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Topic: 2011 World Championship (Read 21182 times) |
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omar
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #195 on: Feb 13th, 2011, 9:14am » |
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I think the TD needs to make a ruling on this.
We had a situation where both players did not show up on time for the Harren vs qswanger game which was scheduled for 6:00 am my time.
At about 7:14 am my time qswanger showed up to claim the forfeit. The server had not yet marked this game as abandoned and removed it, so qswanger was able to sit down at the game, but when he closed the game window to claim the forfeit the game was marked as abandoned by both players.
I looked at the tournament rules and we state:
Forfeits: If a player does not show up for the game within 15 minute after the scheduled start time then that player will lose by forfeit. To claim the forfeit the player that showed up just needs to exit the game window after the 15 minutes are over. However, the player can choose to give the opponent more time by keeping the window open.
But how late can the player arrive to be able to claim the forfeit. I had thought that it was up to an hour after the game start time. I looked at the code and found that the player trying to claim the forfeit must arrive within the first 15 minutes and remain present until the first 15 minutes are over in order to claim the forfeit. So if you arrive after the first 15 minutes are over you do not get the forfeit. Even if you showed up 1 minute after the game start time and left before the first 15 minutes and then showed up again after the first 15 minutes you do not get the forfeit. In essence one must enter the game before the first 15 minutes and must not leave until after the first 15 minutes to claim the forfeit.
qswanger stated in chat that Harren had emailed him that he would not be able to make it for the game. So qswanger thought there is no need to rush and he can claim the forfeit at any time. He did intent to show up at the game start time, but his alarm clock did not go off and he arrived 1 hour and 14 minutes late.
I will change the wording next year to say: "To claim the forfeit the player must arrive within the first 15 minutes and must not leave until after the first 15 minutes are over. The forfeit will be awarded when the player exits the game window after the first 15 minutes are over. However, the player can choose to give the opponent more "
We need the TD's ruling on this situation. Is it a forfeit for both players or does qswanger get the win by forfeit?
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #196 on: Feb 13th, 2011, 12:53pm » |
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We set a record! There were 38 simultaneous logins, and also 21 in chat plus 21 in radio+more in TeamSpeak. Yippee! (Of course I am sad that I lost to chessandgo (again), but I am happy it was at least a good show.  )
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| « Last Edit: Feb 13th, 2011, 12:58pm by Fritzlein » |
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RonWeasley
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #197 on: Feb 13th, 2011, 1:39pm » |
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On the question of qswanger-Harren, I am ruling the game a forfeit for both players. Both were later than the 15 minute grace period.
The main motivation for this ruling is to avoid the specter of a game where both are late and at some long time after, both try to claim a win. Also, I don't want the tournament to have to distinguish between late and later.
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omar
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #198 on: Feb 13th, 2011, 2:51pm » |
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Thanks for the ruling RW.
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RonWeasley
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #199 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 7:41am » |
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on Feb 13th, 2011, 1:39pm, RonWeasley wrote:On the question of qswanger-Harren, I am ruling the game a forfeit for both players. Both were later than the 15 minute grace period.
The main motivation for this ruling is to avoid the specter of a game where both are late and at some long time after, both try to claim a win. Also, I don't want the tournament to have to distinguish between late and later. |
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I want to qualify this ruling. What if both players show up 16 minutes late and want to play the game? I propose the following:
If both players arrive beyond the 15 minute grace period, they may elect to play the game at tournament time control and appeal to the tournament director to have the game count instead of a double forfeit.
In almost all cases, I would accept the game outcome in place of a double forfeit. This is, in effect, a rescheduling of the game. The requirement to appeal to the TD protects the tournament from abuse. I would encourage players finding themselves in this situation to play the game first and appeal later, rather than trying to contact the TD beforehand.
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Adanac
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #200 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 11:16am » |
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Just for fun, I’d like to propose an alternate format for future World Championships. I’m curious to see how many other people enjoy these types of tournaments as much as I do.
