Last Man Standing!

It is past midnight, and we have had four days of competition. We  wanted the two best sequences, and we got three!

Gael was the unconquered winner with 11 wins on the red piste. He took a break after 10 wins, for the tinies to have some fun. And after that he won one game, before Guy stopped him. Congratulations to Gael! (and Well Done, Guy!)

Lucy secured 6 wins on the blue piste early. And Hustla made a quick dash for 6 wins on the timed piste. (Box recorded 5, as Hugh crashed, and the counting restarted.) As we have a tie for the second place, Lucy and Hustla have to share the prize money.

I hope you all had fun. Look out for more fun battles soon! (Are we ready for a ladder any time soon?)

~ Aries ~

Withdrawal anxiety?

I got a complaint yesterday, with a suggestion to change how we deal with effect of people withdrawing. I admit I wasn’t too positive in my response, as we constantly have discussed this a lot over the years, and I have yet to see a perfect, working solution. And even if we all strive for fairness (don’t we?), fairness isn’t as objective as it should be. What seems fair for one player, seems deadly unfair for the other. My job in this is to look to the greater good, or the optimal solution.  As I still have one day before I go back to work, I decided to test some scenarios. But first – I want to draw your attention to the rules and some league history. Current rules about  missing games and a couple of posts on the topic.

OK – back to the current problem! If someone withdraws before playing all games, their remaining games are annulled, and the affected opponents have one counting game less. The rest of the players still have to play their 10 games. The statement was made that this was not fair for the players who have 10 games to play, and we should remove the lowest score from these players, to make them have 9 counting games also. As I needed to see the added fairness of this, I created some scenarios and tested these on a random round, where there were no withdrawals. I renamed all contestants, so that the rankings and changes would be easier to read. The names (initials A-T) were given based on original ranking in a round without withdrawals:

1. Alan
2. Bert
3. Carl
4. Doug
5. Evan
6. Fred
7. Gina
8. Heidi
9. Ivor
10. Jack
11. Ken
12. Linda
13. Muriel
14. Neil
15. Oscar
16. Polly
17. Quito
18. Rudi
19. Selma
20. Tyr

This means that a “fair” system with Polly withdrawing, should not have any effect on who is in the final at all (ranking among top 8 makes no difference for final). And likewise, if Evan withdraws, Ivor should take his place among the 8. Agreed? Of course – with the no-show practice we have, it DOES matter if you are 9th or 13th. But that is a secondary issue. We DO assume people will play in finals if they qualify.

The scenarios I tested against this was:

• Current rule applied:
  • One withdrawal by player high on list (5th of 20 players)
  • One withdrawal by player low list (16th of 20)
• Suggested rule applied:
  • One withdrawal by player high on list (5th of 20)
  • One withdrawal by player low list (16th of 20)

In all cases the player withdrew after 3 games, i.e. 7 games were annulled. The “no. 5″ player is Evan, and the “no. 16″ player is Polly before withdrawals, in all cases.

Results – current rules:

• When Evan withdraws, Ivor loses his place to Jack. Ivor was scheduled against Evan. Jack wasn’t.
  • Not many changes below line (wrt. filling of open slots at final)
  • 6 (of 20) players change rank with one place compared to original list. 2 players move 2 places up or down.
• When Polly withdraws, all 8 finalists keep their places.
  • Ivor drops 2 places (because he lost the score of 5 he originally would have had against Polly).
  • 8 players change rank with one place. One player move 2 places.

Results – suggested rules:

• When Evan withdraws, Ivor is pushed down by Jack, Ken and Muriel, as his game was annulled, while they got higher averages as their worst score were removed.
  • 2 players move 1 place, while 9 move 2 places or more.
• When Polly withdraws, Gina loses her place to Jack, as he got higher average from removing worst game.
  • Ivor is pushed down for same reason as above, his original win against Polly was annulled.
  • 11 players move 1 place from initial ranking, 4 moves 2.

You can see the details here.

Conclusions:

Can we really draw any strong conclusions? I don’t think so. Based on this, however, I do not see there is a reason to change from what we have. I do not think current rules are without flaws, but we need something better if we should change.

My observations are:

• Current system has –  in total – less effect on the ranking. As such it is presumably more fair.
• Suggested system favours those who weren’t affected directly by the withdrawal.
• Both rules affect the players closest to the line most. (Only thing to do is to secure your smiley early.)
• Any withdrawal will affect “innocent” players. So think again, both when you sign up, and if you consider withdrawing.
• If a player who is regarded stronger than you withdraws, there is an upside for you. If he is regarded weaker, you might lose an easy game.

