c4countdown

Hi all; had an idea that while it's awesome to see knockout tournaments and bashes, a lot of the higher rated players tend to stomp all over these, and so it might be nice to have a League style tournament over Apterous. Several possibilities exist for its running:

1/ Straight leagues, however many players are interested could be split into equal divisions with rating limits as in chess or Scrabble, and play each other over however many weeks/months is convenient for all involved. If this happened, we could either have a playoff finals with different variants, or simply have three or four variants to be played across each cycle was wanted or another soln.

2/ A ladder style league, probably split into two groups for convenience. For those unfamiliar with this idea, players are ranked initially by rating or other applicable skill level, and then challenge each other to ascend their ladder. Usual rule is that you may only challenge the players within two places above you, of course you do not challenge below. Victor takes the higher position, this could continue for x matches before a champion is found, and of course is relatively easy to administrate if results are all posted in one thread.

3/ Any other format ideas; which can be posted here for consideration

Anyone who is interested do please let me know your views and feelings I personally don't think a ladder is the best idea but many of you may prefer it.

I was thinking the other day that you could make quite a good TV game show based on apterous. Maybe on a "winner stays on" kind of format, dunno, haven't really thought it through much.

It sounds a great idea, I would personally go for the league, because the ladder thing sounds like another version of the ranking system already in place, just more mobile, and less accurate, so a league in my view seems the better option.

The problem with the league is that we would need to get the two designated players who are playing the match in one place at one time, which may be difficult if people have summer holidays and time away, or just long-term internet crashing, which people undoubtedly will have. Also, if someone stops playing apterous, there is no way to make them play their league games if they are in the league, whilst this problem will not occur in the ladder.

Unless I'm not understanding it, a problem with the ladder thing would be that it would largely come down to the result of just the last match, so the initial leader could win 49 games and then barely lose the 50th, and consequently lose the whole tournament.

First idea sounds pretty good, as long as people are generally available to play when they need to then it could be great fun.

Innis Carson wrote:Unless I'm not understanding it, a problem with the ladder thing would be that it would largely come down to the result of just the last match, so the initial leader could win 49 games and then barely lose the 50th, and consequently lose the whole tournament.

First idea sounds pretty good, as long as people are generally available to play when they need to then it could be great fun.

True point, Innis. My main thought was that the ladder would need updating after every game, and so people would be constantly mischallenging each other or it would be horribly slow.

We have a local cup chess competition where people have a set amount of time in which to play x games, after which deductions are applied, so if once it was set up, people let me know when they are unavailable (antichallenge windows! Wait, the US government already stopped that..), I could draw up a list of target dates and stuff. It all of course also depends on how many people want to play.

Daniel O'Dowd wrote:

Innis Carson wrote:Unless I'm not understanding it, a problem with the ladder thing would be that it would largely come down to the result of just the last match, so the initial leader could win 49 games and then barely lose the 50th, and consequently lose the whole tournament.

First idea sounds pretty good, as long as people are generally available to play when they need to then it could be great fun.

True point, Innis. My main thought was that the ladder would need updating after every game, and so people would be constantly mischallenging each other or it would be horribly slow.

We have a local cup chess competition where people have a set amount of time in which to play x games, after which deductions are applied, so if once it was set up, people let me know when they are unavailable (antichallenge windows! Wait, the US government already stopped that..), I could draw up a list of target dates and stuff. It all of course also depends on how many people want to play.

I think it would be a great idea (especially idea 1) with promotion and relegation between leagues. I will try and think of ways it could work.

I like the idea of more than one league table so that people like me can have a pop at being best of the rubbish people. OK it's not too different from just looking at the ratings table and splitting it arbitrarily, but promotion would still be something nice to aim for and to see announced on the site.

Getting people to play each other in a timely fashion and so on is tricky so the ladder system gets my real-world vote.

An alternative approach that I enjoyed coming up with that would make the league idea work could be as follows:

Each week (could be less but for sake of explanation let's say week) each participant is allocated his / her fixture, say for example I get Daniel.

Any time I want in that week I can either:

• A - play against Daniel, i.e. we arrange it over PM / email / chat etc.
• B - play a lone "marker" game (designated as being "against" Daniel) where a bot chooses ALL selections for all rounds, I declare my words for all rounds, and the conundrum stores the time of my solution if I get it

Then at the end of the week:

• if A happened then a league point to the winner.
• if only B happened and only I did it then I get a point for a walkover
• if only B happened but both Daniel and I did it then the higher scorer gets the point.
• if A and B happened then A takes priority - a point to the winner

The result of B isn't known until the week is over, to prevent someone from purposefully not setting up an A match because they know they won the B match.

