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Topic: 2007 Postal Tournament (Read 4027 times) |
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chessandgo
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Arimaa player #1889
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #15 on: Feb 13th, 2007, 6:32am » |
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I'm not sure the "winner" issue is this connected to the fact that people get to play equal games ; for instance we could divide the pool of players between ranking categories, and play separate tourneys for each category.
But anyway, never mind the formula chosen, and I wish a nice and fruitful tourney to everyone 
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #17 on: Feb 14th, 2007, 1:51pm » |
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Omar, I like the way your code orders the thirteen players in a ring just as it did last year:
Fritzlein 2359 8
robinson 2167 3
RonWeasley 2053 12
omar 1881 4
naveed 1703 8
nbarriga 1534 4
willwould 1504 4
camelback 1508 4
seanick 1672 8
woh 1738 12
arimaa_master 1978 50
Adanac 2076 8
chessandgo 2258 12
However, you then seem to treat it as a line rather than a ring. After pairing the first twelve games you have given everyone two games against their two nearest neighbors, except for chessandgo and Fritzlein, who have only one game each. Why don't you also pair chessandgo vs. Fritzlein on this first pass?
Fritzlein robinson
RonWeasley omar
naveed nbarriga
camelback willwould
seanick woh
Adanac arimaa_master
chessandgo Adanac
arimaa_master woh
camelback seanick
nbarriga willwould
omar naveed
robinson RonWeasley
After your second dozen games, the situation would have been exacerbated with everyone having four games, except for Fritzlein and chessandgo having only two games. The fact that robinson only wanted three games total left Fritzlein with three games as well, but in principle both ends of the chain could have gotten shafted again. Instead of short-changing the ends, you need to close the loop and pair chessandgo vs. robinson and Fritzlein vs. Adanac.
RonWeasley Fritzlein
omar robinson
willwould naveed
nbarriga camelback
arimaa_master seanick
woh Adanac
arimaa_master chessandgo
Adanac seanick
woh camelback
willwould omar
RonWeasley nbarriga
naveed Fritzlein
Continuing in this fashion, you almost didn't pair chessandgo vs. Fritzlein at all! Fritzlein filled up seven of eight games before getting to the bottom of the chain. If there had been more people in the middle, the #1 vs. #2 matchup wouldn't have been included in the tournament, despite being one of the most eligible pairings.
Clearly the solution is to treat the ring as a ring. Instead of going up and down the chain, go around and around the ring. After the first pass, you should have paired thirteen games, i.e. the twelve you paired plus the one game connecting the two ends. Then everyone will have two games, in the best way that you could give everyone two games. After the second pass, everyone should be playing two forward and two back in the ring, for a total of four games each, in the best way that you can give everyone four games. (Except that robinson will have only three games, so one of the people two away from him in the ring will also be short a game.) Then the most eligible games get paired first instead of only maybe possibly by accident at the end if those players have games left over.
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omar
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Arimaa player #2
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #18 on: Feb 14th, 2007, 10:54pm » |
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Thanks for the suggestions Karl. I've modified the pairing script a bit.
The new script is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/pair2.txt
The results of this script is here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/tourn/postal/2007/pairs2.txt
It does seem to do better. The first script produced 46 games with an average difference between matched players of 274 points. The new script produced 47 games with an average difference between matched players of 244 points.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #19 on: Feb 14th, 2007, 11:13pm » |
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Excellent. Now we just have to hope enough people sign up that folks can get their requested games without duplicates. Not that I mind playing Weasley twice, but I'd rather play him and Belbo once each.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #20 on: Feb 21st, 2007, 8:06am » |
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We now have 15 people signed up, and have crossed an important threshold: everyone who requested 8 games or fewer will get all their games against unique opponents. Those who requested 12 or more games will probably get almost 12 games by playing each other twice each.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 21st, 2007, 10:57am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #21 on: Feb 24th, 2007, 5:26pm » |
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I see the pairings are up. A quick comparison of this year's registration to years past:
| 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | | Players | 15 | 19 | 20 | | Games | 75 | 95 | 85 | | Mismatches | 9 | 5 | 3 |
By "mismatch" I mean a rating difference of 400 points or more. Therefore I didn't include chessandgo vs. Zombie as a mismatch, although we know it will be a blowout. (Can it be more brutal than the eighteen-move demolition during challenge qualifying? We shall see.)
