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(Message started by: omar on Aug 15th, 2005, 4:16pm)

Title: World Championship format for 2006
Post by omar on Aug 15th, 2005, 4:16pm
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2006/

After much contemplation I decided to go with the floating double elimination for this years WC tournament. Since I've also decided to increase the time controls, I didn't want to burden the players too much at once. Lets see how it works out this year and after we get some practical experience with it we can consider the floating triple elimination next year.


Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 15th, 2005, 10:46pm
This seems like a wise decision, Omar.  I know I was lobbying both for the longer time control and for the triple elimination, but I see how the burden on the players could get too large, so it is likely for the best that you didn't let me persuade you on both counts.  As it happens, I think I would rather have the extra "blunder protection" of a long time control than the extra "upset protection" of a third elimination.

As you say, our experience this year can inform the decision for 2007.  Maybe the slow games will seem too boring and we can flip-flop to a triple-elimination with a shorter time control.

In any case the format is much improved over last year.  I have already registered.  Who's in with me?  :-)

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by omar on Oct 26th, 2005, 7:44am
I've made a page of the registered players for the 2006 WC tournament.

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/2006/players.html

Please encourage other players to join. Some of the players from previous years have not registered yet; Im hoping they will.

Also don't forget to sign up for the prediction contest.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by 99of9 on Oct 26th, 2005, 7:18pm
Gee, that's a very small crowd :-(

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 26th, 2005, 9:50pm
The small size makes it all the more a wise decision to have a double elimination.  But don't despair: we still have over two weeks of registration to go, and plenty of people could still sign up.  Didn't Ryan Cable as good as say he was in?  And surely Belbo will enter as well.  Fear not: this will be a fine tournament.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by PMertens on Oct 28th, 2005, 1:31am
fine ? yeah probably ... but very very small ....

I could be mistaken, but somehow I got the feeling of a sharply declined activity a while ago :-(

(might have had something to do with server problems shortly after a bunch of new guys came looking ...)

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by 99of9 on Oct 28th, 2005, 2:10am

on 10/28/05 at 01:31:13, PMertens wrote:
somehow I got the feeling of a sharply declined activity a while ago :-(

I think that was about the same time that you and Arimanator stopped competing against each other for botbashes :-).

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 28th, 2005, 11:02am

on 10/28/05 at 01:31:13, PMertens wrote:
fine ? yeah probably ... but very very small ....

I could be mistaken, but somehow I got the feeling of a sharply declined activity a while ago :-(

(might have had something to do with server problems shortly after a bunch of new guys came looking ...)


I agree with 99of9: if there is a decline of activity you and Arimanator account for all it.  In fact, if we leave the two of you out of the calculation, I'll bet the activity has been on a slight, gradual rise, interrupted by a brief spike for the Metafilter mention and a brief dip for the server issues.  There is a handful of newer folks working up the ladder, and a handful of us oldtimers puttering around.  That's a far cry from how dead things were when I joined 15 months ago.

I confess that I was actually sure there would be a big upsurge in activity come November, with all the tournaments approaching, and that hasn't happened yet.  I guess part of the excitement last year was that JDB was closing fast with Clueless, and then Fotland came around and started improving Bomb, so we all wanted a shot at speedy.  Maybe the bot competition will heat up later.

In any event, it's a bit weird to call a 7-player World Championship "very very small", when the number of folks who participated the first two years was 13 and 9 respectively.  If two more folks sign up we'll have as many players as last year, and that's with the longer double-elimination format.  I'll bet a nickel this year's tournament will be better than last year's in more ways than one.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by omar on Oct 29th, 2005, 3:26pm
I think with the longer tounament format the players who are signed up will be glad there aren't too many other players.

Im very satisfied with the quality of the players that have signed up so far. It's going to be a great tournament. I will wait a bit more and then personally invite some of the player who I think should be in the tourament, but haven't signed up yet.

BTW; the computer Go championship is coming up soon, please wish David good luck.

http://www.computer-go.jp/gifu2005/English/

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 29th, 2005, 7:30pm

on 10/28/05 at 11:02:44, Fritzlein wrote:
[...]the number of folks who participated the first two years was 13 and 9 respectively.  If two more folks sign up we'll have as many players as last year [...]


