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Topic: 2013 World Championship Format (Read 31138 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #75 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 5:19pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 3:03pm, ocmiente wrote:[...] 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. |
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OK, I think I understand now. Your feeling that you want to stop playing as soon as you can't win the whole enchilada does not apply to any tournament other than the World Championship. There is once a year when it is all about winning and this is it. Playing to learn, playing just for fun, playing to win an individual game without it meaning anything larger, and so on, are all good things for the rest of the year, but they aren't essential in the World Championship, and may even get in the way. Am I getting close?
If I may quote myself from the first page of this thread:
Quote:| I would love to see a big tournament, and I think that this goal is compatible with determining a World Champion. Yes, I understand there is some tradeoff in that the "championship" aspect is going to be watered down a bit if we try to structure it such that lots of people will want to play, but I would like to see that tradeoff. Arimaa needs to be promoted, and the World Championship is a great promotional vehicle. I'm willing to lose a bit of the hard-core determine-the-best player attitude to get more people to participate. |
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I was under the impression that my view was a popular view, but I could be wrong. I totally understand if people don't want the World Championship to be turned into something orthogonal to its essential purpose. If that turns out to be the consensus opinion, then I am not the right person to be organizing the World Championship. I would rather step aside in favor of someone whose vision is in line with the mainstream vision.
The Swiss Divider-3 format includes as a subset exactly the floating triple-elimination you prefer. That part will be just as good at crowning the World Champion as if it were happening in isolation. The only thing it can cost us to have games continuing below the divider up to a set number of rounds is a division of attention.
Part of the reason I am eager to have a single event in which we both crown a World Champion and drum up large participation is the experience of 2011. We had the biggest live tournament ever following right on the heels of the biggest postal tournament ever. This exhausted Omar to the point that he decreed the 2012 World Championship would not be about large participation. He argued that participation wasn't its essential purpose, and that we should split off other events to serve that other purpose.
But what ever happened to those "other events"? Postal Mixer participation was down in 2011 and it is down further in 2012. The 2011 Arimaa World League was successful, but it wasn't on the scale of the awesome 2011 World Championship. The Open Classic didn't turn into its own standalone event; it simply disappeared. We didn't re-allocate our attention into more specialized bins, but rather we changed our collective focus to be more on championship and less on participation.
I don't want to see that happen again. If the World Championship is three-and-out in 2013 like it was in 2012, I have no problem with it, but that's not where I'm going to expend all my energy. I would instead try to revive the Open Classic as a large, pure Swiss event (no Divider) with a low entry fee and mostly evenly-matched games. I will be just as happy doing that instead.
Therefore I really, really want to hear additional people speak up on precisely this point. Either the Open Classic + Final Eight format or the Swiss Divider-3 format is making the World Championship serve two purposes instead of letting it serve only one. Is dual purpose a good idea? How important to us is promotion and wide participation? Is a large, everybody-plays World Championship a misguided muddle or a clever way to create synergy between two events that would otherwise each be separate and weaker?
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 5:22pm by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #76 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 6:01pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 5:19pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Is dual purpose a good idea? How important to us is promotion and wide participation? Is a large, everybody-plays World Championship a misguided muddle or a clever way to create synergy between two events that would otherwise each be separate and weaker? |
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I think that promotion and wide participation should be a high goal for A event - it doesn't necessarily have to be the WC. However, how do you get people excited about an event if a championship is not on the line? I think the answer is that you either provide some other types of incentives or you tie it in with the WC. Having an Open Classic in the late fall with the Top 8 moving on to the WC finals in January seems to fit both goals without creating a muddle of dual purposes.
As for other incentives - I am thinking tshirts, boardgames, arimaa points, anything that could be seen as promotional.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 6:01pm by mistre » |
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ocmiente
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #77 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 7:05pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 5:19pm, Fritzlein wrote:| Playing to learn, playing just for fun, playing to win an individual game without it meaning anything larger, and so on, are all good things for the rest of the year, but they aren't essential in the World Championship, and may even get in the way. Am I getting close? |
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Yes, that's pretty accurate.