This method allows those who can't arrange a mutual time to play to register a marker and virtually play their opponent, much like playing the "classic" games.

I've just realised that B above would require programming, as opposed to being something that could be run via the forums, which was the spirit in which you suggested it right Daniel?

Good idea Rob

Another small problem with the a/b system is that if someone plays a b match, and they know they did really well on it, and don't think that the opponent will do as well, that would be a disincentive to play the a match, which I imagine is the main match which really should happen. However I think that your a/b idea is a great improvement to the game, and yeah, if we do promotions and relegations at some arbitrary time (maybe 1 or 2 months a league) then it sounds good.

Maybe 3 leagues

Premiership (1600 or 1700+)
Championship (1300-1600 or 1400-1700)
Division 1 (1300-0 or 1400-0)

Or 2 without the div 1

Initially anyway- the rating system means that after they have played x games, and someone wants to join the league, they can be placed in the right one.

Obv. after promotions and relegations then ratings don't matter

b would only require a small amount of programming anyway I imagine, because daily duel is already there made on a similar basis, so it would just be a sort of weekly duel.

Paul Erdunast wrote:
Another small problem with the a/b system is that if someone plays a b match, and they know they did really well on it, and don't think that the opponent will do as well, that would be a disincentive to play the a match, which I imagine is the main match which really should happen.

Yeah I was thinking that although the person would feel they had done well, they would still have a niggling doubt that the opponent could beat them, and in the spirit of things (say they were online and the other person said "shall we play our game" in chat) they would go ahead and play. Avoiding your A game would just be another one of those Apterous gamesmanship things* that are down to the spirit of fair play etc. People who want to do that kind of thing will always be able to one way or another.

Cheers,

Rob.


* like if you are hammering someone and you get the conundrum wrong you quit whilst it ticks on for your opponent and then resume it so you can break 100 / get a MAX etc.

I've always thought a ladder system would work well, as it's distinctly different to the tournaments that people already organise.

I remember the best part of a decade ago Yahoo had a ladder system for a word game called Literati which was pretty popular. The way it worked was initially the ladder rungs were just handed out on a first come first served basis (could use ratings instead here). If you lost to a lower ranked player you moved down one place and the winner moved up halfway up to the higher ranked player's position. You had to maintain a certain level of activity or you were penalised, otherwise you could grab the number 1 spot and keep it by not playing anyone.

Why do we need ideas to make it work? It's quite simple to implement a system whereby we give people a set time limit to play x games, and introduce deductions of points when these targets are not met, and allow points to be returned if someone catches up within the next deadline; it's simply a matter of deciding whether interested people want differing play cycles to contain different variants, and if so what; making sure every player in each league is comfortable with the time limit windows, and getting them all to play each other within that time I'm not sure how many people would want to be promoted or relegated; my thought was simply that the first would be standalone and take it from there depending on success.

Number of divisions would depend on numbers interested and viability. If anyone wanted to set something different up to what comes out of this discussion; the more the merrier! Ladders may be a good thing for longer competition; greater flexibility providing sufficient activity from all players, and less stress because the number of concrete fixtures is so low.

I don't like the idea of a league. The ratings do a good enough job.

Jon O'Neill wrote:I don't like the idea of a league. The ratings do a good enough job.

That's like saying the Football World Cup is a waste of time because we have the Fifa world rankings. Although admittedly, the apterous ratings are a better reflection of ability than the Fifa rankings...
Besides on a one off league game, even a poor player can beat a good player- in the ratings system, for example, one would have to play consistently fantastically for ages to get as high as Bevins and Davies. So my vote goes to a league format. Promotion and relegation issues would make this more exciting than a simple ladder, at least in my view.

I agree with Neil on that, hopefully there will be enough interest to sustain a multi-league system.

A league system is very unlikely to work on the scale people are talking about here.

Craig Beevers wrote:A league system is very unlikely to work on the scale people are talking about here.

As I proved earlier this year. I do kinda agree with Jono on the whole ladder system though- it's basically just finding another way of doing something that's already being done and done well.

What is needed is more and more frequent tournaments like COOT, COMA & COGST. With all the players on Apterous a COGST-style tourney (and plate) with one or more group stages could keep people going for a hell of a long time- especially if it were a double round-robin.

And no, I'm not organising it (though I'll be happy to offer advice).

Jon Corby wrote:I was thinking the other day that you could make quite a good TV game show based on apterous. Maybe on a "winner stays on" kind of format, dunno, haven't really thought it through much.