I see now that JDB and Naveed have signed up.  Yay!  That brings the number of registrants up to 9.

One year ago there were 10 registrants, of whom one never played, and two years ago there were 18 registrants, of whom five never played.  Looking over the nine registrants for this year, I wouldn't be surprised if there were no forfeits at all.  I'm so excited I can hardly wait.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by omar on Oct 31st, 2005, 10:52pm
Frank just signed up, so now we're at 10.

I didn't calculate the exact numbers, but Im sure the average rating of the players has improved quite a bit over the past years.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by PMertens on Nov 1st, 2005, 4:16am
I am pretty sure that Pat and I account for a lot of human vs. bot games ...   8)

What I was refering to is the 15 points Fritzl needed for player of the month ;-)
(and a total of 12 h-h games)

Compared with the 2 previous month I would still call it a decline (even if you take me out of the calculation)

Of course you guys are correct that it can not really be called a small tournament, but I still hoped for a few more somehow ....  

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 1st, 2005, 2:11pm
Well, we still have way more h-v-h games than we did a year ago, but it's true that we've declined significantly from a peak in h-v-h activity several months ago.  That's too bad, because the h-v-h games advance the state of Arimaa theory far more rapidly than all the h-v-b games.

Yes, we are getting bot-bashing down to a science.  Yes, we can feel more comfortable than ever about defending the Arimaa Challenge because we have discovered and cataloged umpteen strategies for beating Bomb.  But no matter how organized and scientific our bot-bashing becomes, it only adds to general theory of Arimaa strategy at coral reef growth rates, because the bots themselves aren't adapting or advancing very fast.

The postal tournament was a great leap forward for experimenting with new ideas and disseminating old ones.  Back in the spring I felt sure we would have a deep understanding of the E+H attack before the next World Championship.  But now the WC is upon us, and we still don't have good rules of thumb about when E+H is sound or unsound.  Indeed, just yesteday I made a rotten move against blue22 in our postal game, underestimating the power of his E+H attack, thereby throwing away an otherwise large advantage.  I feel pretty clueless about Arimaa strategy at the moment, and my hope for winning the WC is that nobody else has worked out new ideas any better than I have.

Yet I feel the strategies are out there.  That is to say, I don't think Arimaa is inherently incomprehensible to human intelligence.  On the contrary, I feel that if we would just view things in the right terms, we could tack on another 200 points to our collective playing strength by next year, and another 200 the year after that.  But that will require discussing with each other and testing against each other and basically not worrying about the bots so much.

I'm glad the Player of the Month Rules are as they are.  Sooner or later some newcomer is going to start playing the lights out in pursuit of the monthly prize, and that will re-energize the community.  Also, I have high hopes for the next postal tournament.  If we slow down the time control so it isn't such a burden to play, last year's format will be perfect.  The 2006 postal tournament will be a great forum  for teaching each other everything we know.

The World Championship itself will contribute more to theory this year than last, in part because the average rating of the competitors has gone up, and in part because a ten-player double-elimination has twice as many games as a ten-player single-elimination.  Eighteen games isn't a huge number, but it's a good start, especially if they are high-quality games.

In short, I think we've got a good infrastructure in place, and a growing community of excellent players.  It will require more h-v-h activity (or much better bots) to keep Arimaa theory rolling, but there are lots of reasons to hope it will pick back up before long.  Arimaa is maturing month by month, and isolated signs of a downturn are far outnumbered by signs of a general upward trend.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Ryan_Cable on Nov 3rd, 2005, 1:28am
I just registered for the tournament. :-)

I will be on a cruise with my family from December 21 to December 28, which, if I did the math right, means I will not be available any of Week 6.  Looking at the competition, I am confident this will be a moot point, :-(  but I still think it is rather strange to have a tournament over Christmas vacation.  Am I the only person who will have trouble playing around Christmas time?  Has this not been a problem in the past?

The median rating of the tournament has indeed skyrocketed!  It was 1536.5 in 2004 and 1823.5 in 2005.  Currently, I have the median rating at 1983.  Unless some more people sign up, it is quite possible that the median rating will be 2000+ by the start of the tournament.  It looks like my goal of 2 wins is going to be very challenging. :-/

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by 99of9 on Nov 3rd, 2005, 3:01am

on 11/03/05 at 01:28:55, Ryan_Cable wrote:
I still think it is rather strange to have a tournament over Christmas vacation.  Am I the only person who will have trouble playing around Christmas time?  Has this not been a problem in the past?


