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Title: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2012, 2:53pm I think we better start this discussion early so that if the community wants to help with organizing it, we have plenty of time to discuss and prepare. I was very happy with how the 2012 WC went and would be willing to do it this way again. However, if the community also wants to be involved with organizing the event to allow more people to participate, I am open to that as well. Although the high registration fee helped to keep the tournament small enough for me to manage, the method of prize distribution does have a little problem which I realized afterwards. If there had been a lot of contributions made to the WC prize fund then the high registration fee would not be enough to keep the tournament small. Even winning one game would have guaranteed a bigger return than the registration fee. Thus more people would have joined driving the prize fund even higher, lowering the average strength of the field and providing incentive for even more to join. So I have to change the method of prize distribution or limit the number of players that can enter. I like the prize distribution method and would be more inclined to limiting the number of players. If I have to run the tournament again in 2013, I will probably limit it to eight players with the players who contributed most to the prize fund and who contributed earlier having a higher priority of being in the tournament. Anyways that's what I would change for next year if I have to run the tournament again. If the community is also willing to help with organizing the event then we can have a WC that allows more people to enter. We can go back to using something like the Open Swiss to determine who plays in the final WC tournament or maybe have several feeder tournaments throughout the year where the winner of each tournament is guaranteed a spot in the final WC tournament. I'm open to suggestions. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Mar 22nd, 2012, 3:52pm I know how I want the 2013 World Championship to be. I want it to be HUGE! I truly believe we could get 64 players with an open format. Having the largest Arimaa tournament ever is a far bigger draw to me than raising the monetary stakes. On the other hand, I agree that this year's World Championship was also a success in a different way, moving towards professionalism rather than mass participation. There was high drama and many spectators. We could do it again and I wouldn't cry. Let me tell anyone who (like me) wants a massive tournament that it isn't going to happen without a major commitment from someone to run it, and it isn't going to happen without a lot of volunteer help in addition to a dedicated TD. Omar's offer means to some extent that if you have a vision you can make it reality by volunteering, but also to some extent that if you aren't going to volunteer, your vision isn't going to happen. I'm at a stage in my life where I can't make that commitment to be TD for a 64-player Arimaa World Championship, so if push comes to shove, I'm just going to kick back and enjoy the elite event as a spectator and commentator with whatever time I happen to have available. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Mar 22nd, 2012, 3:55pm on 03/22/12 at 14:53:05, omar wrote:
I don't think you want to auction off the World Championship to the highest bidder. What if hanzack and chessandgo weren't in the top eight offers? Absurd! If you are going to limit it to eight, do it by rating, entirely separately from how you set the entry fee and/or prize money. If you happen to exclude the next hanzack based on his rating, it will be a tragedy, but a smaller tragedy than excluding any skilled player based on money. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Hippo on Mar 22nd, 2012, 4:45pm I would like huge triple elimination turnament as well. What is nice in that format is that having 5 times as many participants prolog it roughly by 2 rounds ... even the three lose bracket fighting for 3rd place will not prolong the turnament. Of course there would be problems with coverage of such many games and the first rounds may not be that much exciting, but starting from the third round it could be very interesting for enybody to watch. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 22nd, 2012, 5:01pm on 03/22/12 at 15:55:27, Fritzlein wrote:
Yes, finding ways to limit the entry is always tricky. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Mar 22nd, 2012, 5:10pm 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 25th, 2012, 8:55am Thanks aaaa. I'll consider that for next year. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 25th, 2012, 11:31am OK here is a proposal. How about the WC finals having 8 players with the top player from the previous tournament having a seat in the finals. The other seven seats would be filled by running a series of seven single elimination tournaments. The first place winner from each of these tournament gets a seat in the WC finals. The WC finals would be an FTE as it is now. Even if each feeder tournament had 32 players it could be finished in 5 weeks. If you place first in one of the feeder tournaments you can't play in subsequent ones. All other players can try again up to seven times to get a seat in the WC finals. There would be a $10 entry fee each time you enter a feeder tournament. The entry fee would be added to the WC prize fund and is non-refundable. The community can be involved with organizing the seven feeder tournaments and different people can be in charge of each of the seven tournaments so that the burden of running the tournaments is disbursed. For those running the tournament for the first time, I can guide them through the process. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Mar 25th, 2012, 2:28pm Omar, are you completely uninterested in the Arimaa World Championship being (as it was in 2011) a promotional tool to get people who are on the margins of Arimaa to jump in and start playing each other? I admit, your latest proposal gives everyone a chance to be Arimaa World Champion via a series of victories over the board, which is good, but the format does nothing to tap into the tremendous energy and growth potential we saw in the 2011 tournament. Having seven single-elimination feeders meets the demands of having an open format while spreading out the work so you aren't overwhelmed. But even though it is open to everyone, I doubt that we would get a large turnout. Why would lower-rated players pay $10 for a tournament in which they will likely be knocked out in a lopsided game in the first round? How is that fun? Do you expect them to try seven times and pay $70 for seven games, all of them huge mismatches? Single elimination is the worst possible format from a participatory standpoint. 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. But, that said, I've come to the point where I'm willing to throw in the towel on an everybody-plays type of World Championship. If you don't want to focus on participation, let's just forget about it. Instead let's have a big Open Classic tournament that has nothing to do with the World Championship. Let it be a seven-round Swiss, no eliminations, with a minimal entry fee of $5, not distributed as prize money, but donated to arimaa.com for hosting the tournament. It's fine if there are no prizes; people will pay $5 simply for the pleasure of seven organized games, most of them not mismatches. Let's see if we can get people to jump on the Open Classic bandwagon even though it won't have the cachet of being the official designation of the world's best Arimaa player. I'm going to stop giving recommendations for the World Championship format, and instead recommend that you do whatever you want to get your elite 8-player field, so that you don't need to waste any more energy on that and you can instead start spending energy on getting people involved again. It seems like player participation used to be more of your focus. You had participatory events like Player of the Month, where the whole point was simply to encourage HvH games. And remember how you restructured the Postal Championship to be a Postal Mixer, so it could be just for fun, everyone could compete at whatever level they wanted, and we could maximize participation? Now I see in another thread you want to make the Postal Mixer more about prize money for whoever wins more games, i.e. more like a Championship again. And remember how you said when we were discussing the format for the 2012 World Championship that lower-rated players didn't need to participate in the World Championship because they would have their own events tailored to give them evenly-matched games, but then you didn't organize even one such event all year, and put all your energy into the elite World Championship? Arimaa is such a great game that participation is probably going to grow whether or not that's what you are promoting high on your agenda, but still, I would be happy if your emphasis was more like it used to be three or five years ago. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Mar 25th, 2012, 4:57pm As I mentioned in an earlier thread, I liked the old Open Classic / World Championship format. I'll make these suggestions: 1. Longer Open Classic, perhaps 8-11 rounds. This may mean starting in December rather than January and I have no idea how everyone will react to that. 2. Two or three week break between the Open Classic & World Championship. This will build more anticipation for the WC Finals and will make the qualifier feel like a different event than the World Championship. It will also give us targets dates for winter vacations, rather than 3-4 months of non-stop games. (Or summer vacation for southern hemisphere players?) 3. Specified number of victories to qualify for the Finals. For example, 7 victories in a ten-round Swiss would be similar to a quadruple-elimination Open Classic, except with a minimum game guarantee for all players. 4. Perhaps a single-elimination finals but I don't mind double- or triple-elimination if there aren't too many players. I'll learn a lot about the Tournament Management Tool from the event I'm running this year. As long as I have enough free time next winter (I'm optimistic that I will) then I'd be happy to volunteer as an assistant for the 2013 WC to reduce Omar's workload. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by 99of9 on Mar 26th, 2012, 12:21am As usual I agree with Fritz and Adanac. To me this year's structure seems strategically counterproductive for the arimaa community as a whole. IMO more human players contesting the WC (or directly connected prelim event):
Newcomers who get to try their hand against the masters are the ones most likely to believe they can become masters one day. It was impressive that hanzack stepped up for it this year, but I think he is an anomaly in many ways! Personally, I am again unlikely to enter if it's all money focused. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by chessandgo on Mar 26th, 2012, 3:58am I'm also for a larger player pool tournament. Instead of a longer prelimariy phase as Greg suggests, why not a "short" prelims and then a consolation bracket running in parallel of the top-8 finals so that everyone gets their share of games? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by thomastanck on Mar 26th, 2012, 7:02am I have no preference for more/less players, but certainly more players would mean allowing more people to participate. Also, I'm all for the consolation bracket idea that we once mentioned in the chatroom. Everyone that got eliminated gets into another bracket and gets to compete for the lower places before the actual championship ends. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by 99of9 on Mar 26th, 2012, 7:49am I'm not really sure consolation is the way to get more games in. Once the chance of winning is gone, the motivation of some players may drop, so I think that bracket would have lots of forfeits. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Mar 26th, 2012, 7:59am on 03/26/12 at 03:58:02, chessandgo wrote:
In fact, there doesn't need to be a sharp cutoff for when the consolation bracket starts. This isn't a new proposal, but I'll recap what I said before in case not everyone remembers. We could play floating elimination with three (or any number of) lives and have the consolation run in parallel starting as soon as anyone got eliminated from winning the championship. After each round, the newly-eliminated players from the winners bracket would seamlessly feed into the consolation bracket. It could be paired exactly like the main event except with a dividing line: someone with three or more losses couldn't be paired against someone with two or fewer losses. People would be free to drop out after elimination, but also would be free to keep playing until the championship was decided. If the championship ran ten rounds, like it did this year, then everyone who entered would have a chance at ten games (or nine if they got stuck with a bye). The keeps the seriousness of an elimination format with the desirability of everyone who pays a registration fee getting a lot of games. The reason to do this instead of using the Open Classic as a preliminary is to avoid the specter of manipulation in the last round of the Open Classic. Two potential problems were (1) someone already guaranteed a spot in the finals might purposely lose to get a more favorable pairing in finals via a lower seed or (2) someone already eliminated might purposely lose as a favor to his opponent who needs a final-round win to qualify. The solution to Omar being overworked (again not new) would be to not provide commentary/recording until the winners bracket was down to eight players, and to have a community volunteer(s) deal with all pairing and (re)scheduling issues, so Omar would be responsible only for ironing out server failures. on 03/26/12 at 07:49:27, 99of9 wrote:
Yes, that could be a problem, but it might not. We'd have to see how people would behave. Note that in the 2011 Open Classic, even though three losses eliminated people from contention to be World Champion, not a single person dropped out after losing for the third time. Note also that in the 2012 World Championship, where everyone knew the format going in, at least two people were agitating for more games after they got eliminated. Ocmiente in particular wanted some even games against people who ended near him in the rankings, but whom he didn't get to play in his three rounds. There is a potential for many dropouts if we make the transition from "contender" to "also-ran" more explicit, but also potential for large participation to keep on chugging until the very end. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Dolus on Mar 27th, 2012, 2:19pm To me it sounds like one of the biggest issues in the WC is running it. Alone, it's a lot of effort for Omar. Too much to do everything by himself and keep it as an open tournament with 64+ participants. Most players want a large open tournament, and I do as well, but managing it is the difficulty. Adanac suggested that he would be willing to help next year, and as he's going to be hosting a tournament now, he'll gain the experience needed to do so. But I also don't think a participator should serve a major role in playing. It's a lot of unnecessary stress and distractions to the gaming itself. Some help from Adanac will be good, but Omar will certainly need more help than that. I think a good example is the AWL which is run by mostly MegaJester. It frees up Omar of the responsibility, but leaves him available if needed. Since MegaJester is not one of the players, it's much more feasible for him to help out with the tournament. I would like to someday play in an open AWC, but would much rather help run one if it meant being able to have one exist. I am open to learning the Tournament Tool we have, and if I'm able, maybe contributing to automating/simplifying the tournament director work. I would like to do what I can to help make the world championships an open tournament. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Mar 27th, 2012, 3:25pm You are right, Dolus, that it is ideal to have someone running the event who isn't playing in it, as megajester's generosity with the Arimaa World League has shown us. I was wondering whether it would be too much of a fantasy to hope for the same for the Arimaa World Championship; it is extremely generous of you to offer to be the Tournament Director, even if that means not being a player. Volunteer spirit such as you are showing is, I believe, the only way a large-scale tournament is going to happen. (...that plus Omar feeling OK about only some of the games having broadcast and recorded commentary) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 28th, 2012, 12:46pm Good to see the discussion going again. Karl, don't assume I am not interested in more participation. I'm definitely interested in more participation, but as I've said many times before, a big tournament would require more time than I can give. After Karl posted this: Quote:
A few days went by without anyone saying they would be interested to help. So my proposal was an attempt to see if breaking it into multiple smaller tournaments would make it easier for more people to help out. Thanks Dolus for offering to help. Karl it would have been good if you waited a while to see what others would say before giving your opinion on that proposal. OK, here's another proposal. A single FTE with no limit on the number of participants. Additional games will be played to determine 2nd and 3rd place. Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording and even those will depend on availability of commentators and recorders. There will be a non-refundable registration fee of $20 which will be used to provide incentive to get more people to help with organizing the tournament. The prize fund will come from contributions and sponsors. Here are the various roles that are need: Tournament Coordinator - responsible for operating the tournament management tool to pair, schedule and setup the games; update the announcements regarding the event in the gameroom. Game Referees - responsible to be present at the games they are assigned to and intervene if needed to restart or resume a game or contact the TD in case the incident needs a ruling. Tournament Director - responsible to make the final ruling if a disputable incident occurs during the event; may not play in the event; does not need to be present at the games, but does need to be on call during the games and be available by phone to the Game Referees in case a situation arises that needs a ruling. Commentators - provide live commentary during final games. Radio operators - operate the radio during games that have commentators. A/V Recorders - record a video of the games that have commentators. Wiki Recorders - maintain the event wiki pages and write game summaries for final games and other games they feel should be covered, such as upsets. Promoter - responsible to increase the awareness of the event to increase registrations and viewership; post about the event and final games on the Arimaa twitter account and other social media sites; post about the event and final games on BGG forums and other appropriate forums; prepare announcement emails about the event and finals. Fund Raiser - responsible to find sponsors and encourage contributors; should attempt to increase the prize fund as much as possible. People who help with these roles will still mostly be volunteers since even with the registration fee used to provide an incentive it won't be enough compensation for the amount of time and effort they are putting in. Here is how the registration fee will be used. This might need to be adjusted depending on supply and demand as we get more experience. But here is something to get started: Tournament Coordinator: 3% Game Referees: 25% Tournament Director: 2% Commentators: 25% Radio Operators: 5% AV Recorders: 5% Wiki Recorders: 20% Promoter: 8% Fund Raiser: 7% For roles that have multiple people; such as Game Referees the percent of registration fee set aside for that role will be divided based on number of games they helped in. For example if there were two Radio Operators and one help in 6 games and the other helped in 4 games then they would get 60 and 40 percent of the 5%. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by clyring on Mar 28th, 2012, 2:32pm on 03/28/12 at 12:46:42, omar wrote:
"Only games when there are 8 or less players will have commentary and recording ..." While I understand if you will not be doing the commentary for these games yourself, I would not remove the possibility from other potential commentator's minds. I would be happy to commentate some of the earlier games. on 03/28/12 at 12:46:42, omar wrote:
on 03/28/12 at 12:46:42, omar wrote:
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Mar 28th, 2012, 3:10pm on 03/28/12 at 14:32:31, clyring wrote:
I agree with this. 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. Quote:
One of the jobs is Fundraiser so I think that person will be responsible for building the prize fund for the players. At least I believe it was Omar's intent for the entry fee to pay for the volunteers and the Fundraiser to gather up the prizes for players. Personally, the roles I would volunteer for are Tournament Coordinator, Commentator, Wiki Recorder. I would have been willing to do these tasks for free, and I'm not sure what the reaction from the community will be regarding shifting the money incentive from players to volunteers. :-/ But I understand the motivation if Omar wants to build a larger network of volunteers while addressing the criticism that the past tournaments have been too money-focused for players. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Mar 28th, 2012, 3:30pm on 03/28/12 at 12:46:42, omar wrote:
OK, my mistake. I jumped to that conclusion based on your previous posts. I'm sorry. Quote:
I will try to be more positive in the future. Anyone else who has an opinion about the seven-single-elimination qualifier proposal, please post it. I promise not to rant at you the way I ranted at Omar. :) Quote:
Just to clarify, is the workload your only hesitancy in having a big World Championship? For example, if we followed Adanac's proposal of having the Open Classic continue to pick the qualifiers for the World Championship, except that community volunteers would run the Open Classic, would that be OK with you? Or would you prefer having seven single-elimination qualifiers run by the community? I ask because it seems that running seven qualifiers would be more work for the community than running one Open Classic. If you weren't expressing a preference for the seven-single-elimination-qualifiers format over the 2011 Open Classic format, then let me apologize again for misreading your intentions. Quote:
I think you are getting at something really important by giving a whopping percentage to the "game referees" rather than the tournament director or coordinator. The major chore in running a tournament isn't running the pairings and running the scheduler. You have automated that bit, so it scales now. Also the major chore isn't making rulings on awkward, never-before-seen circumstances. It doesn't happen very often. Instead the major chore is being around all the time, which can't be automated. There are lots of little glitches that don't necessarily take a ton of time to resolve, but need to be resolved in a timely fashion before they become big glitches. For example, supposing the official game window disappears before any moves are sent but both players are present and want to play: if someone is on the spot to say, "Start a new game at time control X and I will count it for the official game," then the issue goes away. Otherwise the issue doesn't go away. It is simply too much burden to ask a single person to be present in the game room all weekend every weekend for more than two months. However, I am not sure it is necessary to have have someone present at all times. In reality many games are played start to finish without a hitch. Let me suggest that instead it would be enough to have a rotation of tournament coordinators who are "on call" throughout the tournament, preferably distributed between hemispheres. I said in an earlier post that I couldn't be the tournament coordinator, but I do think I could volunteer to be on call for significant chunks of every weekend, because I doubt it would result in too many calls. I could be doing my homework assignments until someone pinged me for assistance. If there were enough people who could volunteer to be on call in a similar way, we would be able to cover the whole tournament. Quote:
In my opinion, all of these roles are optional. Desirable, yes. Contributing to enjoyment, yes. Mandatory, no. I make this distinction because there could be a situation where we have enough volunteers to run the tournament and enough volunteers that someone is always on call, but not enough volunteers to cover all of these other roles. What decision would we make then? Would we call off the participatory tournament and go back to a deluxe eight-player tournament instead? For me the decision is easy. I would say, go for the big tournament. Whatever gets done in the optional roles is great, but the most important thing by far is to get people in the gameroom and playing against each other. I understand, though, if other people feel differently. I'm not trying to prevent an open discussion about priorities; that's what the thread is for. Let me also highlight two more roles. (1) Site maintainer (100%) I repeat my suggestion to have a $5 entry fee that goes entirely to Omar. His job is the most essential, and he deserves some thanks for everything he does to give us this tremendous game and tremendous place to play it. (2) Code modification My feeling is that, unless we are going with the Open Classic to guarantee a lot of rounds to everyone, we need to institute a consolation bracket. I don't expect that it would be a ton of work to add a consolation bracket to the current FXE code; simply run the algorithm twice, once as at present and a second time to pair all eliminated players. But without this coding job, the pairing is no longer a click of the mouse, it is a nightmare to do by hand. (OK, a consolation bracket also makes more work for the TD having to withdraw players who want to drop out rather than play on to the end, but that seems well worth the hassle if it enables the majority to keep on rockin'.) Just my $0.02 as always. I'll try not to pitch a fit if people disagree. ::) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by 99of9 on Mar 28th, 2012, 10:50pm on 03/28/12 at 15:30:30, Fritzlein wrote:
To quote yourself: desirable, maybe; mandatory, no. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Mar 29th, 2012, 11:10am on 03/28/12 at 15:30:30, Fritzlein wrote:
If 33-64 players joined each qualifier, we’d need 6 rounds x 7 qualifiers = 42 weeks to complete the whole cycle, and it’s already too late for the 2013 WC. Realistically, we’d probably get fewer than 32 players per qualifier which is a more manageable 35 weeks. It seems more compact, and handles a much larger volume of players, to have an 8 to 12-round Swiss qualifier to accomplish the same objective. However, the community consensus seems to be one big FTE tournament. I’m OK with that, and including a consolation section actually makes the two ideas somewhat similar. The biggest concern I would have with a 15-week World Championship is that my wife will get impatient that every weekend is taken up by Arimaa for 15 weeks in a row. It’s not that big of a deal as I’ve competed in every WC since 2006 without much inconvenience (and we’ve even taken a few vacations in the middle of tournaments along the way) but I’d prefer a qualifier, then a two or three week break, followed by maybe a 6-8 round World Championship final. That’s pretty much how it’s been since 2008 (without the break) and it worked pretty well. The exception, of course, was this past abbreviated WC and it just happened to fall in a year when I was very busy for the first 6 weeks of the year, which was fortunate for me but not so fortunate for people that wanted to participate in a big tournament. Quote:
We’re certainly very fortunate that Omar not only invented Arimaa but then devoted huge resources of time & money into running the website. How about $5 for Omar, $10 for the Volunteer Pool and $5 to buy Arimaa prizes from each $20 entry fee? The prizes could be Tournament pieces, Z-Man Arimaa game, or Arimaa books and T-shirts. These could be raffled off randomly to anyone that completes the tournament without a forfeit. Or, if we run any type of qualifier, these prizes could be raffled off amongst the players that fall 1 victory short of qualification. The Fundraiser could also collect cash prizes or, perhaps, even more gift certificates or Arimaa-related prizes. Quote:
If we don’t get new code for a consolation section by next January then the best work-around would just be a separate event for the consolation section in the Tournament Management Tool. Manually re-creating the first 3 rounds to avoid repeat pairings is all that would be needed and the rest would run automatically. But yes, it’s much easier if the code is written specifically for this purpose :) If we continue to have a Spectator Contest next year, perhaps the appointed Code Modifier could have a 2nd project after completing the FXE consolation section. I’d like to see an extra tie-breaker for predicting which move number will have the first piece capture. I’m not a big fan of having the only tie-breaker go to the first submitter. It’s possible that someone could submit the exact winning move within a few minutes of receiving the e-mail and nobody else will have a shot at winning that game. Perhaps also 50% of prizes going to the top predictor for each game but then 50% split amongst every who guessed the correct player. That way everyone has a chance to win a little money for guessing the right player even if they’re always finishing runner-up on the number of moves. Quote:
Your opinions are always very insightful and certainly worth a lot more than 2 Arimaa Points :D |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Mar 29th, 2012, 12:05pm I like Adanac's proposal of a swiss qualifer that feeds into the finals like has been done in previous years. One twist that I think will address the issue of length would be to award the top finishers from the previous year a bye until the finals. So the top 4 finishers from last year (Chessandgo, Hanzack, Adanac, and Nombril would get byes). Then the top 4-6 finishers in the swiss qualifer would reach the finals which could be double or triple elimination. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Mar 29th, 2012, 12:11pm on 03/29/12 at 11:10:50, Adanac wrote:
I really like the 50/50 idea. Some emphasis on picking the winners and not just about the closest number of moves. Even if it was 60/40 or 70/30 that would be an improvement. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Mar 29th, 2012, 1:48pm The current scheduling code is already trivially usable for a parallel consolation tournament; each round, concatenate the current game history files of both sections, add each non-eliminated player on a separate line and run the code with the argument for the number of lives being big enough to revive everyone else; this will effectively invert the roster with respect to which players are considered for scheduling. This is especially important to prevent pairings in the main tournament from being repeated in the consolation section as much as possible. See here (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=siteIssues;action=display;num=1294850293#10) for more details. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 30th, 2012, 12:24pm on 03/28/12 at 14:32:31, clyring wrote:
Yes, of course there can be commentary on earlier rounds. What I should have said is that you really can't expect commentary until the final rounds and even that is dependent on availability of the commentators. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Mar 30th, 2012, 1:18pm on 03/28/12 at 15:30:30, Fritzlein wrote:
Either format would have been OK with me as long as the community is running it. But it seemed like neither was going to actually happen, so I proposed something else. Quote:
Yep, official games need to have someone around to make sure things go smoothly. That's why I can't handle a big tournament. Quote:
This is probably the same as what I've called a 'Game Referee'. The Game Referee would have access to the tournament management tool to restart or resume a game if for example there was a timeout due to a server problem. Of course the Game Referee has to look at the logs, determine what happened, verify that the case falls within the scope of predefined rules to restart or resume; othewise contact the TD. So I think the Game Referee does need to be present during the game so that spectators and players don't have to track down and notify the person who is on call. Of course, when we have multiple people serving as Game Referees there is the problem of coordinating who covers what games. Quote:
Yes, Tournament Coordinator, Tournament Director and Game Referees are essential to run the tournament. For a big tournament having sufficient Game Referees is critical. Without the other roles though the WC just won't be as glamorous. Quote:
Thanks, but I would rather have people give time than money. If you can't give time and still want to contribute, then just add to the prize fund. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Mar 30th, 2012, 10:48pm Last year, I was a strong supporter of the Swiss/Open followed by the Finals/Elimination round....but... After seeing how this year worked out I've changed my mind. Even though I was troubled by some of the pairings that occurred, they seemed far less important than the major drawback I see in the Swiss system. Depending on the number of entrants, the qualifier tournament has the potential to need to break ties based on opponents' results. I *really* don't like having my opponents games dictate a break point for making/missing the finals. Until we reach a point where we do want multiple qualification opportunities (maybe not 8 with the same format...say something like top two postal mixer, top two from last year, top 4 from Open Classic, etc), the floating elimination gets my vote. Especially with open participation and consolation "bracket" for 2nd and 3rd. Addressing Adanac's point of burnout with having to play *every* week: I agree that it was taxing. I was really happy to get a bye towards the end. Is there room in the schedule to take 1 week off after every 3rd or 4th round? Regarding volunteers: I had started a forum discussion and spreadsheet this year about organizing A/V, wiki, etc, but it seemed there were fewer people involved then I had hoped. We did get a good variety for commentary, but what % of the Wiki coverage did Hippo write? What % of the games were recorded by Omar? ... After posting I didn't follow up... so A. the "paycheck" might motivate more? and/or B. we should have a volunteer coordinator that follows up...specifically asks people for help...etc... Finally, I really don't want to bring this up, because I was never willing to read all of the by-laws for the AWL, but... do we want some sort of committee/organization to make official decisions? Or does Omar still prefer to take our input from these discussions and make the final decision? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Thiagor on Mar 31st, 2012, 3:14am on 03/30/12 at 22:48:06, Nombril wrote:
I completely agree. However, we could fix this problem: Just set the qualification criterion to be winning a certain number of games, as opposed to a certain place on the position table. The only drawback would then be that the number of people qualifying is not fixed, but I guess, as long as this number doesn't vary too widely, it really doesn't matter much. So I'd be happy with either this system or a floating elimination as qualifier (the difference seems to be minor anyway). By the way, I'm also willing to help with the organisation next year, e.g. as a game referee or as a wiki recorder, although I will make a definite commitment only closer to the event, when I know better how much time I have available. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 1st, 2012, 9:35am on 03/30/12 at 22:48:06, Nombril wrote:
I have noticed that a major motivator for volunteer effort seems to be a sense of ownership. Three examples are the Continuous Tournament that I ran, the Arimaa World League that megajester founded, and the Ironman Tournament that Adanac is getting started. All three of us volunteered a lot of time, and Adanac and I additionally put up a noticeable amount of money as well. Common to all three cases was each of us pursuing a concept that we personally thought was cool. I was inspired by the idea of an infinite party that you could join or drop out of at any time, but with officially scheduled games, standings, and prizes. Megajester was inspired by the concept of playing for a club as in soccer leagues, and envisioned the crazy loyalty that self-chosen teams engender. Adanac is inspired by the epic nature of long knockout matches, and imagines they can have a historic importance for Arimaa like they did for chess. The critical point is that we each throw our energy into our own vision. I was rather skeptical of megajester's proposed format (although it turned out fantastic) and similarly dubious as to Adanac's current proposal (although it will likely be just as epic as he expects). Probably other people thought my Continuous Tournament format was weird, but I gave it my sincere effort and I think it worked out well. Omar's 2012 Arimaa World Championship was similar in that he was pursuing his vision of what it should be like. Yes, he was present to record video on almost every single game, which is a huge time commitment. It makes sense because that's part of his dream. But the lukewarm participation from other volunteers (and near disappearance of community contributions to the prize fund) probably reflects the fact that the rest of the community didn't feel it was their vision of an Arimaa World Championship. I definitely don't think you can conclude that the volunteer spirit "isn't there" because people didn't fill in their names on the spreadsheet you set up. I think it is more a matter of people buying in to the event and getting excited about helping make it happen. I love large audiences. I love live commentary and permanent video recordings thereof. I understand the urge to have a small number of high-quality games, and put all the energy into promoting a spectator base. That's not a bad thing. But I love large participation even more. The core of a gaming community is always going to be people who play the game. If we can't have everything we want, if we have to make a choice between where our finite energy is spent, I would be prefer it be spent on promoting the player base. I think the trick here is not to decide between my vision and Omar's vision (and/or anyone else's vision), but rather to gauge what will get people fired up. It's really easy for me to call for volunteers to make my vision happen, or for Omar to call for volunteers to make his vision happen. But who is going to volunteer to drum up sponsors and collect money for a larger prize fund just because Omar is dreaming of sponsorship? Who is going to volunteer to be on call for large chunks of thirteen consecutive weekends because I am dreaming of a 64-player World Championship? In light of these reflections, I want to ask a slightly different question than, "What chores will you sign up to do for the 2013 World Championship?" Instead I want to ask, "Is there a dream 2013 World Championship that inspires you so much that you are willing to pitch in to make it reality?" Share your vision and excitement. Quote:
The only workable solution is for Omar to be benevolent dictator. I believe, however, that he understands the importance of having the enthusiasm of the community behind him, and what that implies for how he takes community input. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 1st, 2012, 10:11am on 03/31/12 at 03:14:59, Thiagor wrote:
To apply your idea to the Open Classic as we had it before, we could add a column to our tournament size to indicate the number of people who qualify for the final. players rds wins qualifiers ------- --- ---- ---------- 1- 8 0 0 1-8 9-11 3 1 8-10 12-15 4 2 8-12 16-23 5 3 8-12 24-35 6 4 8-12 36-55 7 5 8-13 56-88 8 6 8-13 89+ 9 7 8+ Note that I set the breakpoint in the number of rounds so as to ensure at least 8 qualifiers, but if we wanted it to be an average of 8 instead, with a range of 6-10, we could set different breakpoints. Unfortunately, this doesn't address my concern about there being motivation to throw final-round games. Both scenarios of intentionally getting a lower seed to avoid a particular pairing and intentionally losing when you are eliminated anyway are alive and well even when more qualifiers are allowed in. On the other hand, the notion of time off between two distinct phases has some merit in my mind. But would both phases be in the new year? We could be looking at 7-8 weeks of Open Classic and 6-8 weeks of (double-elimination) finals. Put a break in between and we might not crown a champion until May! Another merit of the floating triple elimination plus consolation bracket is slightly greater efficiency. Even with 64 players it should be done in 13 weeks. Quote:
Thanks for volunteering in a general sort of way. The point about not knowing commitments this far in advance is valid; it applies to me as well. There will very likely be supporters that come out of the woodwork at the last minute regardless of what format we choose. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 1st, 2012, 10:26am on 03/29/12 at 12:05:00, mistre wrote:
My hunch is that these players would all want to play in the Open Classic anyway, but supposing they didn't, we would have to jigger the number of rounds and/or number of wins required get the right number of qualifiers. If some of them take the bye into the finals and others don't, we wouldn't know how many top spots the Open Classic should choose until the last minute. To cope with the uncertainty, we might have to stick with the tiebreakers that Nombril hates. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 1st, 2012, 10:30am on 03/30/12 at 13:18:55, omar wrote:
I'm not sure I follow that logical train. What is wrong with the spectators and/or players calling in help after the problem has occurred? We have often done that in the past, i.e. calling on you to resolve a problem after it happened, and it worked just fine except when you were not available. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 1st, 2012, 1:15pm on 03/30/12 at 13:18:55, omar wrote:
That is very generous of you. If you decline to accept any remuneration, I like the idea of distributing the registration money among the volunteers who make the tournament happen, or if there is one main organizer who sacrifices all to make sure the event happens (like Dolus volunteered to do above) to give all the registration fee to him. If anyone wants to step forward like megajester did for the AWL, only on a larger scale, they deserve it. The size of the entry fee is another issue. I would be happiest if we held the line at $10. At the moment we already see people hesitating to pay $20 for the Postal Mixer even though it is 100% refundable. My main reason for wanting a registration fee at all is not to build a big prize fund, but rather to encourage a minimal commitment. I believe that almost everyone who would play for prize money would also play simply for the fun of the games and the glory of the victories. Chessandgo isn't going to skip the tournament on the logic that there isn't enough money available for him to win. I would therefore be happy to let prize fund be a nominal amount, plus any community donations, thus reserving all of the $10 entry fee for the TD and/or volunteers. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by chessandgo on Apr 1st, 2012, 4:00pm on 04/01/12 at 13:15:33, Fritzlein wrote:
U sure? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 1st, 2012, 8:47pm on 04/01/12 at 16:00:44, chessandgo wrote:
Feel free to set me straight! ;D (I vaguely recall your saying the glory was enough for you, but probably I remember wrong. It definitely would be a shame if we held a World Championship and the best players in the world didn't show up.) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Apr 2nd, 2012, 4:29pm on 04/01/12 at 20:47:47, Fritzlein wrote:
He’s defending the Arimaa Challenge for the glory. I’m convinced of his genuine motivations :) on 04/01/12 at 10:11:37, Fritzlein wrote:
The floating-elimination has the advantage of being a bit more compact than the old Open Classic/WC Final system. Even with 128 players it would wrap up in April. If we have a big Open Classic it would have to begin in early December, or perhaps even earlier, to accommodate its length. But if the WC cycle begins in January 2013 then I’d have a very strong preference for one giant triple-elimination tournament. I only have a preference for the Open Classic qualifier if it begins early and then has a break week(s) before the Finals begin. The next biggest concerns are the two situations where one player can qualify in the final round of the Open Classic against an opponent with one more or one fewer victory. In both cases I think we should offer incentives to the opposing player. In the case that one player is eliminated and must play someone with a chance of qualification, perhaps the person “playing up” should be offered a 2000 Arimaa Point discount for the following World Championship if he/she wins (or, alternatively, just make it a free entry for next year or a full refund for the current year). I believe that would be a big enough incentive. In the opposite case, where someone is “playing down” I would make the incentive slightly smaller because this player will advance to the Finals and already has two incentives to win built-in (better seed + one less competitor). Perhaps, 1000 Arimaa Point discount for the following WC? Or we could be nastier and make it a stick rather than a carrot – “playing down” against someone who needs a victory to qualify means that you’ll automatically get the lowest seed in the Finals if you lose that game >:(. I do like the idea of targeting 6-10 players to advance and basing advancement upon achieving a certain number of wins. Either double- or triple-elimination in the Finals would be OK, I suppose. The one I prefer would entirely depend upon how much of a gap there is between Open Classic and World Championship :) I'm not passionate about the idea of giving byes into the Finals for the top x number of players from last year's World Championship. I think the Open Classic is so much more interesting if everyone participates. I suppose this whole discussion is moot if we don’t have enough volunteers for next year. With the growth of the community, I'd feel much more optimistic in 2013 than I would have been in 2008 that we'll get enough volunteers. I’d guess that I’m 70%-80% likely to be available for volunteer duties for up to 10 hours per week in 2013. The other 20%-30% means my time will be much more limited or I can’t volunteer at all. Who knows what 2013 will bring for any of us? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 3rd, 2012, 12:09am on 04/01/12 at 10:30:52, Fritzlein wrote:
If a problem is not resolved immediately, it could require having to reschedule the game on another day and possibly delay the next round by another week. If the Game Referee is present during the game then rather then spending time to track down the GR the players can chat right way with the GR and resolve the issue quickly. How would the players and spectators know who to contact if a problem occurs? We would still have to go through the effort of making sure someone is signed up to be the GR for every game. Should we allow people to sign up to be the GR for a game without committing to be present at the game. I would not want that especially if they are receiving some compensation for it. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 3rd, 2012, 1:29am on 03/30/12 at 22:48:06, Nombril wrote:
I don't want to make the final decisions in this event. Actually I would like to see someone step up and be the lead organizer for this event. The organizer can then setup a committee to make the final decisions. I have written up this wiki page to help define the roles: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/Event_Roles |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 3rd, 2012, 9:04am on 04/03/12 at 00:09:45, omar wrote:
Agreed, but this can be done with a call, as has been successfully done in the past when you were the only contact. Quote:
I was envisioning a schedule of times and/or games that is filled each round as soon as the scheduler for that round had been run. I sort of imagined the person in charge would make up that schedule of responsibilities, dividing between himself and two or three other volunteers, depending on when all of them were free that weekend, rather than by a week-to-week sign-up process. Someone would be responsible for making sure every game was covered by someone who would know he was on call. Quote:
Indeed, the commitment I envision would be to be immediately reachable and available if contacted, rather than to read all the chat live throughout the whole game. (Just being logged in to chat without reading it live could actually be less available than being reachable by phone.) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 3rd, 2012, 9:07am on 04/03/12 at 01:29:18, omar wrote:
Ah, so the list of roles is a starting point for discussion? In particular, if someone were to volunteer to be lead organizer, and that person decided that the roles should be different than you hoped, you would be fine with them making the final decision? But maybe when you refer to "final decisions" you are exempting any decisions implied the list of roles, which have already been made and can't be altered. Also I notice that the wiki document doesn't make any reference to The World Championship, but rather to Arimaa events generically. Is it your intent to apply these rules to anyone who wants to run a tournament in the future? Clearly the free weekend tournament Adanac just ran didn't fit in the framework, for starters because there wasn't a Game Referee present at all times. Maybe you don't want any more events like this in the future? And what about the possibility of severing the Open Classic from the World Championship? Would the Open Classic have to run under the same conditions and demands as the World Championship even if the former wasn't a qualifier for the latter? That doesn't make a lot of sense, so unless you explain otherwise, I'll take the list of roles as applying to the World Championship only. Thanks in advance for clarifying the extent to which you are willing to relinquish control to community members (and/or take back control that you haven't been exercising until now). |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 3rd, 2012, 9:49am on 04/02/12 at 16:29:49, Adanac wrote:
There is a problem (at least in the United States) with having the Open Classic at the end of the year; Thanksgiving and Christmas interfere. Perhaps it is tolerable to collide with Thanksgiving, but not with Christmas. Maybe the Open Classic could be backed up to finish the week before Christmas, say Monday December 17, which would mean first pairings around Tuesday November 6, or a week earlier for a week longer tournament. Then there could be a three-week break including Christmas and New Year, with the finals to start in January. Quote:
I could see offering incentives to people in situations where they would have a reason to lose on purpose, but I don't like the idea of punishments for something that could well happen innocently. Quote:
I think the discussion is not entirely moot in any case. Suppose, for example, that Omar decides we don't have the oomph for a huge, open World Championship, and decides that there will be exactly eight participants in the World Championship by invitation based on WHRE. In that situation, I would still want to run the Open Classic, even if it were just for fun, or just another event which could be used to establish WHRE. If the Open Classic were not linked to the World Championship, I think I would prefer straight Swiss pairing rather than the elimination/consolation split that seems more appropriate for a championship. The question of when to schedule it would still be relevant; starting November 1 might be best. Having a list of potential roles to be filled by volunteers would still help an organizer, even if we were more relaxed about accepting the possibility that not every single role we dream up will be filled. Since it is ultimately Omar's decision on whether to have a large, participatory World Championship or not, I'm trying to clarify in my mind what it would mean for him to veto it but still approve an Open Classic that isn't part of the World Championship. I suppose the difference would be that he could find it acceptable to have a lower level of support staff for a non-World-Championship tournament, whereas for a tournament that was an official part of the World Championship, he would draw the minimum level of support higher and say it won't happen at all if we can't meet his higher minimum bar. What I can't really imagine is that Omar would have the same standard for both cases, and say that because we can't have the Open Classic be the qualifier for the World Championship, we can't hold the Open Classic at all. This wouldn't make sense for someone committed to increasing player participation. Quote:
I also am optimistic that there will be enough volunteers to meet my minimum expectations for a World Championship tournament, plus many volunteers for the extras on a case-by-case basis. Notice that this year far more people eventually agreed to do commentary on the spot than were willing to sign up on the spreadsheet ahead of time. It's easier to volunteer in the moment that you see the need and the opportunity than to commit ahead of time. If we get commitment ahead of time only for the things that absolutely must be done, then it seems likely that many extra things that make a tournament extra fun will happen semi-spontaneously when the time comes. The first objective is getting the lead organizer. (I would normally call this person the tournament director, but I'll try to use Omar's terminology to avoid confusion.) I am hesitant to be that person, in part because I don't know what next year will look like for me, and in part because it isn't yet clear to me what all the lead organizer will have to do. Will it just be a ton of responsibility with no freedom or authority? In line with my comment about ownership, I will be very tempted to commit right now, in spite of the uncertainties of my schedule, if Omar is really serious about the lead organizer having the final decision about everything. If it were truly my tournament that I could run the way I wanted, I might be motivated enough to make the extra time commitment. Of course, in that scenario, I would suddenly be in the situation that Omar is currently in, namely wanting things to be a certain way, but not wanting to alienate anyone by making unilateral decisions. I would still definitely want to keep this discussion going, so as to see what would inspire and motivate volunteers. I would not want to go off on a tangent that makes people think the World Championship will not be fun, and therefore isn't worth their donations of time and energy. I recognize in advance that it is tricky to both be benevolent dictator and give the community a sense of ownership. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 3rd, 2012, 11:05pm on 04/03/12 at 09:04:04, Fritzlein wrote:
Sometimes I got caught not being near a computer and things got delayed. That's why I started trying to be close to computer when event games were going on. Being able to call worked out in our case since I know you well enough to give you my number and you happened to be watching the game. In general I don't think the game referees want to give out their phone numbers so that anyone can call them. The main reason for having multiple people be game referees is so that someone will be available to monitor each game. The game referee should actually be watching the game and they don't need to be reading the chat. If something goes wrong, they would use the chat to communicate with the players, but watching the chat is not something that the game referees need to do. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 4th, 2012, 12:16am on 04/03/12 at 09:07:31, Fritzlein wrote:
The organizer can change the roles that are not essential, but essential roles like Director, Coordinator and Referees can't be changed. I would like to have these roles be well defined and not change from event to event. Quote:
Yes, it would be good if we could move towards that. Quote:
We are just starting to formally define these roles. Eventually all events should have the essential roles. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Dolus on Apr 4th, 2012, 9:37am Just an interesting thought I had regarding the on-call business. Google Voice came to mind. It would require some level of management, but as long as anybody who would ever be "on-call" doesn't mind entrusting their phone number to at least whoever would be in charge of the Google Voice account, then there will only need to be one public phone number for people to call should they need to. The Google Voice number. The level of management that is involved would be removing/adding the forwarding phone numbers as appropriate when different people are on call. There can also be restrictions put on when the phone can't be called, to avoid unwanted calls outside of the "on-call" timeframe. Not sure if you can specify "whitelisted" call times, or if you can only "blacklist" call times. But it's certainly possible. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 4th, 2012, 10:54am on 04/04/12 at 00:16:32, omar wrote:
One possible outcome of the direction that you are heading is that there will be fewer events run by community members. I doubt I would have run the Continuous Tournament if I had been required to be present at all games or find an approved coordinator to be present on my behalf. Would similar considerations have deterred megajester from founding the Arimaa World League? I will let Adanac comment about the possible impact of requiring a game referee to be present at every game in order to obtain permission to run the Ironman Tournament. And game referees is just one point of control among many you appear to be asserting in the wiki document you posted. It has become clear to me that I need to step aside from dreaming about organizing any event, even an Open Classic event that has nothing to do with the World Championship. I am happy to let others step forward to fill your list of volunteer roles as they have time and motivation. I will gladly continue to provide live audio commentary on event games as I have time and opportunity, whether or not I am compensated for it out of event entry fees. If you ultimately determine that "there aren't enough volunteers" to have a big tournament, it might have something to do with the way you are approaching it. But I could well be wrong, as I have been wrong many times before. I will be curious to see what will happen for the 2013 World Championship, curious in a detached observer sort of way. Peace, Fritz |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 4th, 2012, 12:45pm Yes, it may be that we don't have as many events, but at least we are able to have some official events without everyone having to physically be at the same place. Consider the burden placed on the players, fans and organizers when real events are organized and everyone has to come together to the same place on a same schedule to make the event happen. For event games I do feel that there needs to be some level of strictness and adherence to rules that makes them different than casual games. If we want to have events and we can't even have someone official present to oversee the game, what's the point. The organizer has failed in making it a true event. I haven't had a chance to implement it yet, but there will be a feature in the TMT so that casual events can be organized with it and not count as event games. The games from such events won't need to have a referee present and will not count towards event ratings. In the past we didn't have a requirement for referees to be present during event games, but as I said I would like to eventually move towards this. For events like the Open Classic and Ironman, I would be OK with not having coverage on all the games as long as some effort is being made to find referees for the games. The WC is important enough that we should have a referee at all games. I've tried to be present at all the games when it is small enough for me to manage. If enough people in the community want a big event, then I think we will have enough people volunteering to make it happen. However, it could be that a few people are pushing for a big event, but the community doesn't really care for a big event. Or perhaps they would be interested in participating in a big event as long as the entry fee is low and they don't have to do anything more and someone else takes on the burden. I really hope that's not the case, otherwise I would feel like I'm being taken advantage of. But I don't think that's the case. I think there will be many people who volunteer and I think it could work really well. We haven't even given it a try and you are already shying away from it. Don't sit back and be an observer to see if Omar can make it work, get involved and encourage others. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 4th, 2012, 6:12pm [EDIT] To those of you who read what I posted here in the few hours that it was up, I apologize. Re-reading it makes me understand that I am too frustrated to be a constructive participant in this discussion right now. I think it is better if I remove the post and wait until I calm down before saying anything else, which is what I should have done in the first place. My bad. [/EDIT] |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 4th, 2012, 11:20pm Karl, the only thing we have a difference of opinion about is the game referee role. From my experience in running these events I know that it is very critical for someone to be present at the game in case an issue occurs. You seem to think it's enough for someone to be on call and get contacted by the spectators. I think that would add another layer of complexity in managing the event. But you seem to be very insistent on trying it this way. I hate to discourage anyone that is very motivated about something. So no problem, if you want to be the organizer and give it a try, I'm will to relax the requirement for the game referee role. In practice I think the game referees will show up to be present at the games. You are welcome to think that I need to control everything, but actually I try to get everybody's opinion (or at least those who want to give it) before making a decision. I can't satisfy everyone, but I do try. I think you are forgetting that if I really wanted things my way the WC would still be a single elimination tournament open to only to a limited number of top rated players :-) OK, run with it. You have lots of time to prepare. Good luck. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 4th, 2012, 11:24pm Oops, I read it and already replied. Good thing I didn't quote you :-) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Thiagor on Apr 5th, 2012, 7:30am Just to add my 2 cents to the discussion: For an event as important as the WC, I think it makes sense to have game referees, and I'd say it's not too much to ask them to be present (probably they would enjoy watching the game anyway). On the other hand, for other events, such as the Ironman tournament, such a rule seems too restrictive to me. For one thing, I suppose it would make spontaneous game scheduling practically impossible. Moreover, what can happen if no referee is present? The worst outcome I can think of is that when a game cannot take place due to technical issues, the schedule would be delayed by one week, which wouldn't be a disaster. (And even this seems very unlikely, since in most cases, it shouldn't be a problem to get another game played in the given time frame.) So I guess the organizational difficulties to find referees for all games would outweigh the potential benefits. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 5th, 2012, 10:20am on 04/04/12 at 12:45:14, omar wrote:
What about the postal mixer and the autopostal games? Aren't they considered event games? I guess there is a difference because you can't have a technical difficulty and therefore there is no need for a referee? Perhaps all postal games should be separated out of WHRE and be given their own WHR score, call it WHRP. I think this would make for a cleaner divide and will get rid of the ambiguity of whether or not to include postal games in WHRE. As for the Ironman tournament, I also don't see how it is possible to have both a spontaneous method of playing games and also have a game referee. It kind of defeats the whole purpose... My overall point is that their is a wide variety of what can be considered an event (from informal to very formal) and all of these should be taken in to account a little differently. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Apr 5th, 2012, 10:56am on 04/05/12 at 10:20:58, mistre wrote:
There actually is a WHRP already: http://home.scarlet.be/~woh/whr/whrp.htm But Postal Mixers count towards all 3: WHR, WHRE, WHRP. I think it would make sense to separate the WHRP from the other two ratings because some players differ so widely between the live and postal time controls. For example, some players have difficulty in the World League because their success in postal games put them on a higher board in live games, and they struggle accordingly. I had the opposite problem in the World Championship where a low WHRP dragged down my seeding to 5th, from 3rd in the previous WC (now with Hanzack's rise to stardom I'm back down to 4th). Some of the Ironman games will be scheduled, and some will be spontaneous, depending upon what players prefer. For the scheduled games, I am going to try to recruit Referees for the tournament. It will be a good learning experience for players that want to be a referee during the World Championship, or any other event. For the spontaneous games, I don't think a referee is needed, especially with a 12 week period to complete a 7 game series. Whatever problems occur should be relatively easy to fix (I hope!!) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 5th, 2012, 1:16pm Omar, now that I know you had time to read what I said before I deleted it, let me apologize again for saying it. I'm impressed with how calmly and graciously you responded given the tone of my letter. Your reply was much better than I deserved. on 04/04/12 at 23:20:15, omar wrote:
Heh, in fact there are many things we disagree about that we haven't rehashed in this thread, and it is guaranteed that if we keep working together, we will have more disagreements in the future. The role of game referee is only scratching the surface. Until such time as two people can share the same brain, there is no way around different viewpoints. What I regret is my way of handling our disagreement. I think we could have struck fewer sparks by framing the disagreement in terms of conflicting interests that are all valuable but must be balanced somehow. I should have been clear that you can set some minimum standards for a World Championship without me calling you a control freak. For example, you might say that a range of different time controls is acceptable, but 15s/move is out of the question, because the quality of play would be too low and there would not be enough time to spectate. I'm on board with wanting the World Championship to be the most serious event of the year. Having described and acknowledged the legitimate concern in general, I would have expressed my opinion that raising the minimum bar too high would rule out large participation. I could have made my point without taking it to an extreme such as, "You don't care about participation." Maybe if I had acknowledged your legitimate concerns, you wouldn't have made absolute statements like, "If we want to have events and we can't even have someone official present to oversee the game, what's the point. The organizer has failed in making it a true event." Perhaps if I hadn't provoked you into taking an uncompromising stand, we could have calmly talked about the tradeoffs involved in various choices, while acknowledging that different decisions might all have merit. Quote:
I want to be very clear about what was upsetting me, not because I am proud of my emotional reaction, but because it matters to me that you know what I am passionate about. Although you accuse me of being insistent on the issue of game referees, I am not hung up on having the World Championship run a certain way. Part of my deleted text (the part I am less ashamed of) made this clear. The World Championship can be done differently than I have in mind and still be a big success. I do not have to get my way about format in order to be happy come January 2013. The reason I flew off the handle was that I thought you were negotiating in bad faith. I thought you were giving lip service to being in favor of having a big tournament, but then not being willing to give up any of the advantages of a small tournament. How can you want something if you don't think it is worth giving up anything else to get it? I also thought you were claiming that you would let organizers make decisions while in truth wanting to make the decisions yourself. (Yes, after getting input, but ultimately deciding unilaterally.) When someone I think of as my friend says one thing and seems to mean another, I get riled up very quickly. Am I making sense? It was not the result of the discussion that was making me flip out, it was the structure of the discussion itself. My motivation for bailing out (and lashing out) was not a feeling that I couldn't get my way, but rather a feeling that I couldn't work with you in a constructive fashion. There are a jillion things that have to be hashed out to make a tournament run well. I foresaw that each discussion would further damage our friendship. Better to walk away than to keep on trading punches. (Although, sadly, I also wanted to get in the last dig.) The fact that you are willing to compromise on the issue of game referees tells me that you are not, in fact, negotiating in bad faith. It suggests that I could have approached things differently so as to work out our differences in a positive way. Your concession makes me embarrassed about the way I have handled myself. Unfortunately, it doesn't address my real concern of how to handle disagreements in the future. What I am most keen to see is a satisfying way of talking about bones of contention. What will happen next time we have different views about what should happen in the 2013 World Championship? How will talk about it? How will the decision be made? Quote:
Thank you for offering to let me run the tournament. I am honored by your trust and excited by the possibility. Before I accept, however, I feel that we need to work out what was really bothering me, as explained above. You have offered to let me have my way in some superficial sense, but I care much less about that than I care about our relationship. What do you think of me? How will you treat me in the future? What will happen in our next conflict? Am I too intransigent and too easily offended to be a good partner in making something happen? Quote:
If my choice were between the Arimaa tournament of my dreams plus a bad relationship with you on the one hand, or the stupidest format in the world plus an ongoing friendship with you, I would rather have your friendship. Nothing motivated my outbursts as much as my feeling that you weren't treating me like a friend. Do you believe this? If you don't, then I don't want to collaborate until we work things out, in public or private as you choose. Otherwise we are doomed to create further unpleasantness by attempting to work together. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 5th, 2012, 2:47pm on 04/05/12 at 07:30:56, Thiagor wrote:
OK, I guess you are right about this. The nature of the event does have an impact on the game referee role. If an issue can't be resolved to keep the game going the most important factors to consider are the potential delay of the event schedule and disappointment to the spectators present. As usual reality throws in a lot of exceptional cases and I have a tendency to want to apply the same rules through out. But I'm beginning to think that the game referee role should be kept flexible so that the organizer can decide if the game referee needs to be present or on call. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 5th, 2012, 3:00pm on 04/05/12 at 10:20:58, mistre wrote:
I like the idea of separating postal games from live game in computing the ratings. Quote:
Good point. The Ironman event isn't an informal event and we do want the games to count towards event ratings, yet the scheduling of the games is very informal and makes it very difficult to require a game referee to be present. Yet, if a game times out, the players need to be able to contact someone to investigate the problem right away and if the game is to be resumed from the current position have access to the tools to do that. This event is a prime example of where a game referee only needs to be on call. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 5th, 2012, 9:34pm No problem Karl. From my side there isn't even a dent or scratch in our relationship. We will have disagreements in the future, but the best way to convince me is to discuss it and give me examples. Try not to get frustrated if you can't convince me about something. I do try to listen and take multiple views into consideration. Sometime it may take me a while to see a certain point of view. Looking at my statements in retrospect I can see why you might have thought that I was arguing in bad faith. Although if I don't want something or just want to do it my way, I would never put on the table to begin with. I do want the community to run the WC, but I also want to ensure that the standard by which I try to run it is maintained. I have to admit I was wrong in thinking that a game referee needs to be present in all events and eventually moving towards that. I realize now that it depends on the nature of the event and not all events need that. I still think the WC should require it and that we would be able to get enough volunteers to cover all the games. But I'm OK now with trying to make a best effort and seeing how it goes, because as I thought more about it I realized that people who sign up as referees for the WC event would be wanting to watch the game anyways, so they would be present even if it wasn't a strict requirement. Also in case the referee wasn't present there is bound to be someone else around who can serve as a backup referee. So that allowed me to be more relaxed about it. Also I didn't realize you were so motivated to run a big tournament. I definitely trust that you will do a good job of making it a success. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 5th, 2012, 9:49pm on 04/04/12 at 09:37:57, Dolus wrote:
Dolus, thanks for providing this suggestion. This sounds like a good way to allow anyone to contact the game referee without having to reveal private phone numbers. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 5th, 2012, 11:01pm on 04/05/12 at 15:00:22, omar wrote:
Ok, now that we all agree, who is in charge of calculating the WHR ratings? Is it Woh? So, if I understand correctly, all that needs to be done is to take out postal games from the WHRE leaving only live H-H event games. In this way, we can see a true comparison of how good a player is live vs postal (I always wanted to do an analysis on that, but had no pure way to do it). Adanac, Thanks for posting the WHRP link. Is there a page on the Arimaa site that takes you there? If so, I haven't been able to find it... Finally, it would be really neat if we could have all of our ratings (Gameroom, WHR, WHRE, WHRP) show on our profile page. Is that possible? *Edit* One more thing I thought of. Shouldn't the postal mixer games be paired based on WHRP? With the start only two days away, I hope that Omar sees this. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 8:35am 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 04/05/12 at 21:34:25, omar wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:51am 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 10:17am 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. ;D) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 6th, 2012, 10:39am on 04/06/12 at 09:51:48, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by ocmiente on Apr 6th, 2012, 11:10am 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 (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2012_World_Championship) 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 11:31am on 03/22/12 at 17:10:48, aaaa wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 12:23pm 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 04/06/12 at 10:39:02, mistre wrote:
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! 8)" 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 04/06/12 at 11:10:42, ocmiente wrote:
You are saying that in 2011 you would rather not have played your final-round game against ChrisB? on 04/06/12 at 11:10:42, ocmiente wrote:
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? ;D |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 1:14pm 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 6th, 2012, 1:37pm 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 2:28pm on 04/06/12 at 13:37:17, mistre wrote:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 6th, 2012, 2:42pm 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 2:54pm on 03/28/12 at 15:10:18, Adanac wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by ocmiente on Apr 6th, 2012, 3:03pm 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 01/19/11 at 15:43:52, omar wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 4:25pm on 04/06/12 at 14:42:39, mistre wrote:
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. ;) ----- 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Apr 6th, 2012, 4:48pm 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 5:19pm on 04/06/12 at 15:03:05, ocmiente wrote:
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 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 6th, 2012, 6:01pm on 04/06/12 at 17:19:45, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by ocmiente on Apr 6th, 2012, 7:05pm on 04/06/12 at 17:19:45, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:07pm on 04/06/12 at 19:05:44, ocmiente wrote:
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:
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:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:32pm on 04/06/12 at 16:25:59, Fritzlein wrote:
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:
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:46pm on 04/06/12 at 21:32:05, mistre wrote:
Thank you! Quote:
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:
I like it. Can't hurt, might help. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 6th, 2012, 9:56pm on 04/06/12 at 16:48:23, Nombril wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 7th, 2012, 3:26am 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 7th, 2012, 12:08pm on 04/07/12 at 03:26:03, omar wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 7th, 2012, 12:21pm on 04/07/12 at 03:26:03, omar wrote:
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:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 7th, 2012, 2:17pm on 04/07/12 at 12:21:42, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 7th, 2012, 3:52pm on 04/07/12 at 14:17:35, omar wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 12th, 2012, 9:15am 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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Dolus on Apr 12th, 2012, 10:08am on 04/12/12 at 09:15:10, Fritzlein wrote:
Where's the :thumbsup: smiley? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Apr 12th, 2012, 10:03pm on 04/06/12 at 21:46:42, Fritzlein wrote:
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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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by ginrunner on Apr 12th, 2012, 11:21pm If there is an entry fee then prize money would be nice With that being said if someone sponsors me they have claim to any and all prize money I receive. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Apr 13th, 2012, 8:04am on 04/12/12 at 09:15:10, Fritzlein wrote:
I say "go for it". I will post the link on our Facebook page too (which is up to 31 members). |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 13th, 2012, 9:43pm on 04/12/12 at 09:15:10, Fritzlein wrote:
I looked into the SurveyMonkey site and found that they are using cookies to prevent someone from taking the survey twice. I was able to take a survey I created twice by opening the survey with another browser. Not good. I tried out other sites, but they also seem to do the same thing. One good thing that came out of it though is that I found a couple of sites that are free and don't have a limit on the number of questions. http://www.surveybuilder.com and http://kwiksurveys.com/ So, I've been busy trying to build something that will allow one Arimaa account to take the survey only once. Basically one of the questions on the survey will be to enter a unique code that is provided to the user. The code given to each user will be different. In the announcements a link like this can be given: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/survey/take.cgi?e=test1 This page gives the user the code they need and the link to the actual survey. After the survey is over codes that were entered can be checked to see if they are valid without knowing who the code belongs to. So if someone makes up a code it won't be valid and the result won't be counted. Karl, you can use this tool to setup the link to the survey. http://arimaa.com/arimaa/survey/ |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 13th, 2012, 9:55pm Omar, thanks for figuring out a way to link surveys to gameroom logins. I'll set up the questions on surveybuilder when I get a chance. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Hippo on Apr 14th, 2012, 7:31pm This is that long thread that I have read just half of it yet. I hope I understand both points of view (Omar's and Fritzlein's). Omar wants a standard to allow game to be classified as an event game. That could lead to some "events" to be classified as organised causal games. Actually this game classification is not that much important for me. Actually Omar's motivation is not in this classification but in increasing the event's standard. Unfortunately I am afraid that in most cases it could lead to swithing to "causal event" if the constrains are difficult to achieve. I agree with Fritzlein that big cheap open turnament would be the best Arimaa promotion. I would hardly be playing arimaa for more than 2 years if not participating in 2010 WC for free. Heaving 2012 WC cheap would do the same for Boo and all strong new players starting on T*. Tripple elimination is fantastic format reducing the dependency on other player's games and being short. And consolidation bracket would eliminate the problem of small number of games played on the event. I understand the omar's intention to run WC as smooth as possible and I hope he could share his "administration tools" to enough people to be able to cover all WC games. But I understand his doubts. I personaly have seen just one example ... in last WC (2012) there were 4 volunteer writers. I myself informed others that I will not have enough time for it and Adanac informed us that he will start later. At the end I wrote coverage for first 4 rounds (20 games). Than I went for a holidays and I hoped someone else covers the rest. From the remaining 11 games only 4 were covered. Two by chessandgo which was not among the 4 volunteers and 2 by Adanac. I understand that players may not want to make coverage as it could point out comentator's weakness, so I as not participating in the event was well qualified for that. But why eliminated players have not participate? Actually it was a bit complicated with the volunteers being eliminated at the very end. So having nice pool of volunteers does not mean the topic is covered ... . In either case I hope for smothly going big cheap tripple elimination WC with volunteer referees (and I don't mind them just to be on call). Actually the prices are not that much important for me as the pleasure from the good games ... |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 14th, 2012, 10:55pm I transferred the survey to survey builder. I took it myself and it seems to work. There is nothing to prevent anyone from taking the survey a jillion times, except that we will later throw out ones with invalid codes. How exactly are we going to do that, Omar? Anyway, it is open for business. If I have messed anything up, we can always wipe the slate clean and start over. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Arimabuff on Apr 15th, 2012, 5:54am on 04/06/12 at 11:31:35, Fritzlein wrote:
I can certainly think of a possible explanation for that. If one of the opponents they beat turns out to be stronger (or weaker) in later games then their merit grows (or diminishes) accordingly. So why not? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 15th, 2012, 9:39am on 04/15/12 at 05:54:49, Arimabuff wrote:
Indeed, why not? I didn't mean for my argument to sound like I was staking out an absolute position or cutting off debate. One number that I would like to see, relevant to your argument, is the in-tournament performance rating of the various prize scenarios. If chessandgo had kept winning (thus reducing the prizes of places #3 through #11) would the performance rating of the top two have risen higher above the rest, or would they just have changed places with each other while staying the same distance above? Chessandgo's extra wins (making him look more dominant) would be balanced by hanzack's extra losses (making him look less dominnant). If the combination of extra wins and extra losses at the top doesn't really affect the performance ratings at the bottom, then extra wins by chessandgo wouldn't seem to be an indicator that the lower ranks deserve less prize money. Would you agree? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by hyperpape on Apr 15th, 2012, 11:56am Is it possible to only answer certain questions? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 15th, 2012, 12:46pm on 04/15/12 at 11:56:08, hyperpape wrote:
Yes, the only question that is mandatory is the first one, asking for the survey code. But if you don't answer all questions, at least click the arrow in the lower right corner to indicate that you are done. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 15th, 2012, 3:32pm We have 19 survey responses already. Super-awesome! |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 18th, 2012, 6:50pm on 04/14/12 at 22:55:21, Fritzlein wrote:
After the survey is over, you can download the survey data file from SurveyBuilder and then upload the file into survey tool. It will tell you which codes if any are invalid. If the person took the survey multiple times and used a valid code then just use the most recently completed survey record in the data file. The tool also tells you the usernames of the people who took the survey. So if you see Guest or usernames that were recently created you might want to check the IP addresses recorded in the survey file to see if there are duplicate records with the same IP and detect fake accounts. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 18th, 2012, 7:22pm on 04/18/12 at 18:50:58, omar wrote:
Awesome. I would like to leave the survey open at least a week, but maybe I will try out the powers of the tool even before then to see how it works. Thanks for building this. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 28th, 2012, 1:28pm on 04/18/12 at 18:50:58, omar wrote:
I closed the survey, downloaded the results, converted to tab delimited format, and uploaded into your tool. There were two eleven-digit survey codes that were declared invalid. Or, to be more precise, the survey results I got from Survey Builder contained two eleven-digit codes, which I assumed had been automatically shortened because they contained a leading zero. I added a leading zero to the eleven-digit codes, and those two twelve-digit codes were rejected. I can't test whether the codes are accepted without the leading zero, because the tool only allows the results to be uploaded once. Before I tabulate and analyze the results, would you please check these two codes? 012570180306 013656795332 The two matrix questions can't be read inside the arimaa.com uploaded results, and are difficult to tabulate even in Excel. For analyzing those, the best option appears to be giving a list of codes to Survey Builder, and letting them tabulate the filtered results. That will also let me do an analysis split by over/under 1800 rating, or by have/haven't previously played in the championship, or by likely/unlikely to play personally. But first I need to settle on a list of which codes I am using. Thanks in advance. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Apr 28th, 2012, 1:48pm Sorry, I didn't see this earlier. No need to add the leading zero's the codes can be shorter than 12 digits. Try uploading the file again without those leading zeros. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Apr 28th, 2012, 5:52pm Thanks Omar. On the second try the two 11-digit codes were accepted. There was no indication of duplicate account creation to get more votes. That gives us 42 completed surveys with a valid code. What an amazing response from the Arimaa community! If the enthusiastic participation in the survey is any guide, we are going to get plenty of volunteers to make the tournament a reality. Three of the questions were not about tournament preferences, but about the respondent. Those are “filter questions” that can be used to see if different subgroups responded differently. Quote:
90% - 100% 14 75% - 90% 8 50% - 75% 9 25% - 50% 7 0% - 25% 3 No answer 1 I will split this between the 22 who said they were more than 75% likely to play and the 20 others. Quote:
None 28 One 4 Two 4 Three or more 6 I will split this between the 14 who have played in a World Championship before and the 28 who haven't. Quote:
under 1600 13 1600-1800 8 1800-2000 9 2000-2200 9 over 2200 3 I will split this between the 21 over 1800 and the 21 under 1800. Quote:
I would like to stop playing as soon as I have lost three games 18 I would like to play six games guaranteed 16 I would like to play seven games guaranteed 1 I would like to play eight games guaranteed 2 I would like to play nine games guaranteed 1 I would like to play ten or more games guaranteed 3 No answer 1 It was close between a desire to have a consolation bracket or not. A majority wanted to keep on playing, and of those, most only wanted six games. participation: 61% of likely players wanted guaranteed games. experience: 50% of experienced players wanted three and out. rating: 50% of high-rated players wanted three and out. What we decide on this one is critical to my motivation. Given my personal goal of maximizing participation, and given that the respondents most in favor of three-and out were less likely to be playing, I will unilaterally decide that the 2013 World Championship will have six guaranteed rounds. There was no consensus anyway; a decision must be made for us to progress, so I will make the decision that I personally think is best for the Arimaa Community. Quote:
No rest weeks 20 One rest week 19 Two or more rest weeks 2 No answer 1 There was an even split between wanting a rest week or not. participation: 56% of likely players wanted no rest week experience: 71% of experienced players wanted no rest week rating: 65% of higher-rated players wanted no rest week The skew of the more critical groups was against having rest weeks, so I'm pretty sure we don't want a rest week during the first six rounds. I am, however, still open to having a rest week between the six guaranteed rounds and the remaining elimination rounds. Quote:
Qualifying / Final 23 Unified Tournament 17 No Answer . . 2 A majority preferred the split format with loss forgiveness. participation: 52% of likely players wanted a split format experience: 71% of experienced players wanted a unified format rating: 50% of high-rated players wanted a unified format When we look at the more critical groups, the majority for a split format disappears. Indeed, among the players who know best what it is like to play in a split format, the support for a unified format is strongest. Therefore I am still torn between re-creating the success of 2011 with exactly the same format (6-round Swiss Open Classic followed by top-eight finals) and making the small experiment of a 6-round Swiss Divider, where Round 7 and onward let the eliminated players go home, but preserve the early-round losses to eliminate all edge effects and all incentives for intentional losses. The latter is my personal preference, but perhaps there is some benefit in having a format that the hoi-polloi can understand? But no, I think people will love Swiss Divider once they no what it is. It is not hard to understand; just unfamiliar. I think the experiment is small enough and the potential gain great enough that we try it out at least once. Also it shortens the tournament by about one round, and nobody likes a long tournament (see below). Quote:
45 seconds per move 9 60 seconds per move 22 90 seconds per move 7 120 seconds per move 2 No Answer . . 2 The clear preference is for 60 seconds/move to be the fast time control. participation: 69% of likely players chose 60 seconds. experience: only 50% of experenced players chose 60 seconds; still the median choice rating: 67% of likely players chose 60 seconds. This decision is a slam dunk. Quote:
45 seconds per move 1 60 seconds per move 4 90 seconds per move 15 120 seconds per move 21 No Answer . . 1 A teensy majority wanted 120 seconds per move for the final games. An obvious compromise is to switch from 60 seconds to 90 after six rounds, and then to 120 seconds when only a small number of players (three?) remain. Or we could just stick with the 60/90 division that has worked well in the past. participation: similar distribution experience: fewer experienced players wanted 120 seconds; more wanted 90. rating: fewer high-rated players wanted 120 seconds; more wanted 90. Quote:
I would like my entire entry fee to be distributed as prizes. (Volunteers would not be compensated at all.) 4 I would like my entry fee split between prizes and compensating volunteers for extra features. 31 I would like my entire entry fee to compensate volunteers. (The prize fund would come from donors and sponsors.) 5 No answer 2 The overwhelming consensus is to split entry fees between prizes and compensation. Not too surprising, since this is what every chess tournament does, every poker tournament does, etc. This is another slam-dunk decision. participation: Likely players were more polarized; unlikely players universally wanted a split. experience: similar distribution rating: similar distribution Quote:
50-30-20 9 40-20-15-10-7-5-3 14 30-15-10-8-6-5-4-4-3-3-3-3-2-2-2 5 Prize fund divided proportional to number of wins; everyone who wins a game gets something. 12 No answer 2 This one doesn't seem to have a clear consensus or even a good compromise. We'll have to think more about prizes distribution. participation: 46% of likely players picked the second option. experience: 50% of experienced players picked the second option. rating: similar distribution Quote:
It is hard to present complete data on this one, so I present only averages. 2.78 Low entry fee 2.85 Good chance of playing opponents near my level 4.02 My preferred time control 4.02 Good chance of playing opponents higher than my level 4.39 My preferred tournament length 4.44 Good chance of my games being commentated 5.22 Large prize fund Low entry fee and evenly matched games dominated people's concerns, while a desire to be commentated and have a large prize fund brought up the rear. This is consistent with the consensus that was developing in the thread pre-survey. participation: Likely participants ranked near opponents #1, low entry fee #2, otherwise similar. experience: Experienced players rated all factors nearly equal, except for a large prize fund still being least important. rating: similar distribution Quote:
1.83 All top-level players participating 2.85 A large number of players participating 2.86 Much live commentary 3.24 Many games evenly-matched 3.52 Much permanently saved commentary 4.85 A long tournament Few spectators care for a long tournament, but almost all spectators want all the top players to participate. Live commentary beat out saved commentary, and large participation beat out even games. Contrasted to the previous question, it is clear people want different things as players than they want as spectators. participation: similar distribution experience: similar distribution rating: similar distribution |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Thiagor on Apr 29th, 2012, 2:12am Interesting results! Thanks for carrying out and evaluating the survey. Let me mention two additional thoughts that just came to my mind: Firstly, on the question about Qualifying & Final vs Unified Tournament, I don't have a strong opinion as a participant or spectator. However from the point of view of encouraging participation, I guess the format of 2011 might give additional motivation: As many players don't have any serious hope to win the tournament, they can stick to the more modest goal to make it into the finals, which is still a big achievement. Secondly, concerning the distribution of prize money: As Fritzlein decided to guarantee each player at least six games, I would prefer a distribution that gives an incentive to win even after having lost three times. That would mean either the distribution proportional to the number of wins, or (my personal preference) a distribution proportional to 1/n^2 (or a similar function), where n is the place in the position table. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Apr 29th, 2012, 1:41pm on 04/29/12 at 02:12:21, Thiagor wrote:
I like this idea very much. It seems to fit my opinion of what prize distribution should be like. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Apr 30th, 2012, 6:15am It seems to me that taking the current unified FTE format and adding second- and third-place consolation brackets to it would satisfactorily address several issues at once in a relatively simple fashion: No arbitrary choice of what tiebreakers to pick to determine these places and in what order, and everyone would be guaranteed of playing at least five games. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on May 4th, 2012, 8:57pm Thanks for running this survey and analyzing the results Karl. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 5th, 2012, 9:26am on 04/29/12 at 02:12:21, Thiagor wrote:
on 04/29/12 at 13:41:03, browni3141 wrote:
You two make me regret not including this option in the poll, especially since it was suggested earlier in the discussion. I initially thought the 1/n^2 distribution was plausible, but when I tried it out myself I found it too steep at the top for my liking. Then I imposed this conclusion on the group by leaving it out of the poll. So let me remedy the situation and re-open the possibility here. For 2012, the 1/n^2 distribution would have been as follows: hanzack $734.32 chessandgo $183.58 Adanac $81.59 Nombril $45.90 Fritzlein $29.37 Tuks $20.40 rabbits $14.99 ocmiente $11.47 Harren $9.07 Simon $7.34 woh $6.07 It seems strange to me that chessandgo would have gotten only 1/4 the money hanzack did, and also strange that Adanac would make it to the podium and barely get back his entry fee. Take nothing away from hanzack's great performance, but he would have walked away with 64% of the prize money. If there had been more participants it would have been approximately 61-15-7-4 at the top. For comparison, see the prizes for the 2012 Masters golf tournament: http://www.augusta.com/masters/story/blog/2012-masters-tournament-prize-money That looks an awfully lot like 1/n distribution. Given the $8M total fund, the top players received a 18-11-7-5-4 payout. This is more in line with my idea of fairness. But I certainly don't want to cut off discussion. Please discuss further if giving over 3/5 of the money to first place seems most appropriate to you. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 5th, 2012, 10:25am on 04/30/12 at 06:15:50, aaaa wrote:
If I understand what you are proposing, it is like quintuple elimination except that players with four losses can only play each other (they are only eligible for 3rd place), and players with three losses can only play each other (they are still eligible for 2nd place, but if they lose they would drop down to join the 3rd place bracket). Let me try to get my head around the consequences. * Clearly, everyone would get to play at least five games, which I like. (Actually, I would like at least 10 games guaranteed :), but of the choices I provided in the poll, 6 games guaranteed was the median choice.) * Everyone who was not eliminated would still be playing for something, albeit not for the championship. I like this as well. * One difference from a full floating-quintuple elimination would be a shorter tournament for the winner. The World Champion wouldn't have to keep playing until all his opponents had five losses. He would already be on the sideline with his crown while the other players squabbled for the lower places. * In past tournaments, the tiebreaker for 3rd/4th has been concurrent with 1st/2nd still playing, while the tiebreaker for 2nd/3rd happened the week after the champion was determined. In your proposal, however, it seems the third-place bracket would go on for about four weeks after the champion was determined, assuming 64 participants. It would have to go on for at least two additional weeks for the person who lost to the champion to get his two extra losses, but would generally go even longer due to the greater number of people in the lowest bracket. If the World Championship went on for a month after the champion was determined, it would be weird. * I can imagine a scenario in which a moderately good player (but not a true contender) gets knocked into the third-place bracket fairly early in the tournament, and then wins through to third place without ever having to play the two people who end up in first and second place. Meanwhile the person who ends up in fourth place might have ended up playing (and losing to) the top two players in a total of three or four games. The dividers would make cross-group pairings impossible, whereas in a unified tournament avoiding cross-group pairings is a lower priority than avoiding repeat pairings. In a unified tournament that moderately good player staying alive with early losses is eventually forced to play the top players. * The division into brackets could cause byes to be unevenly distributed. This would be fine if the higher bracket gave out a bye while the lower bracket didn't, but it seems the reverse could also happen. Currently, if the last player knocked out of the top bracket has one more win than any other eliminated player, we call them 2nd place with no tiebreaker. Under your proposal, it would seem routinely possible for them to then lose in the consolation bracket, ending with an equal number of wins as the player your proposal would crown 2nd place, which seems weird. But weirder still would be a scheduling quirk under which the last eliminated player would have two more wins than the player he meets in the 2nd-place bracket, due to uneven assignment of byes. That player could then get knocked down to third with a single loss, while still having one more win than the player walking away with second place. * In addition to balancing byes, we seem to be generally tweaking the format to compensate easy pairings in earlier rounds with tougher pairings in later rounds, and vice versa. Dividing the tournament into a main bracket and consolation brackets prevents any even-out mechanisms from working. Obviously I am still just brainstorming about this format, so I am probably not seeing exactly how it would work. My first impression, however, is that if we want everyone to keep playing until they have lost five, it would be better to have a unified quintuple elimination with no dividers. My fundamental intuition is that number of wins is a better way to determine second place than a playoff/consolation system that might give the prize to someone with only an equal number of wins or (gasp) even someone with one win fewer. Contrariwise, if we simply want to guarantee everyone a certain number of games, it would be better to have only one divider, and that between players who have something to play for and players who are just playing for fun. Then everyone still playing for the podium would be in a unified group where the pairing algorithm was able to balance things out as well as possible, including by forcing pairings which haven't happened yet. The past system of ranking by number of wins satisfied my intuition of fairness. Unfortunately, even in a unified format, the number of byes given out may be unequal by one, so we require a small kludge: a playoff game when when eliminated players have the same number of wins. It seems like a small kludge, though, whereas expanding the playoff into a tournament-long consolation bracket seems to expand the kludginess. This is just my first impression; I welcome further discussion. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by hyperpape on May 5th, 2012, 1:33pm Perhaps I am missing some subtleties, but a single elimination winners bracket with a consolation bracket for eliminated players is common in Go. You run the consolation bracket so that the players who are knocked out of the original tournament later effectively have byes in the consolation tournament. See this page for an example:http://hiddema.nl/L19.html I'm not sure it's possible to merge that with floating elimination or it solves all the problems, but if possible, I think it may address some of your concerns, Fritzlein. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Thiagor on May 5th, 2012, 2:46pm on 05/05/12 at 09:26:01, Fritzlein wrote:
Ok, I must admit that I hadn't really thought about this steep descend at the top. However, if people think this distribution is otherwise fine, we could just fix it an ad-hoc way, e.g. use 1/(n+1)^2 instead. Another suggestion: Has anyone already thought about combining different distributions? For instance, we could award half of the total prize fund to the top 3 finishers (say 50-30-20), while the other half is given to all players, proportional to their number of wins. This would also, in some sense at least, give justice to the survey results ;-) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 5th, 2012, 4:41pm on 05/05/12 at 13:33:59, hyperpape wrote:
If the Arimaa World Championship were single-elimination, there would be no difficulties, and no need for fancy formats. First place and second place would be obvious: the winner and loser of the last game, respectively. And, as is common in single-elimination tournaments, the two losers of the second-to-last round would play each other for third place. If other losers wanted to play each other for fun, that would be fine too. The subtleties start to arise when someone is still in contention after losing a game. In double-elimination tournaments, anyone with one loss is not playing in a "consolation bracket"; they are still playing for the title. Brackets like the one you linked are common (at least in the United States) with the addition that the winner of the losers' bracket gets to play the winner of the winners' bracket, and can at that point claim the title with two consecutive wins. The typical fixed bracket for a double-elimination tournament is straightforward. Say after one round there are 32 winners and 32 losers. Each group plays internally leaving 16 WW players, 16 WL players, 16 LW players, and 16 LL (eliminated) players. As you note, the second-round losers can be neatly paired with the first-round losers, after which there remain 16 in the winners' bracket and 16 in the losers' bracket. However, everyone in the loser's bracket has now played three games instead of only two. Suppose that someone who lost in the first round wins every game from then on. By the time only one winner remains, his score line will be WWWWWW. The first-round loser, however, will have a score line of LWWWWWWWWWW, having had to win ten games for the privilege of trying to win two more against top player. I saw something nearly this ridiculous happen in a pool (pocket billiards) tournament once, and it was obviously unjust; the player from the losers' bracket was exhausted by the time he won through, while his opponent from the winners' bracket was still fresh. This injustice was exactly what prodded me to propose a floating (as opposed to fixed-bracket) double-elimination tournament for the Arimaa World Championship. If I beat you in the first round, the number of wins you need to become champion should be one more than the number of wins I need to become champion. That's fair (isn't it?) because I have only one more win than you so far. This fairness criterion is what a floating elimination tournament achieves. Yet in a 64-player fixed-bracket double-elimination, a first-round winner needs six more wins for the title while a first-round loser needs twelve more, which is twice as many, not one more. Let me stress again that fairness concerns like this one only apply when losers are still in contention for the title. If there is a consolation bracket purely for the losers to have fun in, then fairness is unimportant and what matters most is pairing evenly-matched games, because evenly-matched games are the most fun. What aaaa was proposing (if I read it correctly) was a triple-elimination tournament with an additional 3-loss and 4-loss bracket to determine 2nd and 3rd place respectively. My thought is that for the purpose of determining order of finish, this is a strictly worse system than having a quintuple-elimination tournament from the get-go, because everyone who is not eliminated is still fighting for something, so fairness matters. Those two extra brackets are not just for fun, they are for eternal glory and (at least a little) money. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 5th, 2012, 4:54pm on 05/05/12 at 14:46:30, Thiagor wrote:
Actually, by the survey we would need 22.5% distributed 50-30-20, 35% distributed 40-20-15-10-7-5-3, 12.5% distributed 30-15-10-8-6-5-4-4-3-3-3-3-2-2-2, and 30% distributed proportional to number of wins. :P The problem with the survey question is that both the shape and extent of the distribution matter. Since there are two concepts in dispute, there isn't really a "middle" or a "compromise" answer. The first three options I presented were all roughly 1/n, with the difference being how many people got something. The last option garnered support perhaps because everyone got something, but if you plot the prize versus place, it is weirdly S-shaped rather than falling off in orderly fashion. At the moment I am leaning toward prizes as 1/n, extended to the place of anyone who won even one game. In a six-round 64-player tournament, that means only one person (other than dropouts) gets nothing, and the top places are about 21-11-7-5-4. But no, that doesn't leave as much money at the top as most people were voting for. This is oddly similar to allotting half per win and half per 1/(n+1)^2 but the shape of the distribution gets weirder, with the top still about 21-11-7-5-4 and a flattening through the middle when the steep half is mostly gone so it is by wins instead, each worth about 0.25 share. I'm just not sure what to do. Maybe 1/n extended to the people who "make the finals" by being alive after six rounds? This would mean that in a 64-player tournament, about 22 places would pay out, with the top getting about 27-14-9-7-5. That last idea might be as close to matching the survey as we can get. (Recall that a slim majority wanted only 7 or 3 places to pay out.) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by hyperpape on May 5th, 2012, 8:43pm I see my post was too unclear. I wrote it as if I'd already been participating in the thread, so my intentions would be clear. Anyway, I meant to not be talking about a single elimination plus consolation bracket, or standard double elimination bracket, but a way of implementing aaaa's idea: if there are n players, wait for the first n/2 to be eliminated in a quadruple floating elimination or triple floating elimination, then pair them. The n/4 winners face the next n/4 players to be eliminated, and so on. Hence the rather cryptic comment about merging a double elimination format with floating elimination. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 6th, 2012, 9:34am on 05/05/12 at 20:43:33, hyperpape wrote:
Only single-elimination eliminates half as many people each round as the round before. A multiple-elimination format will have a more complex progression. For example, a 64-player triple-elimination eliminates 8 people in the third round, 12 people in the fourth round, 12 people in the fifth round, 10 people in the sixth round, 7 or 8 people in the seventh round, and a variable number of people in the following rounds. You can't simply match new losers to old losers; there must be some sort of floating pairing in the consolation bracket. But maybe I am still missing the point of your proposal: Why not have everyone (losers as well as winners) play at the rate of one game per week? Why have one bracket move at a different pace than the other? What is the aim of your proposal, i.e. what benefit are you trying to achieve? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Marty on May 6th, 2012, 3:02pm on 05/05/12 at 16:41:18, Fritzlein wrote:
[technical] it seems to me that for 64 players in a fixed double elimination tournament you need only 7-8 wins to win the loser's bracket and face the winner of the winner's bracket (who'd scored 6 wins) this detail aside, i agree that the floating elimination is fairer than the simpler fixed elimination and i like it better. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 6th, 2012, 10:08pm on 05/06/12 at 15:02:52, Marty wrote:
I could be wrong, but let's break it down. I lose my first game. I am one of 32 losers. I win my second game. I am one of 16 losers. 16 losers join my bracket. I am one of 32 losers again. I win my third game. I am one of 16 losers again. I win my fourth game. I am one of 8 losers. 8 losers join my bracket. I am one of 16 losers again. I win my fifth game. I am one of 8 losers again. I win my sixth game. I am one of 4 losers. 4 losers join my bracket. I am one of 8 losers again. I win my seventh game. I am one of 4 losers again. I win my eighth game. I am one of 2 losers. 2 losers join my bracket. I am one of 4 losers again. I win my ninth game. I am one of 2 losers again. I win my tenth game. I am the only loser. 1 loser joins my bracket. I am one of 2 losers again. I win my eleventh game. I am the only losers again. That makes one loss and ten wins. Now to win the tournament I need two more against the winner of the winners' bracket, i.e. a total of twelve straight wins. Am I doing the math correctly? Quote:
I'm glad you like floating elimination. Also, thanks for posting, and don't hesitate to post with any further questions, suggestions, or general comments! |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Marty on May 7th, 2012, 2:59am on 05/06/12 at 22:08:36, Fritzlein wrote:
your proof is convincing, but i believe i have an counter example. (the actual pairing would be probably arranged as fold pairing instead of adjacent pairing. that shouldn't change anything) http://i50.tinypic.com/ehj3om.png am i missing anything? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by hyperpape on May 7th, 2012, 6:32am Forget rounds. Schedule the consolation bracket whenever there are enough players available. This does create the issue that you have to break ties: if there are n/2 - 1 players eliminated after some week, and n/2 + 1 eliminated the next week, you'll have to decide which player gets seeded into the following round of the consolation bracket. (Maybe that's what you meant by "floating pairing", if so, then yay: agreement). |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 7th, 2012, 10:17am on 05/07/12 at 06:32:58, hyperpape wrote:
What do you mean by enough players? If 8 players are eliminated in the third round of a 64-player triple-elimination, there are enough players to play 4 games in the consolation bracket. So should they play? If not, what are they waiting for, and why? Before I was confused as to what you are trying to achieve, and I still am, but now I am also confused as to what you are proposing to do, never mind what it accomplishes. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 7th, 2012, 10:31am on 05/07/12 at 02:59:12, Marty wrote:
If I am reading your diagram correctly, you are having everyone who is still alive play every round. This is exactly what a traditional double-elimination bracket doesn't do, because the traditional double-elimination wants to maintain equal powers of two. The difference between floating double-elimination and the bracket you propose is only in the pairing within score groups, but both have this structure: After 1 round there are 32 winners and 32 losers After 2 rounds there are 16 winners and 32 losers After 3 rounds there are 8 winners and 24 losers After 4 rounds there are 4 winners and 16 losers After 5 rounds there are 2 winners and 10 losers After 6 rounds there are 1 winners and 6 losers In round 7 someone has to get a bye. This is unlike traditional fixed-bracket double-elimination, which tries to keep 2^n players in both the winners' bracket and the losers' bracket, which requires the losers' bracket to play extra rounds. In short, we're in agreement about everyone playing an equal number of games. :-) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on May 7th, 2012, 9:42pm on 05/07/12 at 10:17:30, Fritzlein wrote:
Wow, I took a break for school and I'm very confused now. My original suggestion (which I thought was being discussed, and as voiced again by aaaa and others) of having the 2nd place and 3rd place bracket seems not to be clear at all. Of course those 8 players would play. The only reason to ever wait would be if there was only a single player in the bracket. Since those brackets continue to play, I don't see how the second place bracket can ever go more then 1 week past the championship, and the 3rd place bracket could ever go one week past that. To have reached those brackets, you are already one loss from getting knocked out of that bracket... and so on. So there is no way for those brackets to be larger or have players with fewer of losses then those that are still playing for the top spot. I think the focus is too much on the number of wins. The number of wins to me is NOT relevant to who is the better player. What is relevant is who did they beat. For example, this year I placed 4th. But towards the end, I had only one loss, while everyone remaining (but hanzack) had 2. By the metric of just "wins" I was in second place. But I had not yet beaten anyone that ended up in the top 3, since after a tough 2nd round game I had a relatively easy schedule, not getting paired against the top couple of players. But in the meantime, Fritz was paired twice against Jean, plus against hanzack and Adanac... and knocked out of the triple elimination before we had played each other. To me, it would have been much more fair had Fritz been "waiting" in the consolation bracket to have a chance to play against the other people that had lost to the same people he had. (In this case, it would have been for the difference between 4th and 5th place... but had there been one less person above us then the 3rd place bracket would have been in effect...but he would have had a rematch with Adanac, and then Jean would have played the remaining player to decide 2nd place...etc...) I see it as a way to provide better differentiation for 2nd and 3rd place, while not changing the triple elimination tournament that was designed to most effectively designate the top player. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 7th, 2012, 11:30pm on 05/07/12 at 21:42:56, Nombril wrote:
OK, we obviously need to play through an example to make this clear. The consolation brackets will be bigger than the top tier, and the tournament will extend more than two weeks past the time the champion is decided. How much more depends on byes and on the dominance of the top player; I am just going to assume the top player wins undefeated for the purpose of illustration. The table shows how many people there are after each round with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 losses. Those with 5 losses are out; those with 4 losses can only play each other (for 3rd place) and those with three losses can only play each other (for 2nd place) until they lose and drop down a bracket. Players with two losses or fewer can only play each other until getting a third loss. round 0L 1L 2L 3L 4L 5L ----- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0 64 1 32 32 2 16 32 16 3 8 24 24 8 4 4 16 24 16 8 5 2 10 20 20 10 2 6 1 6 15 20 15 7 7 1 3 10 18 18 14 8 1 1 7 14 18 23 9 1 0 5 10 16 32 10 1 0 2 8 13 40 11 1 0 1 5 11 46 12 1 0 0 4 8 51 Champion is decided 13 1 0 0 2 6 55 14 1 0 0 1 4 58 Second place is decided 15 1 0 0 1 2 60 16 1 0 0 1 1 61 Third place is decided I hope this makes it clear that nothing strange has to happen for the extra brackets to have extra people; on the contrary, that is the natural evolution of the tournament. It might be possible to construct a scenario in which the extra two brackets only extend the tournament by two weeks, but it is also possible to construct a scenario in which (thanks to byes in the lower brackets) it takes five extra weeks to finish up. Quote:
I understand the problem that you are trying to address, but I believe your proposal is an inefficient means of addressing it. If you are going to extend the tournament by four weeks because everyone (except the champion) plays until losing five times, then it would be better not to separate out the consolation brackets. Consider exactly the scenario you proposed, where I have three losses and you have only two and you have never been forced to play me. Under your proposal, we would not be allowed to play each other, because I would be in the second-place bracket and you would still be in the winners' bracket. But if you don't split off this extra bracket, we could still play. I personally don't think it is worth extending the tournament by four weeks to get a better reading on who is in second and third place. Typically it has only taken one additional game each year. For the 2012 tournament, first and second place were quite obvious, whereas third place only required one more game to clear up. If the fact that you finished fourth and I finished fifth instead of the reverse was not warranted by the actual games played, so be it. We were both clearly behind Adanac in third place, and an exact ordering of lower places don't matter much to me, or to the people who voted to stop playing after three losses. However, IF we are going to extend the tournament another four weeks, the best use of the extra time would be to keep everyone in the same division, even if we crowned the champ well before tournament end. Then pairings that haven't happened yet will happen freely, and other even-out pairing mechanisms can work better too. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on May 9th, 2012, 8:15am What is gnawing at me is that there are a multitude of ways to rank the losers of a championship and that any choice of using them to determine playoff spots or outright final ranks would be almost hopelessly arbitrary. Just considering the main tournament alone, I see number of wins, round reached and performance rating. Add in a consolation section and you get another dimension of which section these values pertain to, if not their combined result, not to mention that if you do account for consolation games, number of losses could also become useful as a differentiating tiebreaker. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 9th, 2012, 4:01pm on 05/09/12 at 08:15:16, aaaa wrote:
I have to agree that our format isn't perfect at distinguishing second from third and is even less perfect at distinguishing third from fourth. But the format isn't terrible at it either. Indeed, I think that the rankings of 2-3-4 are good enough by tournament end that I would be satisfied with any of the three ordering methods you listed, although only the performance rating doesn't need a further tiebreak. So we could do * Wins + performance rating * Wins + single tiebreak game * Order of elimination + performance rating * Order of elimination + single tiebreak game * Performance rating Sure, the choice between these is somewhat arbitrary, but even the worst of them is not a bad choice. I guess my current preference is for the first one or the last one, because then we never have to extend an already-long tournament by an extra week. There may be some cases in which wins-then-rating isn't clearly 100% fair, but then no tournament format is ever clearly 100% fair. Sometimes taking extra measures to make a tournament more fair is not worth the fuss and bother. In a situation where there are several rather good options, we can pick one and be happy that it is good, even if it isn't perfect. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on May 9th, 2012, 10:18pm Thanks for charting it out for 64 people... it does seem pretty clear... but... on 05/07/12 at 23:30:48, Fritzlein wrote:
Also, I wasn't "constructing" a scenario, I was just looking at what happened this year. The 2nd place consolation brackets this year would have kept up with the 1st place bracket, with only 1 more game to be played after the final for the remaining player in the 2nd place bracket to play whoever was knocked out of the 1st place bracket. Was there something odd that happened this year? Or is that just due to the smaller number of players? Maybe all it takes is one loss by the top player to give the 2nd place bracket a chance to "catch up"? (Hmm, nope, just tried that with your 64 player bracket...) I *guess* you could have some break point for starting the consolation brackets (such as you must have won at least 2 games, assuming good turn out). But I would shy away from making things complicated. I definitely agree that it is unreasonable to extend a tournament 4 weeks to differentiate between 2-3-4. Maybe I just need to give into the fact that this is a still a "short" tournament, and luck will have to play a factor, and the only way to finish at the top is to win the games you play. ::) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 10th, 2012, 1:50pm on 05/09/12 at 22:18:00, Nombril wrote:
Sure, the byes could be on either side, which could either lengthen or shorten the extension caused by having extra brackets. But the "default" with 64 players and minimal byes was not a two-round extension, but a four-round extension. Quote:
Nothing strange happened; it was just due to the small number of players. The people in the consolation bracket didn't have time to "pile up" like they would in a larger tournament. But let me point out that even so, your proposal would have extended the tournament three weeks, not two, because the third-place bracket would not have kept up: round 0L 1L 2L 3L 4L 5L ----- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0 11 1 6 5 2 4 4 3 3 3 2 5 1 4 2 2 3 4 5 1 3 1 4 2 6 1 1 3 2 3 1 7 1 0 3 2 3 2 8 1 0 1 3 3 3 9 0 1 1 2 3 4 10 0 1 0 2 3 5 Champion is decided 11 0 1 0 1 3 6 Second place is decided 12 0 1 0 1 2 7 13 0 1 0 1 1 8 Third place is decided Quote:
Yes, losses by the top player don't allow the lower brackets to "catch up" unless those losses occur at the very end. Here is 64 players with the higher player always losing when "paired down" against someone with more losses, and in particular with the top player losing twice before securing the crown: round 0L 1L 2L 3L 4L 5L ----- -- -- -- -- -- -- 0 64 1 32 32 2 16 32 16 3 8 24 24 8 4 4 16 24 16 8 5 2 10 20 20 10 2 6 1 6 15 20 15 7 7 0 4 11 17 18 14 8 0 2 8 14 17 23 9 0 1 5 11 16 31 10 0 0 4 8 13 39 11 0 0 2 6 11 45 12 0 0 1 4 9 50 Champion is decided 13 0 0 1 2 7 54 14 0 0 1 1 5 57 Second place is decided 15 0 0 1 1 3 59 16 0 0 1 1 2 60 17 0 0 1 1 1 61 Third place is decided Note that the two consolation brackets now take five rounds to finish instead of only four. So it is not just whether the top player loses that influences the length of the extension, but when he loses. And, to repeat, the extra weeks are mostly a function of the tournament size. Quote:
I'm glad we're generally in agreement that there is a tradeoff between effort and result. :) It is just too long a tournament extension to be justified. Quote:
I agree: No matter how we decide to distinguish 3rd place from 4th place, the player who got the short end of the tiebreak method must know that he had a chance to place higher (three chances, in fact) by winning a game that he lost. I didn't waste time this year bemoaning the fact that I finished in 5th place behind you due to my having to play a tougher schedule than you had to. Instead I spent all my regret over losing the three games that I lost. If I had won any one of those three... |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on May 10th, 2012, 3:01pm on 05/09/12 at 16:01:12, Fritzlein wrote:
Or my idea which was if wins are tied, take the two players with the highest performance ratings and have them play a single tie-break game. This tie-break game can take place the same week as the final game so no need to extend the tournament. To me this is a sufficient means of determining 2nd from 3rd or 3rd from 4th. I don't want to see any format in which there are consolation games being played weeks after the final has been finished and a champion crowned... |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 13th, 2012, 10:11am on 05/10/12 at 15:01:37, mistre wrote:
That seems like a very reasonable scheme. Rank first by wins and then by a single playoff game. We haven't yet had a three-way tie for wins, but it could happen, so I like the clarification that if there are more than two tied, only the top two by performance rating get to be in the playoff game. The 3rd-4th tiebreak game can take place while the top two are still playing, so there is no tournament extension in that case. When there is a tie in number of wins for 2nd-3rd, though (due to unequal byes) the playoff game would still have to be the week after crowning the champion. I am not sure how to balance my desire for a head-to-head tiebreaker with my desire not to extend the tournament. Would it be too arbitrary to say that if 2nd and 3rd tie on wins, we revert to performance rating to break the tie with no playoff game? Now that I think about it, many tournaments have a 3rd-4th game before the championship, but I can't think of any tournament in any sport that plays a 2nd-3rd game after the champion has been determined. Is it just too anti-climactic? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on May 13th, 2012, 12:20pm mistre's proposal to have one playoff game at the most is pretty much a codification of how we already have been doing things and I don't remember much of a fuss when a game to determine third place in the 2008 championship took place when the winner was already known for a week. The question is whether to assign a monetary award to winning any playoff game. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on May 13th, 2012, 1:26pm on 05/13/12 at 12:20:38, aaaa wrote:
Good question. I believe the standard in chess tournaments is to not break ties when it come to prize money. The prizes for the tied places are pooled and then evenly divided. But for ranking (i.e. glory) some tiebreaker such as strength of schedule is used. It makes sense to me to have our single playoff game not affect prize money and only affect recognition on the page http://arimaa.com/arimaa/wc/ |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Hippo on May 19th, 2012, 3:06pm Uff, I have finally finished the reading :). I like the idea of consolidation bracket for the 4th loss, but I don't think bracket for fifth loss is needed. Even when players are eliminated from this 4elimination turnament they could be paired till the guaranted (say 6) rounds are played. I would let 2nd place for the last eliminated player. I like the idea of the third place to be decided by game among the players in the 3 loss bracket with best performance rating. But there is the problem when to let them play. ... Best 2 players could play several games while others are eliminated and in that case fighting in 3 loss bracket could continue. One option is to decide 3rd place in a round when first time winner could be decided. Another option is to wait to round when winner must be decided or in the case the winner was decided faster than needed play one additional round. Both choices seems to be feasible for me. BTW: There could be problems with performance ratings when forfeits in 3 loses bracket and or first 6 rounds appear but this would not be that big issue as when this was chosen as a criterion for the top 8 players cut-off. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Jul 16th, 2012, 5:56pm Sorry for the long haitus. My current thinking on format is: 1) $10 (1000 Arimaa points) entry fee. 2) One round per week, with a one-week break after six rounds. 3) Everyone plays six rounds. 4) Paired like FTE except those who have three or more losses can't be paired against those with two or fewer losses. 5) Seventh round to the conclusion is straight FTE, with losses, pairing history, etc., carried forward from the first six rounds. 6) Places after first decided by wins (not counting byes) with performance rating as a tiebreaker. 7) Prize money proportional to 1/rank for everyone who makes the finals. 8) $5 of the entry fee is divided between volunteer game referees, commentators, etc. The other $5 goes to the prize fund. Both the volunteer fund and the prize fund can be expanded by donations. Any comments on the basic structure? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Jul 18th, 2012, 1:53am Another thought 9) Seeding by WHRE if at least six games. Otherwise by relative WHRH, then by relative game room rating. By "relative WHRH", I mean take all entered players that have a WHRE rating and compare that to their WHRH. If they average X points higher on WHRH, then any player who doesn't have a WHRE rating uses WHRH minus X points instead of straight WHRH. This mitigates the two ratings being on a different scale. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by ChrisB on Jul 18th, 2012, 2:22am Thanks for the outline Fritz. I have a few comments, mostly related to encouraging more people to enter. But if my comments add problems or complications, I'm fine with everything as you outlined. on 07/16/12 at 17:56:19, Fritzlein wrote:
Looks good to me. This relatively low fee should enable more people to participate. Quote:
Six rounds for all seems good to me. However, instead of a one-week break after six rounds, I would prefer that players have the option to take a free bye during one of the first six weeks and then play their 6th game during week seven. This could come in handy for those with deadlines, exams, vacations, etc. In fact, a second free bye for those making the finals may be desirable. To help prevent one from using the free bye to gain a strategic advantage (for example, avoiding a difficult opponent or, when three players remain, forcing the other two to play), we could require that the bye be declared several weeks in advance. Quote:
Does this mean that the pairing will be folding (that is, top-seeded plays bottom-seeded in Round 1) rather than sliding (that is, top-seeded plays middle-seeded and next middle-seeded plays bottom-seeded in Round 1)? To reduce the number of gross mismatches and thereby encourage more people to enter, I would prefer a sliding pairing for the first six rounds. Quote:
This seems fair to me. (Just as a side note: it looks like about two-thirds of the finalists will start with two losses and that up to one-half of the finalists could be eliminated in round 7) Quote:
For what it's worth from one not likely to make the finals, ha ha, items 6) through 8) all look good to me. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Jul 18th, 2012, 11:02am on 07/18/12 at 02:22:05, ChrisB wrote:
Thanks for the feedback! Quote:
As a player, the thought of being able to have a rest week of my own choosing is enormously attractive. There may be a week which I know in advanced is nearly a forced forfeit because I am travelling and/or busy. Even if I get a game scheduled at a "good" time, say at 5:00 a.m. on a work day because my weekend is unavailable, it is a semi-forfeit due to fatigue. As an administrator, however, it sounds like an absolute nightmare to give players a bye week of their choosing. Depending on the pairing scheme the pairings are at least partially predictable and therefore subject to manipulation even if byes are requested in advance. For starters, the top two seeds could collude to avoid each other in the preliminaries by coordinating to request byes in the sixth and seventh weeks respectively. And then what happens in the seventh week when everyone "must play" due to having earlier requested a bye, but there are an odd number? Then someone gets a second bye, making it strategic to request an earlier bye even if you don't need one. Of course people would try to use their bye(s) strategically. How confident can we be that this won't mess up the tournament dynamics? I haven't thought through all the consequences, but my gut instinct is that we don't want to risk opening this can of worms, especially when the established way of playing every week has proved to be at least tolerable. Quote:
Ahhh, excellent suggestion. It hadn't occurred to me to use a different pairing algorithm before and after the break, but why not? The reason I wanted to get away from Swiss pairings as used in past years in the Open Classic is that it created several different types of situations with an incentive for someone to lose on purpose: * Someone who is already eliminated with three losses might purposely lose as a favor to someone with only two losses. * Someone who is guaranteed a spot in the final might purposely lose to change their own seed, manipulating their pairings in the finals. * Someone who is guaranteed a spot in the final might purposely lose to elevate their opponent into the top eight, knocking someone they fear more out of the top eight. But all of these incentives disappear when we carry losses forward, when the finals aren't limited to eight, and when we forbid people who have three or more losses from playing people who don't. Therefore the Swiss pairing of past Open Classic tournaments could be used again with slight modification for the first six rounds, while FTE pairing could kick in for round seven and beyond. I rather like this idea, and I am leaning towards it for the reasons you suggest. Sliding pairing would make the preliminaries a bit more friendly while folding pairing keeps the finals more cutthroat. Quote:
Yep. As I think about it more, I rather like the idea of limiting prize money to those who make it to round seven, even if half of them get eliminated the very next round. That will add weight to the idea of "making the cut". There will be additional psychological separation between the preliminaries and the finals, even though (because losses are carried forward) it is in essence one big tournament. There are very few people with a realistic chance of winning the World Championship, but there are quite a few who have a realistic shot at "finishing in the money", which gives a larger population of folks something to shoot for. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Jul 18th, 2012, 4:40pm on 07/18/12 at 11:02:50, Fritzlein wrote:
I like this, one of the parts of a split format I like is the prestige of making the cut - and this brings that idea into the unified format! |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Jul 19th, 2012, 11:13am I'd be happy to use this system in the upcoming WC. I didn't see the time control mentioned, but I'd prefer 90s per move. The opening round games will be short regardless of the time control, but after week six I think it's important to have reasonably slow time controls. Anything less than 90s/move would probably reduce the quality of play. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Jul 19th, 2012, 1:03pm on 07/19/12 at 11:13:55, Adanac wrote:
Oops, I forgot to mention time control. Thanks for bringing it up. The survey consensus was pretty clearly for 60s/move for the earliest games, in particular a large majority rejected the notion that all games should be played at 90s/move or slower. For the slowest games the consensus was less clear, because 120s/move got only a bare majority. I will interpret this to mean 120s/move is appropriate only for the finals of the finals. To be more specific I propose the time control For the first six rounds: 60s/5m/100/0/4h/4m Starting in round seven: 90s/5m/100/0/6h/5m When only three or two players remain: 120s/5m/75/0/8h/6m The most important number is time increment per move (60s-90s-120s). The progression is justified by the increasing seriousness of the games. 60s at the start may seem low, but it reduces the burden on top players that a long tournament naturally imposes. Rather than seeding any players straight into the finals, we put everyone on a nearly-equal footing, but at least we don't drag out the early games where the top players can expect blowout wins. Second-most important is max time per move (4m-5m-6m). I justify the increase only because I expect an increased number of commentators at the end. It can be boring to wait a whole six minutes for a move and very difficult to talk about it that long as a commentator. That thought might induce me to keep the cap at five minutes. However, for the very final games I hope we have at least three commentators who can fill up the time, entertain the spectators, and sustain the sense of excitement and tension. As a player who can't hear the commentary, I wouldn't like waiting a whole six minutes in silence, but I think the annoyance to the waiting player can be justified if the lengthened maximum time is conducive to the highest possible quality of play, which is what we want from the championship game(s). Not very important but perhaps controversial will be my proposed banked time percentage (100-100-75). The slight discount on banked time in the finals is intended to discourage blitz moves. For the sake of the spectators, there should at least be time for the commentators to say why necessary moves are necessary. Also for the sake of high-quality play, the players should be encouraged to take a few extra seconds to double-check even obvious moves. Finally, even if player behavior is not influenced at all, the discount should slightly reduce the total game length, so that the 120s/move games aren't actually a full third longer than 90s/move games. I think 75% banking for the championship game(s) is a good idea, but it doesn't really matter. I doubt anyone, whether player or spectator, can point to a game in either 2011 or 2012 where it made a difference one way or the other, even though the time controls were different between the years. We could argue, but we'd be arguing more on principle than practicality. Just let me have my way on this and see what happens. ;) Other than the one place in which 75 != 100, I believe my proposed time controls are completely in line with the consensus desires of the Arimaa community, both as players and as spectators. That is to say that, except in a minor detail, I don't think I am imposing my will so much as implementing the closest thing possible to what everyone else wants. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Jul 26th, 2012, 1:55pm I'm having serious misgivings about how, given their conflicting aims, elimination- and Swiss-style rules are being mixed in the way it's currently being discussed. On the one hand, rules typical for Swiss tournaments, particularly slide pairing and the fact that an as "unpromising" player as possible gets the bye, exist to contribute towards a fair strength of schedule and consequent ranking for everyone at the end of the tournament and are thus only appropriate under the premise that everyone gets there in the first place. On the other hand, (floating tuple) elimination tournaments are cutthroat by their very nature; too many losses and you're out. Thus, byes and lesser valued opponents are things you earn by having a good seed and how well you performed in the tournament, which translates into fold pairing and a bye policy that is inverted in comparison to that of a Swiss-style tournament. So, keeping above in mind, a "sanitized" version of the latest proposal would be to keep the existing FTE tournament structure and add a partially parallel-running Swiss tournament in which eliminated players would flow into and which would end after the sixth round of the main tournament. The Swiss tournament would remain linked to the FTE insofar the scheduling of the former would be affected by the games in the latter, but not vice versa. However, how the final ranking is to be calculated must be chosen meticulously, lest it's unfairly influenced by the various peculiarities arising from such a hybrid approach, especially ones related to byes. I also wouldn't like to see mistre's proposal concerning podium places be dropped. We want to avoid a repeat of a playoff game being played anyway on an ad hoc basis because people were clamoring for one. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Jul 26th, 2012, 11:41pm I don't feel strongly about the method of settling places behind first. Since you and mistre are voting for the same thing, let me see if I can formalize it, and if there are no objections, that can become official. Ranking: First place goes to the only player with fewer than three losses. Other players are ranked in order of wins, not counting byes. If there is a tie for second place by number of wins, the top two of those by performance rating will play a single playoff game, with the winner taking second place and the loser taking third place. If second place is unambiguous, but two or more players are tied for third place, the top two of those by performance rating will play a single playoff game, with the winner taking third place and the loser taking fourth place. Thus, at most one playoff game will take place in the tournament; all ranks not directly determined by the playoff game will be in order of wins, then in order of performance rating including the playoff game. I also don't feel strongly about the difference between Swiss pairing both above and below the elimination line, or FTE above and Swiss below. I'm willing to go with your preference for the latter, unless anyone else thinks of some reason we shouldn't. By the way, have you thought more about my proposal to have the in-tournament performance calculated according to very weak priors of pre-tournament rating rather than according to moderate priors of everyone being equal? I believe that one problem with equal priors is that in a big tournament it takes more rounds before there are enough connections between players to start sorting players with equal records. After two rounds of a 64-player FTE that is true to seed, there will be sixteen 0-2 players who have no distinction, and similarly sixteen 2-0 players. Even in a more realistic scenario including upsets, there will be a large handful of players in groups with no distinction. If we get into a situation with no in-tournament distinction, then we can't reward someone who got a tougher early pairing with an easier later pairing. Similarly, we can't punish someone who got an easy early pairing with a tougher later pairing. Our "even-up" pairing wouldn't kick in until later rounds, which is especially problematic if we are switching to the "even-up" rule that the top player in a score group plays down and a bottom player in a score group plays up, rather than the reverse as we have done in the past. The idea of using pre-tournament ratings for weak priors is that it would immediately distinguish between a tougher pairing and an easier one, and allow immediate application of rewards. But I'm not sure how it would work out in practice; one would have to run some simulations to get a reasonable feel for it. What do you think? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by qswanger on Aug 3rd, 2012, 3:09pm I'm a little late to this discussion (but I did briefly skim the preceeding 10 pages and hope to go back through them more thoroughly later), so my apologies if something similar has already been made to what I'm about to suggest: I kinda like the idea of having an Arimaa world champion determined by a cycle similar to the old FIDE World Chess Championship; i.e., Qualifying "interzonal" tournaments that *could* be open to everyone; "candidate" matches that would follow that; and then a larger World Championship final between the reigning world champion and the survivor of the candidate matches -- "the challenger". I think this would previde for quite a lot of drama. And perhaps it would be more practical to space out all of this over two years instead of every year as we have currently. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Aug 4th, 2012, 6:42pm on 08/03/12 at 15:09:30, qswanger wrote:
Thanks for the feedback, qswanger. We gave you quite a lot to read through, so I commend your perseverance! You are not the only one nostalgic for the old World Championships of chess; Adanac too has fond memories of past drama. He and I discussed the relative merits in another thread. To spare you having to read through even more old posts, let me try to summarize my side of the argument here. The only part of the old FIDE system that appeals to me is the drama of a long head-to-head match between two rivals for the title. The rest of the system strikes me as archaic. First, why should qualifying tournaments be zonal a.k.a. regional a.k.a. geographically determined? For a game played in physical space, sure, it keeps costs down to have the first round of eliminations be local. It would be way too expensive to force everyone to gather in a single place for one big tournament. But on the Internet it makes no sense to enforce geographical distinctions, especially since it is difficult to be sure where anyone is physically located anyway. I don't see the benefit of zonals for an Internet-based tournament. Second, the long knockout matches that were part of the FIDE cycle for a while make things highly dependent on seeding and on particular pairings. What if there is some fluke of seeding so that the #2 player in the world gets paired against the #1 player in the world early in elimination rounds? (For us that could easily have happened with hanzack and chessandgo in 2012 thanks to hanzack's suppressed rating.) Then the finals could be anti-climactic instead of being the peak of drama. The way that Arimaa's FTE format avoids repeat pairings until the end strikes me as much fairer and much more likely to result in the top players surviving until the climatic finish. Again, the FIDE way of doing things was an artifact of costs in physical space: it is much cheaper to get two players together to duke it out for many games than it is to re-pair everyone after every game. Third, the floating elimination format we have adopted is very efficient. If you want a FIDE-style tournament, and you want it to be open to everyone, and you want it to have the same high probability of crowning the best player that floating elimination has, then the FIDE-style tournament is going to take longer to finish, period. This is an artifact of wiping away losses between stages in the FIDE-style tournament rather than preserving losses in floating elimination. Finally, regardless of how qualifying is done, even the drama of the reigning World Champion defending his title against a challenger is a benefit that comes at the price of unfairness. Imagine that there are five top players of essentially equal skill. Why should the old World Champion have a 1/2 chance to become the new World Champion while four players who are just as good as he is only have a 1/8 chance each? Whoever is lucky enough to win one year is has a huge leg up the next year, which to me seems too high a price to pay in order to preserve the champ/challenger storyline. My opinion, in short, is that the Internet gives us the opportunity to do much better than the old FIDE format; the main point in favor of the latter is nostalgia rather than fairness or efficiency. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by clyring on Aug 4th, 2012, 9:00pm With the ease of performing ratings calculations nowadays (which tend to be much more accurate when fed new data regularly than any reasonable tournament format), the main reasons to even bother having a tournament to decide who gets the title are drama and tradition. (Perhaps a third reason might be that it is easier to understand how the tournament was won than how ratings are determined.) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Aug 4th, 2012, 9:47pm on 08/04/12 at 21:00:21, clyring wrote:
Ratings calculations are indeed more accurate than tournament results, but ratings are also far easier to manipulate than elimination-format tournaments. If chess (or Arimaa) were to abandon the tournament tradition and crown a World Champion based on ratings alone, you would see rating manipulation on an unprecedented scale. I see on the latest FIDE list that Kramink at #3 is a distant 40 rating points behind Carlsen at #1. Yet what looks like a substantial gap could be trivially overcome if his fellow Russians (five of whom are in the top twenty) started losing to Kramnik intentionally in order to have a Russian be World Champion. It is not just tradition and drama that dictate using a elimination tournament to crown a World Champion; it is also greater robustness to collusion and other forms of rating manipulation. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Aug 26th, 2012, 11:21am on 07/26/12 at 23:41:05, Fritzlein wrote:
Although the point you raise is a fair one, the reason I don't like this idea, is because it goes against the maxim of having a tournament be influenced as little and as predictably as possible by anything external. This I can only see be translated as the external source being on an ordinal scale and being used exclusively for tie-breaking purposes. Using any more information than that would lead to an uncomfortably fluid mechanism of a dynamic seeding process that is continuously operating during the scheduling of pairings and is very sensitive to the exact values for a whole set of parameters (prior and variance of the rating list plus the prior used in the tournament). This, while it's already very hard to label any particular choice of parameter as anything other than arbitrary. Now admittedly, this objection is somewhat philosophical and subjective, but I think this is fundamentally a manifestation of under how much strain an elimination tournament with so few lives is operating under. 64 participants is likely just too much with only 3 lives per player. It might just be better to declare a maximum size for the FTE and reintroduce some sort of preliminary system for when the field happens to surpass this number. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Aug 26th, 2012, 8:31pm on 08/04/12 at 18:42:49, Fritzlein wrote:
on 08/26/12 at 11:21:59, aaaa wrote:
Something to consider for later years ... that I think ties both of these two points together: If/when we reach the (possibly arbitrary) participation limit for a triple elimination FTE, lets provide a number of ways to qualify for the championship tournament. But lets not use geographical districts, instead we can increase the drama of various events during the year. Maybe one big "classic" tournament in the fall. And the winning AWL team can send some people. And the top performers in the postal mixer get invites. And the top rated WHR players. And a scholarship tournament, where the prize is a paid entry fee. And the top placers from last year. And... <insert other ideas here > Hopefully there would be enough routes to get in that there isn't pressure to rig/cheat/manipulate etc to win at one of these. And if the "limit" for the FTE is high enough, hopefully we wouldn't argue too much about a fair way to divvy up the slot between the different qualifying methods. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Aug 26th, 2012, 9:26pm on 08/26/12 at 11:21:59, aaaa wrote:
It seems our philosophical stance is pretty similar. Indeed, the exact reason I propose not saving the pre-tournament ratings for tiebreaker only is to lessen their influence relative to in-tournament performance. I want to make in-tournament performance more important and pre-tournament rating less important. Consider an example from a small tournament with the following initial ratings: A: 2500 B: 2350 C: 2300 D: 2250 E: 2200 F: 1800 G: 1700 H: 1600 The first round is folding pairing, and suppose the top four seeds win. The only game in much doubt is D vs. E, but D pulls out a hard-fought victory. Now how about the second round? All four of the top seeds have identical in-tournament performance ratings, so we have folding pairing again, i.e. A vs. D and B vs. C. The fifty-point rating advantage that C had over D before the tournament began is what gives C an easier pairing than D again. Those ratings that we consider so suspect that we want to use them only as a tiebreaker have accidentally become more important than the fact that D had to fight for his life in the first round while C cruised to an easy victory. I understand that this is only one scenario, and that other scenarios may not display this effect. I expect that one would have to laboriously pore over simulations to get a good idea of how using pre-tournament ratings as priors for in-tournament performance ratings would pan out. But the possibility seems genuine. To put in another way, you want to reduce the importance of pre-tournament ratings, so you say they are for tiebreakers only. But when you give everyone an identical prior, you create lots of ties in the in-tournament performance. By creating lots of ties, you have inadvertently made the tiebreaker very important. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Aug 26th, 2012, 10:06pm on 08/26/12 at 20:31:29, Nombril wrote:
I'm not sure when the number of participants has become too big for triple elimination. Why isn't more players simply better? One fear that keeps popping up is that it will be too much work, i.e. that the organizers and other volunteers will get burned out. But if that's the issue, then the cure might be worse than the disease! Don't get me wrong: I would love to see the Arimaa community host lots and lots of open events, each of which is an avenue to qualify for the Arimaa World Championship. I think more players in the main event is better, and I think more events is yet still better than that! But a series of qualifying events would require rather more effort than the existing format. Maybe the thought is that we already have some events (postal mixer, AWL, ironman, endgames), so having those events become qualifiers would be no "extra" effort. In my opinion, however, the majority of the "extra" effort will come from requiring standards of support, refereeing, commentating, etc. If these standards applied to every qualifying event, the workload of each would rise proportionately. On the other hand, if we think it is permissible to relax standards in qualifying events, why don't we instead just relax the standards a little for the first six rounds of one big party event, and keep the workload manageable that way? I'm hopeful that we will manage to generate a large participation for the 2013 World Championship. If we do, I'll be curious to see whether it seems to be "too big", and if so on what grounds. Once we know what the problem is (and as of now I don't see why there needs to be a problem), it will be easier to guess the best solution. I'm also hopeful that the number of other Arimaa events around the calendar will increase, with healthy participation in each and every one! |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Aug 28th, 2012, 8:57pm That wasn't at all my point. I was following up on aaaa's statement that at some threshold triple elim won't be very good at differentiating during a "large" tournament - he mentioned 64 players. And going to quadruple with that many people probably pushes the duration too high... I don't think this will be needed this year. But as tournament structures are being tried out, I thought it was worth considering the long term plans and scalability of the systems. I understand the concern about quality/standards for the non WC tournaments... but that is the reason to have so many routes. Any potential champs should have a sure route in. Since your goal is to cast a wide net anyway to create a large tournament, I suggest we don't to apply the WC standards to the quals. Hopefully this is a bridge we will need to cross in a few years! ;D |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Aug 30th, 2012, 1:46pm How about we keep the current (neutral) performance rating and have one based on pre-tournament ratings take the place of the seed as the next tiebreaker? Then the prior won't matter that much and can easily be the same parsimonious value of a half. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Aug 30th, 2012, 3:44pm on 08/30/12 at 13:46:28, aaaa wrote:
That makes sense to me, if you don't mind coding up two flavors of in-tournament performance rating. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 13th, 2012, 1:03pm Hello, folks. Omar and I met in person to go over the basic structure of the 2013 Arimaa World Championship. He has given me the green light on everything we have discussed so far. Over the coming weeks I will be finalizing the tournament rules here: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2013_World_Championship_Rules The most significant change I made from my previous thoughts is to put all of the entry fees into the prize pool and have none go to the organizers. It would be a major headache dividing up those points, and anyway all of us are in this together. I fully believe there is enough volunteer spirit to pull off the way coolest Arimaa tournament ever without anyone getting paid. The Arimaa community never ceases to amaze me with its volunteer contributions and general awesomeness. The most significant thing that has not yet been discussed in this thread is the forfeit policy. I would like forfeits for tardy players to be automatic after 15 minutes, with no player discretion allowed. This is a reversal of past policy which allowed the present player to wait for a tardy player to show up. My distinct impression is that the old policy caused more headaches than it was worth, and that stricter policy will make things better over all. When I proposed this change in the AWL discussion thread, the response was fairly unanimous in support, but I want to officially solicit comments here as well. Is there anyone who will be heartbroken if they are no longer allowed to wait around for an opponent as long as they feel like? Also, comments on all other aspects of the rules are welcome. The smooth functioning of a large tournament depends heavily on the goodwill and participation of community members. This is not going to be my tournament; it is going to be our tournament. For the most part I believe I am merely formalizing the community consensus. P.S. Omar is independently organizing all the other official events, i.e. Spectator Contest, Computer Championship, Challenge Screening, Arimaa Challenge, and the Postal Mixer. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by clyring on Oct 13th, 2012, 5:59pm I have no issues with automatic instead of voluntary forfeit claims. (PS: "stuff" is a great section header. ;)) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 13th, 2012, 6:20pm on 10/13/12 at 17:59:08, clyring wrote:
Excellent, thanks for reading it through. Quote:
It's a work in progress. ;) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Oct 13th, 2012, 6:43pm As I mentioned some time ago, by making only the following modifications to the latest FTE scheduler I was able to create a Swiss one that is also governed by global pairing rules:
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 13th, 2012, 7:29pm on 10/13/12 at 18:43:54, aaaa wrote:
Fantastic! Thank you. It will be a load off my mind to have a globally-optimizing Swiss pairing algorithm rather than the klutzy one which sometimes couldn't even output a complete pairing. I have updated the rules to reflect a globally-optimal Swiss pairing, but I am not sure I have it right. Is the bye priority still split between conditions 4 and 6? And changing "maximize" to "minimize" in condition 7 can't be right because then we would get adjacent pairing rather than sliding pairing. You are welcome to fix the wording to make it true if you like, or you can un-confuse me and I will fix the wording. Thanks in advance. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by supersamu on Oct 14th, 2012, 2:50am I see a problem with the wording in the paragraph forfeits: Quote:
Quote:
What happens if silver is seated 14 minutes past the scheduled start and gold starts the game 2 minutes later? According to my first quote, that would not be a forfeit, but according to the second, it would be. Quote:
lol |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 14th, 2012, 9:18am on 10/14/12 at 02:50:08, supersamu wrote:
Good catch, thanks. I wanted to make sure that Gold couldn't circumvent the 15-minute rule by sitting down in time and then waiting 40 minutes to start the game. But I also didn't want Gold to forfeit if Silver waited until 14:59 after to sit down, leaving Gold one second to start the game or forfeit. I guess I should leave the way I described it first and change the way I described it second, right? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Oct 14th, 2012, 11:31am I got slide pairing by minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses plus the sum of the absolute differences between the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses and half of the total number of players with such a number of losses. Have fun digesting that. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 14th, 2012, 12:26pm on 10/14/12 at 11:31:07, aaaa wrote:
Ah, clever. Why didn't I think of that? I'll write it up. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 15th, 2012, 4:02pm on 10/14/12 at 11:31:07, aaaa wrote:
Fixed in the rules. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Oct 17th, 2012, 1:19pm Quote:
I don't understand why you felt the need to modify the formula; the way I see things, slide pairing should have the smallest priority of them all, not having the penalties for deviating from this ideal grow in a superlinear fashion, thus not competing on an equal footing with the desire to minimize the rank differences between paired players with different number of losses. Concerning what else is on the wiki right now: Quote:
This is just a quibble, but personally, I think this description doesn't quite cover the fact that it has an elimination component in it; perhaps having something like "hybrid" occur somewhere would make it more faithful. Quote:
I'm a bit loath to restart this discussion, but from what I'd gathered, there was little support in the community for the idea of not banking everything from the leftover time. In addition, two of these time controls also don't equal the common ones in terms of the starting reserve. I see little harm and some benefits in being consistent here. In fact, this all actually echoes your own words (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=2011awl2;action=display;num=1294299711;start=135#135). For completeness sake, the corresponding standard time controls are (currently):
Quote:
This is a bold claim, which I'm skeptical of. I can buy 15 seconds maybe, but not a whole quarter of the time for a move. Quote:
Four seems like too much, especially with this new system of two sets of performance ratings affecting the pairings. Realistically, the seeding should already stop being an influence after two rounds. Quote:
This is phrased too binarily; it implies that if the bye can't be given to the ideal player, the respective pairing priorities are indifferent with respect to whoever else gets it. Quote:
This is a silent change from the previous championship, but the argument of wanting to avoid players in the top of their loss group (repeatedly) facing players in better ones is a persuasive one. Quote:
I'm not much of a proponent of lifetime bans; one could make a ban last quite some time without it having to be permanent. Given how elaborate the text is intended to be, you might also want to mention how successful participants may play themselves into the spotlight for possible recruitment as Challenge defenders. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 17th, 2012, 5:58pm on 10/17/12 at 13:19:59, aaaa wrote:
I didn't feel a need to modify the formula; I simply incorrectly copied what you wrote. To repeat what I explicitly said in the chat room: my goal is for the rules to reflect how the algorithm works rather than for the rules to dictate how the algorithm must work. I have changed the wording; please let me know if I now have it correct. If it is still wrong, please believe that it is a second error on my part, not the workings of my unspoken agenda. Quote:
This is not a silent change; I have twice tried to start discussion on the exact point of making this change. You never positively accepted or rejected the notion, but my best guess was that you approved. Again, I am not trying to mandate any changes to the pairing algorithm. Maximizing the sum of squares over all games was a publicly-proposed solution to a publicly-lamented problem, and more consistent with the evolving notion of rewarding tough pairings in earlier rounds with easier pairings later. I don't recall a single objection to it, but if there are any objections now (including even that it would be a hassle to change and not worth it) I'm OK with keeping the old formula too. I am very grateful for your feedback on draft of the rules, but I wish it could be given without suggesting that I am being sneaky about the process. I have been open and above-board up to this point, and the evolution of the rules is ongoing; I'm still soliciting feedback and making changes on the basis of that feedback. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 17th, 2012, 6:07pm on 10/17/12 at 13:19:59, aaaa wrote:
I have changed it from "modified Swiss" to "Swiss-divider", resurrecting the term I invented earlier in the thread. I think "divider" captures the spirit better than "elimination" in a case where the players who can't win keep on playing, so they aren't actually eliminated. The essence of the difference is mostly the division that says players with three or more losses can't be paired against players with two or fewer losses. I'm open to other wording, though. Quote:
You quote me in a discussion about AWL time controls, and in the AWL it is standard practice for a game to be started by the players themselves following a rescheduling or substitution. Clearly a replacement game should be at the same time control as the original, but this would be a hassle for the players involved if the league time control were not on the standard menu. For the World Championship I want to explicitly forbid the players from starting or rescheduling a game on their own. There are several benefits to games being officially scheduled, most importantly the spectator delay, but also the disabling of bots and even the display of upcoming official games in the announcements. Thus my insistence that any rescheduling be done through official channels. Therefore the main harm of using a non-standard time control is alleviated. You are quite right that the consensus opinion was against me on this score. If I am not mistaken, this is the only point of the rules on which there exists a consensus that I am defying. Is it really so important? Here's an offer: If two more people post in this thread to say, "Please use only the standard time controls," I will change to use the standard time controls. Quote:
OK, I have changed it to 15 seconds. Quote:
I am not sure that two rounds is enough. If there are 64 players, after two rounds there will be 16 players at 2-0. If the victories and losses are all true to seeding, all 16 players will have exactly the same UTPR, so they will be ranked by STPR. Of course the number of ties in UTPR will be reduced by upsets and odd numbers in pairing groups; the number of participants won't be a multiple of two and favorites don't always win. Still, it is highly improbable that seeding will "stop being" an influence after two rounds. I think it is much more accurate to call it a "rapid decrease" in influence. We can see how it pans out this year. If there are no ties in UTPR after two rounds, I will quote this post in an admission of my incorrect prediction. Quote:
Hmmm, I'm suddenly in doubt as to the actual algorithm. Is the condition actually absolute? That is to say, must the bye go to a player in the loss group regardless of all lower priorities? In other words, is the condition "Give the bye only to a player among the players tied for the most losses so far," in fact less binary than the condition "Give the bye only to a player among the players with the fewest byes so far"? Quote:
I don't anticipate any punishments being invoked, but I'm curious what folks feel an appropriate punishment for cheating would be. Lifetime ban? Ten-year ban? If you say, "Sorry," then you can play next year? Quote:
I'm open to emphasizing the social rewards of doing well, but is this particular reward quite accurate? I believe the schedule is such that Omar must select the human defenders of the Arimaa Challenge before the World Championship has even finished. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Oct 18th, 2012, 2:41am You're reading a tone into my words that doesn't exist. It was never my intention to suggest that you are being sneaky or have an unspoken agenda; The fact that you're drafting the rules out in the open, belies that very notion. I just took the different formula for the Swiss pairing at its face value and figured it constituted a counterproposal on your part, expecting that had mine been adopted as is, my phrasing of it would simply have been taken verbatim, with there being little chance that any subsequent editing of it would inadvertently cause a change in meaning that looked as deliberate as it did here. As for the FTE part, as the pairing formula constituted a slight, single change with respect to how the existing algorithm works, I felt the need to explicitly point this out in order to avoid it flying under the radar and possibly causing any future misunderstandings. I'm not into power politics, I just feel strongly about getting details right and my comments should be seen in that light. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by rbarreira on Oct 18th, 2012, 4:04am on 10/17/12 at 18:07:58, Fritzlein wrote:
I would say between five to ten years. In the extreme, anything less than 3 years seems too small, more than 10 years seems too big. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 18th, 2012, 4:55am on 10/18/12 at 02:41:00, aaaa wrote:
OK, fair enough. It was my transcription mistake that caused there to be a misunderstanding at all. Quote:
Well, maybe we do need a further discussion of this change so that folks aren't surprised by it. After all it hasn't been hashed out in this thread. I'll make a separate post about it. Quote:
I appreciate your passion about getting the details right; it is a passion that I share. Thanks for your commitment and service. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Oct 18th, 2012, 9:43am We may as well ban cheaters for life during online World Championships. They would just be a distraction in a future WC and would raise suspicions after every victory, which would further tarnish Arimaa’s integrity. In fact, if just 2 or 3 people get caught cheating in the same World Championship, that might be enough to destroy the whole integrity of an online championship. We have to be very strict about this. Accidentally staying logged into the chatroom during a game wouldn’t be a big deal but I agree with a lifetime ban if a player is somehow caught cheating with computer assistance, dummy accounts, etc. Since it’s easier to monitor face-to-face games, we could allow those players to participate in a future tournament if the games are in person (if Arimaa ever becomes popular enough to justify this). On the issue of time controls, I’m very happy to see that the games will be 2 minutes per move in the final rounds. There will be a higher quality of play with the additional 30 seconds, yet most games should still end in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, if we expanded to 2 minutes when there are 4-5 players remaining, I would like that even better. Either 75% or 100% banking of time is OK with me. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 18th, 2012, 12:32pm on 10/18/12 at 09:43:15, Adanac wrote:
I wavered between having the cutoff for 2min/move games being 5 players remaining or 3 players remaining, so I would be easy to persuade on this point. Does anyone else want to weigh in? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Oct 18th, 2012, 12:58pm on 10/18/12 at 12:32:11, Fritzlein wrote:
I would say five, but I like longer games. I'm also wondering if 6m maximum move time is too short. My ultimate preference would probably be unlimited move time, but that would probably be a pretty radical suggestion here, so I'll just suggest 8-10 minutes max for the two minute time control. In my opinion questions like "How will the commentators fill that time?" and "What if the spectators get bored?" have no place in this discussion, but if others shared this opinion then the max move time would probably already be longer. In my opinion the most relevant question is "How often do the players wish they could have used more of their reserve time?" How often do you wish you could have dipped farther into your reserve Fritzlein? I'm sure you've had positions where you would have wanted to use every last second (with a few seconds safety net). For me I probably wouldn't have many opportunities to use 10 minutes of time, because I don't usually have that much left :P. Starting with a greater reserve would make some sense if we were to increase the max time per move. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Oct 18th, 2012, 2:08pm on 10/18/12 at 12:58:53, browni3141 wrote:
Omar created time controls with short initial reserves, maximum limits per move and sometimes <100% banking of unused time because he wants games to move at a steady pace rather than boring the spectators when players think for long, long times. I know that in chess there were some classic games where players used well over an hour to think of a single move: Bent Larsen used over an hour on his 13th move because he saw he was doomed and couldn’t find a way out. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1128831 Nigel Short used over an hour on his 14th move planning out a brilliant, but slightly flawed, queen sacrifice. http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1070682 If we gave players the freedom to use an hour of thought for a single Arimaa move, it would definitely put spectators to sleep (and avoiding that is important to Omar). But I think up to 10 minutes per move is OK, as that is used in the Arimaa Challenge. Similar to the chess examples above, I’d expect Arimaa players would tend to think for long periods of time either because they’re frantically trying to find a move in a desperate position (like Larsen) or trying to decide if a bold and daring move will actually work (like Short). In either case, I don’t think it should be boring for the commentators. After about a few minutes they should try to entertain the spectators by describing all the possible difficulties or brilliant attacking move that the player might be thinking about. I think that would be an interesting exercise. I’m not lobbying for a rule change here because I know Omar didn’t like long move ceilings in the past, I’m just pointing out that a long think can still be entertaining if the commentators speculate on what the upcoming move might be. Theoretically, the quality of play should also improve if players have extra time during critical points in the game. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Oct 18th, 2012, 2:52pm After seeing Adanac's argument I also support the life-time ban. At first I tried to imagine the thought of never being able to play in the world championship, but then I remembered that it doesn't matter, because I would never cheat even if there were no consequences. I love Arimaa too much :) (and I'm just an honest person ;)). Someone who would cheat to get the title doesn't deserve a chance at it. I'm also wondering how bot use could be proven. It is easier to do in chess, but still difficult. How would someone ever be proven to be a cheater if they only used a bot to check for blunders? That's about all they're good for at the world championship level, IMO. EEE is showing that humans can even outplay bots in a highly tactical endgame. In chess engine use can be detected using match-up rates. In Arimaa a blatant engine user would only be hurting himself, and I doubt you could use match up rates to prove bot use to any reasonable degree of certainty anyway. We would have to call a player out because his/her play looks bot-like, and I think most would agree with me that human intuition isn't enough "evidence" to enforce a lifetime ban. Players suspected of cheating can only be observed after the fact to make sure they aren't cheating in the remaining games, and they'd be pretty stupid to do it then, so I doubt we could ever get enough evidence to enforce a life-time ban. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 18th, 2012, 6:23pm on 10/18/12 at 12:58:53, browni3141 wrote:
I can think of many cases where I wished I had more time total. Everyone plays better when they can think for longer, and I always want to play better. Futhermore, I tend to do relatively better at slow time controls than other people, i.e. extra thinking time helps me more than average, so I have an extra reason to want more time. That sentiment, however, isn't the same thing as needing more leeway over time management on a particular move. In truth, I can't recall a single clear-cut case when it would have helped me to allocate more than the max time on a particular move. Arimaa has relatively few automatic moves, so when I need a long think on one move, it is usually a sign of general trouble, i.e. a sign I need to spread my reserve over the course of the next several moves rather than entirely front-loaded. A reasonable first-pass model for the quality of play versus thinking time is that Elo improvement is linear in the log of thinking time. If increasing from 1 minute to 2 minutes is worth 100 Elo, then the next 100 Elo require thinking for 4 minutes, and the 100 Elo after than require 8 minutes, etc. If every move were equally important and/or equally amenable to finding better moves with increased thinking time, then this logarithmic relationship would clearly mean the optimal policy is to think exactly the same amount on each move. For example, if you are in the championship game, coming up against the 6-minute thinking limit, extending to 8 minutes might buy you another 41.5 Elo for that move, whereas saving those two extra minutes to double the next move's thinking time from 2 minutes to 4 minutes buys you 100 Elo then. And furthermore, to even build up such a large reserve, you had to make a lot of 1-minute moves at a penalty of -100 Elo on each of those moves. On average you are costing yourself a ton of playing strength to manage time unevenly. Of course, some moves are indeed more obvious than others, and some moves are indeed more important than others. But my general intuition is that players who want to exceed the max time per move are wanting to manage their time badly. Forcing them to move at a steadier pace is probably usually to their benefit, even if they are frustrated by it. If my theory is true, this is hardly the only case where giving people more freedom of choice results in worse choices on average. This isn't my reason for wanting a max time, though. I'm not trying to help bad time managers improve. The serious reason is consideration for the spectators, commentators, and even the opponent. Waiting around for even six minutes is boring. This is not just my feeling; it is backed up by the general behavior of spectators in a wide variety of situations. The preceding paragraphs were just my theory of why players shouldn't kick and fuss too much at not having complete leeway on time management; it simply wouldn't help much beyond the leeway they already have. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Oct 18th, 2012, 9:41pm on 10/18/12 at 18:23:09, Fritzlein wrote:
That is a huge if. I wouldn't be surprised if optimal time management looks nothing like this model in many cases. I think time management is much more complex than that. In practical play 2 extra minutes on one move might be nearly insignificant, while on another move it could win the game for you. And then there may be times when only a small boost in strength is worth a few extra minutes. Quote:
It's simple math, if we assume that your model is correct, but it doesn't make sense in practical play. You absolutely have to take each individual move into account. Spending 10 minutes on one move may easily be worth the time. In "critical" positions, you may need 10 minutes to work things out, and it won't matter that you won't have that time available later because the later positions are not nearly as important. I get the feeling that you don't consider tactics your strong suit. Maybe if you had more time... ;) Quote:
This doesn't make sense. The way I see it you might make max move time once, or maybe twice in a game. Let's say it's 30 moves until you get to the critical position. Saving an average of 15s per move nets you 7.5 minutes, with your starting reserve on top of that. This does not sound unreasonable to me. Some moves may easily be made in 15-30 seconds, bagging a large amount of reserve. Also remember that spending extra time on one move may increase strength on subsequent moves as well, and if you spend 10 minutes to get a strong position you may only need 2 minutes per move for the rest of the game to keep it and win. Quote:
I don't agree. I believe it may be beneficial to actually save up time in reserve that may be used if you need it. I know I'm a hypocrite for not following my own beliefs in my games :P Quote:
Serious opponent's should not be bothered by the opponent taking a long time. They should actually appreciate the extra pondering time. I often ponder every second that I can in a game, and I would never be bothered by an opponent using his time as he saw fit. Can you find a professional chess player who complained about their opponent taking to long in an OTB tournament? Chess is so huge that you probably could, but such a thing would be extremely rare and certainly would be frowned upon. I can understand that the spectators might get bored, and the commentators may run out of things to say, but in my opinion the game is about the players. Accommodating the spectators at the players' expense is just wrong (IMO), which is why I said before that I don't think it's a relevant aspect of the discussion. Of course, you seem to think that the system in place is to not only the spectator's, but the player's benefit. Besides, if a player takes his full time on a move, it seems reasonable to say that the position is a complex, and therefore interesting, one. As a spectator, I think I could easily stay interested for 10 minutes if the position is interesting enough. Spectators may even be able to stay interested in a position longer than the players, because spectators fuel eachother's thought and each fuels a larger discussion if they are commenting as well as spectating. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Oct 18th, 2012, 10:00pm on 10/18/12 at 12:32:11, Fritzlein wrote:
As for providing commentary on a 10min move... it would be easy to provide a deeper analysis and discussion if the player warned us ahead of time... ::) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 18th, 2012, 10:45pm OK, since I was on the fence anyway, that's enough votes to extend the 2min/move to the final 5 players. I have changed the rules. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Adanac on Oct 19th, 2012, 12:17pm "Tournament Director: Fritz Juhnke (Fritzlein) .... The Tournament Director (TD) will arbitrate disputes and make the final decision about everything that is not clear from the rules. All players agree to accept the decisions of the TD. The TD may not be a player. Are you not participating this year Fritz? I really hope you will because I can't imagine the WC without you! |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 19th, 2012, 1:17pm on 10/18/12 at 21:41:04, browni3141 wrote:
I completely disagree; spectators are definitely relevant. I am tempted to rebut you on this point as well as continuing the discussion of how minimally a per-move time limit impinges on optimal time management. You and I, however, don't have much say in the matter. Omar wants to promote Arimaa as a spectator sport. He believes that spectators matter, and the per-move time limits are a mandate from the top for the benefit of spectators. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 19th, 2012, 1:59pm on 10/18/12 at 04:55:47, Fritzlein wrote:
OK, here's the change to FTE from last year, and why it seems to make sense. In 2012 the last optimization was: "Maximize the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with equal number of losses minus the sum of the squares of the differences in rank among paired players with different number of losses." In 2013 the last optimization will be (unless we decide not to do it): "Maximize the sum of the squares of the rank differences between paired players. " Either way we are trying to get folding pairing within a loss group. The difference is what to do when people with a different number of losses have to play. For example, what if only five undefeated players remain, and we need to pair one of them against one of the thirteen remaining one-loss players? According to Swiss pairing, the ideal is sliding pairing within each group, and the bottom undefeated player plays the top one-loss player, i.e.: 1 vs 3 2 vs 4 5 vs 6 7 vs 13 8 vs 14 9 vs 15 10 vs 16 11 vs 17 12 vs 18 In 2012 we wanted folding pairing within each group, but tried also to keep the bottom undefeated player against the top one-loss player, i.e.: 1 vs 4 2 vs 3 5 vs 6 7 vs 18 8 vs 17 9 vs 16 10 vs 15 11 vs 14 12 vs 13 If we make the change for 2013, it will be folding pairing within each group, but now the top undefeated player against the bottom one-loss player, i.e.: 1 vs 18 2 vs 5 3 vs 4 6 vs 17 7 vs 16 8 vs 15 9 vs 14 10 vs 13 11 vs 12 Actually, the proposed solution for 2013 was already in effect for 2006 and 2007. In 2007, though, the rule had an undesirable side effect: the top seed (Fritzlein) had vastly easier pairings through the first four rounds than the second seed did. I got a bye and I got to "play down" against the easiest remaining player, twice. That was three major breaks for me in just four rounds. It seemed we were giving too much advantage to the top seed. So we changed it in subsequent years to have the Swiss notion of pairing the bottom undefeated player against the top one-loss player. In more recent years, however, that cross-group pairing has started to look unfair to the top player in the lower group, especially because that person would often stay top in his group for several rounds, and therefore have to "play up" multiple times. Several solutions were proposed, but reverting to the method of 2006-7 seemed by far the simplest. In that system the top one-loss player gets the easiest pairing of any one-loss player, rather than the toughest. Furthermore, aaaa's notion of replacing pre-tournament seeding with in-tournament performance rating will prevent the top seed from getting all the breaks. Yes, the top seed will still get the first bye or the first chance to "play down", but these easy pairings will undermine his in-tournament performance rating in future rounds, meaning that he won't get easy pairings round after round. In short, it seems we picked the wrong fix to the problem of 2007, one with unintended consequences. Now that we have a different solution for the original problem, we can remove the wrong fix and its unintended consequences. Comments are, as always, very welcome. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 19th, 2012, 2:00pm on 10/19/12 at 12:17:30, Adanac wrote:
Yes, I will not be playing this year. It is kind of you to say you will miss me as a player, but I feel I have much more to give as an organizer. Compared to last year, there may be fifty additional people who have a chance to play serious, fun, games that they wouldn't otherwise have had. Furthermore, if we can orchestrate a large tournament in a way that isn't an overwhelming burden for the TD, that will open the door for other large tournaments in the future, so there could be positive ripple effects as well. This thought is highly motivating to me, and I hope the thought also mobilizes massive volunteer participation in making things work out well. 2013 can be another leap forward on the road to popularizing Arimaa. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Oct 19th, 2012, 2:55pm on 10/19/12 at 14:00:32, Fritzlein wrote:
That's disappointing. I was hoping we'd get to play, and if I were to become WC, it would mean more to me if I had the challenge of beating you on the way. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Oct 19th, 2012, 8:02pm on 10/19/12 at 14:55:03, browni3141 wrote:
Thank you. That's very flattering. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by 99of9 on Nov 17th, 2012, 4:04am When is the signup for this? I'm used to having to sign up months in advance. So have I missed it? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 17th, 2012, 9:53am on 11/17/12 at 04:04:34, 99of9 wrote:
I set registration start December 1. In past years, I never understood the purpose of registration starting two months or more before the event, although I did like the feeling of building momentum as more and more people signed up and we all could see the growing list. When the registration period was so long, there would be a handful of early signups that would get me excited, then weeks and weeks of nobody signing up, which would deflate my enthusiasm, and then a rash of late signups. The chasm in the middle seemed unnecessary to me, if not counterproductive; am I missing something? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 17th, 2012, 12:31pm I have updated the rules to be more specific about when a timed-out game can be restarted: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2013_World_Championship_Rules#Technical_Problems Right now I have only two criteria: load average and ping time. Anyone can check load average here: http://arimaa.com/logs/ . In the line "load average: 1.03, 1.23, 1.29", the first number is the relevant one, and if it goes over 4 (the number of server CPU's) it is grounds for a restart. Ping times can be checked here: https://my.pingdom.com/reports/result#daterange=1day&check=682116 . Log in with yangfuli@yahoo.com and "arimaarox". If there were two pings over 750 milliseconds in the last five pings, it is grounds for a restart. I would be content to go to war with only those two low-level restart criteria. Of course, more things can go wrong than just load average and ping time. For example, the Apache server could go down. My instinct, however, is that we can't afford to have people on call around the clock for major issues, since Omar is the only one who can deal with them. If we can't have people on call to deal with the issue 24/7, then restarting the game is not a viable option because it wouldn't fit in the originally scheduled time window. Either both players would get a bye or, if too many games were affected, the tournament would be delayed a week so that all affected games could be rescheduled and replayed. Also, there could be problems that are high-level but transient (i.e. not requiring Omar to fix). Perhaps the load is low and pings are fast, but something about the gameroom has issues anyway, which means a restart would be appropriate. I can't think of a way to address this that isn't worse than the problem, because it opens a huge can of worms if we ask Tournament Coordinators to just guess whether there was a server problem. Any criteria must be concrete and independently verifiable. Therefore, I'm willing to let this type of injustice happen on the theory that it won't happen too often. If I am wrong and this tournament has major timeout issues that we figure out a cause for, and we can't figure out a way to fix that cause but we can figure out a way to monitor that cause, we can include that monitoring for 2014. Comments and suggestions are, as always, most welcome. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 17th, 2012, 12:53pm on 04/04/12 at 09:37:57, Dolus wrote:
This sounds like a great idea, Dolus. If I understand correctly, the Arimaa community can set up a single phone number, for free, and set it to re-direct to any other phone number depending on time of day. That's not too much maintenance for me to do myself every week when I divvy up the on-call duties between myself and the Tournament Coordinators. Calls within the US and Canada would be free; Calls from the US and Canada to Europe would be $0.10/minute, which is OK since they would be only one minute long, i.e. "You need to log in to Arimaa.com". I'm not sure how calls from outside the US to the Google voice number would work, though. Does anyone have any experience with Google Voice, and/or any other suggestions? For me by far the best way to be paged is a voice call, but perhaps for some people getting a text message is just as good if not preferable? Not that I know of any free, single-number texting service; I'm just brainstorming here. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Nov 22nd, 2012, 7:05am Karl, thanks so much for the wonderful job you are doing with organizing this tournament. It takes a lot of effort to hash through the details and incorporate the suggestions and feedback into the final WC rules. I really appreciate your efforts and I'm sure the Arimaa community does too. Also a big thanks to everyone who has participated in the open legislation process and helped to make the rules better. I especially want to thank aaaa for not only providing feedback and suggestions, but also developing the code to make the tournament pairing possible. Thanks aaaa, you're the Sathoshi Nakamoto of Arimaa :-) As we get closer to the start of the tournament I hope everyone is getting as excited about the WC and other events as I am. I look forward to playing in the WC and helping out as a tournament coordinator. I hope the members of the community will also show their enthusiasm by volunteering to help with things like updating the game wiki, providing commentary and the many other tasks that Karl has listed. Even if you won't have the time to volunteer, you can still help by making a contribution to the prize fund. Organizing a big tournament that is open to everyone is not going to be easy. But if everyone chips in I think we can make it a big success. Here are the suggestions I have for the WC rules: 1. "Each round will be paired Monday 24:00:00 UTC, except in the unlikely event that a game from the previous round has not yet finished, in which case the next round will be paired directly after the end of the final game of the previous round." In the past when the last game of the round has ended, players have been anxious to have the next round paired as soon as possible. The sooner the round is paired the more time the players have to work out a new time if needed. There is the downside that someone who didn't update their preferred times for the next round might get scheduled for a bad time, but still they would have time to reschedule it. I would suggest considering something like "Each round will be paired shortly after the completion of the last game from the previous round. However, this will be no earlier than Saturday 1:00 UTC and no later than Tuesday 1:00 UTC." 2. "It is the responsibility of the player with the first move to start the game when both players are seated: if Silver is seated and Gold delays starting the game more than 15 minutes past the scheduled start and more than 3 minutes past the time Silver was seated, then Gold loses by forfeit." How about "It is the responsibility of the player with the first move to start the game promptly when both players are seated: the Gold player must start the game within 3 minutes after both players have been seated provided the Silver player has arrived within the grace period." Trying to avoid the situation where both players arrive at the scheduled start time and then the Gold player delays starting the game for almost 15 minutes. 3. I would highly encourage using the time controls that I would like us to standardize on. 1m/4m/100/0/4h/4m 1m30s/5m/100/0/6h/5m 2m/6m/100/0/8h/6m These time controls were chosen to be easy to understand and remember while still keeping the game moving at a steady pace and giving players some flexibility to think longer on some moves. I'm sure you already know this, but for those that don't: just the first parameter of the time control determines the rest of the parameters. If M is the time per move and all the time parameters are in minutes then the time control is: M/2+2*M/100/0/240*M/2+2*M |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 22nd, 2012, 8:13am on 11/22/12 at 07:05:21, omar wrote:
Thank you! I hope the tournament will be one the community can be proud of. I will be well rewarded for my efforts if (A) we have the biggest participation in an Arimaa tournament ever and (B) some of my new ideas work out well. Of course not everything I try will work, but often one can't know in advance, and we have to be open to experimentation to find out. Quote:
Amen to that! Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions, and thanks for everyone who helps make the suggestions reality. Aaaa, without you, all the theoretical discussion about optimal pairings wouldn't make any practical difference, because it simply can't happen unless it is automated. Quote:
Thanks for the suggestions, Omar. I appreciate the feedback and error-checking. Quote:
On point of standard time controls, I will stand by my offer earlier in the thread. Quote:
Good idea; it isn't fair to Silver to have to stand at attention for a long time. I know it is too late for a technical change now, but for 2014 I would be happiest to have the clocks start automatically for tournament games, without the intervention of the players, and without the players even sitting down. I don't know how difficult this would be technically, but it seems the fairest way to handle tardiness, and it avoids convoluted rules about who has to do what when. To me it doesn't make sense that either player should have to wait for a tardy opponent. If the other guy isn't there on time, his clock should be running down. Quote:
In last year's tournament I felt quite inconvenienced by the variable pairing time, and I know by chat and forum comments that I was not the only one. In addition, woh wrote me privately just last week to suggest that pairings be done at exactly the same time every week, without even the possibility of delay I have written in. It is easy for a tournament organizer to tell everyone to get their preferences entered as soon as possible, but I preferred to wait until the last minute, not because I was lazy and irresponsible, but because I often didn't know my schedule ten days in advance. The longer I waited to enter time preferences, the more accurately I knew my schedule for the following week. But trying to wait for more information became a hassle when I had to figure out each week exactly how long I was allowed to wait. It is true that scheduling earlier gives the players more time to re-negotiate a time, but the scheduling algorithm has already picked the optimal time. I know players are sometimes unhappy with the time they get assigned, but that is a consequence of opponents having schedules that don't mesh. The two players logically can't find a better time slot than the algorithm found unless... (A) They didn't enter their true preferences. (Why didn't they have their true preferences entered? Because the scheduler ran sooner than they were ready? :P) or (B) Something in real life changed after they entered their preferences, so formerly good times became bad or vice versa. If (B) is the main reason that people are able to re-negotiate a time that was better than the best time according to their entered preferences, then the smart thing to do is to run pairings as late as possible, rather than as early as possible. If everyone knows when the deadline is, they can maximize the accuracy of their preferences, and minimize the likelihood of later changes that necessitate re-negotiating. I chose Monday 24:00:00 UTC because it is highly likely that this time can be honored every week. It doesn't conflict with anything in my schedule, so I will always be available, and it won't conflict with any games unless a game in the last time slot (119) goes much longer than average. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Janzert on Nov 22nd, 2012, 10:47am on 11/22/12 at 08:13:54, Fritzlein wrote:
That would seem to resolve quite a bit of the complexity with no downside. Hopefully it can happen for next year. on 11/22/12 at 07:05:21, omar wrote:
on 11/22/12 at 08:13:54, Fritzlein wrote:
It might be really nice, and I think help satisfy the competing desires, if the games could be paired, where the players in each game are set, as soon as possible after the previous round ended. Then scheduled, with each game receiving the time it will be played, at a fixed time later on. Janzert |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 23rd, 2012, 7:55am on 11/22/12 at 10:47:45, Janzert wrote:
Ah, I see. I do remember that as a player I had a burning curiosity to know as soon as possible who my next opponent would be. With that in mind, perhaps I can try to do the pairing earlier than the scheduling, as my own schedule permits. I wonder whether, in a large tournament with many games every round, we might have a Monday game or two every week. If so, then the discussion about pairing/scheduling earlier or later will be mostly moot. We must in any case wait until all the games are complete; our window of choice when to do paring might be only a few hours rather than a day or two. But in later rounds when only a few players remain, we know from experience that it is likely all games will finish on the weekend. At that point it could make a real difference. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by omar on Nov 25th, 2012, 7:58am Quote:
So we need one more vote to use the standard time controls? You mean my vote doesn't count for two :-) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Nov 29th, 2012, 9:24pm on 11/23/12 at 07:55:34, Fritzlein wrote:
Hah, that hasn't stopped anyone in the past... I recall numerous hypothetical pairings in the chat room. If Player A wins that game they are favored in tomorrow, then these will be the pairings, but then if Player B wins... I definitely support a consistent scheduling time. As for the new topic of automatically starting a game when both players are seated... I'm not as sure there. I recall a number of times where I would sit at a game first, then go get a drink while waiting. If it automatically started while I was gone... !!! Or the converse, I would sit down at the game if I was running a little late, just to send a message saying I would be ready in 5 minutes. Obviously if the game were to start automatically I wouldn't do either of those things. I just want folks to consider if those types of conveniences are worth discarding. Or am I being too cavalier with the 15 minute starting window? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Janzert on Nov 30th, 2012, 12:43am on 11/29/12 at 21:24:18, Nombril wrote:
I think you just misunderstood the idea. Quote:
i.e. the clocks would start at the scheduled start time whether anyone is there or not. So you can still sit at the game and then go get a drink or anything else. Just be sure to do it 5 minutes before the start time, or 15 minutes if you want the same buffer as there is currently. :) Janzert |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 30th, 2012, 8:35am on 11/25/12 at 07:58:48, omar wrote:
Exactly. Quote:
Starting in about ten hours, your vote counts as minus one, because you are opposed to any changes once the registration has opened. :-) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 30th, 2012, 8:57am on 11/29/12 at 21:24:18, Nombril wrote:
Oh, yes, players will always try to anticipate pairings before they are posted. When I say "moot" I mean that if there is a game on Monday, there is no point discussing whether the pairings should be moved up to Sunday instead of being done at the regular Monday time. One must in any case wait until all games of the previous round finish. Quote:
Great, we'll see how the consistent Monday scheduling time works out. Quote:
The latter scenario is actually one that I am worried about. At present players know they have a safety window, so they don't feel a need to respect the opponent's time. "Hi, I know I'm already late, but I'm going to go away for a while anyway. You are ready to start? Never mind. You just sit tight until whenever I feel I am ready to play." That's not very considerate. (I recognize that saying something is more considerate than saying nothing, yet the bare fact of being late still seems like an issue to me.) Players in the Arimaa community are generally very tolerant, and very forgiving of late opponents, but tardiness is still an imposition. If the clocks started automatically at the scheduled time, no sooner and no later, rather than being controlled by the players, there would be no question of courtesy. Players would show up promptly because they would be automatically penalized if they didn't. Incidentally, I just watched Word Wars (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390632/) last night. Starting the clocks of absent players is standard in Scrabble tournaments. For Scrabble, however, the time control is 25 minutes for the whole game and you never lose on time, you just get penalized points, so the effect of a running clock is less. In spite of the automatic clock start, some players followed in the movie did show up late, but the tardy player won anyway. :P |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by mistre on Nov 30th, 2012, 12:09pm That's like Poker players showing up late for a tournament and sacrificing early antes. Phil Helmuth is notorious for this. Has there been an announcement on when the tournament is supposed to start? Really looking forward to it this year. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 30th, 2012, 2:30pm on 11/30/12 at 12:09:27, mistre wrote:
Yeah. Sacrificing antes is another small but painful penalty. If only we could have an equivalently incremental penalty in Arimaa, other than losing the game after five minutes. Quote:
So far the information is just here http://arimaa.com/arimaa/mwiki/index.php/2013_World_Championship_Rules . Registration opens a few hours from now and games start January 7. I will add it to the gameroom announcements when I have verified registration is working properly, and Omar will mass-mail an announcement in the next week or so. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Nov 30th, 2012, 3:03pm Now I dislike even more the clock starting at the exact prescribed time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you aren't allowed to even sit at the game until that exact time, so you can't make sure the browser loads the game, etc. So gold would have their first move set up time as the only time period for getting seated at the game. (It doesn't happen often anymore, but I still do see players need to restart their browser or take other measures before being able to get seated.) I have not considered a game starting at 10 min after the scheduled time as starting late or being inconsiderate. There is a 15 minute window for a 1-3 hour game to start. It seems + 0-15 minutes on the start time seems like a small consideration relative to the variation in the game time. We don't have a packed day of events, with the next game for those players waiting in the wings. Is it rude for a player to fight to the end, and delay a goal by 10 moves in a hopeless position? That is a longer delay then 15 minutes. BUT, though it might sound contrary to the above, I do understand and support the idea of an automatic start. And if there is consensus (or the TD decides!) that 15 min is too large a window, then perhaps we should have the clock start 5 minutes after the scheduled time (if it wasn't already started). Another option is to allow players to be seated before the start time. (I'm not sure what is more technically difficult to adjust.) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Nov 30th, 2012, 8:38pm on 11/30/12 at 15:03:34, Nombril wrote:
At the moment you can't sit down until 2 or 3 minutes before the game starts. Clearly that time would have to be lengthened to make the automatic starting of clocks reasonable. Quote:
Well, this is how the rule becomes reality. If we say the game starts at 3:00, and you will forfeit if you are fifteen minutes late, then it is interpreted to mean the game really starts at 3:15, and if you arrive before 3:15 you aren't really late. It is the presence or absence of a penalty that determines what "on time" means, thus you are "on time" until the penalties start. Maybe we could do the automatic clocks rule and say the game starts at 3:00 but the clocks start at 3:15, no sooner, no later? I'm not going to get hung up on what you call it as long as the clocks start at a time that is fixed rather than starting at a time that either player can arbitrarily (without the consent of the other player) push back. Quote:
Fighting to the death is not a delay of the game; that is the game. Quote:
In that case, we may be on the same page after all. :) |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by browni3141 on Nov 30th, 2012, 10:42pm I must disagree with Nombril. Being late at all to any form of formal scheduled meeting such as a championship game of Arimaa is rude. I think that the clocks should start counting down the second the scheduled time is reached out of courtesy to the spectators and attending players. I do agree however that the game window should be allowed to be opened before the clocks start. My opinion might be different if this were a casual game between two players, but this is the World Championship, and I personally might be slightly offended if my opponent arrived late to our game. Players who take this seriously will make a strong effort to be present when the game is supposed to start. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Dec 1st, 2012, 10:18am I am going to open two new threads, one for discussing the actual 2013 World Championship (as opposed to its rules) and one for discussing the 2014 rules (since the rules for this year are fixed barring an extreme situation. Thanks to all who participated in this thread to make the format for the 2013 Arimaa World Championship as awesome as possible! |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Dec 1st, 2012, 3:47pm It's possible for the final standings to have a player who reached the finals be ranked behind one who didn't. To solve this incongruity, I propose that all those with final ranks no lower than the lowest-ranked finalist end up in the money. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Dec 6th, 2012, 5:21pm on 12/01/12 at 15:47:32, aaaa wrote:
Interesting; my intuition would be exactly the opposite. If you give a group of players provisional ratings that reflect their true strengths, and you put the top third in Group A and the bottom two-thirds in Group B, and you tell Group A to play a few games while Group B doesn't play, then by random chance some bottom players in Group A will have ratings that fall below the top ratings in Group B. Thus even if we were dead right in the division, additional information could make it appear that we were wrong. I would prefer to have only the people who make the finals get prizes, even if they immediately lose out of the finals. I understand that this elevates the structure of the tournament to a higher status than the performance ratings, but that seems right and fitting to me. To put it another way, paying prizes to people who didn't make the finals seems like a larger incongruity than the one you mention. Given a choice of incongruities, I would rather live with some prizewinners having a lower performance rating than non-prizewinners instead of living with taking some prize money out of the pool of finalists to give to non-finalists. But that is just a feeling, not a logical proof. Therefore I am very curious what other people feel about giving prize money to non-finalist with a higher performance rating than the lowest finalist. How does popular opinion shake out on this issue? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Nombril on Dec 6th, 2012, 8:57pm I think that structure of the tournament is more important than performance ratings (even in tournament performance ratings). Once you have made the finals, you have met a specific threshold at that point in time. Future play should not change that accomplishment. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Dec 7th, 2012, 1:14pm Certainly it must come across as weird if only finalists were eligible for a prize but the final ranking for the purpose of distributing the fund is in part determined by the consolation games in the Swiss section? I could then ask whether non-finalists would bump down any finalist to a lower rank for the purpose of calculating the prize distribution. I'd be inclined to have things be more clean then and have games between eliminated players affect the performance ratings only for the purpose of the scheduling inside the Swiss section itself. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Dec 8th, 2012, 7:50am on 12/07/12 at 13:14:16, aaaa wrote:
I don't feel strongly about having games inside the Swiss section affecting the performance ratings of players in the FTE section or not. My recommendation is to do whatever is easiest, which I would guess is to have all the performance ratings be affected by all the games. If, however, that feels too illogical, and you would rather do what feels most consistent to you, then you have my full support to ignore Swiss-section games while pairing the FTE. There is certainly justification for either way of doing it. |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by aaaa on Dec 17th, 2012, 4:18pm How come the seeding rule immediately falls back to a player's gameroom rating if there aren't enough WHRE games? Why not look at the regular WHR first? |
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Title: Re: 2013 World Championship Format Post by Fritzlein on Dec 17th, 2012, 5:18pm on 12/17/12 at 16:18:32, aaaa wrote:
I wanted to keep the rule simple, because I will exercise my judgement in any case. The more detail I give, the more likely I will do something different anyway, making the any extra detail I give misleading. The idea you suggested in chat, i.e. adjusting gameroom ratings by the median offset between gameroom ratings and WHRE ratings for players who have both, will certainly be under consideration. Also I will look for any ratings that appear obviously inflated or deflated. But the fact is I don't yet know what I am going to do, so I won't spell it out in greater detail in the rules. |
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