~ Aries ~

PS.

I also understand this matter has been discussed before taking it to me, as I am “hard to get hold of”. I really hope that you do not feel it that way, I try to be available. To make it easier to get help, we got Flora Jewell to help us as CEO (Complaints and Etiquette Officer). If you do have complaints/questions/suggestions regarding “operations” she will help you swiftly. If she can’t do it there and then, she will come back ASAP or contact me for help. Your team captains should also be of great help, as they are seasoned league players.

I am still available and I am responsible for the draws, the finals and keeping this machinery going. I am on European time (SLT +9). I have a RL job, but SL is an important hobby, so I spend a lot of time here. My IMs are rarely capped, and they go straight to my email if I am not in-world. This way I can respond even if I am not in SL. Notecards also works well – if you have longer essays (i.e. bigger problems, longer solutions…). And if I do not answer when I am online, I am most likely AFK for a little while. But “…I will be back”…. suddenly.

Invalid card?

By now, most of us have experienced the “Invalid card!” error.  It used to be less of a problem, but now they are almost as normal as error-free games. (Well – not really, but you get my point.) For our league games, it creates some hassle with multiple postcards, IMs with explanations, offer of witnesses, and so on. From the scoring side, it is rarely a problem, as our players are honest and we see no protests.

The rule applied in the league on these incidents, is that the round with invalid card is disregarded, and players continue counting from point from the previous point. This is a fair and simple solution. However, if you just continue playing, two minor problems can appear:

• The game might declare a winner prematurely – i.e. you have to start a new game to actually get to 5 points scored from counting rounds.
• If you disregard the round with invalid card, the player who lost that round will have first move, even if the round is annulled, and ideally the same player should start the next round.

Yesterday, I experienced the error in a league game, and Kimi solved this in a great way that I wanted to share with you. Imagine you are playing a game, and you realise that you will end up in an “Invalid Card!” situation or you get the error message from the game. These are the steps to take:

1. Ask for a timeout, but do not leave the piste.
2. Exchange info about your card hands, to figure out if and how it is possible to end this round in a tie.
3. Agree on needed moves, and make the round a tie.
4. There! You have annulled the round, and can start from last counting point. The end result on the board after the game is over is the correct one.

Try it!

If there is NO possible way to make it a tie, try to let the player who won previous round “win” again, but disregard the point. This way you get the right player to start the next round, but you will have one point too many on the board.

~ Aries ~

Summing up Round 8 in CL and AL

We are very close to the end of round 8 of season 8, so we need to count the slots. Here are the results from this season.

As you see, the team slots for The Big Team Battle are distributed as follows:

• Heart of Dragons: 8 slots
• Celtic Swashbucklers: 8 slots

This means that the team captains must put together a team of active players from their teams. List must be sent to Aries in a notecard before Sunday, December 18th.

PS. I am a bit worried about these numbers. We really need more teams! So I am challenging the smaller teams  to see if they can have a team of 3 (or more) in each round. The Team Battle has been a part of CL since the start, and was created to have some added fun – not only on the individual level. It’s not about world domination, it’s about that good old friendly rivalry!

If you need help or ideas how to set up or “revitalize” your team, just let me know.

September Ladder: The end game!

Only a few days left of September, so we are close to the end of the ladder. As you know, the formal challenges have not worked as intended.*) And from midnight Wednesday, there are only 72 hours left of the game. This means that formal challenges are kinda dead, or at least futile. So we do need special rules for the last 3 days.

• Formal challenges can not be made after 12:01 AM SLT Wednesday.
• All top 5 players have to play the player directly below and above them daily. This will be based on the ranking at 12:01 every morning. Players who do not do this, will lose one place in the rank at the start of the following day.
• Top 10 players have to play at least one game each day. Players who do not do this, will lose one place in the rank at the start of the following day.

The smart players will contact their closest opponents now, to make sure you will be able to find a common time to play their potentially mandatory games.

There will be 2 winners in this Ladder. The player ranked as number 1, when all games are in at midnight Friday, September 30th, will receive a trophy and prize money for climbing the ladder to the top. The top 8 players, will be invited to a final tournament, giving the No. 1 and the 7 others a chance to show their strength. The timing for this will be announced later.

Within a couple of days, I will have summed up this “beta version” of the Ladder tournament. I think we have had a lot of fun, but some teething problems could not be avoided. I apologize for changing and tweaking the rule a couple of times, but it has been needed. I would also like to thank some players and friends for constructive criticism, and help to solve some of the issues!

Aries

*)It was meant to be a tool to avoid conflicts, instead it became a source of conflict.