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Topic: 2013 World Championship Format (Read 31144 times) |
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Dolus
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #15 on: Mar 27th, 2012, 2:19pm » |
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To me it sounds like one of the biggest issues in the WC is running it. Alone, it's a lot of effort for Omar. Too much to do everything by himself and keep it as an open tournament with 64+ participants. Most players want a large open tournament, and I do as well, but managing it is the difficulty.
Adanac suggested that he would be willing to help next year, and as he's going to be hosting a tournament now, he'll gain the experience needed to do so. But I also don't think a participator should serve a major role in playing. It's a lot of unnecessary stress and distractions to the gaming itself. Some help from Adanac will be good, but Omar will certainly need more help than that.
I think a good example is the AWL which is run by mostly MegaJester. It frees up Omar of the responsibility, but leaves him available if needed. Since MegaJester is not one of the players, it's much more feasible for him to help out with the tournament.
I would like to someday play in an open AWC, but would much rather help run one if it meant being able to have one exist. I am open to learning the Tournament Tool we have, and if I'm able, maybe contributing to automating/simplifying the tournament director work. I would like to do what I can to help make the world championships an open tournament.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #16 on: Mar 27th, 2012, 3:25pm » |
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You are right, Dolus, that it is ideal to have someone running the event who isn't playing in it, as megajester's generosity with the Arimaa World League has shown us. I was wondering whether it would be too much of a fantasy to hope for the same for the Arimaa World Championship; it is extremely generous of you to offer to be the Tournament Director, even if that means not being a player. Volunteer spirit such as you are showing is, I believe, the only way a large-scale tournament is going to happen. (...that plus Omar feeling OK about only some of the games having broadcast and recorded commentary)
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #17 on: Mar 28th, 2012, 12:46pm » |
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Good to see the discussion going again. Karl, don't assume I am not interested in more participation. I'm definitely interested in more participation, but as I've said many times before, a big tournament would require more time than I can give.
After Karl posted this:
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Let me tell anyone who (like me) wants a massive tournament that it isn't going to happen without a major commitment from someone to run it, and it isn't going to happen without a lot of volunteer help in addition to a dedicated TD.
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A few days went by without anyone saying they would be interested to help. So my proposal was an attempt to see if breaking it into multiple smaller tournaments would make it easier for more people to help out. Thanks Dolus for offering to help. Karl it would have been good if you waited a while to see what others would say before giving your opinion on that proposal.
OK, here's another proposal. A single FTE with no limit on the number of participants. Additional games will be played to determine 2nd and 3rd place. Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording and even those will depend on availability of commentators and recorders. There will be a non-refundable registration fee of $20 which will be used to provide incentive to get more people to help with organizing the tournament. The prize fund will come from contributions and sponsors.
Here are the various roles that are need:
Tournament Coordinator - responsible for operating the tournament management tool to pair, schedule and setup the games; update the announcements regarding the event in the gameroom.
Game Referees - responsible to be present at the games they are assigned to and intervene if needed to restart or resume a game or contact the TD in case the incident needs a ruling.
Tournament Director - responsible to make the final ruling if a disputable incident occurs during the event; may not play in the event; does not need to be present at the games, but does need to be on call during the games and be available by phone to the Game Referees in case a situation arises that needs a ruling.
Commentators - provide live commentary during final games.
Radio operators - operate the radio during games that have commentators.
A/V Recorders - record a video of the games that have commentators.
Wiki Recorders - maintain the event wiki pages and write game summaries for final games and other games they feel should be covered, such as upsets.
Promoter - responsible to increase the awareness of the event to increase registrations and viewership; post about the event and final games on the Arimaa twitter account and other social media sites; post about the event and final games on BGG forums and other appropriate forums; prepare announcement emails about the event and finals.
Fund Raiser - responsible to find sponsors and encourage contributors; should attempt to increase the prize fund as much as possible.
People who help with these roles will still mostly be volunteers since even with the registration fee used to provide an incentive it won't be enough compensation for the amount of time and effort they are putting in.
Here is how the registration fee will be used. This might need to be adjusted depending on supply and demand as we get more experience. But here is something to get started:
Tournament Coordinator: 3%
Game Referees: 25%
Tournament Director: 2%
Commentators: 25%
Radio Operators: 5%
AV Recorders: 5%
Wiki Recorders: 20%
Promoter: 8%
Fund Raiser: 7%
For roles that have multiple people; such as Game Referees the percent of registration fee set aside for that role will be divided based on number of games they helped in. For example if there were two Radio Operators and one help in 6 games and the other helped in 4 games then they would get 60 and 40 percent of the 5%.