Tournament Structure
A fixed-bracket head-to-head elimination event where the winners advance through the bracket and the losers from the first 2 rounds move on to a Relegation Swiss tournament.
Players are seeded 1 to 32 with pairings such as
#1 vs #32 and #16 vs #17 in round 1, with the 2 winners playing each other in round 2
#2 vs #31 and #15 vs #18 in round 1, with the 2 winners playing each other in round 2
The Final Eight
The true intent of this system is to create exciting head-to-head matches between the world’s best players. So the longest matches and the bulk of the tournament would revolve around the final 3 rounds of the tournament.
- Best-of-Five Head-to-Head Matches at a time control of 90 seconds per move.
- Winners advance to the next round to play a new Best-of-Five match.
- The first 3 games are played once per week for 3 weeks. The final 2 games, if necessary, are both tentatively scheduled for week 4. This is an intense 4th week but many matches won’t require a 5th game and this double-scheduling would knock 3 weeks off the total tournament time, one less week for each of the final 3 rounds.
The Opening Rounds
We could accommodate 32 players comfortably (certainly 64 or 128 are possible with 1 or 2 additional weeks, but the organization gets more difficult), but to avoid having the whole thing drag on for 5 months we’d need to play faster opening-round matches:
-Best-of-Three Matches at a time control of 30 seconds per move.
-Games are played consecutively with 30 minute breaks between games (or faster if the players agree).
-Each player would need to schedule during a time slot where they have approximately 3 hours available.
Relegation Swiss
Of the initial 32 players, 24 would be eliminated during the first 2 weeks. They could participate in an 8-round Swiss tournament from weeks 3-10, coinciding with the Quarter-Finals & Semi-Finals. The Swiss would not continue on week 11 when the entire focus of the Arimaa community would be on the World Championship Finals & 3rd Place Match. This Relegation Swiss would be just for fun & practice, though we could give small gift certificates to the top finishers for incentive. Time controls could be 30, 45 or 60s, whatever the community prefers. The tournament director for this Swiss should be a volunteer other than Omar or Ned, so that they can focus on the survivors in the elimination matches.
Schedule
Week 1: 32 players in a Best-of-Three Elimination Match at 30s
Week 2: 16 players in a Best-of-Three Elimination Match at 30s
Weeks 3-6: 8 players in a Best-of-Five Elimination Match at 90s + first 4 Rounds of Relegation Swiss
Weeks 7-10: 4 Players in a Best-of-Five Elimination + 24 players in Rounds 5-8 of Relegation Swiss
Weeks 11-14: Finals & 3rd Place Match
Obviously, there are huge compromises in the structure to accelerate the tournament in the opening weeks. The huge risk is that a top player would be eliminated during the 30s games. But when I look at the 30s Games History of the top players, it seems very likely that most would win their opening matches 2-0 or 2-1, with very few major upsets.
There are obvious drawbacks to this system, but I really like the rivalry and drama built by head-to-head elimination matches in professional sports and the old Chess candidates cycle. I also believe that the stamina built up during matches would be good practice for us in the Arimaa Challenge versus the bots. And though it’s a gruelling event, there are times such as weeks such as 3, 7 and 11 when players can enter a new series without any immediate pressure of elimination. This would last no more than 14 weeks, though it could easily be reduced to 13 weeks or fewer with some tweaking. Only the first week would feature large numbers of official games (excluding the Relegation Swiss), so the workload for the Omar and the TD would be greatly reduced from weeks 2-14.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #201 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 11:44am » |
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The drama of head-to-head elimination play comes at the expense of more upsets. FIDE briefly embraced short knockout tournaments, but was embarrassed in 1999 when they had to crown the #36 seeded player (Khalifman) as the World Champion. The problem of turning the tournament into more of a lottery can be somewhat offset by playing more games, but note that for the 1999 FIDE World Championship the format was two games plus a tiebreaker if necessary, i.e. essentially best two out of three games in preliminary rounds, with best of five for the semis and best of seven for the finals, similar to your proposal.
