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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #60 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 8:35am » |
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Thanks for clarifying, Omar. I'll plow ahead in the faith that everything will work out well. We'll just see what happens when our next conflict comes around! 
It is a good way of thinking to hope and expect that the volunteer effort that actually occurs come tournament time will be beyond the basic standard we are trying to uphold. We should have a large gap between the level we consider minimum and the ideal we aspire too. Making aspirations mandatory is counter-productive; it is far better to simply do as well as we can in the right direction.
I certainly would like to have a referee present at every game, and if all goes swimmingly we may come close to making it happen, but if on the contrary all we are able to muster is people to be on call all the time, that will be no reason to consider the tournament a failure or to think we shouldn't have done it the way we did. To me, if we get a large number of people playing organized Arimaa, and everyone generally has a good time while we crown a World Champion, that is a success.
on Apr 5th, 2012, 9:34pm, omar wrote:| Also I didn't realize you were so motivated to run a big tournament. |
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My motivation is not a constant factor that is always going to stay the same regardless of what you do. As a leader, it pays for you to figure out what motivates people and what demoralizes them.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #61 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:51am » |
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Insofar as Omar has given me ownership of the 2013 Arimaa World Championship, I would like to turn around and pass that ownership on to the rest of the community. Considering that the tournament is nine months away(!) we have already had an amazing expression of willingness to volunteer and enthusiasm to make things turn out well.
Sometimes I get used to the status quo, and I forget what an amazing community Arimaa has. It takes newcomers to remind me from time to time that we are more friendly and helpful to each other than any other gaming site that I know of. We have something truly special going on here, and we can keep it going in the future if we treasure and nurture it.
I don't expect there will be any situations where I have such a strong opinion that I insist on it even against a developing community consensus to the contrary. The tournament that most of us want is the tournament we should have, because that is the tournament people will play in and will volunteer to make happen. I admit that one point at which I would draw a line is if the consensus is to do something that places an unreasonable burden on Omar; we need to be wise enough to chart a sustainable course even if we all would love to see a really cool tournament that we don't have the resources for. But I don't expect situations like this to arise; I'm sure most of us want to protect Omar from burnout, and also want to do generally wise things.
The consensus I heard in last year's discussions and this year's so far is overwhelmingly in favor of encouraging participation, getting a large turnout if we can. The surge to 33 registrations in 2011, up from just 16 in 2010, was thrilling. Our lowest seed was rated 1265, and fully two-thirds of the field was rated below 2000, with no realistic chance of actually becoming World Champion. This opened my eyes to the possibility that the World Championship tournament can get people to come out and play even if they aren't the elites. Indeed, people came out to play who weren't even the regulars. This tournament can be our best vehicle of the year to promote the play of Arimaa. Even Swynndla might get excited enough to sign up. 
I expect that if we merely duplicate the 2011 tournament format (Open Classic / Final Eight) in 2013, we could redouble participation to 64. The Arimaa community has grown, and there is a larger pool of potential players than ever before, but it still isn't easy to just log in and find a human opponent that isn't a mismatch. The Swiss pairing format has some early-round mismatches, but quickly sorts people by results so that later-round games are evenly matched, which makes them more dramatic and more fun. It's our best opportunity to provide people with the best type of Arimaa game.
On the other hand, the clean break between preliminaries and finals created several issues which seem to be addressed by having a unified floating triple elimination plus consolation bracket.
(1) In OC/F8 there are situations where losing a game on purpose could be a strategic advantage to winning the tournament overall. In FTE+C each player's lives are too precious to ever make it beneficial to lose on purpose.
(2) In OC/F8 we needed tiebreakers to make the final cut. Those tiebreakers could be eliminated by advancing ties to the final, but that makes the transition a little less neat and less justifiable. What's the reason then to wipe the slate clean instead of simply continuing to play as in FTE+C? The elimination format was designed from the start to leave everyone in control of his own fate with nobody ever eliminated because of the result of a game he didn't play in.
