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Topic: player of the month (Read 11670 times) |
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omar
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #30 on: Apr 6th, 2005, 6:50pm » |
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I'll try to make the chages this month so that May will be the first month with the new rules.
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Fritzlein
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #31 on: Apr 6th, 2005, 8:01pm » |
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I initially favored counting the human vs. bot games for something, but I've changed my mind. Already over 85% of the games are human versus bot at the moment. Such games are mostly boring, and anyway they will still make up the majority of games on the server no matter how the contest changes. Only human vs. human games should count in Player of the Month, because that's what we need to promote.
I think there should be some premium on winning, or else the award becomes a silly "quantity play" award, in which no one will have to try hard to win. More human vs. human games is only interesting if the humans involved are straining as hard as possible to win. On the other hand, I don't like the "winning streak" format. Right now, if I have the longest winning streak, I have a reason to avoid all rated games, because they put my winning streak on the line. The new rules should encourage BOTH the leader AND the chasers to play more human versus human games.
I'd keep a couple of current good rules: only rated games count and only games against players with at least 2 games of experience.
Anything within those guidelines will seem like a big improvement to me, even if it makes the contest harder for me to win. If I had to give a specific point scheme at the moment, I would say: 1 point for every distinct human played but not beaten and 2 points for every distinct human played and beaten. If you lose every game, you have to play twice as many games as someone who wins every game, so you had better try hard to win, but losses never hurt you, so persistence pays off.
An emphasis on distinct humans should really mix things up around here. I'll try to win the contest no matter what the rules are, but I know my rating will sink like a stone once I stop pumping it up against bots. Hmmm... maybe I should try to get a rating of 2300 this month, just for the record books, before the rules change and I take a nosedive against humans.
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99of9
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #32 on: Apr 7th, 2005, 3:15am » |
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I second Fritz's suggestion, verbatim.
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mouse
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #33 on: Apr 9th, 2005, 5:56am » |
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on Apr 9th, 2005, 12:04am, Arimanator wrote:One thing I don't understand about this contest is why am I on OLTI's list and he on mine? If everybody can be on everybody's list where is the contest? That may not be apparent now since bots are not allowed to participate but what if with human players you end up with the first ten with each the nine others on their list, is there something I am not getting here? Please somebody explain my head hurts  |
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The player of the month is the one with the longest winning streak against different opponnents. If you win against a opponent this game will be included in your winning streak. But to promote more play you will not lose your winning streak if you later lose to a player allready in your winning streak.
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omar
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #34 on: Apr 9th, 2005, 11:27am » |
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I've written up the new rules and posted them here:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/potm/rules200503.html
Let me know what you think.
First of all Im glad we seem to be settling on the decision to include the bots or not. I could have gone either way on that. But, I guess it would have made the contest a little easier for the stonger players if we had included the bots and the rules favored the winning player (which seems hard to avoid). So it seems better to not include the bot games even though those are the type of games that are played the most.
The other issue is how to keep the rules from favoring the stronger players and yet preventing low quality games. If we give equal points to the winner and loser, then there is no advantage for stronger players, but the players also have no incentive to win; so we can get very low quality games. In fact if any points are given for losing, a player can rack up points by losing quickly and playing lots of games that way. Adding a rule which says the losing player must last for at least some minumum number of moves in order to receive the points helps to prevent this. I figured as long as we will need a rule like this, we might as well expand that rule and make it so that a player who really trys hard but still loses can get the same number of points as the winning player. Thus the same rule also helps to reduce the strong player advantage. I chose to expand the rule to have 3 levels with 1 point given at 20 moves, 2 points at 40 moves and 3 points at 60 moves (the winning player always get 3 points). We could have done this by having the losing player get points proportional to the number of moves they lasted. But we would still need to introduce cutoffs at the two ends; like no more than 60 points and 0 if less than 20. This helps to reduce the chance of ties. But since it doesn't eliminate ties, we would still need another tie breaker rule just in case. I could still be persuaded to go with this is if it offers a clear advantage that I haven't noticed yet.
One thing that we did not discuss, but I added while writting up these rules is the time control needed in order for the game to count. I added that the games should use at least a 45 sec per move time control and sudden death type games are not counted. The reason I thought we needed this was to maintain the quality of the games. With bots we don't have a choice about the time control, but when both players are humans we do and we might have a tendency to pick faster games just to get them over quickly. Also there is a rule which says that a player does not receive any points if they lose on time (but the opponent should still get the points for the win to prevent the possibility of losing on time to throw away the game). So stronger players could use fast games to their advantage. This trys to minimize that.
I would like to start with the new rules in May if possible.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 27th, 2005, 6:27am by omar » |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #35 on: Apr 9th, 2005, 8:14pm » |
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on Apr 9th, 2005, 11:27am, omar wrote:I chose to expand the rule to have 3 levels with 1 point given at 20 moves, 2 points at 40 moves and 3 points at 60 moves (the winning player always get 3 points).
