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Topic: 2006 Postal Tournament Format (Read 2939 times) |
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omar
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #15 on: Feb 8th, 2006, 3:51pm » |
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Sorry I haven't been able to keep up on the Forum lately. Been pretty busy with some things going on at home.
Thanks for starting this discussion Karl and thanks everyone for providing input.
I don't think I will have much time to make changes to the tournament format this year; plus we need to announce the tournament and get it started soon. So I think we better keep the format the same as last year.
The one thing that can easily be changed is the time control. Last years time control did feel quite rushed especially at the start of the tournament. This year I'd like to try out the time control proposed by Karl which uses the T parameter; 1d/80d/100/0/300d/21d. These kind of time controls seem to work pretty good in the interactive games that I've played. The game keeps moving and yet I don't feel rushed. Lets see how this feels in the postal games.
Lets shoot for starting the tournament on Feb 26th. That will give a couple weeks time to announce it and allow for registration.
Im starting to think that we shouldn't really call this a championship tournament. Because if we have a lot of players; like 16; then each player is not really playing enough games to really determine who is the champion. Im starting to think the focus of the tournament should really be to try for high quality games and not worry too much about who wins the most games. As such we could change the prize fund distribution method so that we use a scoring method similar to the player of the month contest. Basically winner gets 3 points and loser gets 1 point if the game lasts as least 20 moves, 2 if 40 moves and 3 if 60 moves. Thus it would be possible for someone to even lose all the games still and get a high score if they put up a good fight in all their games.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #16 on: Feb 8th, 2006, 9:28pm » |
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on Feb 8th, 2006, 3:51pm, omar wrote:| Im starting to think that we shouldn't really call this a championship tournament. |
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I agree. I don't care about crowning someone as the best postal player, whereas I do care about more human-human games, high-quality games, fun games, and games that see a clash of styles. I want to push back the frontiers of Arimaa knowledge even further. Last year Omar's 8 points were less interesting to me as a measure of how good a player Omar is, and more interesting to me as a measure of how sound his camel attacks were. He re-wrote the book on the value of a camel and the value of a camel hostage. Pre-tournament I would have been happy to get a camel hostage for a dog sacrifice, but now I slightly prefer to capture a dog and give my camel hostage. That sort of discovery is what this tournament is about.
Quote:As such we could change the prize fund distribution method so that we use a scoring method similar to the player of the month contest. Basically winner gets 3 points and loser gets 1 point if the game lasts as least 20 moves, 2 if 40 moves and 3 if 60 moves. Thus it would be possible for someone to even lose all the games still and get a high score if they put up a good fight in all their games.
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Well, simpler is better, but I don't much like that a 21-move loss equals a 39-move loss. Why not give the winner 80 points and the loser one point per move up to a maximum of 80? That way you always have the incentive to keep fighting for one more move, rather than thinking, "Well, this will never make it to 60, so I can stop trying once I reach 41..."
This isn't the same as 45-second games where playing another 20 moves represents an additional time commitment of half an hour. Postal play requires much more endurance and commitment; players should be rewarded for each and every day they continue to slug it out.
One point per move is still pretty darned simple. Someone who loses every game in 40 moves on average still gets back 2/3 of his entry fee, while someone who wins every game gets only 4/3 of his entry fee, so this point structure is still all about commitment.
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99of9
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #17 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 12:34am » |
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on Jan 30th, 2006, 1:14am, Ryan_Cable wrote:
I was thinking of preventing the operator from choosing how long the bot thinks about each game |
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I agree that this should be disallowed. The time used per move should be decided by the algorithm alone, or chosen by the operator once per algorithm update (ie every 3 moves/25 moves).
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99of9
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #18 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 12:39am » |
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on Feb 8th, 2006, 3:51pm, omar wrote:
seems ok to me
Quote:Basically winner gets 3 points and loser gets 1 point if the game lasts as least 20 moves, 2 if 40 moves and 3 if 60 moves. Thus it would be possible for someone to even lose all the games still and get a high score if they put up a good fight in all their games.
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I prefer something similar to Karl, but with an earlier cutoff:
1 point per move up to 60 moves for the loser.
60 points for the winner.
But I also want to get people's opinions on whether bots can be exempt from the fees and prizes?
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Ryan_Cable
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #19 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 4:02am » |
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The time control 1d/80d/100/0/300d/21d allows someone to take 4 20-day vacations in a row. I would prefer 2d/20d/100/0/300d/21d to make people earn extra vacations if they want them.
I think the bot developers should have the option to participate without fees and prizes. (I assume any interested developer would take this option.) Still, if a bot is entered, there must be a good faith commitment to play all of the games to conclusion. However, requiring a deposit might be too strict, given the need to dedicate a computer for the bot to play on.
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99of9
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #20 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 5:03am » |
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on Feb 9th, 2006, 4:02am, Ryan_Cable wrote:| Still, if a bot is entered, there must be a good faith commitment to play all of the games to conclusion. |
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Yes, good point. I was thinking about running Gnobby overnight on my laptop every night (so it would effectively be thinking 1/3 of the time).
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #21 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 8:26am » |
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on Feb 9th, 2006, 12:39am, 99of9 wrote:| But I also want to get people's opinions on whether bots can be exempt from the fees and prizes? |
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I support exempting bots from fees and prizes, at the option of the developer. This is a political decision, because I'm afraid there won't be bot participants otherwise. I feel that developers are doing us a favor by participating, so I want to encourage it.