(3) OC/F8 takes a couple more rounds than FTE+C, because the losses are wiped clean before the final. Given that there is some concern about the tournament being too long anyway, the more efficient format is desirable.
It seems to me that FTE+C eliminates the disadvantages of OC/F8, so we might as well go for it as a strictly improved format. Adanac has argued that having a break has advantages to compensate its disadvantages, but I would argue that if we want any breakpoints we can simply insert them into FTE+C.
(4) It might be a bit grueling to play every week for thirteen weeks. But if we want a week off after six weeks, we can simply insert a rest week into the schedule of FTE+C. We could even insert rest weeks both after round 4 and round 8.
(5) We used the break in OC/F8 to change the time control from 60s/move to 90s/move. For FTE+C we could make the same change, or even change twice. We could start at 60s/move, increase to 90s/move when only 8 games (16-17 players) remain, and increase again to 120s/move when only 2 games (4-5 players) remain. The consolation bracket could be the same time control throughout, maybe 60s/move or even 45s/move.
(6) We used the break in OC/F8 to tell losers they could go home. For FTE+C, we can permit the losers withdraw at any time after they have three losses, but otherwise let them play on for as long as they want. Game-hungry players would get around 12 games for the price of entry, making it likely we will have the most games ever played in a single event, while the demoralized could withdraw without shame whenever it suited them instead of only at a single break point.
In light of these considerations, I am leaning towards floating triple elimination plus consolation as the format of choice. On the other hand, we have oodles of time before the tournament, plenty to weigh the merits of Open Classic / Final Eight, or even come in from left field with a completely new idea.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 10:19am by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #62 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 10:17am » |
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Revisiting Omar's list of roles, it occurred to me that there is a missing role that might be called "hospitality". People are going to sign up for the tournament without knowing what is going to happen, and certainly without having read the long format discussion threads. We want that; the main point of a participatory format is to draw in non-regular players. But these people will arrive full of questions as to how to use the scheduler, how they find out their opponent, how they will be paired next round, etc. It improves their tournament experience greatly if there is someone around to answer their questions.
The amazingly cool thing about the Arimaa community, however, is that the hospitality role is excellently filled without it being formalized in any way. People in the chat room and in the forum are always willing to welcome the newcomers and orient the confused. It is this kind of spontaneous volunteerism that makes me optimistic about us being able to run even a massive tournament successfully.
I was going to create a new role for hospitality, but I will resist the urge to formalize something that is already happening perfectly well spontaneously. We can save the red tape for those things that must be organized if they are going to happen at all.
(Not that I would complain if someone volunteered to create a written orientation page explaining how to play in the tournament.  )
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 10:24am by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #63 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 10:39am » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:51am, Fritzlein wrote:
(6) We used the break in OC/F8 to tell losers they could go home. For FTE+C, we can permit the losers withdraw at any time after they have three losses, but otherwise let them play on for as long as they want. Game-hungry players would get around 12 games for the price of entry, making it likely we will have the most games ever played in a single event, while the demoralized could withdraw without shame whenever it suited them instead of only at a single break point.
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This is the one point in your proposal that I am personally not too fond of. If I am eliminated from a tournament, I would rather watch the remaining games that matter then continue on and play meaningless games all the way until the end of the tournament. And if you give the option for losers to withdraw, then you might not even have an opponent to play.
However, I like the idea of playing additional games to determine final placement if required to break ties. Say there are 64 entrants and the prize money is going to be distributed amongst the top 16, with places 8-16 just getting their money back or a little more. And say that multiple players are eliminated at the same time. They could start a mini-consolation bracket and play only enough games to determine their final placement. These consolation matches would decide places from the lowest spot to earn prize money all the way up to #3 if needed. So more like tie-breaker games than a true consolation bracket.