I dunno - you could have a situation where one player is really good and keeps winning so I'd probably limit them to about 8 wins. But then, and this is the brilliant bit, the best players over a series could all come back at the end and have a knockout tournament!

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:I was thinking the other day that you could make quite a good TV game show based on apterous. Maybe on a "winner stays on" kind of format, dunno, haven't really thought it through much.

I dunno - you could have a situation where one player is really good and keeps winning so I'd probably limit them to about 8 wins. But then, and this is the brilliant bit, the best players over a series could all come back at the end and have a knockout tournament!

It'll never catch on.

Neil Zussman wrote:

Gavin Chipper wrote:

Jon Corby wrote:I was thinking the other day that you could make quite a good TV game show based on apterous. Maybe on a "winner stays on" kind of format, dunno, haven't really thought it through much.

I dunno - you could have a situation where one player is really good and keeps winning so I'd probably limit them to about 8 wins. But then, and this is the brilliant bit, the best players over a series could all come back at the end and have a knockout tournament!

It'll never catch on.

Isn't that similar to Countdown though. I don't really understand how it is different to it at all - unless you mean goatdown, or people playing each other on computers, or just the spectating chat box for 45 minutes :S

Jimmy Gough wrote: Isn't that similar to Countdown though. I don't really understand how it is different to it at all - unless you mean goatdown, or people playing each other on computers, or just the spectating chat box for 45 minutes :S

Brilliant. Sorry Jimmy.

I will support anything.

Yay for leagues! I like the idea of smaller leagues, say six people in each with pretty regular promotion and relegation. A couple of leagues at school ran like that with four in each. I spent most of my time flitting between two divisions, and it was my ultimate aim to stay in div.3 for more than one cycle of matches.

If a full round robin format is too much to organise, how about a challenge system? I've seen this work pretty well for onlin4e Blood Bowl leagues.

Ben Wilson wrote:I do kinda agree with Jono on the whole ladder system though- it's basically just finding another way of doing something that's already being done and done well.

This is what I was going for. We have ratings for the long-term, tournaments for the short term; I see no point in adding something in between.

Whilst a league system would be cool, from my experience of online Countdown stuff the interest will never last - this is why aptobashes are cool, since they all happen in one evening and we don't have the thing that happens with tournaments where the final takes place several weeks (months) after it starts, by which point nobody cares any more.

I'm also with Jono - we don't really need a league system since we have ratings etc. My only (possibly) helpful contribution is that maybe having more plate-style tournaments that have a ratings cap. It's all very well having a plate where first round losers (or whatever) make up the numbers, but often what seems to happen is that due to the proportion of high-level players you just end up with one (or more) players in the plate who are still massively better than the rest of the field. I reckon some aptobashes (or just plain tournaments) where you have ratings-restricted entry could be cool, since I reckon that could lend itself to more closer games, and avoid the problem of a handful of players dominating everything.

Thinking more about this, the argument that we don't need leagues because we have ratings doesn't wash with me. Increasing my rating is much more of a personal thing. Maybe that's different if you're right at the top? There's just not that much incentive to go from 60th to 50th, but a league is a much more tangible thing, and I'd love to get somewhere near a top division.

Ben Wilson wrote:I do kinda agree with Jono on the whole ladder system though- it's basically just finding another way of doing something that's already being done and done well.

Not really. Ratings are fairly constant but can easily be skewed by playing bots in certain formats. The highest rated human player will rarely change and it is somewhat dull. Ladders on the other hand are far more liable to change and a fair few people could potentially be number 1. There is far more of an active competitive element with ladders.

Ian Volante wrote:Thinking more about this, the argument that we don't need leagues because we have ratings doesn't wash with me. Increasing my rating is much more of a personal thing. Maybe that's different if you're right at the top? There's just not that much incentive to go from 60th to 50th, but a league is a much more tangible thing, and I'd love to get somewhere near a top division.

I agree - I'd get much more excited about a proper league with promotion/relegation etc. than I do about improving my rating.