Yes, I have had trouble with this in past years, but at least that time of year is a little less busy at work.  On balance I don't mind too much.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by MrBrain on Nov 3rd, 2005, 3:03pm
Perhaps an e-mail should be sent to those registered on the site.  I didn't realize registrations were going on until I happened to pop in right now.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 3rd, 2005, 3:57pm

on 11/03/05 at 01:28:55, Ryan_Cable wrote:
I just registered for the tournament. :-)


Awesome!  That makes 11 now, so we'll almost certainly beat last year in terms of the number of people who actually play a game.  And we still have another week of registration, so it's conceivable we could even beat the participation of the inaugural World Championship.


Quote:
I will be on a cruise with my family from December 21 to December 28, which, if I did the math right, means I will not be available any of Week 6.  Looking at the competition, I am confident this will be a moot point, :-(  but I still think it is rather strange to have a tournament over Christmas vacation.  Am I the only person who will have trouble playing around Christmas time?  Has this not been a problem in the past?


Last year the championship was decided on December 18th, and everyone except me and Belbo was finished the week before.  We did play a showcase game on the 23rd, but it didn't matter to the outcome.  The new format ensures there will be no irrelevant games, though, so holiday conflicts are more likely to be a problem this year.

Also there will be more rounds.   By my rough calculation, an eleven-player FDE tournament takes six or seven rounds, and that number edges up for every additional participant.  On the other hand, after five rounds it should be down to the last two players, so not everyone will be inconvenienced.

I find that the holidays make it easier for me to schedule a game.  This partly because my family knows they come in second to Arimaa, and I would interrupt whatever I was doing with them to play in the WC.  But even apart from that, my family activities aren't usually like work, with an uninterrupted 8-hour chunk that nixes any games.  When I'm on vacation it actually seems easier to find 30 time slots that would work out, like on the 23rd last year when I was free the whole day.  Then again, I wasn't on a cruise ship!

Anyway, you can still be World Champion.  Just win your first five games, forfeit the sixth to let one player catch up, and come back for a dramatic seventh-round triumph!


Quote:
It looks like my goal of 2 wins is going to be very challenging. :-/


No kidding.  This is a killer tournament.  I'm just hoping the number of participants is odd (and I can avoid losing all my rating points to 99of9 until it starts) so that I get a first-round bye: that's the only easy game anyone is going to get.  

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 3rd, 2005, 4:05pm

on 11/03/05 at 15:03:20, MrBrain wrote:
Perhaps an e-mail should be sent to those registered on the site.  I didn't realize registrations were going on until I happened to pop in right now.


Ahh, but you mean to say you still aren't registered, even though you do realize now?  ;)  Seriously, although your deflated rating means you would get terrible pairings, it still would be your best shot at some slow games.  Plus it is free.

Anyway, I think Omar did send out an e-mail to everyone when the registration opened, but that was long enough ago that a second mailing wouldn't be out of order.  (Omar, are you philosophically opposed to mailing more than once per event?)  In a current e-mail we could mention that eleven people have already signed up:  It might inspire a few more folks to jump on the bandwagon if they knew it wasn't just a tiny club of guys playing.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by RonWeasley on Nov 4th, 2005, 8:05am
One unspoken subtext here is that everybody hopes Arimanator and blue_22 can play.  Their experience and diversity of style make them icons in this community.   Yes, there are good reasons for other players to enter, but from a spectator's point of view, these two belong with the other top players.

Unfortunately I can't schedule time to play this one.  For the usual lame reasons.  What I really need is a supply of Felix Felicis potion.  Then I'd be lucky enough to get time to play.  See you all in the postals!

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 4th, 2005, 12:19pm

on 11/03/05 at 16:05:15, Fritzlein wrote:
Ahh, but you mean to say you still aren't registered, even though you do realize now?  ;)


Mr. Brain is in!  We're up to twelve!  This tournament just keeps getting better...