Please others chime in about the need for a complete consolation bracket, but everyone is guaranteed 3 games already and for every game you win, you get one more. That surely is worth the price of admission if the entry fee is minimal.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 10:40am by mistre » |
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ocmiente
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #64 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 11:10am » |
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I agree that a consolation bracket is not necessary. I was at one time a proponent of that, but that was before playing in the WC in 2011. Even if I play three games and am out in a triple elimination tournament, I'm satisfied with that.
In the 2012 WC, I was also happy to play 4 games and go out. Well, I would have been happer had I gone 12 games and out, but I did not feel the need to play more after 4 games. I didn't think there was much significance in the final ranking at the lower end of the scale, but that is a separate issue having to do with the way the players were matched (and I'm not convinced that that issue is resolvable).
What I would like is to have something completely separate from the WC or any other tournament to allow players to play scheduled games once a week (or less) with people at their same level without the pressure of playing in a tournament, for games with a 45 second time control. When omar gets the code in to differentiate event games from other types of games in the tournament scheduler this might be possible. This could run in parallel with any tournaments, and would give anyone who felt the need to continue playing games after the WC an outlet.
Also, I think the floating triple elimination tournament format for the WC is a good choice. I'll try to show up regardless of the format, provided that I qualify, but of all the suggested formats, floating triple elimination is my preference.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 11:24am by ocmiente » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #65 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 11:31am » |
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on Mar 22nd, 2012, 5:10pm, aaaa wrote:| Why not make the payout proportional to an exponentiation with the number of wins as power? For example, using base 2, hanzack would have won just over half of the total prize money, which looks fairly typical for a winner of a tournament and should, for anyone who doesn't have a serious chance of finishing high up, take away any notion of expecting a monetary gain from participation. |
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I intuitively like the idea, especially base 2 for simplicity. It is typical in tournaments to pay out according to place rather than according to wins, but there is something intuitively appealing about knowing that every win doubles your payout, so every game has something riding on it. According to payouts by place, it would have made no difference to hanzack whether he won with one life left, or with two left, or won undefeated. It makes perfect sense to me that a dominant performance pays out more.
I note that according to the formula players can get payouts below the entry fee. Also someone with zero wins still get a payout. Both of these features are atypical, but they don't bother me in the slightest. Why shouldn't people be given an incentive for every game rather than a cliff between being in the money and out of the money? As for the zero-wins payout, it might be roughly $640/2^11 = $0.31. Let that stay in as a token of appreciation for showing up at all, rather than dropping out, which would earn $0.00.
To get more explicit about the payouts, and inform our intuitions, let's consider what would have happened based on how far chessandgo had come back after it was down to just him and hanzack.
hanzack wins undefeated:
$681.14 hanzack
$170.29 chessandgo
$85.14 Adanac
$85.14 Nombril
$42.57 Fritzlein
$21.29 Tuks
$21.29 rabbits
$10.64 ocmiente
$10.64 Harren
$10.64 Simon
$5.32 woh
hanzack loses once (actual scenario)
$592.90 hanzack
$296.45 chessandgo
$74.11 Adanac
$74.11 Nombril
$37.06 Fritzlein
$18.53 Tuks
$18.53 rabbits
$9.26 ocmiente
$9.26 Harren
$9.26 Simon
$4.63 woh
hanzack loses twice
$470.89 hanzack
$470.89 chessandgo
$58.86 Adanac
$58.86 Nombril
$29.43 Fritzlein
$14.72 Tuks
$14.72 rabbits
$7.36 ocmiente
$7.36 Harren
$7.36 Simon
$3.68 woh
chessandgo comes back to win!
$333.59 hanzack
$667.18 chessandgo
$41.70 Adanac
$41.70 Nombril
$20.85 Fritzlein
$10.42 Tuks
$10.42 rabbits
$5.21 ocmiente
$5.21 Harren
$5.21 Simon
$2.61 woh
Now that I see some actual numbers, I notice some unintuitive things that do bother me a little. First, I notice that everybody except the final two can see their payday vary by a factor of two based on games they weren't involved in. Why should someone get double or half the money depending on events out of their control?