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I like the fact that there is an incentive for playing hard in that long losses are worth more than short losses. I don't really care for rewarding losses so much relative to wins, though. Losing in over 40 moves is fairly typical, and doesn't necessarily indicate a close game. See, for example, my loss to Belbo in the EU vs. US match, where he crushed me but it took 47 moves. I was outplayed from start to finish but I would get 2/3 of a win!
My prediction is that many winners of the contest in the months to come will do so with a pile of losses, and the contest will become quantity over quality. To keep a better balance I like a four-point scale, i.e. four points for a win and the same as you suggest for losses, up to four points if you lose in over 80 moves.
This is all hypothetical, though. Let's just implement some change and see what happens. You can always tweak it again for June if it seems to be out of whack.
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99of9
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #36 on: Apr 9th, 2005, 11:12pm » |
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on Apr 9th, 2005, 12:20pm, Arimanator wrote:| I propose that the points that the loser doesn't get belong to the winner. they share 6 points together, equally if the game lasted 60 plus moves , 4-2, 5-1, 6-0 otherwise. |
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Once the game goes past 60 moves there is then no incentive to win. About 1/4 high quality games from top players go past this point. Though I guess this is true in Omar's plan too...
I don't think you should try so hard to make people aggressive. This may have the side effect of reducing the "quality" of the games. Arimaa may well be a theoretically defensive game.
Another side effect is that good players may seek low-ranked "prey" to play against and win 6 points. At least in Omar's model Fritzlein is rewarded as much for beating me as he is for beating a newbie. In your system he may never bother playing me, nor I him. (In my experience close games are very tiring - but that is exactly what we want to encourage people to play.)
I do support small incentives for quick wins (as was done in some of the prediction contests for championships), but not when you get to choose your opponents, and certainly not as large ones as you suggest. They are good for making players play interesting endgames (to finish off defeated opponents as quickly as possible), but I don't think they should be used to artificially put pressure on everyone to play entire games aggressively.
I'm not sure which I think is best out of Omar and Fritz's points plan. At this stage I'd go with Fritz's, because at least it preserves the incentive for winning until move 80. Personally though I'd say that the winner should always get 1 more point than it is possible for the loser to get. Oh... what about a combination of the two schemes:
4 points for a win
0 points for a loss under 20 moves
1 point for a loss of 21-40 moves
2 points for a loss of 41-60 moves
3 points for a loss of over 60 moves
(+1 bonus point if you are playing someone with a rating over 200 above you?)
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| « Last Edit: Apr 9th, 2005, 11:30pm by 99of9 » |
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99of9
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #37 on: Apr 9th, 2005, 11:35pm » |
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"Another game against the same player will also be counted if the sides (colors) are changed"
I love this rule. I think colours are very important in arimaa, so it is very important to get good games from both colours.
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99of9
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #38 on: Apr 10th, 2005, 8:20am » |
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on Apr 10th, 2005, 7:21am, Arimanator wrote:| What are we talking about hustling a few gullible newbies in a bar for a beer? |
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I'm just suggesting that we shouldn't incentivize this behaviour more than playing tough games against people of similar standard. Your proposal, if it had been instituted, would do exactly that. Later in your post you suggest that I am only interested in rewarding high ratings, my argument against this part of your proposal is for exactly the opposite reason.
on Apr 10th, 2005, 7:21am, Arimanator wrote:| (for example if you play someone with 300 + less than you the game will not be valid for the contest). |
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Haha Fritz... you will get to play exactly 2 games per month... both against me .
on Apr 10th, 2005, 7:21am, Arimanator wrote:And the idea as I understood it and I will wait for Omar to say if I am right or not is to give everyone a chance whether they're top notch or not and reward the effort more than the performance because as I said once again you only see the high level part of the game not the little people who need to be encouraged to continue playing and I am still waiting for Omar for a confirmation about that. Now you may say that past 60 or 75 moves the incentive to win will be gone and I doubt it when you play a game with talent for 75 moves you don't all of a sudden say to yourself, well now I will just push my pieces and see what happens.
Now if you see any contest only as a means to reward the higher rating, have it your way. |
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Obviously people who are better at the game will always have a better chance in any contest, unless they are directly penalised (eg by my rating imbalance bonus suggestion). This is because they are able to better control the outcome of every game they play. Not only regarding whether they win or not, but also how fast they win. It is very difficult to come up with a set of rules which gives everyone an equal chance of winning.
I agree that Omar has had a good shot at it, but I am simply pointing out that under his (and your) scheme, there is no incentive apart from ratings to win after move 60. Perhaps the ratings incentive is enough, perhaps it is not.
