Posts:
2,233
Registered:
Mar 4, 2007
From:
San Francisco
Age:
45 Home page
Re: Video announcement, Pente Tourney
Posted:
Sep 8, 2015, 2:51 AM
Hi Spif, In regards to your inquiry of format I compose the following:
The format works with any number to my knowledge. As i browse past tourneys i notice some things...
1- 80% tourneys where elimination... either single or double but usually double. 2- there was a double elim with 22 players, and so it doesn't seem we are required to hit 32 if we pass 16. 3- All tourneys involving a crown have been double elim i believe. 4- BYE only happens if there is a odd number of players I believe. 5- Yes we have done round robin, and Swiss before, but those seem suited to very large tourneys. They are more complex (IMHO), and take longer to complete,.. although perhaps I am mistaken? 6- No, we did not discuss tourney format this time around. I just shot called it, and went with what has been the norm that has worked in the past. 7- Yes I believe that there have been heated discussions in years past over formats,.. but restarting a new one worries me in that it could prolong this tourney... 8- Certainly I welcome the topic, and we can discuss it,.. just I'm not sure that the tourneys format should be changed at this point regardless of outcome in a discussion, but I could be wrong? 9- Yes a Bye is unfortunate... :/ If we have a odd number we could always kick the last signer, or low totem player off the list to eliminate any BYEs... although I think that has never been done before... 10- I bet if we got you and karlw, richardiii, and up2ng into a thread on this it could be a interesting read...
11- >>>World cup-style group stages feeding a final single/double elim bracket might be a good in-between?<<< Im not sure what this would look like... does this simplify things, or make them more prolonged and complex compared to just a double elim? And, do we even have a tourney code that would support that I wonder...
12- please feel free to comment to what I have said, make further other comments, ask questions, or correct any thing I have said that may be mistaken or incomplete.
Thanks,
Zoey
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Re: Video announcement, Pente Tourney
Posted:
Sep 8, 2015, 3:36 AM
I appreciate the response, zoey!
Everything you say sounds right. Re-opening a format discussion is perhaps unwise after 16ish signups. So totally understand if the call has to be: leave it as is so as to not disrupt the tourney as planned. That said, given that it's three months out, I don't think the point of no return has been passed, by any means.
Byes are not the hugest deal in the world. I would think it should go to either the gold crown holder or the highest rated player in the tourney, if they are different - giving to the middle-ranked is kind of unusual in tourneys I've participated in!
I think swiss is less suited to huge numbers, if anything - the more players in swiss, the more rounds you need to have to converge to accurate points standings. That said, since we have ranks to go off of, it's perhaps not as big of a deal here - matching people up based on current ranking probably has some inaccuracy for rusty old dudes like me, but in general should lead to faster convergance to an accurate ladder.
Swiss is definitely more complex, but doesn't necessarily have to take longer - it would involve more total matchups, but you can either have people play 2+ matchups per week or give a shorter time to schedule matchups. You'd be surprised how good people are at scheduling things themselves! The tourney I'm currently running is swiss format with 54 entrants - everyone schedules one best-of-three match each week for eight weeks. And honestly - we're 6 weeks in at this point and have had basically no issues with scheduling despite having players from Europe, Japan, Australia, North America, and South America. But - it's been a LOT of work to run it. I probably spend 15-20 hours a week just managing this tournament, and there are 3 other people helping organizing (but not putting in that amount of time). It is extremely understandable not to want to impose that kind of commitment on anyone! With ours there is also an 8-person final bracket based on the top players at the end of the swiss; that could be something like 4 given the current amount of signups.
The advantages would be: more total matchups, more accurate results (maybe not as big of a deal with pente? generally doesn't lead to flukes in the way that my other tournament's game can, sometimes), more participation for the marginal guys like me who will probably lose early on. Disadvantages are work for the organizers as well as time commitment for the players.
There was a BK tourney with world cup-style group stages maybe like 7-8 years ago? Very big tourney, but might have been a little before your time? I was in it as chicphoenix (no idea in retrospect why I used a different handle there). I'm not sure if it's supported here, but it's always possible to just run the bracket through challonge and have people report scores. Again - more work to organize. I think this one is probably best suited to the tourney at hand, assuming a few more sign up - it scales pretty easily to more players (I'm sure it's possible to have a 22-player double elim, but 6 getting byes seems pretty non-optimal to me!), and reduces the effect of fluky early losses on ultimate outcome. Oh, found it. Here's the link: http://brainking.com/pl/Tournaments?trg=20168&tri=156901&trnst=0.