The other disadvantage of playing more games is, of course, more games. In a unified triple-elimination for 32 players, the champion would need to play at most 12 games (plus worst-case two byes). In your proposed format, he would need to play at most 21 games. Thus, the heightened drama of head-to-head single elimination weakens the efficiency of the floating triple elimination. For my money, I think we have enough excitement in floating triple elimination that we don't need the burden of extra games.
Finally, while there is some heightening of drama due to single-elimination, I think the "rivalry" aspect of mini-matches is actually a net negative. When rabbits upset chessandgo, I was much more interested in the question, "Can rabbits beat Adanac too," as opposed to the question, "Can rabbits beat chessandgo again?" And I think after rabbits beat you, most spectators would have been less interested in a repeat of either chessandgo-rabbits or Adanac-rabbits than they were actually interested in Fritzlein-rabbits. As further evidence of low interest in rivalry pairings, the chatroom buzz looking forward to the first round of the finals was disappointed that chessandgo-Nombril and Adanac-rabbits will be repeats from the preliminaries when there are other pairings that haven't yet been seen.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 14th, 2011, 12:42pm by Fritzlein » |
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Adanac
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #202 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 3:26pm » |
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If FIDE was “embarrassed” to crown a 2616-rated Grandmaster as their World Champion then why did they invite him to the tournament? They could have just restricted the event to a small number of 2700+ rated players rather than inviting a larger field of “tourists” (Kasparov’s infamous remark). Will the Arimaa community be embarrassed if a player with “only” a 2100 rating wins the World Championship or will we congratulate him for overcoming great odds to win it all? I’d guess the latter.
And I’m not defending the 1999 FIDE tournament either. Back in the 1960s-1980s when Spassky, Fischer, Petrosian, Smyslov, Tal, Korchnoi, Larsen, Karpov, Polugaevsky, Portisch, Taimanov, and all the other GMs I forgot to mention played head-to-head candidates matches for the right to participate in the World Championship it was the golden age of chess and they produced many epic encounters (those head-to-head matches are the inspiration for my proposal). And the best player always seemed to emerge victorious for the right to play the defending World Champion. I much preferred that over the crapshoot 1999 tournament that featured a not-so-epic finale between Akopian & Khalifman. Partially it was due to the absence of Kasparov, Karpov and Anand, but also the upset losses by Kramnik, Polgar, Ivanchuk, etc. in short matches. I didn’t like the tournament before it started and I liked it even less after seeing how it unfolded. Similarly, in Arimaa everyone wants to see a Chessandgo-Fritzlein finale and while everyone likes to see an occasional upset here and there, few spectators want to see no-name finalists competing in the final round.
However, the odds of my proposed tournament unfolding that way are much, much slimmer. Unlike that 1999 FIDE tournament which often involved matches between 2600 vs. 2700 rated opponents (i.e. reasonable chance of an upset in any short match), the opening rounds of an Arimaa tournament will have relatively few close matches. I’d be surprised if any 1900 players can pull off not 1 but 2 upsets in a three-game match against a 2300+ rated player. Maybe one of the top 5 players will be eliminated during the first two rounds, but more likely that won’t happen. Upsets occur rarely in Arimaa WC tournaments and when they do occur it’s often because the underdog was better than the community had previously realized.
Yes, my proposal does ask the World Champion to play a few more games to win the title than the current system does, but I think a few more games, with a higher percentage of those games occurring between the highest-rated players, is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. We enjoy playing this game, right?  I did try to compress my proposal down as tightly as possible, but it’s obviously tough to have both an open field for all registrants and a lengthy series of matches.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #203 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 3:57pm » |
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on Feb 14th, 2011, 3:26pm, Adanac wrote:| If FIDE was “embarrassed” to crown a 2616-rated Grandmaster as their World Champion then why did they invite him to the tournament? They could have just restricted the event to a small number of 2700+ rated players rather than inviting a larger field of “tourists” (Kasparov’s infamous remark). |
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Maybe "embarrassed" is the wrong word. I should have said that FIDE was "discredited". But in any case, the reason to invite a large field to play is for the sake of fairness and legitimacy. The eventual World Champion isn't protected from having to play anyone. No one can be shut out of the title like in early days when champions could avoid certain contenders. (That issue was part of the reason for forming FIDE, if I understand correctly.) Having the legitimacy that an open format confers is a separate issue from choosing a format that allows the best players to win most of the time.
