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Topic: 2011 World Championship (Read 21187 times) |
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Eltripas
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Re: 2011 World ChampionshipMy first reaction is th
« Reply #45 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 12:31am » |
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on Jan 3rd, 2011, 5:35pm, RonWeasley wrote:
My first reaction is the resigning player loses the game.
Trying to find a more sinister motive, I can think of 1) to mess with our heads, man; or 2) a conspiracy to give wins to an undeserving player.
The first is annoying, but should have an effect on only standings near the bottom. The incidental beneficiaries of improper resignations would be near the bottom to have games against the offending player. The second would only work in the earliest rounds unless some very good players participated. I don't expect that this year. If it happens in any year, the community has a bigger problem than just the WC tournament.
This is a good time to voice concerns I haven't thought of yet. These debates always help me be a better TD. |
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Actually Hanzack's motive is to keep his rating as low as possible, (I don't know if that enters in the category "to mess with our heads, man"), but I think that he may resign only some games (the ones that affect more his rating) which may be unfair to his other opponents, so I suggest that, if he resigns a game he gets a warning that if he does that again he is going to be kicked out of the tournament.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 4th, 2011, 12:32am by Eltripas » |
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jdb
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #46 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 5:54am » |
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My game is scheduled for Sunday at 12:00am. I did not select that time slot at all on the scheduler.
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omar
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #47 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 6:13am » |
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on Jan 3rd, 2011, 11:53am, jdb wrote:| I would suggest having a ruling prepared if someone resigns a won game. |
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This is something that we have not considered before. We have always assumed that players will play to win. But a player may intentionally lose a game either to lower their rating (perhaps to enter a tournament in the future which is limited to players under a certain rating) or to help another player do better in the current tournament. I'm sure this has been encountered in Chess tournaments and there are probably rules to handle it. I think the consequences for throwing a game should be part of the tournament rules while the determination of whether or not a player has thrown a game should be made by the TD.
It's too late to change the rules for this year, but next year I will add something like the following:
"If the tournament director determines that a player has intentionally lost a game, the player will be eliminated from the tournament and will not be allowed to take part in future rated events for 2 year."
I consider this to be as severe as intentionally cheating to try and win.
The key role of the tournament director is to make a determination when a special situation or dispute arises.
The extent of a tournament directors ability to punish a player should be limited to eliminating the player from the current event. Punishments which ban a player from future events should be part of the written rules of the event.
Although having such rules in place is good for handling a situation when it arises, I totally agree with Karl that we should apply some social and peer pressure to prevent it from happening in the first place. I will send an email to hanzack and if others see him in chat, please discuss this with him and let him know that we would not want to see him throwing games.
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DonEsteban
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #48 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 7:48am » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 6:13am, omar wrote:| I'm sure this has been encountered in Chess tournaments and there are probably rules to handle it. |
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I've never heard of it or any Chess tournament rules to sanction this kind of behavior. That doesn't mean that it never happens, but I don't expect it to be a wide-spread problem for several reasons: a) Players who have reached a certain level usually play to win. b) Players wouldn't usually risk their reputation by intentionally letting someone else win (or profiting from such players). c) In order to win a tournament, you still have to beat the strongest player(s). So, yes, you can get an advantage by winning against dummy players, but it usually won't be decisive, especially in elimination-mode tournaments.
This all goes mainly for real-life tournaments. The question of false/double nicks is very real, but I haven't so far heard of a practical solution to prevent it. So I suggest we just stay relaxed and hope that the vast majority of players will be interested in a fair and sporting competition. After all this is basically just a fun sport and there are not millions of dollars at stake.
