas I have so far are as follows, please feel free to make suggestions for different awards or methods of selecting the winners.
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Jul 14th, 2011, 11:05am I have not read the whole discussion ... but the penalty for team overranking should be considered as well when you consider resizing win, loss, forfeight scoring. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 15th, 2011, 12:30am on 07/14/11 at 11:05:52, Hippo wrote:
You mean overspending with the budget, right? Yes you're right. I think we need to penalize in whole points, so the decision to be made is how many points' overspend should equal one point. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by dree12 on Jul 15th, 2011, 10:53am I think an overspend should cost a win, no matter how much. This avoids penaltizing a disadvantaged team too much. Also why not have budget remaining as a tiebreaker? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jul 15th, 2011, 11:44am Then one could field, for example, C&G, Adanac, and Fritz every game at the cost of one win for the season. The current scale of losing a point for every... I don't remember the exact number, but I believe Fritz worked it out formulaically at 300ish rating points you're over, ceilinged, is probably the way to go. Megajester, in the event of a playoff, how do you fairly determine the rating limit? How do you determine overspending penalties? The current method doesn't really work because it becomes a straight bilateral zero-sum game, so if you can overspend by 800 points for a good chance at three wins, you're in the black, especially considering substitutions. Also, I'm not entirely clear on the difference between 3,1,0 which we had last year and 2,0,-1 when the game number is fixed. Any particular reason for this change? The awards seem decent, although it seems like there are a lot of them for a season containing only 36 games. (I think, 2 simultaneous sets of 6 matches at 3 games/match) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by dree12 on Jul 15th, 2011, 12:53pm Then maybe penilize a win just for going over, and then half a win every 350? I think the budget should try to become more... budgetlike, with a large penalty for overspending rather than only one point for the first overspend. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 16th, 2011, 2:42am on 07/15/11 at 11:44:32, Sconibulus wrote:
I say we remove the rating limit. Of course part of the purpose of the League is to encourage new players to join, but by the time we have our tiebreaker we will have achieved that. Clash of the titans! on 07/15/11 at 11:44:32, Sconibulus wrote:
Because aaaa argued that it's the same both ways, and I see his point that psychologically it makes more sense to punish forfeits than to reward people for turning up. And there were no objections. I see no point in arguing with people when their way works just as well as mine. on 07/15/11 at 11:44:32, Sconibulus wrote:
It means you have a lot of talking points each match, which has to be a good thing. If you could prune the list which ones would you prune? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 16th, 2011, 2:51am on 07/15/11 at 12:53:28, dree12 wrote:
Last year's rules (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/League_Rules) read as follows: Captains may not overspend or underspend in any one round (ie. spend more or less than 1/6 of their total ratings budget) by more than 700 points. Exceeding this limit will be penalized by the deduction of 1 league point, with an additional point deducted for every 350th rating point. The reason our limit is 700 is to give captains a bit of freedom to make tactical decisions on budget spending depending on which team they're playing this week. Perhaps to incorporate dree12's suggestion we could penalise a team's exceeding the limit by 2 points instead of 1, and keep the 1 additional point for every 350th rating point. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Jul 16th, 2011, 9:32am If I had to prune some, it'd probably be the silver and bronze Rising Stars, changing man of the match to man of the week, and the Most Innovative Opening, it seems to fall reasonable into the realm of Innovative Strategy. Note: I'm not saying pruning is necessary, I was just commenting that giving out 22 awards for 36 games seems like a lot. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 19th, 2011, 9:57am OK I think that sounds reasonable. I think we could open a Man of the Match thread for each match for people to make nominations in, not quite sure about how we'd decide but we can hammer this out in the coming days. Woh! I've lost the link to that page where I could download the WHR ratings for everybody in the League, could you send it to me again? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Jul 19th, 2011, 1:22pm on 07/19/11 at 09:57:15, megajester wrote:
It's under the Players -> Top rated players from the gameroom. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 20th, 2011, 12:36am on 07/19/11 at 13:22:27, Hippo wrote:
Sorry, I meant the "wiki-ready" page. Woh? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Jul 20th, 2011, 12:08pm megajester, you can find it here (http://home.scarlet.be/~woh/whr/whrl.txt) I haven't followed this thread closely, so I am not sure last year's version can still be used |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 21st, 2011, 12:37am on 07/20/11 at 12:08:20, woh wrote:
Thanks woh. How simple is it to update the list of players? If not I can copy the standard WHR page into Excel and work something out. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Jul 21st, 2011, 7:55am The page is updated now. It should include all current players. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 21st, 2011, 9:55am on 07/21/11 at 07:55:53, woh wrote:
I'm not maintaining the wiki list of players anymore, I've been updating the first post in the team threads here... If you show me how to do it I could update the player list myself if you wanted, I just don't want it to be any trouble for you. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 24th, 2011, 9:58am on 07/07/11 at 01:58:34, megajester wrote:
I think it's better to avoid fractional values where one can and not take the average. This would also slightly penalize forfeits even more. Quote:
A playoff match itself could still end in a tie, thus still not relieving us from the need of having a (set of) tiebreaker(s). [EDIT]Of course, this cannot happen unless there are double forfeits or a forfeit costs a full win.[/EDIT] Quote:
Surely it should be first versus fourth and second versus third then. One thing I oppose is the use of head-to-head record as a tiebreaker after a round robin competition, except perhaps when it's far down the list. on 07/16/11 at 02:42:17, megajester wrote:
Just to get this straight: I didn't actually express any opinion on which functionally equivalent point system to use, although I can see how my reasoning could be used as support for having a forfeit actually be explicitly marked as a literal loss. on 07/16/11 at 02:51:49, megajester wrote:
Just a minor thing, but it's a bit weird to have uneven gaps between penalty increases: 350 rating points between successive penalty sizes, except between the first and the second one, where it's 349. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 24th, 2011, 12:04pm Here is an argument in favor of having a forfeit cost at least half a win: Assuming forfeits are exceptional events, the score will primarily be determined by whether games are won or lost. Therefore, score differences only really become significant in terms of wins. Now, in case one forfeits while having a score equal to an integral number of wins, one will of course fall behind compared to the case of having a regular loss. Also, a forfeit leading to a suchlike score can also be considered significant, because one went from being ahead of a "main score class" to being equal to it. However, if a forfeit were to keep one strictly between two such classes, then that would likely not make a difference, meaning that, in that case, it would be little of a penalty. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 25th, 2011, 12:50am on 07/24/11 at 09:58:17, aaaa wrote:
But if you don't do it by averages then a tie between two teams where one team has x wins, y losses and 0 forfeits, and the other has one more win and two more forfeits, the tiebreaker is going to be more about how many games were actually played than how long those games lasted. on 07/24/11 at 09:58:17, aaaa wrote:
Whatever on 07/24/11 at 09:58:17, aaaa wrote:
OK good on 07/24/11 at 09:58:17, aaaa wrote:
For goodness sake, why argue so long and hard for something you're not in support of??? Please please please can we not waste each other's time through pointless pedantry. on 07/24/11 at 09:58:17, aaaa wrote:
Point taken. Captains may not overspend or underspend in any one round (ie. spend more or less than 1/6 of their total ratings budget) by more than 659 points. Exceeding this limit will be penalized by the deduction of 1 league point, with an additional point deducted for every 350th rating point. on 07/24/11 at 12:04:07, aaaa wrote:
Firstly, I think being behind the "main score class" you would otherwise be in is penalty enough in itself. Secondly, this would also function as a "yellow card/red card" system, in that a second forfeit puts you firmly in the next class down. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 25th, 2011, 1:26pm on 07/25/11 at 00:50:09, megajester wrote:
One could argue that that would actually be a good thing. Quote:
That doesn't fix the problem. I'd go with the following:
Quote:
The penalty-card system does provide a nice analogy in the justification of 2/0/-1. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 25th, 2011, 3:19pm on 07/25/11 at 13:26:54, aaaa wrote:
True. OK guys, forfeiting doesn't just lose you a point, it seriously dents your move difference as well. Just so everybody's clear on that. on 07/25/11 at 13:26:54, aaaa wrote:
I'd never have noticed the equal size of the penalty classes if you hadn't pointed it out, so thoughtful of you... Now let's try to make it understandable for mere mortals such as myself. How about this:
Which would make for:
on 07/25/11 at 13:26:54, aaaa wrote:
Why thank you. If there's anything left to discuss can we have it now so I can draft the rules and get this party started? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 25th, 2011, 4:17pm Sorry, but apart from the starting penalty being lowered (against dree12's suggestion), my natural reading of the proposed text still leads to an off-by-one error compared to the table. For example, I simply interpret 1050 rating points away from the norm as being the minimum of a penalty class rather than the maximum. Using your words, better make it:
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 25th, 2011, 4:40pm on 07/25/11 at 16:17:49, aaaa wrote:
700 + 350 = 1050. Exceeding that, ie. 1051 or above, loses you another point. I had forgotten about dree12's suggestion though, you're quite right about that. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 25th, 2011, 5:04pm You're just asking for trouble with that phrasing and intended interpretation, so I'm going to take another shot:
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 25th, 2011, 5:49pm OK fair enough. I will make a draft as soon as I can and post it here. Last orders everybody, last orders. 8) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Jul 29th, 2011, 11:18am My latest draft of the League Rules are here: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/League_Rules You'll notice I've set a start date for this coming Monday, the 29th of July, as the start the first match cycle. On that day I will be posting the fixtures list and the ratings list. Captains will then be sending me rosters by the following Tuesday for games to be played that week. I'm looking forward to it! I hope I've been able to incorporate most of the suggestions made on this thread so far. Please feel free to mention anything you feel might be a problem, but seeing as we're this far into the process I'd be very grateful if we could not "sweat the small stuff." 80/20 rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) and all that. If everybody on the Legislators Committee feels that this draft is ready, please say so on this thread, and then we're good to go! Edit: Of course, Monday is the 1st of August. I will adjust the rules accordingly. Sorry for the mixup. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Jul 29th, 2011, 5:10pm The rules look OK. Thanks, megajester. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by mistre on Jul 29th, 2011, 11:35pm I just have a few questions since I haven't played in the league before: 1) Shouldn't it state somewhere that their is a limit on to how far in the future someone could reschedule? I would think you wouldn't want to cut in to the following weeks games. 2) What happens if a player loses on time and it truly is a network issue? 3) Could the league last longer than 6 weeks? That seems like too short of a time frame. I want to play for longer... |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Jul 30th, 2011, 6:43am on 07/29/11 at 23:35:29, mistre wrote:
Keep in mind each match includes a week of planning and a week of playing. That puts us at the end of October with a clear winner or at the end of November if there is a 3 or 4 way tie for the lead. That being said, many people do want to play for longer as evidenced by having two League tournaments last year. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Jul 30th, 2011, 3:38pm
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Jul 31st, 2011, 9:50am The league rules confuse me regarding the start date. The given date is July 29 which is a Friday. Shouldn't that be a Monday like it was in the previous edition of the WL? A Friday falls in the middle of the period where the games are scheduled. Apart from that the rules are fine by me. A practical question: will there be a specific page for the players to set their preferred time slots like in the previous editions? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 1st, 2011, 3:15am on 07/30/11 at 15:38:09, aaaa wrote:
The expression dates back to when we were discussing whether or not we should make Table 2 U-2000 and Table 3 U-1800 or some such scheme to guarantee newer players being included. In the end we opted with ratings budgets instead. on 07/30/11 at 15:38:09, aaaa wrote:
Just to make absolutely clear I've made the following amendment: "8.3 When one player substitutes for another, his rating is deducted from the team's ratings budget instead of that of the original player." on 07/30/11 at 15:38:09, aaaa wrote:
This means that if the originally rostered player turns up 14 minutes late he is still the official player, and not the person volunteering to play as substitute. Although you're technically right that there is a seeming contradiction between 8.2.1 and 8.2.2, it wouldn't be a problem in practice. The intention is clear and if there were a dispute the Director would rule accordingly. Still, I have adjusted the rules to read "time slot" in 8.2.2. on 07/30/11 at 15:38:09, aaaa wrote:
The rule that a substitute may not be rated higher than the player rostered for the next table above removes any potential for bait-and-switch tactics. As for the other I have added the following statement: "No player may play twice in the same playoff match." on 07/30/11 at 15:38:09, aaaa wrote:
OK I have added: "In all cases the team with the higher move difference chooses color." on 07/30/11 at 15:38:09, aaaa wrote:
Seeing as each match consists of 3 games, a tie is only possible if both players manage to forfeit on the same table. With all the provisions available for substitution etc. I seriously doubt that that would happen. However the purist in me agrees with you that this still isn't good, so I have made the following amendment: "10.4.3 Points will be scored as normal. In the event of a tie in any playoff match, the team with the greater move difference for that match will be declared the winner." |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 1st, 2011, 3:25am on 07/29/11 at 23:35:29, mistre wrote:
For 1) I have added the following statement: 7.4 If a game is terminated and/or a player loses on time due to issues within arimaa.com systems, the result shall be discarded and the game rescheduled under the same procedure outlined in 7.1, for a time within 96 hours (4 days) of the originally scheduled time. If the players cannot agree to a game time within this timeframe, one or both of the players should contact the Organizer so he and the Director can agree on a solution. For 2) I have added this statement to 7.1: "A game must be played within 96 hours (4 days) of its originally-scheduled time." |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 1st, 2011, 3:34am Thanks to aaaa and mistre for their helpful pointers. I see no reason why we shouldn't go ahead with the League, even though the current draft rules are still awaiting approval from the Legislators Committee (Fritzlein and woh have given approval although I'd still like confirmation for the latest adjustments, Eltripas and aaaa have yet to make their opinion clear). I will assume the rules are more or less finalized and proceed accordingly. So, Welcome to the 2011 Arimaa World League! It's time to visit your clubhouse and tell your manager you're available, because he has until next Tuesday to submit a roster. I will be posting official player ratings, the fixtures list, and a link to the scheduler page by the end of the day... Edit: Done! Click here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2011_Arimaa_World_League) for the 2011 AWL front page. LET THE GAMES BEGIN! 8) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 1st, 2011, 9:44am on 08/01/11 at 03:34:34, megajester wrote:
I give my approval for the latest adjustments. I think the concerns everyone raised were quite valid, and I would have been unhappy if any of the given situations had arisen with the rules as they were. I would have wanted to go against the league rules as written and with common sense. Probably that will still be the case for some imaginable instances, but I'm ready to get the league started anyway. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 1st, 2011, 4:40pm Just by the way, this year I think I'll try to do commentary on my chess.com blog (http://blog.chess.com/megajester). It'll be easier than adding commentary the wiki and might even be good for publicity. Maybe I could still copy over what I write if people think that would be a good idea... |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 1st, 2011, 5:13pm If you want to make the tie-breaking absolutely watertight with respect to determining seeding, color selection and match winner, you could add budget remaining and random lot as additional tiebreakers. Conversely, if a final playoff match were to end in a draw on points, I'd just declare the two teams co-winners without looking at any tiebreaker at all. Anyway, since this is all extremely academic, I would not want to stand in the way of getting this show on the road and hereby sign off on the current draft with or without any changes with regards to above paragraph. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 2nd, 2011, 12:33am on 08/01/11 at 17:13:34, aaaa wrote:
Thanks for the approval to the current draft. As always you make a good point, it's good to have you on board. Now we just need a nod from Eltripas and woh, and I can remove the "tentative" from the title of the Rules page. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Aug 2nd, 2011, 5:51am I have no problems with the adjustments. Let the games begin! woh |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Eltripas on Aug 2nd, 2011, 11:31am As you know I would have preferred point system based in the length of games, and a different reward to a game played to the finish resulting in a loss and to a resignation, but since I'm on a minority and I don't have any other issue with the rules, I give my approval to the rules. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 2nd, 2011, 1:30pm on 08/02/11 at 11:31:07, Eltripas wrote:
I might have preferred your scoring to what we ended up with, but I seem to be losing my stomach for quibbling over rules minutiae. And I used to be so good at it! Sometimes I could even wear down Omar. Anyway, now I'm in the "good enough .. let's play" camp. I'm ready to see some games! |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 2nd, 2011, 2:32pm OK, the rules are officially finalized! Thanks to everybody for chipping in with their ideas, and contributing to the lively yet positive debate. Also thanks to the Legislators Committee for being willing to compromise for a happy medium, in the finest tradition of the Arimaa community. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 3rd, 2011, 1:40pm I'm a bit worried about the risk of players setting their time preferences for the wrong event. The gameroom links to the general set, the previous season has the outdated tag "2010worldleague" and "2011worldleague" is, as of now, not recognized as an event by the server. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 4th, 2011, 8:41am I asked Omar to announce the start of the league, and he reminded me that he had told me how to add announcements long ago. :P So I put up a link to the wiki page and a plea for new participants. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 5th, 2011, 4:02am "2011 Arimaa World Festival" (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/events/reg.cgi?e=2011awl)? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 5th, 2011, 5:13am on 08/05/11 at 04:02:41, aaaa wrote:
Thanks! oops... |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 6th, 2011, 2:20pm Before the first league games are played, I would like to move a motion to change the time control to 1m/4m/100/0/4h/4m. By making it a common time control, the chance of an error when a game needs to be started manually due to substitution would be significantly less, as otherwise one would have to be aware of having to pick a custom time control and then enter it manually. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 6th, 2011, 6:56pm on 08/06/11 at 14:20:26, aaaa wrote:
Just to clarify, the current time control is: 60s/5m/75/0/4h/4m So aaaa's proposal means you would get the same amount of time per move (1 minute). You would start with 4 minutes in reserve instead of 5, but all of your unused time would be added to your reserve instead of only 75%. I agree with aaaa that there is a case to be made for uniformity. If the others on the Legislators Committee agree and there are no objections I think we can do this without too much skin off anyone's nose. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Sconibulus on Aug 6th, 2011, 7:37pm Wasn't that time control chosen to match the WC prelims? If so, that already sounds like a uniform time control, although I could see why we might not necessarily want to use it. Just seems worth mentioning where it came from so we can decide if a change is really warranted. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 6th, 2011, 7:47pm Although I prefer 75% reserve banking to 100% reserve banking, I lost that argument when Omar chose to make 100% the default. I second the wisdom of using a time control that can be selected from the defaults and doesn't have to be entered as a custom time control. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 9th, 2011, 3:46am If woh and Eltripas don't reply within a few hours I will schedule the games for this round as usual. Then we would have to weigh the pros and cons of changing the time control mid-season. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Aug 9th, 2011, 5:51am megajester Sorry for not replying quicker. I agree with the change proposed by aaaa. woh |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 9th, 2011, 6:15am Thanks woh. What do you say Eltripas? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Eltripas on Aug 9th, 2011, 2:30pm Seems convenient, go ahead. http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID32319/images/Mentos_moment,_I_approve.jpg |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 13th, 2011, 5:51pm Shouldn't there also be (an) award(s) for the best game of the round and/or season? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 15th, 2011, 1:20am Surely having both Player of the Round and Game of the Round would be too much... |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 15th, 2011, 12:29pm Perhaps in order to avoid some overlap, it could, for example, be something like "technically best game". |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 15th, 2011, 3:11pm I see the league rules no longer include a ratings budget penalty for substitutions. The current rules seem to imply that the ratings of the substituted played will be used. I must have missed the discussion leading to that decision; to me the absence of a penalty seems very open to abuse. For example, in this round Fritzlein (2650) was paired with Nombril (2200). What if Ring of Fire decided to substitute arimaaphile (1450) on the theory that they weren't giving away much in winning chances but were saving 750 budget points for later? Such a substitution would be more or less equivalent to submitting a roster out of order, i.e. not having the highest-rated played on board one, etc. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 15th, 2011, 4:09pm That's a very good point. I propose that what is subtracted from the budget will be the higher of the rating of the originally scheduled player and that of whoever actually played and that it's still applied with respect to this round. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Aug 15th, 2011, 6:13pm That makes sense. The higher of the ratings should be counted. Since this was the first round it is a good idea to apply the change to this round. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 15th, 2011, 7:29pm Hmmm... taking the higher of the two player ratings is no penalty when subbing upwards: then you get exactly what you pay for. To make the penalty proportional to the change in player strength (i.e. the magnitude of the substitution): (A) If the substitute is lower-rated, the cost is the rating of the original player. (B) If the substitute is higher-rated, the cost is the rating of the substitute plus the difference between his rating and the rating of the original player. In either case the team pays for more than they are getting, and the amount of the extra payment is equal the change in strength of player. This seems like a simple principle, a strong enough penalty to discourage intentional, tactical substitutions, but not so punitive as to force forfeits when a sub happens to be available. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 16th, 2011, 11:20am If a substitute being higher rated is penalized anyway, then you might as well have no rating restriction whatsoever so as to maximize substitution opportunities. So, I'll change my proposal to adopt Fritzlein's formula and drop the "+100" ceiling from rules 8.1.2 and 8.2.2. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by The_Jeh on Aug 25th, 2011, 4:34pm Who won Player of the Round for round 1? Are we doing that? I think megajester mentioned it in the official announcements. I'll nominate ocmiente for this award if no one else has been named. It looked like an uphill battle in the 40's, but he played well in a true endgame. I have to give respect to VinceS, too, for pressing so hard against a higher rated player. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 26th, 2011, 8:19am I apologize for the inconvenience to you of having to propose and debate this rule, and my delay in getting back to you. Not including this provision in this season's rules was an oversight. If I have understood the proposal(s) correctly, they would be covered by the following rule changes ( 8.2.2 8.3 When a substitution is made the deduction made from the teams budget is calculated as follows: If the originally rostered player's rating is higher, the originally rostered player's rating is deducted; if the substituted player's rating is higher, the substituted player's rating plus the difference between the ratings of the two players is deducted. The same deduction is made even if the substituted player forfeits. Along with a provision from last season: 6.3.3 Managers may not overspend or underspend in any one round (ie. spend more or less than 1/6 of their total ratings budget) by more than 700 points. Exceeding this limit will be penalized by the deduction of 1 league point plus a point for every 350 rating points or part thereof in excess after the 700 point mark. This only applies to the initial roster submitted; if a substitution causes this limit to be exceeded no penalty shall be applied. I propose that these changes take immediate effect and be applied retroactively. If accepted, Europa's budget balance will be corrected by -340 points. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Aug 26th, 2011, 9:01am on 08/26/11 at 08:19:21, megajester wrote:
I was substituted down, so budget spent in planning phase should be equal to budget used after the substitution. There was someone recalculating budget according Heyckies rating meanwhile? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 26th, 2011, 9:15am Yes, because according to the old rules the substituted player's rating was deducted instead of the original player's rating. According to the proposed rules, you being the original player and more highly rated, your rating should have been used instead of his. The difference is 340. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 27th, 2011, 8:06am A few comments on your proposed changes: on 08/26/11 at 08:19:21, megajester wrote:
This should also apply with the other kind of substitution at 8.1.2, but rather than to maintain duplicate text all the time, it would be better to take any commonality and consolidate them under a general substitution section. Right now, 8.3 is fulfilling that role, but rather than end the substitution chapter with these general provisos, it should begin with them. Quote:
My inner pedant would like to point out that the special case of an equal rating remains unaddressed. I also realize that any mention of "substituted player" is actually ambiguous. Quote:
Although I can understand that it would be too harsh for virtual ratings arising from upwards substitutions to determine league point penalties, this does open an avenue for manipulation involving substituting upwards to bypass the per-round expenditure limit. Using the earlier-mentioned higher of the two ratings here would fix that, although, admittedly, it would make things more complicated. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Boo on Aug 28th, 2011, 1:15pm I think megajester should add links to official tournament rules and results to his signature. Would be a lot easier to find. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 28th, 2011, 2:24pm Wish granted. Lookyyy! | | V |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 28th, 2011, 2:34pm on 08/27/11 at 08:06:37, aaaa wrote:
Thank you aaaa. Razor-sharp as always. I hear you about the duplicate text, but I'd rather leave that sort of redraft to the next season. I am adjusting 8.3 to take your points into account. I see where you're coming from with 6.3.3. This provision was there in the last league, and the rationale behind it is it means the manager can make dead certain his team won't go overbudget. Otherwise it would be possible for a teammate to substitute on the spur of the moment and put the team overbudget without realizing it. And it keeps things simple, as you say. Current draft: 8.1.2 8.2.2 8.3 When a substitution is made the deduction made from the teams budget is calculated as follows: If the originally rostered player's rating is higher or if both players' ratings are the same, the originally rostered player's rating is deducted; if the substitute player's rating is higher, the substitute player's rating plus the difference between the ratings of the two players is deducted. The same deduction is made even if the substitute player forfeits. 6.3.3 Managers may not overspend or underspend in any one round (ie. spend more or less than 1/6 of their total ratings budget) by more than 700 points. Exceeding this limit will be penalized by the deduction of 1 league point plus a point for every 350 rating points or part thereof in excess after the 700 point mark. This only applies to the initial roster submitted; if a substitution causes this limit to be exceeded no penalty shall be applied. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Aug 29th, 2011, 12:25am What about ... substituted player rating plus absolute value of difference of rosted and substituted player. ... I don't like cases at all. I like that for the middle case both branches gave the same result, but I don't like mentioning all the three cases. Mentioning one of them and using otherwise sounds better to me. It's just an idea, feel free to ignore it. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 29th, 2011, 6:07am on 08/29/11 at 00:25:47, Hippo wrote:
I think it's better to leave aesthetic things for the next season. What does the committee think about Hippo's idea of adding the whole difference between the ratings and not just half? My personal opinion is that when changing rules mid-season it's more important that our solutions are workable than perfect. Perfection is something to strive for between seasons. As I understand it most are reasonably happy with the proposal as it is. If aaaa, Eltripas, Fritzlein and woh signal their approval in this thread I can put the change into effect. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 29th, 2011, 7:12am on 08/29/11 at 06:07:57, megajester wrote:
If I read correctly, Hippo is not proposing a change of substance, he is merely using the absolute value function to state the same rule more simply. Mathematicians are always interested in stating things in the most compact way possible. They like to use half as many words even if it takes just as long (or longer) to understand it. :) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 29th, 2011, 7:27am Oh of course, the current proposal is already to add 100% of the difference... never mind me... OK, can we vote on this? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by aaaa on Aug 29th, 2011, 10:02am I approve of the proposal described five posts ago, as well as it being applied retroactively. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Aug 29th, 2011, 2:34pm on 08/29/11 at 07:12:52, Fritzlein wrote:
:) Yes, mathematican would write rs+|rs-rr| not to use words at all. And he would somehow expect it is readable for other humans as well. But what is surprising, from my formula megajester deduced all 100% penalty is to be applied ... and just after a while he finds it was on original rules as well. So may be it is more readable at the end ;). |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Aug 29th, 2011, 3:44pm on 08/29/11 at 10:02:13, aaaa wrote:
I second this. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Eltripas on Aug 29th, 2011, 8:15pm on 08/29/11 at 07:27:29, megajester wrote:
http://gemandmax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/I_Approve.jpg |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Boo on Aug 30th, 2011, 2:40am After joining a team I noticed that Europe is the most numerous one. I think it might be because Atlantics and Europa correspond to a geographical region and other two (Ring of Fire and Rockies) do not. I think all teams should have the same number of members (+/- 1). Having the same number of people in a team would allow to organize matches with 4 boards, not 3. I think the league regulations should at least say something about conditions that should be met if new team wants to join the league. (Is it geographically based or not?) P.S. If other teams have difficulties gathering 3 people, I can join some other team. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 30th, 2011, 3:13am on 08/30/11 at 02:40:21, Boo wrote:
This is a milestone I've been waiting and hoping for ever since the inception of the League. My vision was to have something like the English Premier League, just for Arimaa. Clubs with their own character, atmosphere, history, brand, fanbase etc. Last year we had enough trouble getting just four teams off the ground. Setting up four teams artificially was a necessary evil, and artificially encouraging team spirit has been even harder. I knew at some point we would need to encourage teams to spontaneously form, but I didn't think this moment would come around so fast. So maybe we can all mull this over for the next season. Suggestions are welcome as always. (PS: Fritz, are you cool with the rule change?) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 30th, 2011, 8:03am on 08/30/11 at 02:40:21, Boo wrote:
Yes, both Rockies and Ring of Fire almost had to take a forfeit this round due to having only two volunteers. We would each love to have you join. on 08/30/11 at 03:13:48, megajester wrote:
We are at least as close to the milestone of seeing a team curl up and die. I think the first change to consider is to let newcomers know that some teams are overstaffed and other understaffed. Quote:
But the Premier League is supported by a host of minor league teams. When a top tier teams runs into difficulties, financial or otherwise, it can be dropped from the league and be replaced by one of many teams dying to have that spot. The edge effects are handled seamlessly. In our situation, with no reservoir of teams in a lower level, spontaneous creation and dissolution of teams would be ugly. The chaos would not be pushed way down out of sight. Quote:
Yes, I am in favor of the rule change and the retroactive application to the Heyckie/Hippo substitution. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Aug 30th, 2011, 6:13pm on 08/30/11 at 08:03:36, Fritzlein wrote:
It would be good to have players sign back up each season, as I know in the Atlantics there are at least 4 players that haven't been in the game room for months. on 08/30/11 at 08:03:36, Fritzlein wrote:
Very good point. We should have minor leagues as well! ;D I have actually been thinking at length about the situations brought forth by both of the above and have been trying to summarize my thoughts into a good idea. I'll let you know when I get there. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Boo on Aug 31st, 2011, 1:45am Quote:
I only said what thing rules should have described, it is a common feature of any kind of league rules. Personally, I don't think new teams will emerge soon, but it doesn't mean the rules should not have such a paragraph. Even board increase from 3 to 4 is not reasonable, if teams are struggling being full. It could be something like this: New teams willing to join the league should fulfill the following conditions: 1) Inform the league director about their intention at least 72 hours before the season starts. 2) Provide a list of players containing their team. The list must have at least #number_of_boards * 2 (currently it would be 6) players listed that are not in other teams. As of new players, I think it is a bad tendency when active players gather in one team. (Today Europa got one more new player). It could be regulated the that team captains should remove the players from the team list, if they are inactive for 6 months. And new players should be assigned to the team that has the least number of active players by tournament director. If there is a tie, the player gets assigned to the team, that is ranked lower in the tournament table. This should make the chances for all teams to gather full squad about equal. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 31st, 2011, 3:38am on 08/31/11 at 01:45:29, Boo wrote:
I believe that regulation should be kept to an absolute minimum. In particular I believe that if you don't let players join the club they want and force them to join whatever club the management thinks is better you're going to kill whatever 'team spirit' the clubs ever had. The reason I didn't add anything in the rules about new teams was because at the time new teams were merely a pipe-dream (and still are if Fritz's post is anything to go by), and it's all enough work as it is without writing and debating rules that are never going to be invoked. I do agree however that in principle everybody should re-sign on every season so team membership isn't full of inactives. But the summer slump this year was SUCH a slump that I thought that if I asked people to re-sign on, only half the active players would be around at that point to notice, and so I'd have like 7 people to base my ratings budget calculation on. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Boo on Aug 31st, 2011, 4:54am Quote:
I would like to join to Ring of Fire then, because they have 11 members, and Rockies have 13, if no one objects. Is it possible? |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 31st, 2011, 5:09am on 08/31/11 at 04:54:17, Boo wrote:
Sure. I've made the changes to the Europa and Ring of Fire threads. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 31st, 2011, 8:02am on 08/31/11 at 03:38:43, megajester wrote:
Speaking of which, the regulations could be reduced in length by eliminating the budget calculation entirely and simply allocating 2000 points per player/game. Why not keep it as simple as possible if we know it approximately works? I fail to see how lumping in a bunch of people who probably won't play will produce a more accurate number than a guess based on what worked pretty well last season. It like calculating the average rainfall in Dallas using data points from Houston because otherwise you don't have enough data points from Dallas! |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 31st, 2011, 8:42am on 08/31/11 at 08:02:12, Fritzlein wrote:
Suits me down to the ground :) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Hippo on Aug 31st, 2011, 9:00am I hope Herve does not want to save it as a secret, but we in Europe team have roster problems as well. I was not that eager to play in the first round, but we had no player for table 1 available. Herve asked me to write me down even expecting the possible forfeit. I was very happy with the Monday afternoon schedule ... till the connection problems caused me being late. I don't know if there were problems for 2nd round as I was eager to play. Yes, having odd number of teams would be odd and 2 teams is not enough. Let us hope each team would be able to fill the roster and the number of forfeits would be low. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by Fritzlein on Aug 31st, 2011, 10:38am Fortunately no forfeits so far, and a number of interesting games. I'm glad the AWL is up and running, even if it is creaking around the edges. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by megajester on Aug 31st, 2011, 12:13pm Yeah, thank goodness. Thanks to everybody for keeping the ball rolling. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_aQjHqX26gDE/SYwuWfb5mqI/AAAAAAAAABk/tcupPTxDiBw/s400/untitled.bm 8) I KNOW YOU WILL DO YOUR DUTY 8) |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by woh on Sep 1st, 2011, 6:02am Especially thanks to YOU megajester for being the driving force behind the Arimaa World League. Thank you for all the work and time you put into it so we can play our favorite game against each other. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by mistre on Sep 1st, 2011, 1:48pm If not for the unfortunate timeout for Fritz, we would likely have a 4-way tie at 3-3 with no forfeits. Seems like a pretty solid start for all 4 teams. |
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Title: Re: AWL 2011 Comments and Suggestions (Planning St Post by novacat on Sep 21st, 2011, 6:20pm I do not see cvic on the official ratings page for round 4. For the record, his peak whr for this round is 1680. |
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