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 10th, 2005, 9:55am
There are a couple of days left to register, so I am still hopeful more people will sign up, but if we end up playing with exactly twelve participants, the byes will be somewhat predictable.
RoundNo lossesOne lossTwo losses
1660
2363
3246
4138
5A039
5B1110

There will be no byes the first two rounds.  Going into the third round, there will be three players with two wins and no losses; the highest rated of these will get a bye.  There will be no byes the fourth and fifth rounds.

Going into the sixth round there two possibilities

(A) There are three players left, each with one loss.  The bye goes to the highest-rated player, unless he was the one who got the third-round bye, in which case the bye goes to the next highest-rated played who is left.  The player with the bye plays the winner of the other two for the championship.

(B) There is one undefeated player left, and one player with one loss.  There will be no more byes, because only two players remain.  The undefeated player needs to win once for the championship, while the other player needs to win twice in a row.

To summarize, anyone who wins six games is the World Champion, no matter where they are seeded and no matter which round they lose in, as long as they don't lose twice.  Either one or two players will get a bye and thus have a chance to win with only five victories.  The byes are based partly on the tournament itself rather than purely on seeding: you have be winning to get a bye.

The whole tournament structure is more fair than traditional double-elimination with 12 players, where the top four seeds get a first-round bye and only need to win four times to become champion through the winners' bracket, but someone who isn't in the top four seeds and who loses the first round must win seven times to become champion through the loser's bracket.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by 99of9 on Nov 10th, 2005, 9:56pm
That seems a fairly good structure for 12 players.  Now I just have to hope that someone can beat you in the first two rounds ;-) to give me a week off if I make it through myself.  Go Mr Brain!

Omar I have a request for the prediction contest.  I remember last time it was a little frustrating having 5% increments on the prediction choices.  Especially near 0% and near 100%, 1% starts to matter a lot.  I wonder if all integers between 90% and 100% could be included in the choices?  (I'd be even happier with all integers between 50% and 100%, but I realise the way you set it up is not really compatible with this, because we didn't type a number in, we selected from a list.)

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 11th, 2005, 6:28pm
I see grey_0x2A is in.  Awesome!  Not only do we have 13 registered, but I think this ensures us 14, since Paul said he would register if necessary to make it an even number.  Either someone else will register, or Paul will step up to make sure there is no first-round bye.  And if all 14 play, it will be the biggest World Championship ever as well as the best ever.  Yay!

It is much harder to work out the byes with 14 players than it was with 12, because in the second round someone who is 1-0 will play someone who is 0-1.  Thus we can't tell in advance whether there will be three or four eliminations in round two.

After three rounds, however, there will have been exactly seven eliminations, so a bye is certain in round four.
RoundNo lossesOne lossTwo losses
1770
2A383
2B464
3257
4A149
4B2210
5Aa0410
5Ab1211
5B1211

By round 5 there are several possibilities, some involving a bye and some not.  The tournament can no longer finish in 6 rounds, as was formerly possible; now it will take 7 or 8.   By my best guesstimate, it seems possible for there to be only one bye awarded, but also possible for as many as five to be awarded, one each in rounds 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.

I don't think five wins can win this tournament any more, even for a player who gets a bye; six wins now seem necessary.  (But maybe it is possible that if many byes are awarded that one player will get two byes, so in that case five wins could be enough after all.)   I don't think anyone could be required to win seven times for the trophy, because the tournament can't go eight rounds without the eventual champion getting a bye some time.  If that calculation is correct, then one thing hasn't changed from the 12-player format: If you win six times you are Champion of the World!

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Ryan_Cable on Nov 12th, 2005, 4:05am
I think registration ends in less than 24 hours.  Maybe someone should send Paul an email letting him know we have an odd number of players.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by PMertens on Nov 12th, 2005, 4:58am
did I call this "very small" ??  ;D

now thats going to be a lot of fun ...

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 12th, 2005, 7:53am

on 11/12/05 at 04:58:32, PMertens wrote:
now thats going to be a lot of fun ...


You can say that again.  Acheron has signed up, so now we are 14.  If we get #15 in the next few hours, we presumably get Paul to make 16!

I just noticed a potential problem: Acheron and MrBrain have the same rating.  In that case, which one gets seeded higher?  Who is the tournament director for resolving such issues?  If it were up to me, I would clarify the pairing rules to say, after the "further ties broken by pre-tournament rating" to say "still further ties broken randomly".