Also I see that chessandgo gets more money for winning with two losses than hanzack does, because hanzack had an extra bye. This means a bye can be a money disadvantage, even if it is an advantage to winning the title. But if we were to count byes as wins, it could create other problems, such as three-way tussle for first place in which a bye is given out every round. In that situation the top players would be getting extra payouts simply because there were an odd number of them left.
So maybe there is merit in considering the alternate payout scheme of prizes proportional to 1/n where n is your place, with ties splitting their prize money. Then we would have had payouts of
$378.86 hanzack
$189.43 chessandgo
$126.29 Adanac
$94.71 Nombril
$75.77 Fritzlein
$58.63 Tuks
$58.63 rabbits
$42.45 ocmiente
$42.45 Harren
$42.45 Simon
$34.44 woh
This seems to make payouts near the bottom too large, so we could get even more traditional and make the smallest prize greater than the $80 entry fee (i.e. only the top five places pay out, but still proportional to 1/n):
$501.07 hanzack
$250.54 chessandgo
$167.02 Adanac
$125.27 Nombril
$100.21 Fritzlein
Either of the latter two proposals means no differentiation between hanzack losing zero, one, or two times, so we have lost the every-game-matters motivation that I like. I'm not sure what is best; I'm just thinking out loud here.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 2:41pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #66 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 12:23pm » |
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Thanks for the responses on the consolation bracket, mistre and ocmiente. If I am understanding you correctly, you both are responding, not just to how the tournament is structured, but also to what we call it.
I heard once that a store experimented by selling neatly folded silk handkerchiefs under the sign saying, "Silk Handkerchiefs: $10," right next to a pile of the identical product, but all jumbled up in a pile with a sign saying, "Noserags: $1". Despite being offered a 90% discount for the same thing, customers overwhelmingly preferred to buy the silk handkerchiefs rather than the noserags.
on Apr 6th, 2012, 10:39am, mistre wrote:| If I am eliminated from a tournament, I would rather watch the remaining games that matter then continue on and play meaningless games all the way until the end of the tournament. |
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Going back to the 2011 Open Classic tournament, everyone who lost three times was eliminated from contention, i.e. they had no chance to become World Champion even with a miracle run of wins from that point forward. However, we didn't say, "You are eliminated with an option to play on.  " Instead we said, "Everybody gets to play six rounds. Yay!  " Sixteen out of sixteen players went on to finish their remaining game(s) after being eliminated. Perhaps they all thought that their leftover games were meaningless, and they all played on merely to discharge an unpleasant obligation. But perhaps, due to the way we presented the format, they didn't think the remaining games were meaningless?
on Apr 6th, 2012, 11:10am, ocmiente wrote:| I agree that a consolation bracket is not necessary. I was at one time a proponent of that, but that was before playing in the WC in 2011. |
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You are saying that in 2011 you would rather not have played your final-round game against ChrisB?
on Apr 6th, 2012, 11:10am, ocmiente wrote:| What I would like is to have something completely separate from the WC or any other tournament to allow players to play scheduled games once a week (or less) with people at their same level without the pressure of playing in a tournament, for games with a 45 second time control. |
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But wait, isn't what you are proposing in essence exactly the consolation bracket that I proposed? Faster time control, officially scheduled games, opponents of the same level, no pressure of prize money or titles, games played just for fun? But perhaps calling this event the consolation bracket of the World Championship makes it into a noserag instead of a silk handkerchief? In particular, would you have enjoyed playing ChrisB in 2011 on the same week at the same time controls, but not as part of the event so it would be just for fun?
Am I missing some differences in substance rather than in appearance? If not, then your reactions are a great indication that my proposed name for the tournament format absolutely, utterly stinks.