Otherwise (as an outsider and lacking any further knowledge of the concrete problem at hand) I'd fully agree with you, omar.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #49 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 9:26am » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 7:48am, DonEsteban wrote:| I've never heard of it or any Chess tournament rules to sanction this kind of behavior. That doesn't mean that it never happens [...] |
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Actually, the USCF in the past encountered severe problems with people intentionally losing games, or "sandbagging" as it was called. The reason people intentionally lost games was to lower their ratings and thereby gain entry into lower divisions. For example, a player whose true strength was 1900 would not have very good chances to win the "under 2000" division, but if he intentionally lost games to get a rating below 1800, he would have great chances to win the "under 1800" division, and the accompanying prize money. The USCF addressed the problem by barring people from the "under X" sections on the basis of career peak rating rather than on the basis of current rating.
Also FIDE historically had problems with people intentionally losing/drawing games. In the Soviet era, the qualifying tournaments for the World Championship were round-robins in which several of the players were Soviets, since they had many of the world's top players. If they all were careful not to beat their top player, then their top player had far better odds of advancing. The Soviets never admitted to cheating, but statistical analysis shows that it almost certainly happened. FIDE addressed this problem by switching to an elimination format rather than a round-robin format.
I agree that the Arimaa community can and should primarily rely on everyone to try hard to win every game, but the experience of chess doesn't guide us to ignore the possibility of intentional losses. On the contrary, chess teaches us that it will happen unless we take reasonable steps to forestall it.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #50 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 10:06am » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 5:54am, jdb wrote:| My game is scheduled for Sunday at 12:00am. I did not select that time slot at all on the scheduler. |
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I thought midnight was an odd time for you; I recall you preferring early times to late times in the past. Anyway, the way I understand the scheduler, it is impossible for you to be scheduled for a time that is selected as no preference, i.e. not even lowest preference, so this must be a bug of some sort. Omar and Ron are going to get an early start on rulings this tournament!
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jdb
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #51 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 12:01pm » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 10:06am, Fritzlein wrote:
I thought midnight was an odd time for you; I recall you preferring early times to late times in the past. Anyway, the way I understand the scheduler, it is impossible for you to be scheduled for a time that is selected as no preference, i.e. not even lowest preference, so this must be a bug of some sort. Omar and Ron are going to get an early start on rulings this tournament! |
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It looks like the scheduler thinks 12:00am is at night. I did select 12 noon on Sunday as a time . Maybe the game room time means 12 noon? At any rate, I cannot play on Sunday at midnight, there is a prior commitment.
To be clear, I selected slots 90 and 102. I did not select slot 78, which I think the game is scheduled for.
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Eltripas
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #52 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 12:07pm » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 12:01pm, jdb wrote:
It looks like the scheduler thinks 12:00am is at night. . |
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To be fair, 12:00 am is at night, but this kind of confusion is why the 24h hour should be used.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 4th, 2011, 12:07pm by Eltripas » |
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aaaa
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #53 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 12:19pm » |
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The color coding is there to prevent any time-of-day confusion.
It could be that jdb hadn't used the right scheduler for the championship, meaning that there were no preferential data for the algorithm to use, resulting in it simply picking a most-preferred time slot from his opponent.
The scheduling page should be changed to prominently display for which event the time slot preferences apply.
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Hippo
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #54 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 1:19pm » |
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Yes, I have filled the schedule when I registered, fortunately I have checked the schedule once more later and discovered it was not WC2011 scheduler
(so I have rescheduled in time, but jdb could have less luck).
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #55 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 5:53pm » |
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Based on a rough calculation, after six rounds there should be about eleven players with a record of 4-2 or better. This means that about three players with a 4-2 record will be eliminated due to weak strength of schedule. Only the approximately three players with a 5-1 record will be in the finals for sure.
In short, as usual, strength of schedule will be critically important.
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Nombril
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #56 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 10:03pm » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 5:53pm, Fritzlein wrote:| This means that about three players with a 4-2 record will be eliminated due to weak strength of schedule. |
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I still think it is insane to use SOS to determine who will be in the finals. (OK - maybe that is a bit stronger language than I used last year.  )
I'm not a tournament expert, but after a quick look at the wikipedia article on SOS, it seems that for major sports: a. SOS is irrelevant because all teams play each other, b. SOS has been eliminated from use (in the college bowl rankings - which seemed to be the major user of SOS), or c. a playoff system is used to avoid having to use SOS to determine anything other than initial seedings for a playoff tournament.