Also, I'm (obviously) not on the same page with you when you write that the triple elimination format was terrible. We really haven't tried it out on a large scale. If the WC had been open to everyone this year (rather than those willing to shell out $80 or so) then it might have been a different experience for everyone. I don't see anything that precludes a triple elimination tournament from being large.
I'm not sold on the Swiss tournament you describe, but we'll see what everyone else thinks. Thanks for pitching in to help organize the tournament.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #78 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:07pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 7:05pm, ocmiente wrote:| Also, I'm (obviously) not on the same page with you when you write that the triple elimination format was terrible. |
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Oops, my humor missed the mark. I was trying to be funny by calling my old proposal (FTE+C) a bad idea and making exactly the same proposal under the new name of Swiss Divider-3. But I wasn't just being tongue-in-cheek. I seriously believe that what you call it influences how much people enjoy it.
I don't by any means think FTE (no C) is a bad idea. In fact, I originally didn't like Omar's idea of hitching up the Open Classic with the World Championship. I thought we were overloading the purpose of the World Championship, and thought it would be better to have simply just a FTE, for essentially the reasons you are forwarding. My, how times change. 
Quote:| I don't see anything that precludes a triple elimination tournament from being large. |
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The FTE format would do a great job of picking a World Champion out of a large number of entrants. I simply don't think a large number of people will sign up if FTE is the format, even if the entry fee is held down to $10. Admittedly, a low entry fee would entice more people than signed up this year, but maybe just 24 instead of 64.
Quote:| Thanks for pitching in to help organize the tournament. |
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You are welcome. Thank you for participating too. It helped me to clarify the distinction between wanting the World Championship to be open to large participation and wanting the World Championship to encourage larger participation. For the former there is straight Floating Triple Elimination (and hopefully an unrelated Open Classic some other time). For the latter there is either an Open Classic qualifier plus Final Eight, or there is the Open 8-round Swiss Divider-3 (formerly known as FTE + C).
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:13pm by Fritzlein » |
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mistre
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #79 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:32pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 4:25pm, Fritzlein wrote:
How do surveys generally prevent people from voting multiple times? |
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Well, if the survey is small enough then it makes sense to also ask for a user name and not make it anonymous. However if anonymity is important to retain, then I am sure there is some way that Omar can allow only 1 survey to be filled out per user name. I highly doubt that people would set up multiple accounts just to sway a survey's results (but even if they did then it could be easily spotted and those particular surveys could be made void).
I like your questions. I would also add a more specific one about what type of entry fee you prefer:
- Free
- $10 - no prize money
- $10 - with prize money
- $20 or $25
- $30 or $40
- $50 or more
Finally, I would add an open ended question - what is your primary motivation for wanting to play in the Arimaa World Championships?
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:32pm by mistre » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #80 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:46pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:32pm, mistre wrote:
Thank you!
Quote:I would also add a more specific one about what type of entry fee you prefer:
- Free
- $10 - no prize money
- $10 - with prize money
- $20 or $25
- $30 or $40
- $50 or more
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I thought about such a question but I couldn't figure out why anyone would prefer a higher entry fee. It's like political polling: nobody is in favor of paying more taxes, although they are often in favor of someone else paying more taxes. Do you want to pay more taxes? Of course not! Also I prefer a free tournament over paying $10. Also I would rather pay $10 and get a prize than pay $10 and not get a prize.
The only remedy I could think of was to group together good things that everyone obviously likes, and make them rank the list. That way you can't say you want everything. You have to choose whether high prizes or low entry fee is more important. (I'm assuming the survey site can handle this type of question.)