What if we called it an "Open 12-round Swiss Divider-3" tournament? Everyone already knows what a Swiss tournament is from chess and other events. "Swiss" means no eliminations, everyone gets to play lots of opponents near their own level. Swiss is good advertising for participation, because 1500-rated players know that a Swiss is geared to give them a good time as well as giving 2000+ rated players a good time. Plus "Open" is a very positive word for marketing a tournament.
The "Divider-3" simply represents the fact that you can't pair players across the 3-loss line, and when there is only one player above the 3-loss line, they become the champion. There are no eliminations. There are no meaningless games. (In the fine print of the last page of rules we could, without explicitly calling withdrawing an "option", tell people that they should inform the TD in a timely fashion if they must withdraw from the tournament between rounds.)
The "12-round" adjective is a bit of lie because the number of rounds depends on how many people sign up and on how long it takes all but one to accumulate three losses. On the plus side, however, it is good marketing to tell people how amazingly much product they will get for one low-low price. And we might even want to make the marketing true: after 12 rounds there would be no more games below the divider, only games to determine the champion plus any tiebreaks.
I am no longer pushing floating triple elimination plus consolation as my preferred format. I admit that it was a terrible tournament format. I am now a better-informed, wiser man. My new preferred format is the Swiss Divider-3 format. What does everyone think about having an Open 12-round Swiss Divider-3 tournament for the 2013 Arimaa World Championship?
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 1:36pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #67 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 1:14pm » |
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Given that I am so outrageously optimistic as to propose a 12-round, 64-player event, we need to get down to brass tacks about the game referees. I am extremely glad that we will have the Ironman tournament starting soon to help us work out what a game referees can/should do, and how to do it. The more practice we have on this front, the more qualified game referees we will train up, and the more ordinary members of the community will think, "Hey, I know what a game referee is! I can do that!"
What do folks think about starting to write up a Referee Manual that explains how to do certain things? I admit I'm even confused as to what all a game referee can and can't do technically, but I guess I will learn as we go, perhaps in part via the construction of a Referee Manual. Probably Omar is going to have to get this off the ground himself.
One critical thing seems to be the ability to restart a timed-out game from the final position. I imagine that different events will have different scenarios for when a restart is permissible. Casual events might allow it any time both players want it. The World Championship might allow it only if the server collapsed and sent up a cloud of ash. In any case the important thing is to spell out exactly how to do it.
Speaking of server collapse, game referees should know what logs to look at to determine whether there was indeed a server failure rather than a timeout our glitch on the client side. And of course they must have access to these logs.
Something that seems to come up often is the ability to designate a game other than an officially scheduled game as the game that counts for the event. Again this will be allowed only in very narrow circumstances for the World Championship and very freely in other cases, such as the Arimaa World League where there was a protocol, not only for having a different game be the official one, but also for subbing in players other than the scheduled players!
A feature we might want to offer is the rescheduling of any game by mutual agreement of the players, as long as it stays inside the scheduler window. Sometimes if the time can be moved we don't need a forfeit or a fuss about whether a different game can be official. A game referee should know how to change the scheduled start time of a game before it starts. But we also might not want to allow this because it creates such a headache with people. Should we keep the current system instead? One headache of the current system (although it hasn't happened yet) is that players can unilaterally change their time preferences between the first and second scheduler run, even though it is forbidden by rule. With 64 players, you can bet it will happen at least once. Having mutual-agreement rescheduling run through a game referee prevents any such horseplay.
A common occurrence is one player or both showing up late. It doesn't take a referee to resolve that; the player who is present can take a forfeit win without the referee. Still, I imagine the referee would usually get called up in this situation to explain the options and/or confirm the result.
Are there other things a referee can do to resolve issues? Again, I am very glad Adanac is going to start working this out via Ironman so that the concept of referee isn't totally untested going into the World Championship.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 1:16pm by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #68 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 1:37pm » |
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Ok, let me come at it from a slightly different perspective. You are basing your preferred format on the assumption that everyone wants to play 12 games (or somewhere close to that). For most players, a majority of these games will be after they are eliminated (unlike previous swiss tournaments when there was only 6 rounds and you likely were not completely eliminated until at least round 4. There is a big difference between 6 rounds and 12...