Just say I am willing to let my rating take a dive for a month, just to win POTM: I am pretty sure I could take nearly anyone to 60 moves as long as I go in with the plan that I do not need to try to push for a win, I simply need to get the game to 60 moves. I bet you would consider such games very boring to watch (as would I probably).
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Fritzlein
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #39 on: Apr 10th, 2005, 8:50am » |
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on Apr 10th, 2005, 7:21am, Arimanator wrote:
I believe that Omar will be the "referee" here to know who abused of their right to play weaker players and there can be limitative rules (for example if you play someone with 300 + less than you the game will not be valid for the contest). |
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It is hard to design a system where everyone has a reasonable chance of winning. Under your suggestion, the only game of mine that would count is against 99of9, because nobody else is within 300 rating points of me. I don't think this gives me a reasonable chance of winning! If you made the cutoff 500 points instead, I would have nine active humans I could play, and that would at least give me a fighting chance, although other folks would have over twenty potential opponents. If we need an additional way to level the contest, I would prefer a 500-point cutoff and my four-point scale to Omar's three-point scale with no cutoff.
Quote:| Now if you see any contest only as a means to reward the higher rating, have it your way. |
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It is tough to make a contest that anyone can win regardless of rating, but also one that encourages serious play. There probably isn't a perfect solution. In fact, we probably can't even tell in advance what solution will be better and what will be worse. Omar is just going to have to try something out and see what happens.
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omar
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #40 on: Apr 13th, 2005, 4:35pm » |
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Thanks for the great feedback guys. I am a bit suprised though because I thought the majority of the feedback would be about what time controls should count, but nothing was said about that. I'll assume for now that everyone agrees on the time controls that will count.
What I was mainly looking for was to see if anyone would notice any major loop hole or flaw in the rules. I didn't see any and I think no one else did either. The discussion has focused mainly on some finer adjustments to the rules.
For now I think I will keep the rules as they are posted on the new rules page and just give it a try. It's often too hard to predict how a set of rules will play out without actually trying it. After a few months I think we will have a better idea and can decide then if we need to make any adjustments.
However, I am fairly confident these rules should serve
the stated goal pretty well. As I mentioned on the new rules page, the contest should be won by the player who made the most effort to play high quality games against many different human opponents. I have changed the wording now from "high quality" to "serious", because I think that better reflects the intent. High quality might be interperted to mean games that are without blunders and exciting to watch, but that not what I mean. As long as the person made a serious effort to play a good game, it doesn't matter how flawless or exciting the game is.
Since the games are rated, I definitely think the ratings are enough for people to have an incentive to win throughout the game, regardless of the contest rules. I have yet to see rated games between humans where the players are not trying hard to win.
The winning player does have a bit of an incentive to win faster so that his opponent does not get as many points. It's not as strong as directly gaining more points for winning faster, but I don't think we really want it to be that strong since it could have other side effects like making the contest more favorable to stronger players.
There is a possiblity that the winner maybe be someone who played a lot of games in a a boring dragged out manner and lost a lot of them. But I think that's quite alright; I don't see anything wrong with doing that. Just the fact that they engaged more people to play and gave them a chance to play a game against a human player is a good thing.
We might have new players to the site getting invited by a lot of expericenced players for an easy game. But again I don't see anything wrong with someone who does that a lot and wins the contest. The new players might get a chance to chat and learn something on a personal level about Arimaa from an experienced player. I think overall it's a good thing.
So lets give this a try and see what happens. The new rules will take effect in May.
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omar
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #41 on: Apr 17th, 2005, 7:45pm » |
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Here is the future 'Player of the Month' contest page.
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/potm/potm200503.cgi
This won't actually begin until May 2005, but I put it up now so that we can test it. If you notice any games that should have been picked up, but didn't; or ones that did but should not have been, please let me know through the 'Contact' page. Thanks.
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Fritzlein
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #42 on: Apr 22nd, 2005, 5:33pm » |
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It looks like Robinson has been credited with three wins against Belbo when two is the limit by the rules. I'll also send this to you via the contact page, Omar.
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jdb
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #43 on: Apr 23rd, 2005, 12:04pm » |
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I think the player should still get their points if they lose on time. At a minimum they need to play 20 moves to get a point anyway. After playing that many moves, losing on time doesn't seem so wrong to me. I guess I don't understand what the rationale is for foreiting the points when losing on time.
Just my opinion...
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Fritzlein
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Re: player of the month
« Reply #44 on: Apr 23rd, 2005, 4:52pm » |
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Good point JDB. You can be trying very hard when you lose on time after 65 moves and then you get nothing. That doesn't seem fair. But notice also that if you don't penalize losing on time you can't penalize resignation, because people who want to resign would just let their time run out, so it is both or neither.
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