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clyring
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #18 on: Mar 28th, 2012, 2:32pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 12:46pm, omar wrote:Good to see the discussion going again. Karl, don't assume I am not interested in more participation. I'm definitely interested in more participation, but as I've said many times before, a big tournament would require more time than I can give.
After Karl posted this:
A few days went by without anyone saying they would be interested to help. So my proposal was an attempt to see if breaking it into multiple smaller tournaments would make it easier for more people to help out. Thanks Dolus for offering to help. Karl it would have been good if you waited a while to see what others would say before giving your opinion on that proposal.
OK, here's another proposal. A single FTE with no limit on the number of participants. Additional games will be played to determine 2nd and 3rd place. Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording and even those will depend on availability of commentators and recorders. There will be a non-refundable registration fee of $20 which will be used to provide incentive to get more people to help with organizing the tournament. The prize fund will come from contributions and sponsors.
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This all sounds very nice except for one detail:
"Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording ..."
While I understand if you will not be doing the commentary for these games yourself, I would not remove the possibility from other potential commentator's minds. I would be happy to commentate some of the earlier games.
on Mar 28th, 2012, 12:46pm, omar wrote:
Here are the various roles that are need:
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Commentators - provide live commentary during final games.
Radio operators - operate the radio during games that have commentators.
A/V Recorders - record a video of the games that have commentators.
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People who help with these roles will still mostly be volunteers since even with the registration fee used to provide an incentive it won't be enough compensation for the amount of time and effort they are putting in.
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These three selected roles I would be more than willing to perform if needed. (That said, I would need to be trained in the ways of the first second.)
on Mar 28th, 2012, 12:46pm, omar wrote:
Here is how the registration fee will be used. This might need to be adjusted depending on supply and demand as we get more experience. But here is something to get started:
Tournament Coordinator: 3%
Game Referees: 25%
Tournament Director: 2%
Commentators: 25%
Radio Operators: 5%
AV Recorders: 5%
Wiki Recorders: 20%
Promoter: 8%
Fund Raiser: 7%
For roles that have multiple people; such as Game Referees the percent of registration fee set aside for that role will be divided based on number of games they helped in. For example if there were two Radio Operators and one help in 6 games and the other helped in 4 games then they would get 60 and 40 percent of the 5%.
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I think you are leaving out another very important group here: The players! Where is the prize money going to come from? Perhaps split the difference here?
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| « Last Edit: Mar 28th, 2012, 3:02pm by clyring » |
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Adanac
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #19 on: Mar 28th, 2012, 3:10pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 2:32pm, clyring wrote:This all sounds very nice except for one detail:
"Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording ..."
While I understand if you will not be doing the commentary for these games yourself, I would not remove the possibility from other potential commentator's minds. I would be happy to commentate some of the earlier games.
These three selected roles I would be more than willing to perform if needed. (That said, I would need to be trained in the ways of the first second.)
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I agree with this. In fact, if we have enough volunteers for A/V, Radio & Commentating, then I think it would be a nice perk to try to commentate at least one game for every player during the World Championship tournament. I think that's a great learning benefit for everyone and may lure additional players into joining. I can definitely say that I've learned a lot from my own games that have been commentated & recorded for posterity.
Quote:| I think you are leaving out another very important group here: The players! Where is the prize money going to come from? Perhaps split the difference here? |
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One of the jobs is Fundraiser so I think that person will be responsible for building the prize fund for the players. At least I believe it was Omar's intent for the entry fee to pay for the volunteers and the Fundraiser to gather up the prizes for players.
Personally, the roles I would volunteer for are Tournament Coordinator, Commentator, Wiki Recorder. I would have been willing to do these tasks for free, and I'm not sure what the reaction from the community will be regarding shifting the money incentive from players to volunteers.  But I understand the motivation if Omar wants to build a larger network of volunteers while addressing the criticism that the past tournaments have been too money-focused for players.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 28th, 2012, 3:16pm by Adanac » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #20 on: Mar 28th, 2012, 3:30pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 12:46pm, omar wrote:| Karl, don't assume I am not interested in more participation. |
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OK, my mistake. I jumped to that conclusion based on your previous posts. I'm sorry.