Another potential problem (even if everyone wanted to go the distance) is that game referees would be needed for all games till the end. Who is going to want to keep tabs on a game with a 1-11 player vs an 0-12 player and potentially miss out on an opportunity to participate, watch, commentate on the games that matter?
What I really like about the Open Classic/Top 8 format is that there is a definite shift in seriousness. There is a storytelling arc to the story. If all players play every round to the end, either the other games are ignored or they take away from the focus that the top games are getting more important. I just don't think this would be the best format for a World Championship and is more in-line with the continuous tournament that you hosted a while back.
But maybe we need to ask the right questions to get the right answers (and then put it in a survey so everyone gets a voice). I would ask questions like "What is your motivation for wanting to be a part of the Arimaa World Championship?" "What are your preferences in format, #of games, prize structure, time controls, etc.?" Only then can we get a better picture of what the community wants as a whole (as only a minority will bother to post their thoughts in the forum).
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 1:48pm by mistre » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #69 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 2:28pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 1:37pm, mistre wrote:| But maybe we need to ask the right questions to get the right answers (and then put it in a survey so everyone gets a voice). I would ask questions like "What is your motivation for wanting to be a part of the Arimaa World Championship?" "What are your preferences in format, #of games, prize structure, time controls, etc.?" Only then can we get a better picture of what the community wants as a whole (as only a minority will bother to post their thoughts in the forum). |
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It's a very good point that only a minority of people will post about their motivations in the forum. We're certainly not a random sample; "serious" players are over-represented. In fact, the same would probably be true of a survey as well. I'll bet that well less than half of the people who would play in an open world championship would fill out a survey about what they want to see in an open world championship. So no matter what we do, we will to some extent be guessing in the dark about motivations.
Quote:| Another potential problem (even if everyone wanted to go the distance) is that game referees would be needed for all games till the end. Who is going to want to keep tabs on a game with a 1-11 player vs an 0-12 player and potentially miss out on an opportunity to participate, watch, commentate on the games that matter? |
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Excellent point. There is the motivation of the volunteers to consider as well as the motivation of the players themselves. I don't want the community volunteers to get burned out any more than I want Omar to get burned out. We need to be realistic in terms of what we can pull off, and scale back on the less-important, less-motivating things first.
Quote:| Ok, let me come at it from a slightly different perspective. You are basing your preferred format on the assumption that everyone wants to play 12 games (or somewhere close to that). For most players, a majority of these games will be after they are eliminated (unlike previous swiss tournaments when there was only 6 rounds and you likely were not completely eliminated until at least round 4. There is a big difference between 6 rounds and 12... |
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Yeah, I shouldn't assume that more rounds is better for all players. I could see a tradeoff between enticing people with more games for the money and scaring people away with too much commitment to handle. Maybe 8 rounds would be closer to the sweet spot. Anyone who got eliminated after 8 rounds would get no consolation, but that's fine because they got to play plenty of good games before then. People who win five and lose three probably don't need any consolation.
Another argument in favor of 8 rounds is simply that it is closer to what worked before. Given the huge success of the 2011 tournament, any radical departure might be messing with the winning formula. An Open 8-round Swiss Divider-3 tournament is more like tweaking a little bit to see if we can improve things and less like striking out in a bold new direction.
I notice the big difference between us in that you assume a sharp cliff in player motivation between still being able to win it all and having no chance. I suppose I under-estimate the size of the cliff. I would argue that if a third loss takes someone from a 0.01% chance of being World Champion to a 0.00% of being World Championship, they have lost only a rounding error. But in fact people live on dreams, as the lottery proves. And part of the very reason I want to have the large tournament of the year be the World Championship is because people with crazy dreams will sign up for it even though they would never sign up for the Continuous Tournament. The Continuous Tournament wasn't sexy, but the World Championship is.