Premier League

Chris Davies
Kirk Bevins
Jon Corby
Charlie Reams
Junaid Mubeen
Kai Laddiman
Dinos Sfyris
Damian Eadie
Callum Laddiman
James Hurrell
Innis Carson

Championship

Andre Hulme
Matthew Green
Ben Pugh
Ben Wilson
Maria Martin
Jim Bentley
Jimmy Gough
Dan Vanniasingham
Oliver Garner
Chris Kirby
Eoin Monaghan
Nick Wainwright

League One

Michael Wallace
Joe Denniss
Jack Hurst
Richard Priest
Martin May
Gareth Mitchell
Stuart Arnot
Neil Zussman
Andy Kravis
Lee Simmonds
Michael Davidson
Jojo Apollo

League Two

Jacob Sutton
Ian Volante
Norm Ahmad
Dale Levell
Tom Rowell
Ross Allatt
Keith Bevins
Donald Gordon
Allan Harmer
Barry Evans
Henry Meier
Robert Shadwick

Conference

Kevin Davis
Daniel Dodgson
Matthew Tassier
Ben Hunter
Julie Taylor
James Doohan
Mark Harrison
Aaron Higgs
Paul Erdunast
Jay Murphy
Karen Pearson
Lesley Hines


Underleague

Matt Coates
Liam Tiernan
Simon Myers
Matt Morrison
Julie Russell
James Hall
Steven Tew
Lisa Thomson
Lloyd Pettet
Joe Hammill
Phil Reynolds
Andrew Feist

Sub-division

Shaun Hegarty
Tom Chafer-Cook
Phil Collinge
John Gordon
Nate Stewart
Darren Carter
Dominic Colley
Samir Pilica
Ziggy Malone
Alex Hancocks
Marc Meakin


Quite a lot of players on apterous league

Andrew Herbertson
Adam Dexter
Ryan Adams
Ian Dent
Christine Russell
Keith Williams
Francis Hammill
Jack Morgan
Supee Juachan
Gregor Morgan
Ian Henley


How about it?

Looks like u put in a lot of effort typing that out, but i think the whole idea is slightly flawed. It looks like you took this league straight from the Apterous ratings, which i guess kind of defeats the object of having a separate league somewhat.

IMHO what would be quite interesting to do, would be to simulate a whole series of countdown on apterous, with a randomly generated order of play, and see what happens. I don't think the guys with the highest ratings would necessarily run away it.

Andrew Hulme wrote: IMHO what would be quite interesting to do, would be to simulate a whole series of countdown on apterous, with a randomly generated order of play, and see what happens. I don't think the guys with the highest ratings would necessarily run away it.

That would be quality.

Good idea Andrew.

Do a whole series effectively, with the top 8 in the finals?

Yeah thats what I thought. Would be quite interesting because a lot of the ppl on here are capable of beating the real top guys in a one off game. Really dont think there'd be many octochamps. I would probably be happy enough to run this if enough people were interested...

I like the idea of a league, and would gladly sign up despite my expectation that it will fizzle out before we get through two "seasons". (Even knowing you're in the fifth division of eight, winning your division is still winning your division.) Perhaps giving regular breathers -- one month of league play, followed by one month off (or maybe playoffs), so it doesn't seem like "oh I've got to do this for how long?" Although I agree with Ben above that a semi-regular bunch of tournaments with striated flights would serve the purpose just as well, probably. (Unlike Ben, I'm willing to throw my hat in the ring to help organize such a thing.)

If you bag a top 5 place in the Premiership do you get to play against winners of Des chiffres et des lettres in a high-profile knockout tournament?

Nice idea Ben, but we all know how rubbish the French are in high-profile knockout tournaments. Even if you invited the best of a few other European nations, the champion of des Chiffres et des Lettres would probably only ever win once in the first 54 attempts, compared to, say, 12 wins for the British champions...


Back on topic, I'm always happy to take part in leagues etc (especially if I can work my way up to the Conference, the same level as the footy team I support). However, as I can only get online at certain times of day, and other people may have similar restrictions, I imagine that I would find it difficult to arrange fixtures. Hence I (and presumably some other people) would only realistically be able to participate if the abovementioned option (b) was put in place. If there is no option (b), I think we'll just have to trust people to be sensible and not enter if they're luddite internet-access-limited people like me...

Andrew Hulme wrote:Looks like u put in a lot of effort typing that out, but i think the whole idea is slightly flawed. It looks like you took this league straight from the Apterous ratings, which i guess kind of defeats the object of having a separate league somewhat.

IMHO what would be quite interesting to do, would be to simulate a whole series of countdown on apterous, with a randomly generated order of play, and see what happens. I don't think the guys with the highest ratings would necessarily run away it.

I would think there would be four ways to separate the players on Apterous into leagues.
1. Andrew's idea, might take a long time though.
2. Ratings idea, could defeat the point of having leagues as Andrew said.
3. A 6-10 game tourney run similarly to the Aptobash which the top players on wins and spread get put in the highest league, would take ages to organise
4. Randomly generated leagues with the winner going into the top league etc.