Quote:| Will the Arimaa community be embarrassed if a player with “only” a 2100 rating wins the World Championship or will we congratulate him for overcoming great odds to win it all? |
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Well, the more we lessen the "great odds" an underdog has to overcome, i.e. the more we make the Arimaa World Championship like a lottery, then the less congratulations are due to an underdog that wins it. Khalifman was simply not deserving of the respect that he would have been deserving of had he won the FIDE World Championship in the traditional way. Or do you think he was just as legitimate as Petrosian because the title "World Champion" was the same?
Quote:| And I’m not defending the 1999 FIDE tournament either. [...] the crapshoot 1999 tournament that featured a not-so-epic finale between Akopian & Khalifman. [...] I didn’t like the tournament before it started and I liked it even less after seeing how it unfolded. |
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Hmmm, if you didn't like the FIDE knockout tournament structure, then why propose such a similar structure for the Arimaa World Championship?
Quote:| Back in the 1960s-1980s when Spassky, Fischer, Petrosian, Smyslov, Tal, Korchnoi, Larsen, Karpov, Polugaevsky, Portisch, Taimanov, and all the other GMs I forgot to mention played head-to-head candidates matches for the right to participate in the World Championship it was the golden age of chess and they produced many epic encounters (those head-to-head matches are the inspiration for my proposal). |
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Hmmm, if the chess championships of the 1960's-1980's are the inspiration for your proposal, then why not propose something for Arimaa similar to what inspired you? Those candidates cycles were very slow and deliberate, with long matches that gave an excellent chance that the better player would prevail. They weren't trying to cram everything into a few weeks like the FIDE knockouts.
Quote:| Unlike that 1999 FIDE tournament which often involved matches between 2600 vs. 2700 rated opponents (i.e. reasonable chance of an upset in any short match), the opening rounds of an Arimaa tournament will have relatively few close matches. |
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I agree that Arimaa ratings are more spread out than chess ratings, so upsets are less likely for the present. But I would say (A) that could change in the future and (B) just because we can get away with an inefficient format doesn't mean that efficiency is irrelevant.
Quote:| Yes, my proposal does ask the World Champion to play a few more games to win the title than the current system does, but I think a few more games, with a higher percentage of those games occurring between the highest-rated players, is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. We enjoy playing this game, right? |
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Absolutely, I like playing more games. I have often found myself pressing for longer World Championship formats against Omar's resistance to the tournament dragging on for a long time. But separate from the number of games to be played is a question of how best to allocate those games. If we all agree that the World Champion might need to play 21 games to take the crown, then I would much prefer a floating quintuple-elimination over your proposed format. It's more bang for the buck.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 14th, 2011, 4:23pm by Fritzlein » |
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robinz
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #204 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 4:38pm » |
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Sorry all, I'm only a newbie, so I quite understand if my opinion is judged not to be important But I sympathise with Adanac's view that the long knockout matches of the way the World Chess Championship cycles were traditionally run were a great thing, and something similar in the Arimaa WC could be very exciting for the spectators. (Well, for this one, at least  )
But I also understand the objection to his proposal, namely that the matches aren't long enough to avoid a feeling that they may be decided more on luck than on skill. But I'm not sure that's so different from the current format - it's not the same format, of course, but still, as I understand it, a player in the second stage goes out as soon as he has lost 2 games, so I don't see why this is any less open to a strong player going out after suffering just one or two unexpected setbacks.