On the other hand, look what ddyer wrote over at BGG when he signed up in 2011:
Quote:Time is short to sign up for the annual Arimaa world champrionship tournament. I seem to be alone in the class of "definitely will not win" players, and it sure would be nice if there were some others.
Look at it this way - the $10 entry fee is pretty cheap course of "lessons" with the best players available. |
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Here we have a documented case of someone whose motivation was learning rather than dreaming of winning, and someone who thought it would be fun to get more evenly-matched games, and someone who was glad it was cheap. Fortunately for him, there was a run of late signups of lower-rated players, including even someone rated below him.
Quote:| What I really like about the Open Classic/Top 8 format is that there is a definite shift in seriousness. There is a storytelling arc to the story. If all players play every round to the end, either the other games are ignored or they take away from the focus that the top games are getting more important. I just don't think this would be the best format for a World Championship and is more in-line with the continuous tournament that you hosted a while back. |
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Do you think it might address your concerns if there were only eight all-play rounds? The winner probably won't be determined for 12-14 rounds, so the critical "serious" games would still be left. Maybe that would serve to hike up the intensity for spectators? (Also that could be a good spot to insert a one-week break. It could build tension as well as permit recuperation.)
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 2:43pm by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #70 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 2:42pm » |
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It sounds like you are heading the right direction in terms of my preferences, but I will step back and let others chime in. As for a survey - if it was posted on the front page in bold in a very visible place and it was short and to the point, I think we could get a majority of people to answer it.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #71 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 2:54pm » |
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on Mar 28th, 2012, 3:10pm, Adanac wrote:| 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. |
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I want to keep this aspiration in mind. My hunch is that if we are able to run a big open tournament at all, we will have enough volunteer commentators to hit each player at least once. I say this because being a game referee is probably less fun than being a commentator. Furthermore, commentating on a 1500 vs. 1500 game would be a perfect commentary opportunity for a 1700-rated player who would like to give it a shot, but who has been too shy to jump in on the big games.
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ocmiente
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #72 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 3:03pm » |
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To be clear, when I wrote, "Well, I would have been happer had I gone 12 games and out", the implication was that I would have won 9 out of the first eleven of those games, and maybe won the tournament. Having been through a couple of these WCs, I have little desire to continue playing in WC tournament when my chances of winning are completely gone.
The other mention of some mechanism to allow players to play evenly matched games throughout the year is completely different from the WC, and serves a different purpose.
I haven't taken the time to dig up the link (edit: I have now... link below), but there was a post a while back from Omar listing the general goals of the world championship, and I think one of them was that the WC's main purpose was to crown a champion. I think this should be the main purpose of the WC, and the other concerns about ensuring that the final rankings for all of the players making sense, or that people who sign up play a certain number of games to justify the entrance fee, etc. should be distant seconds to that reason.
So, I'm still in favor of a simple triple elimination tournament. Anyone who signs up knows going in that they might play three games and be out. If they are looking to play a bunch of evenly matched games, the WC is probably not the best format for accomplishing that. We need something different for that and it should be handled in a different discussion. Once the tournament scheduler can handle non-event games, I'll try to bring that up in a different thread.
Here's the link I was thinking of:
on Jan 19th, 2011, 3:43pm, omar wrote:Regarding the WC tournament format. It's really a complex issue with various inter-related factors when you start thinking about it in detail. Here are my thoughts on the various factors and what format we should use next year.
The WC tournament:
1. Should try to select the best player. |
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Of course, Omar goes on to discuss the fact that tournaments are poor selectors of the best player, and that the point is not necessarily to accomplish that goal, but that the championship should do as much as it can to try to accomplish that goal. I'm paraphrasing, so those interested should please click on the link and read the original text.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 3:29pm by ocmiente » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #73 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 4:25pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 2:42pm, mistre wrote:| As for a survey - if it was posted on the front page in bold in a very visible place and it was short and to the point, I think we could get a majority of people to answer it. |
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How do surveys generally prevent people from voting multiple times? Anyway, the questions could be biased so that whoever wrote up the survey would get the answers he wanted. Therefore, before we issue any survey, we need to take a survey of what questions people think we should include.
