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Topic: 2006 World Championship (Read 5936 times) |
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omar
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #45 on: Nov 28th, 2005, 5:03pm » |
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on Nov 22nd, 2005, 5:23pm, acheron wrote:6:00am match time.
That's just obscene.
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There is definitely a lot of room to improve the game scheduling system. I coded it up quickly a few years ago and haven't had a chance to really focus on it again. If anyone wants to improve it, I can send you the code.
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BlackKnight
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #46 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 12:50pm » |
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I haven't studied all the sophisticated conditions of the pairing algorithm and so I don't know if the following suggestion makes any sense or fits into the system, but I just realized for my next game the color will be Gold and Omar will have Silver.
However, our colors so far were S - G and G - S, respectively.
So in a Swiss system chess tournament it would be very natural to continue the sequence and get S - G - S and G - S - G, respectively. Even if we are using a different system, it could still make sense to continue the natural sequence.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #47 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 5:59pm » |
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BlackKnight, I think that it would fit into the system perfectly well to say
"Whoever has played Gold a lower percentage of games so far gets to play Gold. In case of a tie, whoever last played Silver in a round where his opponent played Gold gets to play Gold. Further ties are broken randomly."
On the other hand, even though this rule works within the system and does what you want, I'm not sure I like it. Wouldn't it make more sense to assign colors to a player in the order G-S-S-G-G-S-S or S-G-G-S-S-G-G than alternating? If you alternate, then getting Gold in the first round determines your fate much deeper into the tournament, in that you will either play more Gold than Silver or you will get equal numbers. The way it is now, with ties broken randomly, there is no advantage or disadvantage in the later rounds based on the order in which colors were assigned in earlier rounds.
I don't think it makes much difference one way or the other, but I have a slight preference for it being random, and if it isn't random, I have a slight preference for "first one and second two" rather than "alternating" as a tiebreaker. That is to say, if we introduce a tiebreaker, I'd like the opposite of the one you propose! 
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| « Last Edit: Nov 29th, 2005, 6:02pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #48 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 6:25pm » |
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on Nov 28th, 2005, 5:03pm, omar wrote:| There is definitely a lot of room to improve the game scheduling system. I coded it up quickly a few years ago and haven't had a chance to really focus on it again. If anyone wants to improve it, I can send you the code. |
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I'd volunteer to work on this, if only to teach myself a little Perl, but what are the criteria of what is best? Here are the criteria I envision:
* Assign all game times independently, so that the only time preferences that matter are yours and your opponent's. In particular, you should never be bumped to a different time slot because the best slot is already "taken" by another game.
* Of course the actual game time can only come from times where both players overlap. If they overlap at more than one time, the "best" is selected as follows:
* If 1 is a favored time, 2 is an OK time, and 3 is a barely acceptable time, then the rank of the (unordered) pairs of preferences, from best to worst, is (1,1), (1,2), (2,2), (1,3), (2,3), (3,3)
* If more than one time slot has a preference pair in the best class, then each such time slot is equally likely to be chosen.
For example, if there are only four overlapping times, and the (ordered) pairs of preferences for those are (1,3), (3,1), (3,1), (2,3), then the last time slot is thrown out, and each of the first three is equally likely to become the scheduled game time.
One could argue that if it has to be a (3,1) or a (1,3) then each player should have an equal chance of being unhappy, but I disagree. Someone who puts down more 1's as preferences should have a higher chance of one of those slots becoming the actual game time than someone who puts down fewer 1's.
Also it seems clear to me that if the time slots have preferences (1,3), (3,1), (3,1), (2,2), then even though the sum is four in each pair, the (2,2) should automatically be selected for fairness sake.
These are just thoughts off the top of my head, though. Are there important criteria I am missing?
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99of9
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #49 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 7:05pm » |
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That seems ok to me. It's also important to include Omar's rule about allocating from Sunday backwards. That way we can fill out our 30 slots with Wednesday sessions that (hopefully) won't be required.