Quote:| Karl it would have been good if you waited a while to see what others would say before giving your opinion on that proposal. |
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I will try to be more positive in the future. Anyone else who has an opinion about the seven-single-elimination qualifier proposal, please post it. I promise not to rant at you the way I ranted at Omar. 
Quote:| I'm definitely interested in more participation, but as I've said many times before, a big tournament would require more time than I can give. |
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Just to clarify, is the workload your only hesitancy in having a big World Championship? For example, if we followed Adanac's proposal of having the Open Classic continue to pick the qualifiers for the World Championship, except that community volunteers would run the Open Classic, would that be OK with you? Or would you prefer having seven single-elimination qualifiers run by the community? I ask because it seems that running seven qualifiers would be more work for the community than running one Open Classic. If you weren't expressing a preference for the seven-single-elimination-qualifiers format over the 2011 Open Classic format, then let me apologize again for misreading your intentions.
Quote:Tournament Coordinator: 3%
Game Referees: 25%
Tournament Director: 2% |
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I think you are getting at something really important by giving a whopping percentage to the "game referees" rather than the tournament director or coordinator. The major chore in running a tournament isn't running the pairings and running the scheduler. You have automated that bit, so it scales now. Also the major chore isn't making rulings on awkward, never-before-seen circumstances. It doesn't happen very often.
Instead the major chore is being around all the time, which can't be automated. There are lots of little glitches that don't necessarily take a ton of time to resolve, but need to be resolved in a timely fashion before they become big glitches. For example, supposing the official game window disappears before any moves are sent but both players are present and want to play: if someone is on the spot to say, "Start a new game at time control X and I will count it for the official game," then the issue goes away. Otherwise the issue doesn't go away.
It is simply too much burden to ask a single person to be present in the game room all weekend every weekend for more than two months. However, I am not sure it is necessary to have have someone present at all times. In reality many games are played start to finish without a hitch. Let me suggest that instead it would be enough to have a rotation of tournament coordinators who are "on call" throughout the tournament, preferably distributed between hemispheres.
I said in an earlier post that I couldn't be the tournament coordinator, but I do think I could volunteer to be on call for significant chunks of every weekend, because I doubt it would result in too many calls. I could be doing my homework assignments until someone pinged me for assistance. If there were enough people who could volunteer to be on call in a similar way, we would be able to cover the whole tournament.
Quote:Commentators: 25%
Radio Operators: 5%
AV Recorders: 5%
Wiki Recorders: 20%
Promoter: 8%
Fund Raiser: 7% |
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In my opinion, all of these roles are optional. Desirable, yes. Contributing to enjoyment, yes. Mandatory, no.
I make this distinction because there could be a situation where we have enough volunteers to run the tournament and enough volunteers that someone is always on call, but not enough volunteers to cover all of these other roles. What decision would we make then? Would we call off the participatory tournament and go back to a deluxe eight-player tournament instead?
For me the decision is easy. I would say, go for the big tournament. Whatever gets done in the optional roles is great, but the most important thing by far is to get people in the gameroom and playing against each other. I understand, though, if other people feel differently. I'm not trying to prevent an open discussion about priorities; that's what the thread is for.
Let me also highlight two more roles.
(1) Site maintainer (100%)
I repeat my suggestion to have a $5 entry fee that goes entirely to Omar. His job is the most essential, and he deserves some thanks for everything he does to give us this tremendous game and tremendous place to play it.
(2) Code modification
My feeling is that, unless we are going with the Open Classic to guarantee a lot of rounds to everyone, we need to institute a consolation bracket. I don't expect that it would be a ton of work to add a consolation bracket to the current FXE code; simply run the algorithm twice, once as at present and a second time to pair all eliminated players. But without this coding job, the pairing is no longer a click of the mouse, it is a nightmare to do by hand.
(OK, a consolation bracket also makes more work for the TD having to withdraw players who want to drop out rather than play on to the end, but that seems well worth the hassle if it enables the majority to keep on rockin'.)
Just my $0.02 as always. I'll try not to pitch a fit if people disagree. 