Also, what if someone who joined Apterous after the leagues had started - how would they be integrated into the tourney at the start of the next 'season'?

I think the leagues are a great idea, and I wouldn't mind giving a helping hand to organizing the whole thing

Oh it'd be quite easy for me to organise it all, ta If it DID get to there being 23 sextillion divisions then I imagine other people could administrate each one in a separate stickied thread.

As far as new joiners, we'd have to wait for them to complete eleven games to get an established rating; then they could choose to instantly join their rating-band league, and:

Either play part of the season, at no penalty for previous game targets, the same being applied to others (the addition of everyone having one cycle extra of games wouldn't change their penalty point position)

They could play as many of the required full season games as they want, becoming elegible for inclusion in all results, any relegations or promotions etc, and also liable to the same catchup restrictions, possibly modified depending on time they joined.

All of this of course is total speculation right now. Could anyone concretely interested at the moment please PM me, so I have definite numbers to work from If needs be, we can simply have a few informal mini leagues as trials of the system, say, six people from a few various rating bands, first come first served? With two cycles, one standard, and one voter choice?

Not a full response from me yet as I'm still trying to work out in my head the best way of making the league system work. I'd obviously be willing to help.

But one small point - I don't think that basing the league seedings on ratings makes it pointless in the slightest. The seedings have to come from somewhere, and as flawed a system as it might be, we don't have a better metric than rating right now to base it on. I think because in Ian's list above he has ordered the players in each league by ranking (as well as the leagues themselves), it might be easy to forget that each league of players would all be starting at 0 points. It would only take a couple of game rounds for the league to start looking very different from the ratings rankings.

There absolutely must be some kind of free online league-organising system which is available online that can be adapted?

Despite my name not being on that list of players above - I'd be interested in either. Might also be a way I can help improve my rating as I get the impression a number of people won't play me because of my low rating.

I'd like to be included in anything that is done, if possible. Couldn't see my name on the above lists.

Ignore that list; it's not at all official and has no relevance whatsoever. You've both been added; we have seven people so far

I'd definitely be up for a league, I think it would be a good challenge. Players who didn't play in one season could be dropped to the entry league the season after (if they don't play at all it seems likely that they won't start again next season anyway). Promotions, Relegations, and Playoffs could all take place.

As a lower-rated player (although I was chuffed to see I made the underleague!), I'd also like to see some ratings-restricted aptobashes though - maybe an open section, an under-1600, an under-1300 and an under-1000 or something like that?

At chess tournaments there are often 6 or so sections all based on grading.

I'll add my name to the list please Daniel, either for a warm up tourney to test the mechanics of it all, or for the real thing.

Two weeks to play these games seems sufficient, post results and links in the new created thread Please note that in the event of a draw after 15 rounds, still play your extra conundra, but let me know it was primarily drawn, because I'll run this on 2/1/0 scoring, with a 0.5 bonus for winning a tie. This makes it less harsh on close scorelines.

Since this is just a dry run I shan't bother with the concept of target games played. Tied points scores are resolved on points scored, then spread.

Can we do HTML here?
Edit: NO.

Anyway, I will say I'd prefer nine over four. As for my availability, I'll probably be on later tonight, maybe sometime Sunday, and I'll try to get in Tuesday and Thursday afternoons as well.

Edit: Although if we get to twelve, sixes would be cool too (double round for 10 games?)

8th Seed.

I am overwhelmed.

i would like to enter as well please

Can I be added too?

Aaron Higgs wrote:Can I be added too?

And me!

Aaron Higgs wrote:Can I be added too?

And me! But if it's like the Premiership, I'm being Man.United!

You three can all be added so we now have twelve I'll just create a new thread with the two divisions in.

Twelve players=two test leagues of six. One cycle in each as above to be Standard 15. One to be standard Goatdown unless you allll hate that. Always thirty second matches please.

ETA: I got a PM from Andrew Hulme, he's in as well; so we can have one league of seven or I can drop out since this is all only a test

Can I get involved if there is still space?

Yes Niall, you're the final entrant.

Thanks Daniel, will be interesting to see how this turns out.

Looks like an interesting idea; I'll throw my hat into the ring for when there's space

Andrew Feist wrote:Although I agree with Ben above that a semi-regular bunch of tournaments with striated flights would serve the purpose just as well, probably. (Unlike Ben, I'm willing to throw my hat in the ring to help organize such a thing.)

Let's see whether people want ratings-restricted tournaments, shall we?