So my ideal system would be to have something much like the Swiss system qualifier that we now have, but the top 8 from that competing, not in some short elimination tournament, but in a series of knockout matches, say of 8/10/12 games? I realise that this would take quite a long time, so there might not be space in the calendar for it (especially as some kind of tiebreak would need to be arranged for matches that were still level after the expected series of games). If it's totally unfeasible, then fair enough (although there may be workarounds - perhaps only having the top 4, not the top 8 - or even just the top 2 - playing matches), but I thought I'd suggest it, as it's what I would like to see, and the comments from Fritzlein and Adanac don't sound like their thoughts are too far away from mine.
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aaaa
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #205 on: Feb 14th, 2011, 9:39pm » |
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Performance ratings of the Open Classic participants, assuming a prior of .5/1 against a 1500-rated player, ignoring only the one double forfeit:
| Fritzlein | 2313 | | chessandgo | 2254 | | Tuks | 2212 | | rabbits | 2183 | | Adanac | 2103 | | hanzack | 1908 | | Nombril | 1907 | | Hippo | 1829 | | omar | 1775 | | 99of9 | 1764 | | jdb | 1749 | | Nevermind | 1747 | | The_Jeh | 1709 | | woh | 1586 | | megamau | 1555 | | Sconibulus | 1501 | | naveed | 1460 | | ArifSyed | 1413 | | Harren | 1411 | | Heyckie | 1370 | | ChrisB | 1366 | | Labradorboy | 1358 | | ginrunner | 1352 | | ocmiente | 1267 | | knarl | 1241 | | 722caasi | 1137 | | b599 | 1050 | | qswanger | 1050 | | Belteshazzar | 925 | | beancrisp | 903 | | oali | 692 | | Rad | 637 | | ddyer | 278 |
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Adanac
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #206 on: Feb 15th, 2011, 1:08pm » |
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Raising the F-Factor in the Strength of Schedule tie-breaker did have an impact on the final standings, though the same 8 people would have qualified with any F value. For any high value of F, including the value of 3.696 that we used this year, Tuks finished 3rd and I finished 4th. For any value less than 2.92, that would have flipped with me in 3rd and Tuks in 4th.
Of course, the pairings in earlier rounds could have been different as well, and the ripple effect of those different pairings might have impacted the Final 8. We'll never know. 
Tuks and I faced three common opponents (99of9, Nevermind, rabbits) but the differences were:
Tuks played:
Fritzlein 5 wins
ocmiente 2 wins
qswanger 2 wins
I played:
Nombril 4 wins
Omar 4 wins
knarl 2 wins
I'm the only person in the Top 4 that didn't face any 5 win opponents (by contrast, rabbits played all four 5 win players), so my 4 & 4 win opponents didn't value as highly as Tuks 5 & 2 win opponents. And that makes sense for a high value of F (which is driven by a high Standard Deviation amongst tournament participans).
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Tuks
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #207 on: Feb 15th, 2011, 3:48pm » |
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wow, the whr is very close to the actual last 8 results, the only difference is rabbits has a higher whr than adanac despite one less victory.
has anyone thought of using whr instead of SoS? it creates the same pairings in round 1+2 and seems to show the strength of someones schedule well
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #208 on: Feb 20th, 2011, 5:25pm » |
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on Feb 13th, 2011, 12:53pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Omar reports that we had a record 28 tuned into the radio for Hippo's victory over me. |
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And now 33 peak radio viewers for rabbits beating hanzack. The records are falling fast and furious.
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| « Last Edit: Feb 26th, 2011, 7:16pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #209 on: Feb 27th, 2011, 12:32pm » |
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on Feb 20th, 2011, 5:25pm, Fritzlein wrote:
And now 33 peak radio viewers for rabbits beating hanzack. The records are falling fast and furious.
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And 34 peak listeners for Adanac vs. Tuks. Another game, another record; <yawns>
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