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Topic: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid (Read 23615 times) |
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lightvector
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #45 on: May 2nd, 2015, 10:55am » |
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I have just talked with Omar, and I can confirm that although some aspects of it were genuine (such as his prior lack of knowledge of the betting and some of his feelings towards the matter) and that however in-bad-taste it might have been, according to him this was in large part a play to add some additional drama into the ending of the challenge.
I know that for some people, me included, this event has had a strong impact. I did not enjoy it, and I think it's completely understandable if this affects anyone's desires in continuing to be a part of this community and game. But I'm also glad that things can be resolved, and I just want to move forward.
I continue to stand for fun and community, and will be proceeding with developing my app and rounding up a team to make a new website. I've talked with Omar to reschedule the closing event for next Saturday May 9 to occur at the same time (16:00 GMT) to talk about this and other plans going forward.
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| « Last Edit: May 2nd, 2015, 11:04am by lightvector » |
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Skarn
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #46 on: May 2nd, 2015, 11:23am » |
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on May 1st, 2015, 4:03pm, SilverMitt wrote:
The way I can interpret these views is: "This looks bad and I don't care about the details." This is perfectly valid, and the fact that the details exonerate lightvector is irrelevant to this case. As long as we understand one another's views, we can all agree to disagree. |
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This wasn't supposed to be game-night among friends, it was supposed to be a formal competition. It was supposed to be squeaky clean.
Suppose a businessman offered to pay $1000 to a senator of your country if a bill that benefits his company passes. The senator votes "yes" and the bill passes. Later when confronted about it the senator says that $1000 is very little money compared to the wealth he already has, that he truly cares about politics and that his highschool buddy had also offered him $1000, only if the bill didn't pass. Would you be comfortable with that situation?
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deep_blue
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #47 on: May 2nd, 2015, 11:36am » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 11:23am, Skarn wrote:
Suppose a businessman offered to pay $1000 to a senator of your country if a bill that benefits his company passes. The senator votes "yes" and the bill passes. Later when confronted about it the senator says that $1000 is very little money compared to the wealth he already has, that he truly cares about politics and that his highschool buddy had also offered him $1000, only if the bill didn't pass. Would you be comfortable with that situation? |
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You can't really compare that. In your situation someone gets money for doing something.
Browni doesn't get any money for losing.
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rbarreira
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #48 on: May 2nd, 2015, 11:46am » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 8:31am, omar wrote:
But I thought it would be a good opportunity to add some suspense and drama to the challenge match being won. I hold no hard feeling from what anyone has said in this thread and I'm sorry if I hurt anyone else feelings by what I said. The only person I let in on this was Janzert and only after it seemed that he might have been effected by this thread. |
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I'm not sure if I believe this, and even if I do it's still ridiculous and unpleasant.
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russ
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #49 on: May 2nd, 2015, 12:11pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 11:36am, deep_blue wrote:
You can't really compare that. In your situation someone gets money for doing something.
Browni doesn't get any money for losing. |
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Suppose your senator is considering voting for e.g. a tax bill which would cost the senator personally $1000 due to the change in tax calculations which would result. Suppose a lobbyist wants that that tax bill to pass and gives the senator $1000 if he supports it. Now the senator mathematically/financially has no personal incentive either way, because whether or not he supports it, he personally neither loses nor gains money as a result.
Does that mean that there's nothing wrong with the lobbyist giving $1000 to the senator to support the bill?
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CraggyCornmeal
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #50 on: May 2nd, 2015, 12:27pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 12:11pm, russ wrote:
Suppose your senator is considering voting for e.g. a tax bill which would cost the senator personally $1000 due to the change in tax calculations which would result. Suppose a lobbyist wants that that tax bill to pass and gives the senator $1000 if he supports it. Now the senator mathematically/financially has no personal incentive either way, because whether or not he supports it, he personally neither loses nor gains money as a result.
Does that mean that there's nothing wrong with the lobbyist giving $1000 to the senator to support the bill? |
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Intent is important.
The lobbyist's intent is to mold legislation to his liking.
Lightvector's intent was to relieve Browni's stress.
It's moot now, but I think it's worthwhile to explore the ethical contours of this discussion. The arguments have tended to divide along deontological/consequentialist lines. The deontological argument has been that the Challenge should be invalidated because ethical rules were broken, while the consequentialist argument has been that the Challenge should stand because the net consequence of the bets didn't give Browni any incentive to lose. (This excepts the deontological argument that the Challenge should stand because no rules were explicitly broken.)
The two sides have been talking past each other because they've been employing two vastly different ethical frameworks.
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browni3141
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #51 on: May 2nd, 2015, 12:41pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 11:23am, Skarn wrote:
This wasn't supposed to be game-night among friends, it was supposed to be a formal competition. It was supposed to be squeaky clean.