I note that everyone got up to ten games without duplicate opponents, and up to twelve with a couple of duplicates. The three game-hungry players got 14, 15, and 15 games respectively, including duplicate opponents.
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RonWeasley
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Harry's friend (Arimaa player #441)
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #22 on: Feb 24th, 2007, 9:15pm » |
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So ... many ... games ... uhh ...
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IdahoEv
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Arimaa player #1753
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Zombie in the postal tournament
« Reply #23 on: Feb 25th, 2007, 6:55pm » |
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Zombie version 6 has been entered in the tournament, playing a full complement of 15 games. V.6 is slightly upgraded from the V.5 that played in the computer championship, including some improvements to endgame rabbit eval and a fix of a minor eval bug Zombie inherited from Fairy.
The rules for the PT technically state that it must be announced what hardware bots are running on, and they must be available for under $1000.
Zombie is running on a linux server box in my basement that cost $189.00. You can see the exact hardware here:
http://store.madtux.org/product_info.php?cPath=57&products_id=240
I added 256MB RAM to the default configuration by scrounging from a box of spare parts in my closet, so the actual server has 512MB of RAM, and this compile of Zombie is using up to 400MB for its hashtable. Zombie is searching for a fixed 3 hour per move time window.
NOTE: Through an agreement with Fritzlein, if my server crashes while I am on vacation this spring or summer, Fritzl will pick up the slack by running Zombie on an old laptop he has sitting around. Since this laptop has quite a bit lower specifications than my sever, I assume this eventuality wouldn't offend anyone. (Even though the rules say that technically the hardware is not allowed to change).
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #24 on: Feb 25th, 2007, 11:12pm » |
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Thanks for entering Zombie, IdahoEv. The restrictions on computers seem a bit excessive to me, especially now that prize money is awarded 100% for participation and 0% for game results. I would be happy to play postally against a bot that was running on a supercomputer, just to see if the bot could hang with us. Furthermore, I think it would encourage developers to enter their bots if they could periodically update the code with whatever improvements they have made in the mean time.
I know we discussed this before, but how do folks feel now that there is no prize money on the line?
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arimaa_master
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Arimaa player #2010
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #25 on: Feb 26th, 2007, 2:03am » |
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I fully agree with you, Karl. I am very interested to play against computer opponent with some super powerful hardware and especially if program could be modified during postal game (Our playing technique could be updated so why not allow computers do the same? )
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chessandgo
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Arimaa player #1889
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #26 on: Feb 26th, 2007, 4:42am » |
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agreed 100 % 
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IdahoEv
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Arimaa player #1753
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #27 on: Feb 27th, 2007, 12:20am » |
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on Feb 25th, 2007, 11:12pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Thanks for entering Zombie, IdahoEv. The restrictions on computers seem a bit excessive to me, especially now that prize money is awarded 100% for participation and 0% for game results. |
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I would tend to agree. I think the rules are right for the WCC, but I think they are somewhat irrelevant for the postal tournament. However, them's the rules we've got. I would suggest we lobby Omar for alterations for next year if we want them changed.
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nbarriga
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Almost retired Bot Developer
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #28 on: Feb 27th, 2007, 10:23am » |
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Hi, I just realized, that in everyone of my games, one player has 20 days reserve and the other 60. Is that normal? If so, why?
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IdahoEv
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Arimaa player #1753
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Re: 2007 Postal Tournament
« Reply #29 on: Feb 27th, 2007, 12:07pm » |
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on Feb 27th, 2007, 10:23am, nbarriga wrote:| Hi, I just realized, that in everyone of my games, one player has 20 days reserve and the other 60. Is that normal? If so, why? |
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This confused me for a long time as well. Here's what you are seeing:
For the active player's turn, it shows the remaining amount of reserve time that player can use for this turn.
For the non-active player's turn, it shows the total remaining reserve.
The time control for this tournament starts you with 60 days of reserve (2nd number in the time control), but you can only use 21 days of it for a single turn (5th number in the time control).
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