Either that or include a 4th category of badness. Or even a 5th... No reason not to record quite detailed gradations of preferences, just like more detailed gradations of time.
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Janzert
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #50 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 8:20pm » |
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on Nov 29th, 2005, 6:25pm, Fritzlein wrote:
* Assign all game times independently, so that the only time preferences that matter are yours and your opponent's. In particular, you should never be bumped to a different time slot because the best slot is already "taken" by another game.
* Of course the actual game time can only come from times where both players overlap. If they overlap at more than one time, the "best" is selected as follows:
* If 1 is a favored time, 2 is an OK time, and 3 is a barely acceptable time, then the rank of the (unordered) pairs of preferences, from best to worst, is (1,1), (1,2), (2,2), (1,3), (2,3), (3,3)
* If more than one time slot has a preference pair in the best class, then each such time slot is equally likely to be chosen.
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From a spectator point of view, I would prefer the first rule to only apply for the first two steps. If there are multiple time slots that are equally agreeable to both players it would then be nice if they could be chosen to not overlap with another game.
Also choosing the game time seems to be equivalent to a vote involving a large number of candidates (time slots) and two voters (the players). There is actually a fair amount of voting theory out there that should be applicable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_methods). The current system would seem to be a type of range voting.
Janzert
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| « Last Edit: Nov 29th, 2005, 8:22pm by Janzert » |
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99of9
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #51 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 9:19pm » |
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on Nov 29th, 2005, 8:20pm, Janzert wrote:| From a spectator point of view, I would prefer the first rule to only apply for the first two steps. If there are multiple time slots that are equally agreeable to both players it would then be nice if they could be chosen to not overlap with another game. |
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Ha, fascinating. As a spectator I prefer the opposite. I would prefer to have a few games going at once so when one gets boring I can focus on the other. That way I use less hours spectating too.
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BlackKnight
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #52 on: Nov 29th, 2005, 11:45pm » |
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on Nov 29th, 2005, 5:59pm, Fritzlein wrote:| I don't think it makes much difference one way or the other, but I have a slight preference for it being random, and if it isn't random, I have a slight preference for "first one and second two" rather than "alternating" as a tiebreaker. That is to say, if we introduce a tiebreaker, I'd like the opposite of the one you propose! |
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Thanks for your explanations!
Now I see that elimination makes actually a big difference in the system. So I wouldn't like any of those two fixed color assignments that might determine my fate from the first round on.  Thus, I also vote for random now! 
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| « Last Edit: Nov 30th, 2005, 6:00am by BlackKnight » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #53 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 9:50am » |
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on Nov 29th, 2005, 7:05pm, 99of9 wrote:That seems ok to me. It's also important to include Omar's rule about allocating from Sunday backwards. That way we can fill out our 30 slots with Wednesday sessions that (hopefully) won't be required.
Either that or include a 4th category of badness. Or even a 5th... No reason not to record quite detailed gradations of preferences, just like more detailed gradations of time. |
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Interesting. I didn't know that the slots were filled from Sunday backwards. I thought the preponderance of weekend games was explained by the expressed preferences of the players.
Personally, I don't necessarily prefer weekend times. A weekend "3" is just as bad as a weekday "3" for me. Last week, in fact, I was travelling the whole weekend, and was quite eager for a Tuesday evening or Wednesday time. It seems to me that we should let the expressed preferences speak for themselves, and not assume that later is better, unless there is some other reason for this I don't see.
If we were to add a fourth category of preference, would you agree that the order from best to worst should be (1,1), (1,2), (2,2), (1,3), (2,3), (3,3), (1,4), (2,4), (3,4), (4,4)? That is to say, even though the sum of (1,4) expresses a higher average preference than (3,3), we avoid assigning a superbad slot to anyone if at all possible?