Another way to get a reasonable answer would be to somehow directly link costs to spending. For example, would you prefer a $10 entry fee and no game referees or a $20 entry fee and someone you could call if something went wrong? But the real tradeoffs as to what a higher entry fee gets are totally unclear. We haven't even decided whether to pay game referees, and if so, how much.
Quote:| Finally, I would add an open ended question - what is your primary motivation for wanting to play in the Arimaa World Championships? |
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I like it. Can't hurt, might help.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:48pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #81 on: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:56pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 4:48pm, Nombril wrote:| My original thought for the FTE with consolation was to remove any chance for byes or opponents' performance to determine 2nd and 3rd place. |
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OK, we should probably call this tiebreaker games rather than a consolation bracket. I personally am in favor of breaking ties over the board down to third place. It matters for the permanent glory. For distribution of prize money, I wouldn't break ties below third place, but rather pool and split the money for the tied places. Money is less important than fame.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 6th, 2012, 9:57pm by Fritzlein » |
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #82 on: Apr 7th, 2012, 3:26am » |
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Wow, this discussion is really moving now. I like it.
I like the idea of a survey to gather what the community wants. To avoid anyone from voting twice there should be a registration phase where you first register to take the survey and the list of registered users is open to viewing. New accounts would be suspect and I can check IPs to see if they might be duplicates. After the registration period ends the survey can be taken by the registered users. Then to allow everyone to be sure that their votes counted the complete data from the survey is made available to everyone and the users are identified by a random number they picked when taking the survey. You can look for your random number in the survey data to make sure the answers you selected are there.
ocmiente, I think your suggestion of a separate event outside the WC to allow close pairings is something I've also been considering. Maybe something like the Auto Postal, but for live games. You get paired with an opponent close to your level and the system helps you coordinate a time for the game and shows it in your live games section when the time comes so you can just enter the game (similar to event games) without having to invite your opponent and wait for them to accept. Also it treats the game as an event game and allow you win by forfeit if the opponent does not show up within the grace period. Maybe I'll get a chance to implement it this summer. I think this will definitely boost the number of event games and allow more people to build up their WHRE throughout the year.
Regarding the format; how long would a F6E take with 64 players? Actually I can run simulations to find out and check if the code can even handle that. This would ensure that everyone gets 6 meaningful games. As Nombril suggested those that still have a chance at 2nd and 3rd continue playing even after being eliminated from 1st place.
I suggest this with the assumption that more meaningful games is what people want and providing that will increase the number of people that register. Although I am not sure if this is true. Some people may not want so many game. In particular I fear that some top players may shy away knowing that they will survive till later rounds and have to play a very long tournament which might run into weeks that conflict with other plans. Maybe one of the questions on the survey should be about finding out how many week they would be willing to play. Although for a question like this the opinion of higher rated players is more important and we might have to ask for a ballpark of their rating on the survey.
However, if my goal is to increase participation the sure way to do it is by increasing the prize fund and distributing it using 1/n or perhaps 1/n^2. If the prize fund is big enough that even the first players to be eliminated are getting back more than the registration fee then there really is no reason for someone to not play in the WC other than a schedule conflict or not knowing about it. As long as we do a good job of also promoting the event during the registration phase it should have optimal participation if a large prize fund is ready before the registration starts.
To increase the prize fund we need a good fund raising person who will actively follow leads and sign on sponsors and contributors. I myself could give at least 10 leads of business owner and HNW individuals who could easily contribute about $50 each. Although it would seem odd for me to call these people and ask them to contribute, it would be perfectly fine for a fund raising person to call them and say that Omar referred them and ask them to make a contribution. If everyone provided some leads the prize fund would be in the thousands.