Also, I have another regret about the pairing rules.  In the second round there will be seven 1-0 players.  Six of them will play each other in three pairs.  The seventh will have to play someone who is 0-1.  The way the rules are now, the 1-0 player is paired with the lowest rated 0-1 player.  I feel this is not in keeping with the spirit of the pairing.  If you can't play someone whose record is as good as yours, you should have to play the highest-rated player with a worse record.

Oh, well, the format is obviously experimental, and this year's experience can be used to make things run more smoothly next year.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Ryan_Cable on Nov 12th, 2005, 7:14pm
The situation where both the undefeated and single loss groups are odd does seem to be in need of a fix for next year.  If I understand it correctly, for the 14 player case, in the second round, the fourth ranked winner would play the last ranked looser.  This is very harsh for the looser, but the part that is most out of touch with the spirit of the tournament is that the fourth ranked winner gets a weaker opponent than the top three winners.  For the 15 player case it is the fifth ranked player who gets this lucky pairing.

I only see two ways to avoid this:  To pair highest ranked undefeated player that does not have a bye with lowest ranked single looser, which almost certainly dooms the last ranked player to a crushing defeat, or to give byes to the undefeated player that does not already have a bye and to the top ranked single looser, making it possible for a single round to have 3 byes.

I think solution 1, though harsh, is probably best.  I believe the two goals of this format are to give the best chance of picking the player with the top true rating within a limited number of rounds and to never penalize a player for having a higher rating.  Solution 1 meets both of these goals, but solution 2 is likely to add rounds to the tournament.  Letting one of the undefeated players play the top ranked looser is clearly wrong, because the top ranked looser is heavily penalized over the second ranked looser who would get to play the lowest ranked looser.

Another problem for the 15 player case is that the top ranked player gets the least useful bye.  In round one, seed 1 gets a bye and seed 2 gets to play seed 15.  In round two, seed 2 gets a bye (assuming there is not an amazing upset) and seed 1 has to play the lowest ranked winner (roughly seed 8).  In the third round, if seed 3 has managed to defeat seed 14 and the second lowest ranked winner (roughly seed 7) and if four players were eliminated after round two as is most likely, seed 3 would get a powerful bye.

One way to solve both of these problems is if we added fictional players to the end of the rankings to pad the seeding up to 2^n.  These fictional players would always loose to higher ranked players whether real or fictional.  If we have 2^n- x players (where x<2^(n-1)), in round one the top x players would get effective byes, and all of the fictional players would get 0-1 records.  After round one, only players with a single defeat will have the opportunity to play a fictional player.  The number of undefeated players would always be a power of 2 so the only time it might be necessary to give a true bye is when there is one or fewer undefeated players left.  This solution is likely to add at least one round to the tournament.

A simpler (and I think better) way to solve the problem is to assign byes to the player with the most defeats that is still in the tournament, with ties broken in favor of the person who lost in the latest round, with ties broken in favor of highest pre-tournament ranking.  This top ranked looser is still in worse shape than anyone in the undefeated bracket, since they can choose to take a week off by forfeiting and still end up in the same place as the looser who received a bye, or if they (wisely) play their game, they have the chance to stay in the undefeated bracket.  Since there is almost always someone falling down into the single looser group, the people getting the later byes (which are likely to be more useful), will almost always have better performances and/or higher ratings than those getting the earlier byes.  It would still be necessary to find a fix for the case where there is an odd number of undefeated players, but I think solution 1 from above would still work.

After we see how the tournament works out, we will have a year to consider all sorts of changes.

PS Paul and BlackKnight have registered, giving us 16 players and making much of this moot unless someone else signs up.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Fritzlein on Nov 12th, 2005, 7:52pm
Sixteen!  Fantastic!
RoundNo lossesOne lossTwo losses
1880
2484
3268
41411
51213
6A0313
6B1113

If noboby signs up to make it seventeen participants or more, then the bye picture is much clearer: Noboby gets a bye until round 5, and the person who gets it then will have entirely earned it by being the only undefeated player left.  Anyone can get the bye by winning the first four games.

In round 6 the higher-ranked of the two in the loser's bracket gets the bye, while the lower-ranked has the sad task of playing the lone remaining undefeated.  However, if the lower-ranked fellow does manage to win, he is rewarded with a bye in round 7, and will play the winner of the round 7 game for all the marbles in round 8.

