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Topic: 2013 World Championship Format (Read 31146 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #150 on: Aug 26th, 2012, 9:26pm » |
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on Aug 26th, 2012, 11:21am, aaaa wrote:| Although the point you raise is a fair one, the reason I don't like this idea, is because it goes against the maxim of having a tournament be influenced as little and as predictably as possible by anything external. |
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It seems our philosophical stance is pretty similar. Indeed, the exact reason I propose not saving the pre-tournament ratings for tiebreaker only is to lessen their influence relative to in-tournament performance. I want to make in-tournament performance more important and pre-tournament rating less important. Consider an example from a small tournament with the following initial ratings:
A: 2500
B: 2350
C: 2300
D: 2250
E: 2200
F: 1800
G: 1700
H: 1600
The first round is folding pairing, and suppose the top four seeds win. The only game in much doubt is D vs. E, but D pulls out a hard-fought victory.
Now how about the second round? All four of the top seeds have identical in-tournament performance ratings, so we have folding pairing again, i.e. A vs. D and B vs. C. The fifty-point rating advantage that C had over D before the tournament began is what gives C an easier pairing than D again. Those ratings that we consider so suspect that we want to use them only as a tiebreaker have accidentally become more important than the fact that D had to fight for his life in the first round while C cruised to an easy victory.
I understand that this is only one scenario, and that other scenarios may not display this effect. I expect that one would have to laboriously pore over simulations to get a good idea of how using pre-tournament ratings as priors for in-tournament performance ratings would pan out. But the possibility seems genuine.
To put in another way, you want to reduce the importance of pre-tournament ratings, so you say they are for tiebreakers only. But when you give everyone an identical prior, you create lots of ties in the in-tournament performance. By creating lots of ties, you have inadvertently made the tiebreaker very important.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 27th, 2012, 4:08pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #151 on: Aug 26th, 2012, 10:06pm » |
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on Aug 26th, 2012, 8:31pm, Nombril wrote:| If/when we reach the (possibly arbitrary) participation limit for a triple elimination FTE, lets provide a number of ways to qualify for the championship tournament. But lets not use geographical districts, instead we can increase the drama of various events during the year. Maybe one big "classic" tournament in the fall. And the winning AWL team can send some people. And the top performers in the postal mixer get invites. And the top rated WHR players. And a scholarship tournament, where the prize is a paid entry fee. And the top placers from last year. And... <insert other ideas here > |
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I'm not sure when the number of participants has become too big for triple elimination. Why isn't more players simply better? One fear that keeps popping up is that it will be too much work, i.e. that the organizers and other volunteers will get burned out. But if that's the issue, then the cure might be worse than the disease! Don't get me wrong: I would love to see the Arimaa community host lots and lots of open events, each of which is an avenue to qualify for the Arimaa World Championship. I think more players in the main event is better, and I think more events is yet still better than that! But a series of qualifying events would require rather more effort than the existing format.
Maybe the thought is that we already have some events (postal mixer, AWL, ironman, endgames), so having those events become qualifiers would be no "extra" effort. In my opinion, however, the majority of the "extra" effort will come from requiring standards of support, refereeing, commentating, etc. If these standards applied to every qualifying event, the workload of each would rise proportionately. On the other hand, if we think it is permissible to relax standards in qualifying events, why don't we instead just relax the standards a little for the first six rounds of one big party event, and keep the workload manageable that way?
I'm hopeful that we will manage to generate a large participation for the 2013 World Championship. If we do, I'll be curious to see whether it seems to be "too big", and if so on what grounds. Once we know what the problem is (and as of now I don't see why there needs to be a problem), it will be easier to guess the best solution. I'm also hopeful that the number of other Arimaa events around the calendar will increase, with healthy participation in each and every one!
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Nombril
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #152 on: Aug 28th, 2012, 8:57pm » |
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That wasn't at all my point. I was following up on aaaa's statement that at some threshold triple elim won't be very good at differentiating during a "large" tournament - he mentioned 64 players. And going to quadruple with that many people probably pushes the duration too high...
I don't think this will be needed this year. But as tournament structures are being tried out, I thought it was worth considering the long term plans and scalability of the systems.
I understand the concern about quality/standards for the non WC tournaments... but that is the reason to have so many routes. Any potential champs should have a sure route in. Since your goal is to cast a wide net anyway to create a large tournament, I suggest we don't to apply the WC standards to the quals.
Hopefully this is a bridge we will need to cross in a few years! 
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aaaa
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #153 on: Aug 30th, 2012, 1:46pm » |
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How about we keep the current (neutral) performance rating and have one based on pre-tournament ratings take the place of the seed as the next tiebreaker? Then the prior won't matter that much and can easily be the same parsimonious value of a half.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #154 on: Aug 30th, 2012, 3:44pm » |
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on Aug 30th, 2012, 1:46pm, aaaa wrote:| How about we keep the current (neutral) performance rating and have one based on pre-tournament ratings take the place of the seed as the next tiebreaker? Then the prior won't matter that much and can easily be the same parsimonious value of a half. |
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That makes sense to me, if you don't mind coding up two flavors of in-tournament performance rating.
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| « Last Edit: Aug 30th, 2012, 3:46pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #155 on: Oct 13th, 2012, 1:03pm » |
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Hello, folks. Omar and I met in person to go over the basic structure of the 2013 Arimaa World Championship. He has given me the green light on everything we have discussed so far. Over the coming weeks I will be finalizing the tournament rules here: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2013_World_Championship_Rules
The most significant change I made from my previous thoughts is to put all of the entry fees into the prize pool and have none go to the organizers. It would be a major headache dividing up those points, and anyway all of us are in this together. I fully believe there is enough volunteer spirit to pull off the way coolest Arimaa tournament ever without anyone getting paid. The Arimaa community never ceases to amaze me with its volunteer contributions and general awesomeness.