Anyway, that was pretty long. My vote would be toward something similar to the BK tourney, but with the group stages leading into an elimination tourney - this is a pretty standard format for other tourneys. But again I 110% understand not wanting to shake things up at this point! Curious to hear your thoughts.
That was the toughest tourney I had ever played in, Very cool to remember that one Jayhawklov
PS That took a year and half to complete (Over 45 top rated (1850 and above) players and 140 or more total, the largest Pente tourney in the last 25 years or so
Message was edited by: jayhawklov at Sep 8, 2015 5:44 PM
Message was edited by: jayhawklov at Sep 8, 2015 6:06 PM
Yea was fun. Last tourney I did of any kind with pente, and was probably starting to rust already at that point! Glad to see you around again, jayhawk.
To be fair w/ the time scale, the games were turn-based with each taking a week - it's definitely possible to have a big swiss tourney that goes a bit quicker
well I won't be studying that'd just melt my brain and for me usually doesn't do much good. I pretty much figure I'll just move somewhere no one has ever thought of before and see where it takes me (well as P2 anyway )
As a side note I just sent a fellowship wide message out to everyone in Serious Pente Players so hopefully that will motivate some of the folks who haven't yet seen or heard about this tournament.
only 39 more days to signup! if you haven't done it yet the timer is ticking down...join in with the rest of us before it's too late!
Spif, sorry I have not responded yet. Been busy yesterday and today with work and my kid. I need some time to digest what you have said, so that my response may be more thoughtful. Thanks.
do know that, a format change will be considered.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
No worries zoey! Please don't feel obligated to respond in any particular way - ultimately it's your tourney and I'm happy to participate in whatever format you think is best!
I see we just got in Chousu and Spavacz... Very nice. Spavacz will be dangerous.
Would be cool if we could get Arczi too, but I doubt he will, unless it was D-pente, because he loves that variation.
And, Kolia emailed me stating he is considering signing up to. He is currently moving from one country to another, so he will need to settle in first before committing.
Also, I keep twisting Dmitriking's arm into signing up,... we'll see..
Also, I don't know if I have mentioned this yet, But...
"Gary Gabrel", the inventor of pente, has confirmed with me over facebook that he will be mailing me a special pente gift for the winner... More details on that later
I'm very happy for how things are turning out. This tourney will be rather epic.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Posts:
2,233
Registered:
Mar 4, 2007
From:
San Francisco
Age:
45 Home page
Re: Video announcement, Pente Tourney
Posted:
Sep 11, 2015, 6:24 AM
@ rainwolf
> Here's a proper link to the PenteDB program, the one > hosted here on pente.org is severely outdated. Dweebo > recently open sourced it and put it on > GitHub
That's a great link, as the open source option is awesome. With that said, the average person is probably going to take one look at all that stuff to build and do the deer in the head lights look. Most people will probably be better off with the ready made app(pente db), and to my knowledge, Peter did not do any improvements to the app since that version I posted. Although, I could be wrong, which would be a good thing if I am, as an improved version would be good. That said, there wasn't much wrong with the ready made app. Is "severely outdated" a realistic description? Are they really different? You have me curious now.
Scire hostis animum - Intelligere ludum - Nosce te ipsum - Prima moventur conciliat - Nolite errare
Zoey, in terms of features I am pretty sure the open sourced version and the executable version you linked to are the same.
The one difference is with java support. The open source version will work with just about any java you have installed, most importantly it works with 64-bit java which should make the program faster. The installer and program do a better job of finding the best version of java to use.
The older version only works with 32-bit java and doesn't do as good a job choosing the right version of java.
A short announcement from the flight deck: Many of you have probably noticed that zoeyk is an admin here and has special abilities because of it. He does not have the ability to enter game rooms invisibly and spy on game play, he does not have the ability to use the database during live rated play, and he does not have access to the server logs where he'd be able to see player's practice moves afterward.
There is a development server that is publicly accessible, but zoeyk has the same access rights as here, and I explicitly turned off database access there to anyone.
Re: Video announcement, Pente Tourney
Posted:
Oct 21, 2015, 12:01 PM
Upon zoeyk's suggestion, I enabled access to the database for every participant in the tournament until the start of the tournament, until December 1st, 2015.
that'd just melt my brain and for me usually doesn't do much good. I pretty much figure I'll just move somewhere no one has ever thought of before and see where it takes me (well as P2 anyway 
)