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| « Last Edit: Mar 28th, 2012, 6:05pm by Fritzlein » |
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99of9
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #21 on: Mar 28th, 2012, 10:50pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 3:30pm, Fritzlein wrote:
My feeling is that, unless we are going with the Open Classic to guarantee a lot of rounds to everyone, we need to institute a consolation bracket. |
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To quote yourself: desirable, maybe; mandatory, no.
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Adanac
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #22 on: Mar 29th, 2012, 11:10am » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 3:30pm, Fritzlein wrote:I will try to be more positive in the future. Anyone else who has an opinion about the seven-single-elimination qualifier proposal, please post it. I promise not to rant at you the way I ranted at Omar.
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If 33-64 players joined each qualifier, we’d need 6 rounds x 7 qualifiers = 42 weeks to complete the whole cycle, and it’s already too late for the 2013 WC. Realistically, we’d probably get fewer than 32 players per qualifier which is a more manageable 35 weeks. It seems more compact, and handles a much larger volume of players, to have an 8 to 12-round Swiss qualifier to accomplish the same objective. However, the community consensus seems to be one big FTE tournament. I’m OK with that, and including a consolation section actually makes the two ideas somewhat similar. The biggest concern I would have with a 15-week World Championship is that my wife will get impatient that every weekend is taken up by Arimaa for 15 weeks in a row. It’s not that big of a deal as I’ve competed in every WC since 2006 without much inconvenience (and we’ve even taken a few vacations in the middle of tournaments along the way) but I’d prefer a qualifier, then a two or three week break, followed by maybe a 6-8 round World Championship final. That’s pretty much how it’s been since 2008 (without the break) and it worked pretty well. The exception, of course, was this past abbreviated WC and it just happened to fall in a year when I was very busy for the first 6 weeks of the year, which was fortunate for me but not so fortunate for people that wanted to participate in a big tournament.
Quote:(1) Site maintainer (100%)
I repeat my suggestion to have a $5 entry fee that goes entirely to Omar. His job is the most essential, and he deserves some thanks for everything he does to give us this tremendous game and tremendous place to play it. |
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We’re certainly very fortunate that Omar not only invented Arimaa but then devoted huge resources of time & money into running the website. How about $5 for Omar, $10 for the Volunteer Pool and $5 to buy Arimaa prizes from each $20 entry fee? The prizes could be Tournament pieces, Z-Man Arimaa game, or Arimaa books and T-shirts. These could be raffled off randomly to anyone that completes the tournament without a forfeit. Or, if we run any type of qualifier, these prizes could be raffled off amongst the players that fall 1 victory short of qualification. The Fundraiser could also collect cash prizes or, perhaps, even more gift certificates or Arimaa-related prizes.
Quote:(2) Code modification
My feeling is that, unless we are going with the Open Classic to guarantee a lot of rounds to everyone, we need to institute a consolation bracket. I don't expect that it would be a ton of work to add a consolation bracket to the current FXE code; simply run the algorithm twice, once as at present and a second time to pair all eliminated players. But without this coding job, the pairing is no longer a click of the mouse, it is a nightmare to do by hand.
(OK, a consolation bracket also makes more work for the TD having to withdraw players who want to drop out rather than play on to the end, but that seems well worth the hassle if it enables the majority to keep on rockin'.) |
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If we don’t get new code for a consolation section by next January then the best work-around would just be a separate event for the consolation section in the Tournament Management Tool. Manually re-creating the first 3 rounds to avoid repeat pairings is all that would be needed and the rest would run automatically. But yes, it’s much easier if the code is written specifically for this purpose
If we continue to have a Spectator Contest next year, perhaps the appointed Code Modifier could have a 2nd project after completing the FXE consolation section. I’d like to see an extra tie-breaker for predicting which move number will have the first piece capture. I’m not a big fan of having the only tie-breaker go to the first submitter. It’s possible that someone could submit the exact winning move within a few minutes of receiving the e-mail and nobody else will have a shot at winning that game. Perhaps also 50% of prizes going to the top predictor for each game but then 50% split amongst every who guessed the correct player. That way everyone has a chance to win a little money for guessing the right player even if they’re always finishing runner-up on the number of moves.