I understand that the #8 and #9 player probably have equal odds at winning the tournament. But based on pre-tournament rankings and the results of the last three WCs, making the final 8 might be the realistic goal for many (most?) of the other players to be aiming for.
I assume it is too late to change anything for this year... but for future consideration: Would there be any drawback to having 1 extra game, where just the bottom portion of the 'split' win grouping play each other? The size of the bottom portion would be set so that the winners of that 'playoff' would be in the final 8. (In Fritz's rough estimate, the single top 4-2 player (based on SOS) gets in automatically, but the bottom 6 have a playoff for the last 3 spots: one undefeated, three 5-1 records, one 4-2 automatic bid, and three 4-2 +playoff winners.)
With such a small number of games, I still have a hard time believing that SOS isn't at least partly random, or at least a function of pre-tournament rankings (since they dictated the initial seeds). Maybe the math would prove my gut feeling wrong. It just seems to be more 'fair' to have your 'destiny' in your own hands, rather that calculating various scenarios in the last round for others to win/loose to allow you to make the finals.
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99of9
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #57 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 10:33pm » |
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on Dec 23rd, 2010, 9:18am, omar wrote:Here is the link to set your default preferred game times:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/selectTimes.cgi
When I create the 2011 WC event using the tournament tool, it will copy over these times and you will be emailed the URL (different than the above) to update your preferred times for the 2011 WC event.
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I did this, but it appears that the wrong preferences were copied over (maybe last years?). I can play 24 hours before my scheduled time, but will find it very difficult to play at the scheduled time. I will be out of internet contact for the next 24 hours, but will send a message to my opponent now. Sorry for not checking in after the preliminary schedule was organized, but I have been away from computers all week.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #58 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:21pm » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 10:03pm, Nombril wrote:| I still think it is insane to use SOS to determine who will be in the finals. (OK - maybe that is a bit stronger language than I used last year. ) |
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I think it is problematic to decide by SoS, but playing extra rounds of preliminary is also problematic.
Quote:| b. SOS has been eliminated from use (in the college bowl rankings - which seemed to be the major user of SOS) |
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Actually every one of the computer rankings in the BCS uses SoS. That is how the computers could put a two-loss Oklahoma ahead of a one-loss Ohio State. But even though the BCS uses SoS, given how unpopular it is, I don't think we want to imitate them.
Quote:| c. a playoff system is used to avoid having to use SOS to determine anything other than initial seedings for a playoff tournament. |
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My preference would be to get rid of the gap between the preliminaries and the finals. Why have a playoff to determine who is in the playoff? Why not instead unify the tournament into an open triple-elimination?
The original justification for having a preliminary and a finals was to provide an event in which everyone could participate and have a good time. That made some sense when there were no other events all year to have fun in, but now we have the Arimaa World League and one-day tournaments. We don't have to make the World Championship serve a double purpose.
If the only purpose of the World Championship tournament is to crown a World Champion, then it is OK to have some people take three tough beatings and go home. We don't have to make it fun for all entries. Furthermore, getting rid of the division between a preliminary and a final gets rid of the problem of how to limit the field to eight; the field is narrowed by losses, and everyone gets three.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:22pm by Fritzlein » |
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omar
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Re: 2011 World Championship
« Reply #59 on: Jan 4th, 2011, 11:45pm » |
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on Jan 4th, 2011, 10:33pm, 99of9 wrote:
I did this, but it appears that the wrong preferences were copied over (maybe last years?). I can play 24 hours before my scheduled time, but will find it very difficult to play at the scheduled time. I will be out of internet contact for the next 24 hours, but will send a message to my opponent now. Sorry for not checking in after the preliminary schedule was organized, but I have been away from computers all week. |
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Darn, I forgot that when it doesn't find any game times selected for the event it first looks for previous event game times before checking the default game times. Please let me know if you and your opponent agree to a different time. I will change it manually.
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