If one player goes undefeated, he will win in seven rounds with the two byes in the tournament going to him and the second-place finisher.  If nobody goes undefeated, the tournament will last eight rounds, and will end with byes awarded to either the top two or the top three finishers.

Ryan, I did consider that early-round byes are less useful than late-round byes.  However, I still believe the first bye should go to the highest eligible person for several reasons:
(1) Often, there is no guarantee that anyone else will get a bye.  It would be slightly strange if a few lower-ranked players got a bye and the top player never did, forcing him to work harder to win in spite of having the higher seed.
(2) Sometimes it will work out so that all remaining players have received a bye, and a second bye must be awarded to someone.  The best performer should have the first shot at the second bye.
(3) Although a late-round bye is more useful, it's a handicap to have to win an extra game to become eligible for it.  For example in the sixteen-player tournament, the top performer gets the "least useful" bye in round 5, while two other players are getting knocked out without having had a chance at a bye.  It's true that the bye which goes to the second-best performer in round 6 is nicer, but the player who got it presumably had about a 50% chance of getting knocked out in round 5.  And the third bye in round seven is clearly the "most useful" bye, since one of the top two players will be eliminating the other in the meantime, but presumably the player who got the round 7 bye had about a 75% chance of being eliminated in round 5 or 6 without ever having had a bye.

Well, I would need to see how it works out in practice in a lot of different situations, but in general a bye in the hand seems more valuable than a potential bye later on.

As far as the pairings within the rounds, I agree that there are issues when the number of players is each bracket odd.  I wanted something algorithmic and simple, but sometimes there will exist alternate pairings more in the spirit of the tourney than the ones produced by the algorithm.  Therefore, while I'm not sure there is a better way of assigning byes, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a better pairing algorithm.

P.S. Unless I am mistaken, the sixteen-player tournament is precisely egalitarian in the sense that for every player six wins are necessary to become champion, and for every player six wins are sufficient to become chapmion.  The assignment of byes no longer affects the requirements: Win six games before losing two.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by Ryan_Cable on Nov 12th, 2005, 11:37pm

on 11/12/05 at 19:52:22, Fritzlein wrote:
Well, I would need to see how it works out in practice in a lot of different situations, but in general a bye in the hand seems more valuable than a potential bye later on.


I think it depends on the situation.  A fourth or fifth round bye in the hand is probably worth more than a later bye in the bush, but a first round bye is clearly worth less than a second or third round bye in the bush with a rating distribution like the one in this tournament.  One possibility is to give byes under the current system and allow players to decline a bye to maintain their bye eligibility for later rounds.  This might give too much of an advantage to the top seed though.


on 11/12/05 at 19:52:22, Fritzlein wrote:
As far as the pairings within the rounds, I agree that there are issues when the number of players is each bracket odd.  I wanted something algorithmic and simple, but sometimes there will exist alternate pairings more in the spirit of the tourney than the ones produced by the algorithm.  Therefore, while I'm not sure there is a better way of assigning byes, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a better pairing algorithm.


I agree; the pairing is the more important thing to fix.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by omar on Nov 15th, 2005, 5:05pm

on 11/10/05 at 21:56:28, 99of9 wrote:
That seems a fairly good structure for 12 players.  Now I just have to hope that someone can beat you in the first two rounds ;-) to give me a week off if I make it through myself.  Go Mr Brain!

Omar I have a request for the prediction contest.  I remember last time it was a little frustrating having 5% increments on the prediction choices.  Especially near 0% and near 100%, 1% starts to matter a lot.  I wonder if all integers between 90% and 100% could be included in the choices?  (I'd be even happier with all integers between 50% and 100%, but I realise the way you set it up is not really compatible with this, because we didn't type a number in, we selected from a list.)


Sorry Toby, I didn't see your request in time. I'll see if it seems easy enough I'll change it, otherwise I don't want to risk breaking the system now that it's being used.

Title: Re: World Championship format for 2006
Post by 99of9 on Nov 15th, 2005, 6:30pm
No problem.  Fritz and I are having a discussion about this on another thread, and he doesn't think it is all that useful anyway.  Now that the comp has started I wouldn't bother changing it for this year.



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