Quote:| Just my $0.02 as always. I'll try not to pitch a fit if people disagree. |
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Your opinions are always very insightful and certainly worth a lot more than 2 Arimaa Points 
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| « Last Edit: Mar 29th, 2012, 11:15am by Adanac » |
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #23 on: Mar 29th, 2012, 12:05pm » |
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I like Adanac's proposal of a swiss qualifer that feeds into the finals like has been done in previous years. One twist that I think will address the issue of length would be to award the top finishers from the previous year a bye until the finals. So the top 4 finishers from last year (Chessandgo, Hanzack, Adanac, and Nombril would get byes). Then the top 4-6 finishers in the swiss qualifer would reach the finals which could be double or triple elimination.
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #24 on: Mar 29th, 2012, 12:11pm » |
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on Mar 29th, 2012, 11:10am, Adanac wrote:
Perhaps also 50% of prizes going to the top predictor for each game but then 50% split amongst every who guessed the correct player. That way everyone has a chance to win a little money for guessing the right player even if they’re always finishing runner-up on the number of moves. |
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I really like the 50/50 idea. Some emphasis on picking the winners and not just about the closest number of moves. Even if it was 60/40 or 70/30 that would be an improvement.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 29th, 2012, 12:11pm by mistre » |
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aaaa
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #25 on: Mar 29th, 2012, 1:48pm » |
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The current scheduling code is already trivially usable for a parallel consolation tournament; each round, concatenate the current game history files of both sections, add each non-eliminated player on a separate line and run the code with the argument for the number of lives being big enough to revive everyone else; this will effectively invert the roster with respect to which players are considered for scheduling. This is especially important to prevent pairings in the main tournament from being repeated in the consolation section as much as possible. See here for more details.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 29th, 2012, 2:22pm by aaaa » |
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #26 on: Mar 30th, 2012, 12:24pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 2:32pm, clyring wrote:
This all sounds very nice except for one detail:
"Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording ..."
While I understand if you will not be doing the commentary for these games yourself, I would not remove the possibility from other potential commentator's minds. I would be happy to commentate some of the earlier games.
These three selected roles I would be more than willing to perform if needed. (That said, I would need to be trained in the ways of the first second.)
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Yes, of course there can be commentary on earlier rounds. What I should have said is that you really can't expect commentary until the final rounds and even that is dependent on availability of the commentators.
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #27 on: Mar 30th, 2012, 1:18pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 3:30pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Just to clarify, is the workload your only hesitancy in having a big World Championship? For example, if we followed Adanac's proposal of having the Open Classic continue to pick the qualifiers for the World Championship, except that community volunteers would run the Open Classic, would that be OK with you? Or would you prefer having seven single-elimination qualifiers run by the community? I ask because it seems that running seven qualifiers would be more work for the community than running one Open Classic. If you weren't expressing a preference for the seven-single-elimination-qualifiers format over the 2011 Open Classic format, then let me apologize again for misreading your intentions.
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Either format would have been OK with me as long as the community is running it. But it seemed like neither was going to actually happen, so I proposed something else.
Quote:
I think you are getting at something really important by giving a whopping percentage to the "game referees" rather than the tournament director or coordinator. The major chore in running a tournament isn't running the pairings and running the scheduler. You have automated that bit, so it scales now. Also the major chore isn't making rulings on awkward, never-before-seen circumstances. It doesn't happen very often.
Instead the major chore is being around all the time, which can't be automated. There are lots of little glitches that don't necessarily take a ton of time to resolve, but need to be resolved in a timely fashion before they become big glitches. For example, supposing the official game window disappears before any moves are sent but both players are present and want to play: if someone is on the spot to say, "Start a new game at time control X and I will count it for the official game," then the issue goes away. Otherwise the issue doesn't go away. It is simply too much burden to ask a single person to be present in the game room all weekend every weekend for more than two months.
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Yep, official games need to have someone around to make sure things go smoothly. That's why I can't handle a big tournament.
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However, I am not sure it is necessary to have have someone present at all times. In reality many games are played start to finish without a hitch. Let me suggest that instead it would be enough to have a rotation of tournament coordinators who are "on call" throughout the tournament, preferably distributed between hemispheres.
I said in an earlier post that I couldn't be the tournament coordinator, but I do think I could volunteer to be on call for significant chunks of every weekend, because I doubt it would result in too many calls. I could be doing my homework assignments until someone pinged me for assistance. If there were enough people who could volunteer to be on call in a similar way, we would be able to cover the whole tournament.