Regarding the role of the game referee. This is a role that I spun out of the tournament coordinator role so that one person could be the tournament coordinator; to run the pairing and scheduling; and multiple other people can oversee the games. If the tournament is not too big, it would be easy enough for the tournament coordinator to also serve the role of the game referee. I'll start a wiki page to define the game referee role.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #83 on: Apr 7th, 2012, 12:08pm » |
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on Apr 7th, 2012, 3:26am, omar wrote:| I like the idea of a survey to gather what the community wants. To avoid anyone from voting twice there should be a registration phase where you first register to take the survey and the list of registered users is open to viewing. New accounts would be suspect and I can check IPs to see if they might be duplicates. After the registration period ends the survey can be taken by the registered users. Then to allow everyone to be sure that their votes counted the complete data from the survey is made available to everyone and the users are identified by a random number they picked when taking the survey. You can look for your random number in the survey data to make sure the answers you selected are there. |
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I created a free account on Survey Monkey. They limited me to ten questions; that's OK because I only had eleven, and it wan't painful to drop the question on how many times the respondent had previously played in an Arimaa World Championship.
Survey Monkey has a way to embed the survey in arimaa.com. If this worked it would be an ideal way to control access, because you could let only logged-in users access the page, and only once each. Unfortunately, I suspect the embedded option would actually make it harder to control access, because we can't easily track survey completion without a paid account. Free users somehow can't pick up a signal that a particular survey has been completed, and thus can't make the link stop working in the future.
The easiest free option is just to hand out a link that everyone can use. Automatically only one survey per IP address is accepted. Reasonably easy to circumvent, but probably there wouldn't be much cheating.
The best free option is probably controlling by e-mail address. You can give Survey Monkey a list of e-mail addresses and it will mail out individualized URL's. Nobody is going to take the time to crack that security, and if we are curious we can even match up which URL's got used with the list of e-mails.
Maybe it would be too "spammy" to send the survey to everyone? I wouldn't mind, but if that seems too intrusive, there should be a straightforward way to get a subset of accounts, e.g. everyone who has ever played a non-autopostal event game union everyone who has played 100 total games. This gives us hundreds of potential respondents, and includes those people most likely to play. There would be some concern about not reaching out to the marginal players whom I would like to draw into the tournament, but my main target is really the casual, occasional player, not the guy who created an account, played six bots, and never came back. Indeed, I might not want our decisions influenced by the opinions of random Arimaa players who probably won't play anyway.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 7th, 2012, 12:58pm by Fritzlein » |
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #84 on: Apr 7th, 2012, 12:21pm » |
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on Apr 7th, 2012, 3:26am, omar wrote:| Regarding the format; how long would a F6E take with 64 players? Actually I can run simulations to find out and check if the code can even handle that. This would ensure that everyone gets 6 meaningful games. |
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Without simulation, I'll guess F6E with 64 players lasts an average of 20 rounds. Even some top players would need a big payday to be motivated enough for that!
Quote:| However, if my goal is to increase participation the sure way to do it is by increasing the prize fund and distributing it using 1/n or perhaps 1/n^2. If the prize fund is big enough that even the first players to be eliminated are getting back more than the registration fee then there really is no reason for someone to not play in the WC other than a schedule conflict or not knowing about it. |
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I expect that the most important factor in increasing registration will be keeping the entry fee low. Using prizes directed at the lower finishers is less efficient than making them pay less in the first place.
For example, let's suppose that for a given format we could get 64 players with a $10 entry fee and all $640 in prizes given to the top half. Compare that to increasing the entry fee to $20, bringing in $640 more to the prize fund for a total of $1280. But to give even $10 to the 32nd place according to 1/n payouts would require $1518 in the prize fund, i.e. an extra $238 out of pocket.
Furthermore, although the 32nd player's money situation is constant at a $10 net cost to play, everyone below him ended in a slightly worse money situation, making them slightly less likely to sign up in the first place. So participation probably went down a little despite the extra money you kicked in.
If you managed to raise $238 for the prize pool, the way to use that for increased participation is to give payouts of $640 distributed at the top as before, but only charge $7 entry fee. That should actually increase the number of people who sign up, since they have to pay a bit less each.
In summary, use prize money to keep top players happy and low entry fee to keep everyone else happy.