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2013 Arimaa World Championship Survey
Given that one round is played per week, and that only players with fewer than three losses are in contention for the title, which is your preference for tournament length?
* I would like to stop playing as soon as I have lost three
* I would like to play six games guaranteed
* I would like to play seven games guaranteed
* I would like to play eight games guaranteed
* I would like to play nine games guaranteed
* I would like to play ten or more games guaranteed
Would you like the tournament to have rest weeks in the middle?
* No rest weeks
* One rest week
* Two or more rest weeks
Would you prefer a preliminary/final division, with preliminary losses forgiven before the final, or a unified format in which losses from any round count equally?
* Preliminary / Final
* Unified Format
Which time control would you prefer for the fastest games of the tournament?
* 45 seconds per move
* 60 seconds per move
* 90 seconds per move
* 120 seconds per move
Which time control would you prefer for the slowest games of the tournament (i.e. the deciding games among top players)?
* 45 seconds per move
* 60 seconds per move
* 90 seconds per move
* 120 seconds per move
Which prize payout structure (in order of player finish) is closest to your preference?
* 50-30-20
* 40-20-15-10-7-5-3
* 17-14-12-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-1-1
* Prize fund divided proportional to number of wins, so everyone who wins a game at least gets something.
Please rank in order which of these would make you most likely to participate as a player:
* Low entry fee
* Large prize fund
* My preferred tournament length
* My preferred time control
* Good chance of playing opponents near my level
* Good chance of playing opponents higher than my level
* Good chance of my games being commentated
If the actual structure of the tournament were close to your preferred structure, how likely would you be to participate as a player?
* 90% - 100%
* 75% - 90%
* 50% - 75%
* 25% - 50%
* 0% - 25%
Supposing you could not participate as a player, please rank in order which of these would create the tournament you would like to become a reality.
* A large number of players participating
* All top-level players participating
* A long tournament
* Many games evenly-matched
* Much live commentary
* Much recorded commentary
Approximately what is your Arimaa rating?
* under 1600
* 1600-1800
* 1800-2000
* 2000-2200
* over 2200
How many Arimaa World Championships have you participated in through 2012?
* 0
* 1
* 2
* 3 or more
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Nombril
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #74 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 4:48pm » |
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My original thought for the FTE with consolation was to remove any chance for byes or opponents' performance to determine 2nd and 3rd place.
This year Fritz was in 5th place - but he lost to the same people I did. It seems that even though he was knocked out earlier, it was just "luck" of the draw that had him playing the top players one round before me. But because Adanac and I had our 3rd loss one round later, I had a chance to play for 3rd place and Fritz didn't.
So my original suggestion was not to have the consolation bracket be never ending, but rather have a 2nd place bracket, where one loss there would drop you to the 3rd place bracket, and a loss there would be the end. I think this ensures that the difference between #3 and #4 spot being decided by a direct game.
This doesn't affect the main goal of deciding the first place finisher...
On the topic of FTE vs Open/Finals:
I still like the FTE better... but if we think the Open Swiss / WC format has psychological, time commitment and volunteer benefits, should we consider a distinct break between them? Have the Open Classic in Sept - October. Then the WC in January-February.
(PS - should we consider multiple qualification methods for the WC if it is broken into two tournaments?)
Regarding payouts:
First question: What are thoughts on the entry fee? If it is going back down to $10 this probably isn't a big deal.
Second question: What were payouts this year, that would be a good comparison point? (Hmm, I guess I could calculate that myself...but I haven't...)
Personally, I liked that this year if I finished around the middle of the pack I could expect to roughly break even. But that was with $80 on the line
With $10 buy in... I'm tempted to suggest no prize money, just play for pride and prestige. Put the $ towards the efforts to run the tournament.
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