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This is probably the same as what I've called a 'Game Referee'. The Game Referee would have access to the tournament management tool to restart or resume a game if for example there was a timeout due to a server problem. Of course the Game Referee has to look at the logs, determine what happened, verify that the case falls within the scope of predefined rules to restart or resume; othewise contact the TD. So I think the Game Referee does need to be present during the game so that spectators and players don't have to track down and notify the person who is on call. Of course, when we have multiple people serving as Game Referees there is the problem of coordinating who covers what games.
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In my opinion, all of these roles are optional. Desirable, yes. Contributing to enjoyment, yes. Mandatory, no.
I make this distinction because there could be a situation where we have enough volunteers to run the tournament and enough volunteers that someone is always on call, but not enough volunteers to cover all of these other roles. What decision would we make then? Would we call off the participatory tournament and go back to a deluxe eight-player tournament instead?
For me the decision is easy. I would say, go for the big tournament. Whatever gets done in the optional roles is great, but the most important thing by far is to get people in the gameroom and playing against each other. I understand, though, if other people feel differently. I'm not trying to prevent an open discussion about priorities; that's what the thread is for.
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Yes, Tournament Coordinator, Tournament Director and Game Referees are essential to run the tournament. For a big tournament having sufficient Game Referees is critical. Without the other roles though the WC just won't be as glamorous.
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Let me also highlight two more roles.
(1) Site maintainer (100%)
I repeat my suggestion to have a $5 entry fee that goes entirely to Omar. His job is the most essential, and he deserves some thanks for everything he does to give us this tremendous game and tremendous place to play it.
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Thanks, but I would rather have people give time than money. If you can't give time and still want to contribute, then just add to the prize fund.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 30th, 2012, 1:27pm by omar » |
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Nombril
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #28 on: Mar 30th, 2012, 10:48pm » |
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Last year, I was a strong supporter of the Swiss/Open followed by the Finals/Elimination round....but...
After seeing how this year worked out I've changed my mind. Even though I was troubled by some of the pairings that occurred, they seemed far less important than the major drawback I see in the Swiss system. Depending on the number of entrants, the qualifier tournament has the potential to need to break ties based on opponents' results. I *really* don't like having my opponents games dictate a break point for making/missing the finals.
Until we reach a point where we do want multiple qualification opportunities (maybe not 8 with the same format...say something like top two postal mixer, top two from last year, top 4 from Open Classic, etc), the floating elimination gets my vote. Especially with open participation and consolation "bracket" for 2nd and 3rd.
Addressing Adanac's point of burnout with having to play *every* week: I agree that it was taxing. I was really happy to get a bye towards the end. Is there room in the schedule to take 1 week off after every 3rd or 4th round?
Regarding volunteers: I had started a forum discussion and spreadsheet this year about organizing A/V, wiki, etc, but it seemed there were fewer people involved then I had hoped. We did get a good variety for commentary, but what % of the Wiki coverage did Hippo write? What % of the games were recorded by Omar?
... After posting I didn't follow up...
so
A. the "paycheck" might motivate more?
and/or
B. we should have a volunteer coordinator that follows up...specifically asks people for help...etc...
Finally, I really don't want to bring this up, because I was never willing to read all of the by-laws for the AWL, but... do we want some sort of committee/organization to make official decisions? Or does Omar still prefer to take our input from these discussions and make the final decision?
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Thiagor
Forum Full Member
Arimaa player #7007
Gender:
Posts: 16
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #29 on: Mar 31st, 2012, 3:14am » |
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on Mar 30th, 2012, 10:48pm, Nombril wrote: After seeing how this year worked out I've changed my mind. Even though I was troubled by some of the pairings that occurred, they seemed far less important than the major drawback I see in the Swiss system. Depending on the number of entrants, the qualifier tournament has the potential to need to break ties based on opponents' results. I *really* don't like having my opponents games dictate a break point for making/missing the finals.
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I completely agree. However, we could fix this problem: Just set the qualification criterion to be winning a certain number of games, as opposed to a certain place on the position table. The only drawback would then be that the number of people qualifying is not fixed, but I guess, as long as this number doesn't vary too widely, it really doesn't matter much.
So I'd be happy with either this system or a floating elimination as qualifier (the difference seems to be minor anyway).
By the way, I'm also willing to help with the organisation next year, e.g. as a game referee or as a wiki recorder, although I will make a definite commitment only closer to the event, when I know better how much time I have available.
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