Suppose a businessman offered to pay $1000 to a senator of your country if a bill that benefits his company passes. The senator votes "yes" and the bill passes. Later when confronted about it the senator says that $1000 is very little money compared to the wealth he already has, that he truly cares about politics and that his highschool buddy had also offered him $1000, only if the bill didn't pass. Would you be comfortable with that situation? |
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I don't feel like discussing the analogy (although I think there are some flaws with it), but I'll take a stab at the situation.
I would say that the highschool buddy and the businessman both made unethical decisions if they did not know another negating offer would be accepted (although then it would be against their own interest for either of them to offer so I assume they didn't know), and that the senator made an unethical decision if he accepted on offer without intention of accepting the other. The senator acted in his best interest to take advantage of two other bad decisions and make $500 from each party. I'm kind of borderline on whether or not this type of exploitation is okay, but I'm pretty sure enough people would feel it is not okay to make it unacceptable to allow them to know. Therefore the senator made an unethical decision if any of the offers were public knowledge because it looks like corruption, but would be fine if all communications were private.
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| « Last Edit: May 2nd, 2015, 12:42pm by browni3141 » |
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Skarn
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #52 on: May 2nd, 2015, 12:43pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 11:36am, deep_blue wrote:
You can't really compare that. In your situation someone gets money for doing something.
Browni doesn't get any money for losing. |
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Suppose we have a match in the WC. You promise beforehand to pay my college debt/phone bill if and only if I loose. Totally okay, it's not like I'd be gaining anything, right? Before the agreement with lightvector browni would have been at -$236 if he lost. Lighvector made that number be cero. $0 > -$236.
I know that as a newbie I am a relative outsider, but as much as there might have been a culture of making small bets in the community, the challenge should have been squeaky clean. It was a formal competition, not whoever wins Catan pays for pizza.
No one is being accused of acting in bad faith, but there was definitely bad form. It is a shame that the arimaa challenge will go down in history somewhat tarnished by this.
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Skarn
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #53 on: May 2nd, 2015, 12:51pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 12:27pm, CraggyCornmeal wrote:
The two sides have been talking past each other because they've been employing two vastly different ethical frameworks. |
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That's not true, I'm a consequentialist. These events discredit the arimaa challenge, the arimaa community and set a terrible precedent of what to expect from future competitions.
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browni3141
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #54 on: May 2nd, 2015, 3:24pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 12:43pm, Skarn wrote:
Suppose we have a match in the WC. You promise beforehand to pay my college debt/phone bill if and only if I loose. Totally okay, it's not like I'd be gaining anything, right? Before the agreement with lightvector browni would have been at -$236 if he lost. Lighvector made that number be cero. $0 > -$236.
I know that as a newbie I am a relative outsider, but as much as there might have been a culture of making small bets in the community, the challenge should have been squeaky clean. It was a formal competition, not whoever wins Catan pays for pizza.
No one is being accused of acting in bad faith, but there was definitely bad form. It is a shame that the arimaa challenge will go down in history somewhat tarnished by this.
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This is a completely different scenario. Paying out to Fritzlein is conditional upon the Challenge being lost. Paying my phone bill would not be.
Before I accept your offer to pay my phone bill if I lose, I am -$236 if I lose and -$236 if I win, so both decisions are equal. After I accept your offer, I am +$0 dollars if I lose and -$236 if I win, making me prefer to lose.
Before I accepted lightvector's offer to payout my bet to Fritzlein, I was -$WCev if I lost and +$0 if I won, so I prefer to win. After I accepted I was +$0 if I lost and +$0 if I won, so both decisions are equal monetarily. If I had reason to lose without monetary incentive I should not have accepted lightvector's offer and omar should not have chosen me as a defender. If lightvector thought I would have reason to lose he should not have offered. Neither of these were the case so there was nothing wrong with the offer or acceptance except that other people incorrectly perceive it as wrong.
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lucky81
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #55 on: May 2nd, 2015, 4:15pm » |
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Here is how I see it:
Fritzlein created a monetary incentive for browni to win. I don't see anything wrong with that. He also created a monetary incentive for Sharp to win! It's a common scheme in sports. Chess players play for money too. In fact, I'm surprised Omar hadn't himself allocated at least a small token piece of the Challenge prize money for the defenders. There is no conflict of interest there.
Lightvector then removed browni's monetary incentive to win. The only excuse I see for that is that the amount was small.
Since everybody throws in analogies, I will provide mine as well.
AC Milan plays Manchester United for the UEFA Champions League final. Coca Cola, MU's sponsor, shows up and says to the Manchester United players: we will pay $100,000 to every player that scores a goal in the final.
The manager of AC Milan gets word of this, goes to MU players, and says: we will pay $100,000 to every player that does *not* score a goal in the final.
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| « Last Edit: May 2nd, 2015, 5:53pm by lucky81 » |
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mattj256
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #56 on: May 2nd, 2015, 10:01pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 8:31am, omar wrote:I guess this means that the 2015 Arimaa Challenge match results stand.... I thought it would be a good opportunity to add some suspense and drama to the challenge match being won.