The most significant thing that has not yet been discussed in this thread is the forfeit policy. I would like forfeits for tardy players to be automatic after 15 minutes, with no player discretion allowed. This is a reversal of past policy which allowed the present player to wait for a tardy player to show up. My distinct impression is that the old policy caused more headaches than it was worth, and that stricter policy will make things better over all.
When I proposed this change in the AWL discussion thread, the response was fairly unanimous in support, but I want to officially solicit comments here as well. Is there anyone who will be heartbroken if they are no longer allowed to wait around for an opponent as long as they feel like?
Also, comments on all other aspects of the rules are welcome. The smooth functioning of a large tournament depends heavily on the goodwill and participation of community members. This is not going to be my tournament; it is going to be our tournament. For the most part I believe I am merely formalizing the community consensus.
P.S. Omar is independently organizing all the other official events, i.e. Spectator Contest, Computer Championship, Challenge Screening, Arimaa Challenge, and the Postal Mixer.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 13th, 2012, 7:31pm by Fritzlein » |
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clyring
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #156 on: Oct 13th, 2012, 5:59pm » |
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I have no issues with automatic instead of voluntary forfeit claims.
(PS: "stuff" is a great section header.  )
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #157 on: Oct 13th, 2012, 6:20pm » |
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on Oct 13th, 2012, 5:59pm, clyring wrote:| I have no issues with automatic instead of voluntary forfeit claims. |
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Excellent, thanks for reading it through.
Quote:| (PS: "stuff" is a great section header. ) |
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It's a work in progress.
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aaaa
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Arimaa player #958
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #158 on: Oct 13th, 2012, 6:43pm » |
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As I mentioned some time ago, by making only the following modifications to the latest FTE scheduler I was able to create a Swiss one that is also governed by global pairing rules:- eliminating being eliminated after a number of losses
- inverting the bye policy such that the scheduler prefers giving them too less rather than more "promising" players.
- changing the pairing scoring in such a way that it tends to slide pairing rather than fold.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #159 on: Oct 13th, 2012, 7:29pm » |
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on Oct 13th, 2012, 6:43pm, aaaa wrote:As I mentioned some time ago, by making only the following modifications to the latest FTE scheduler I was able to create a Swiss one that is also governed by global pairing rules:- eliminating being eliminated after a number of losses
- inverting the bye policy such that the scheduler prefers giving them too less rather than more "promising" players.
- changing the pairing scoring in such a way that it tends to slide pairing rather than fold.
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Fantastic! Thank you. It will be a load off my mind to have a globally-optimizing Swiss pairing algorithm rather than the klutzy one which sometimes couldn't even output a complete pairing.
I have updated the rules to reflect a globally-optimal Swiss pairing, but I am not sure I have it right. Is the bye priority still split between conditions 4 and 6? And changing "maximize" to "minimize" in condition 7 can't be right because then we would get adjacent pairing rather than sliding pairing. You are welcome to fix the wording to make it true if you like, or you can un-confuse me and I will fix the wording. Thanks in advance.
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supersamu
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #160 on: Oct 14th, 2012, 2:50am » |
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I see a problem with the wording in the paragraph forfeits:
Quote:| if Silver is seated and Gold delays starting the game more than 15 minutes past the scheduled start and more than 3 minutes past the time Silver was seated, then Gold loses by forfeit. |
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Quote:| A game that starts more than 15 minutes after the scheduled start time (...) will be scored as a forfeit for one or both players, depending on who was seated when. |
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What happens if silver is seated 14 minutes past the scheduled start and gold starts the game 2 minutes later? According to my first quote, that would not be a forfeit, but according to the second, it would be.
Quote:| Also the World Champion receives eternal glory. |
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lol
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #161 on: Oct 14th, 2012, 9:18am » |
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on Oct 14th, 2012, 2:50am, supersamu wrote:I see a problem with the wording in the paragraph forfeits:
What happens if silver is seated 14 minutes past the scheduled start and gold starts the game 2 minutes later? According to my first quote, that would not be a forfeit, but according to the second, it would be. |
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Good catch, thanks. I wanted to make sure that Gold couldn't circumvent the 15-minute rule by sitting down in time and then waiting 40 minutes to start the game. But I also didn't want Gold to forfeit if Silver waited until 14:59 after to sit down, leaving Gold one second to start the game or forfeit. I guess I should leave the way I described it first and change the way I described it second, right?
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aaaa
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Arimaa player #958
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #162 on: Oct 14th, 2012, 11:31am » |
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I got slide pairing by minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses plus the sum of the absolute differences between the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses and half of the total number of players with such a number of losses.
Have fun digesting that.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #163 on: Oct 14th, 2012, 12:26pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2012, 11:31am, aaaa wrote:I got slide pairing by minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses plus the sum of the absolute differences between the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses and half of the total number of players with such a number of losses.
Have fun digesting that. |
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Ah, clever. Why didn't I think of that? I'll write it up.
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #164 on: Oct 15th, 2012, 4:02pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2012, 11:31am, aaaa wrote:I got slide pairing by minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses plus the sum of the absolute differences between the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses and half of the total number of players with such a number of losses.
Have fun digesting that. |
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Fixed in the rules.
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