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #54 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 10:29am » |
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on Nov 29th, 2005, 8:20pm, Janzert wrote:| From a spectator point of view, I would prefer the first rule to only apply for the first two steps. If there are multiple time slots that are equally agreeable to both players it would then be nice if they could be chosen to not overlap with another game. |
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It makes sense to me to apply yet another criteria at the last level, rather than randomly breaking ties between games of equal preferences. Why be random if there is a sensible tiebreaker?
On the other hand, I am ambivalent as a spectator. Overlapping games means fewer hours I have to spend watching, and more excitement during those hours. On the other hand, a single game can take up my whole attention when it gets exciting, and I might miss whatever is happening in a concurrent game. Maybe we need to hear from more people about their preferences on this score.
Now that I think about it, however, I'm going to contradict my previous post, and say that "later is better" makes a lot of sense as a final tiebreaker, because whatever the preferences of the participants, spectators are more likely to be able to watch a game if it is on the weekend.
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| « Last Edit: Nov 30th, 2005, 10:31am by Fritzlein » |
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Adanac
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #55 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 11:39am » |
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on Nov 30th, 2005, 10:29am, Fritzlein wrote:
It makes sense to me to apply yet another criteria at the last level, rather than randomly breaking ties between games of equal preferences. Why be random if there is a sensible tiebreaker?
On the other hand, I am ambivalent as a spectator. Overlapping games means fewer hours I have to spend watching, and more excitement during those hours. On the other hand, a single game can take up my whole attention when it gets exciting, and I might miss whatever is happening in a concurrent game. Maybe we need to hear from more people about their preferences on this score.
Now that I think about it, however, I'm going to contradict my previous post, and say that "later is better" makes a lot of sense as a final tiebreaker, because whatever the preferences of the participants, spectators are more likely to be able to watch a game if it is on the weekend. |
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I like the idea of concurrent games on the weekends. It's easier to plan my schedule around spectating if the games are clumped together and it shouldn't be too difficult to follow 2 games simultaneously. It would also allow potential start times every hour, rather than every 2 hours (convenient!) and it could accomodate future tournaments with 24 or 32 players. Also, we could more easily justify 2-3 minutes per move rather than 90 seconds if the spectators potentially have 2 games to watch.
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MrBrain
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #56 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 4:28pm » |
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I dislike the "later" criterion because my weekends are almost always extremely busy. The only time that really worked for me this week was Tuesday, but I still ended up with a 1 am draw on the weekend.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #57 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 4:46pm » |
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According to pre-tournament ratings, the third round features 1 vs. 6 and 2 vs. 5, but I just noticed that according to current ratings it is actually 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3. This seems like an argument that the floating pairings are working well.
I confess to being thrilled that my nemesis, 99of9, has to play against his nemesis Adanac in the third round. If Adanac wins, then I can't be paired against 99of9 before round seven, even if I lose once myself.
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99of9
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #58 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 5:14pm » |
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on Nov 30th, 2005, 4:46pm, Fritzlein wrote:| I confess to being thrilled that my nemesis, 99of9, has to play against his nemesis Adanac in the third round. If Adanac wins, then I can't be paired against 99of9 before round seven, even if I lose once myself. |
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I suppose I should try to win then!
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 World Championship
« Reply #59 on: Nov 30th, 2005, 5:54pm » |
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on Nov 30th, 2005, 4:28pm, MrBrain wrote:| I dislike the "later" criterion because my weekends are almost always extremely busy. The only time that really worked for me this week was Tuesday, but I still ended up with a 1 am draw on the weekend. |
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Well, if I'm not the only one who dislikes the "later is better" criterion, then I suggest we scrap it entirely, and simply choose randomly between times of equal preference. It seems unfair to people who prefer weekday times to offer such times but then bias the scheduling towards the weekend.
But in any case, if we switch to the finer granularity of one hour time slots and four or five levels of preference, then the preferences themselves should do better at unambiguously determining the best time. It may become superfluous to make assumptions on behalf of the players about what is best for them.
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