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I used to watch the TV show "House" a lot, and I would be annoyed because the medical aspect was already suspenseful and dramatic, but the writers felt they had to inject soap-opera elements into the story line to keep it interesting.
I was one of the 50 people logged into the chat room who watched live as Sharp clinched the challenge by beating browni3141 in game six of the Challenge. That was supposed to be the memorable part of the tournament. My coworkers don't know the rules of Arimaa, but they all know that browni3141 won the World Championship and Sharp won the Arimaa challenge. Arimaa is a great game, and writing a bot that can beat humans (with or without the prize money) is a challenge that is worthy of me. And also we have a great community, but I wouldn't be part of the community if the game didn't captivate and fascinate me.
I hope we are done with all this soap opera stuff. If betting on games is an important issue I hope there will be meaningful changes next year.
I hope I haven't said anything that has hurt anyone's feelings, and if anyone is upset at me please reach out to me so I can address what's wrong.
After lightvector publishes in ICGA and wins the prize, I hope we'll have another opportunity to recognize his accomplishments.
To the extent that I make time for Arimaa, I want it to be building my bot, improving the website, improving my skills, and helping the community.
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Heyckie
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #57 on: May 3rd, 2015, 4:10pm » |
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Wow this really turned into nearly the worst scenario I had in mind when I decided to send Omar that message. I'm very sorry 
Most of all sorry Fritzlein and browni3141, you didn't do anything wrong (well ok browni maybe could have declined lightvector's offer but nobody can be expected to be that perfect). My message to omar didn't mention your original bet at all, I still just don't see absolutely anything wrong with it.
I guess I should have messaged not omar but lightvector, and point to him that his offer was simply wrong, no matter how well intended, an that maybe he should apologize. But that's hindsight again and having only hindsight and no real time reasoning was what got me dragging the whole community into this the first place.
In my defense:
1. The situation was such that if I decided I should contact someone, the sooner I did it the better. Also I've had a severe Real Life Syndrome for about a week. That meant I simply could not think as much as I would have wanted to about what to do.
2. The only other option I could think of at the moment was to keep quiet and consent feeling a somewhat guilty for an unknown amount of time if no fuss ever came out of lightvector's offer, or b very very guilty if someone else realized it after or during the ceremonies and started to wonder why nobody told omar etc. I still don't know how bad that would have been, on current hindsight probably not as bad as this, but can't know for sure (for example b could have happened). I still don't like the idea of starting to whine and speculate about this in chat behind omar's and lightvector's backs.
3. This drama really is about the worst I could imagine happening when contacting omar (only thing worse still would have been an actual invalidation of the Challenge). I guess I hoped he would maybe just privately scold lightvector a bit or something.
The thing I'm slapping myself in the head hardest about is that I was right then and there in the Chatroom when the inappropriate offer was made and did not in any way object to it at the time.
About all the talk and arguments made about the Challenge in this thread I'm so at one with chessandgo that I really have nothing worthwhile to add.
I tried to apologize yesterday when I saw the drama, but couldn't as I only had an old phone to get online with and it wouldn't send a message of much over a hundred characters; had to shorten my already short message to PerkofBR about our EEE game to get it through.
Really sorry.
Please try to make peace with each other you all. Blame me if you can't stop your angry feelings.
Heyckie
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ikalyoncu
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #58 on: May 3rd, 2015, 5:12pm » |
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on May 2nd, 2015, 10:01pm, mattj256 wrote:
I was one of the 50 people logged into the chat room who watched live as Sharp clinched the challenge by beating browni3141 in game six of the Challenge. That was supposed to be the memorable part of the tournament.
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My feelings exactly, Omar.
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supersamu
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Re: 2015 Arimaa Challenge Match results invalid
« Reply #59 on: May 3rd, 2015, 5:38pm » |
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I originally wanted to send the following to Heyckie privately, but I feel this is a better place to share it:
I don't feel you did anything wrong and nobody can expect you to know what Omar would do with the information given to him. I was in the chatroom as well (or I read the chat in the archive, I can't remember), and I didn't raise an eyebrow when the bet was discussed. So I don't think you should feel ashamed for not speaking out when the bet/lightvector's promise happened.
I also don't see you as a snitch because you acted behind the back of the bettors and told Omar about the situation without telling Fritzlein, browni3141 or lightvector.
You saw something that might harm the perception of Arimaa or the view of the legitimacy of the challenge and gave Omar information that was already public.
You are not responsible for the way Omar reacted to the information.
You thought Omar deserves to know what happened (imagine if Omar found out 2 years later) and you gave him the chance to respond to the situation within his own terms.
Again:
You absolutely don't need to apologize for telling Omar of the bet. I fully support your decision, and I would also have fully supported your decision if the challenge match were declared invalid, or any other scenario you can imagine happened.
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