But no matter how much money you raise in prizes, I would never want to make the World Championship free to enter. I don't care if you got a $5000 sponsor and didn't need a dime from entrants; we should charge anyway. People who can register for nothing are too likely to drop out and mess up the pairings, as we know from experience. At the $10 entry fee level of 2011, only one player of thirty-three dropped out, which is the kind of participation I'd like to drum up.
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| « Last Edit: Apr 7th, 2012, 12:55pm by Fritzlein » |
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omar
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #85 on: Apr 7th, 2012, 2:17pm » |
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on Apr 7th, 2012, 12:21pm, Fritzlein wrote:
For example, let's suppose that for a given format we could get 64 players with a $10 entry fee and all $640 in prizes given to the top half. Compare that to increasing the entry fee to $20, bringing in $640 more to the prize fund for a total of $1280. But to give even $10 to the 32nd place according to 1/n payouts would require $1518 in the prize fund, i.e. an extra $238 out of pocket.
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Yes, $10 seems like a good entry fee to maximize participation. I also think that it should never be zero to make sure that those who register are serious about playing.
But the full registration fees should go to the people helping to run the event. Player may play just for the fun and glory even if there was no prize money, but the people who run a big event and make it happen are doing real work. The long term sustainability of a large WC would depend on being able to properly compensate the organizing team. This year I will try to help with A/V recording, commentary and referee, and would like to get compensated. Even though it might be very little, it would be a step in the right direction. If we were to raise $5000 for the prize fund, I would even suggest using $1000 of that to compensate the helpers more.
Imagine how many people would want to sign up if there was $4000 in the prize fund when registration started and the entry fee was only $10.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #86 on: Apr 7th, 2012, 3:52pm » |
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on Apr 7th, 2012, 2:17pm, omar wrote:| But the full registration fees should go to the people helping to run the event. |
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I agree. I think $10 is a fair administrative expense, and we can do prizes based (concentrated at the top) from donations and sponsors. The prizes don't have to be huge because they are supplemented by glory and because the entry fee is low.
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Fritzlein
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #87 on: Apr 12th, 2012, 9:15am » |
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I'm thinking about posting the Survey Monkey poll, via a link from the game room announcements, Friday night, so as to catch the weekend surge, including observers of hanzack's second Challenge game. If there are game commentators, we could also tell people to take the survey from the audio. The protection against ballot-stuffing is just IP-based, but I'd rather just see what happens and keep the ball rolling than get stalled thinking too much about security. Is everyone cool with that?
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Dolus
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #88 on: Apr 12th, 2012, 10:08am » |
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on Apr 12th, 2012, 9:15am, Fritzlein wrote:| I'm thinking about posting the Survey Monkey poll, via a link from the game room announcements, Friday night, so as to catch the weekend surge, including observers of hanzack's second Challenge game. If there are game commentators, we could also tell people to take the survey from the audio. The protection against ballot-stuffing is just IP-based, but I'd rather just see what happens and keep the ball rolling than get stalled thinking too much about security. Is everyone cool with that? |
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Where's the :thumbsup: smiley?
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browni3141
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Re: 2013 World Championship Format
« Reply #89 on: Apr 12th, 2012, 10:03pm » |
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on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:46pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Thank you!
I thought about such a question but I couldn't figure out why anyone would prefer a higher entry fee. It's like political polling: nobody is in favor of paying more taxes, although they are often in favor of someone else paying more taxes. Do you want to pay more taxes? Of course not! Also I prefer a free tournament over paying $10. Also I would rather pay $10 and get a prize than pay $10 and not get a prize.
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I would actually prefer a small entry fee for an event like the WC. The very fact that it costs something adds some value to it. It makes it more of a commitment and gives it a more serious atmosphere. For some casual weekend event or something that's more "just for fun" I'd prefer no entry fee.
There are cases in my opinion where free isn't necessarily better.
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