On the other hand, if a bot were to quit its games in the middle of the tournament, that would be no favor to the community, and I would rather the bot weren't entered in the first place. I am assuming that won't happen, but if it ever did, the next year I would be pushing for bots to have the same entry fee and prize money structure as everyone else.
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omar
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #22 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 1:34pm » |
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The incremental score for the loser based on number of moves sounds good. Lets use the limit of 60 since this can more realisticly be achevied with good effort.
The time control proposed by Ryan also seems good. Since I don't have any experience with either Ryan's or Karl's time control, I really don't have any preference. But Im pretty sure both will be more relaxed than what we used last year (1d/14d/100/14d/300d).
I think we should also keep the bot rules the same as last year. Bots should register and can't be changed. They should register to show a commitment just as everyone else; I perfer not to have exceptions to the rules unless necessary. They should not be manually modified, because allowing that opens up a can of worms and I don't think we want to dwell on what modifications are OK and what aren't. The programs can be modified if it is an automated process.
So the tournament rules this year will be pretty much exactly like last years with only the time control and prize distribution score being adjusted.
I've posted the pages for the tournament here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2006/
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| « Last Edit: Feb 9th, 2006, 4:39pm by omar » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #23 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 5:06pm » |
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on Feb 9th, 2006, 4:02am, Ryan_Cable wrote:| The time control 1d/80d/100/0/300d/21d allows someone to take 4 20-day vacations in a row. I would prefer 2d/20d/100/0/300d/21d to make people earn extra vacations if they want them. |
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Almost always, I prefer the bulk of the time control to come from a per-move increment rather than a large block of time awarded at the beginning. I feel this way for the reason you mention among others. However, the postal tournament is one situation that should be an exception in my mind. People have a legitimate need for extra time early in the tournament when they have trouble keeping up with all ten games at once, but later in the tournament when most of the games have wrapped up they need less time.
Ideally we would have a declining time control, say 3d per move for the first 20 moves, 2d per move for the next 20 moves, and 1d per move thereafter. Since that isn't possible with current software, I think 1d/80d is a pretty good compromise, even if it could be abused at the beginning. Note that with a limit of 300d it will help discourage stalling. If you keep to a scehdule of 1d per move, your opponent will be forced to make 110 moves with the 1d/80d schedule, whereas you could only force 93 moves with the 2d/20d schedule. Not that I expect any game to be decided by score after 300 days, but the point remains that we need to leave more time at the beginning and need to cut it down at the end.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #24 on: Feb 9th, 2006, 5:10pm » |
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on Feb 9th, 2006, 1:34pm, omar wrote:
Awesome. Thanks, Omar! I have already registered. Would it be good to announce registration under the notice of the Challenge games in the lobby? Maybe also linking to a list of players registered so far would be a good idea: it seemed to help for the World Championship. Some players who are bashful about signing up if they feel they are "not good enough" might be encouraged to see who else is signing up.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 9th, 2006, 5:14pm by Fritzlein » |
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RonWeasley
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #25 on: Feb 10th, 2006, 12:17pm » |
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Pigwidgeon is ready. I fed him some extra mice. For 10 games, I might need to borrow Errol too.
Personally I will be happy if I win 5 games, but players ranked above me should be careful. Fred thinks he can turn one of your horses into a frog.
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frostlad
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #26 on: Feb 11th, 2006, 3:08pm » |
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on Feb 9th, 2006, 5:10pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Maybe also linking to a list of players registered so far would be a good idea: it seemed to help for the World Championship. Some players who are bashful about signing up if they feel they are "not good enough" might be encouraged to see who else is signing up. |
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I agree! I don't mind playing higher ranked players, but it would be nice if there was a couple of players that were closer to my rating that would make it a game for me.
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omar
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #27 on: Feb 11th, 2006, 4:13pm » |
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Posted the announcement in the gameroom. Also a players list page.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #28 on: Feb 12th, 2006, 8:52am » |
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Omar,
Thanks for putting up a page to list the players who have already registered. There are seven of us signed up and you haven't even sent out the e-mail yet! I think we have a decent chance of topping the 16 players we had for last year's tournament. I'm going to be checking daily to see how many people sign up.
on Feb 11th, 2006, 3:08pm, frostlad wrote:| I agree! I don't mind playing higher ranked players, but it would be nice if there was a couple of players that were closer to my rating that would make it a game for me. |
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If it goes like last year, you'll have lots of good games. I see you are rated 1568. Last year Junaid entered with a rating of 1570, and got to play four players rated lower than himself as well as six players rated highger. I'm hoping that this tournament will again attract players of all ratings and all levels of experience.
Also, the distribution of prize money is geared towards committed play rather than winning. Even if you were to get blitzed and lose every game in 20 moves (which you won't) you would still get about $10 of your entry fee back. If you win three and lose seven in an average of 40 moves each, you will get about $18 back. Basically the only way to lose all your money is to drop out of the tournament and/or quit your games. Play for fun and learn as much as you can!
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| « Last Edit: Feb 12th, 2006, 9:00am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2006 Postal Tournament Format
« Reply #29 on: Feb 17th, 2006, 2:45pm » |
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The list of players registered so far is a great feature. It allows us to see that we have ten people registered already (yippee!) and none from Europe (boo, hiss!). Where are Robinson, Belbo, Megamau, Kamikazeking, etc.? I was impressed by Europe's strong showing in the World Championship, but now it looks like they're in full retreat. Yes, I know PMertens' attention span is too short for postal Arimaa, but I'm reluctant to believe that Europeans in general are too impatient. 
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