Another League Format

I'd like to present another league format for discussion. I post it here not as a proposal, but simply to engage in some dialog, and determine its merits and pitfalls. IBL will not work with our current player base, but after some thought we might be able to come up with a "league" that
will.

The idea is to have a mini league not unlike the way sporting events are handled. Players will enter the league by choosing a division, which are setup to represent different times of the day (and/or days of the week), say a morning/afternoon division, an evening division, and a late-night division. After an enrollment period, players would then have (say) one month to make an effort to play each player in their division 3 times and report the results (perhaps auto-reported if both use wbn, but also allow manual reporting).

At the end of one month, winners of each division (and perhaps a wildcard), I suppose based on winning percentage in case not all games were played, would enter into a playoff, which would have to be organized based on the players individual availabilities.

Once a season is complete, we can start it up all over again.

Naturally a web site will be required to enroll, report games, withdraw, view standings and game results, etc., hopefully linked to winbolo.net and fermat's logs in some way. I will build this.

I've left a ton of details out that we'll need to fill in... Thoughts? I'd love to hear any variations on the above theme as well.

I like the idea...but !

If a division have 21 players you have to play 20 x 3 games / month = 60 games / month = very difficult to organize !

If each game takes for exemple 30 minutes, you must play 30 hours + the time to organize each (IRC...) = too heavy, I think, for most of players.

To play only 1 game vs each one in the division would be more reasonable no ???

It is the first thing which come in my head...

The second : What happen if best players only play with less skilled players and don't play every one in the division ? How to calculate it ? Rating must be calculate with all the games which really were to be played in the month, no ???

Your league idea is good ; just adjust some things and it will be nice. I think that others will have good ideas too. :)

I think the idea will be to choose a # of divisions so that the number of players in them is no larger than 5 or 6. Before we attempt this league, we'll take a poll and see how much interest there is... And we can always split a division if it gets too big.

Yes... The biggest issue I can see is how to handle people not playing all of their games... It may end up unfair to some. We'll certainly need a preset way to determine tie-breakers, and I'm not opposed to bringing in wbn ratings or ladder positions to do it. Suggestions wanted on how to deal with this issue!

Note also that I don't think it'll fly perfectly every time... Remember it is all in fun, and if things don't work out in a division one time around, maybe it'll work better in the next league a month later. At least it can facilitate game play.

I'd like to also have a way for a player to withdraw, so that if they know they are unable to make themselves available enough to play then they can remove themselves from the formula.

My biggest concern is possible disputes, such as "he refused to play me every time I asked him to in irc" type of things... Does anyone care?

the problem with the "all in fun" thing is that, the moment you throw competition into the mix, its no longer all in fun, the IBL was simply intended to get people of similiar skill to play each other in 'fun' games, the rankings of the IBL were intended to be irrelevant, and simply used to match you up with other people of similiar skill .... People did not use it as such. Complaints of bugs and lag were unbelievable, cries of unfairness, cries of teammates trying to purposely lose to effect their enemies ranks, etc. ... not fun at all...

Min

No offense min, but *please* stfu, great idea fermat, if you are willing to organize it. Also min, could you please send me MinBorg via email? I NEED it, but the downloads are all down and it's not on the FTP.

-Madd Maxx-

so, you tell me to stfu for voicing a valid opinion, and then you expect me to send you minborg? .... how about no.

Min

Could you send ME minborg? I've never seen it, and I think it would be kinda handy... :D :D :D

alexm@winbolo.net

trust me, you NEEEED it.

:?: What about no ranking ? Just a table in each division with 1 line / player : 1 cell / vs player with 3 sub-cells (1 sub-cell / game, in each sub-cell : on which map, in which time, won = green cell, lose = red cell, not played = white cell...) and a "total cell" in head of the line with how many games played, vs how many different players and how many wons totals. :)

Pfffff..... It is hard to explain it !!! Please, look down in fermat's post : he has posted a link to my "league.xls" file.

Thanks for your comments :idea: :)

I think it would be a waste of time to join this... I mean, why PROVE that I can kick all your buttocks?


hahahhahhahaa!!

Thanks Alain for all of your suggestions. Some cool ideas there.

In addition to the layout suggestion, he also came up with an interesting point system.

game not played: 0 pts
game played and lost: 1 pt
game played and won: 5 pts
all 3 games played vs. 1 player: 3 pts

The above is designed to encourage players to play even though they may lose.

For example, in a division with 5 players, A player who has played and lost all his games will get (12 x 1) + (4 x 3) = 24 points.

You can download Alain's sample layout and point system here:

http://fermat.winbolo.us/bolo/download/league.xls

Min wrote:

so, you tell me to stfu for voicing a valid opinion, and then you expect me to send you minborg? .... how about no.

Min

jeez. every time some one talkst to bring a idea that is like ibl and you come along and start talking how it not going to work with these players. ya, i know ibl was a pain in the ass and i know you and liz work hard at it and not a lot of people respect that for you. but, instead of saying "it won't work" why try to help fermat? you know, give him some advice on how it "should" work.
and saying it not going to work with these players is bull shit. ibl was a long time ago. and i don't really think you give enought credit to a lot of winboloers. i say fermat. go for it. im very interested and i am willing to help you if you need help.

Ahhhhah Now heres a good Idea I was really into what Underdog was trying to do before but I knew that my mom wouldnt give me any money but I still wanted in ...In the way that you propose and that alian has helped get along with Even some of the players that Arent as good anymore...Or never were that good "like myself" wont be discouraged from playing and they have a fair chance...I think that this would be all in good fun for the players with good sportsmanship instead of saying "lag" or "pillbug" just accept that it happened and go on and hope that you might face the player again? I mean for those who can handle the concept of a tournament "just for fun" and such I think this is a great Idea keep up with the ideas I'll look into it when I can..."as I'm STILL grounded from the comp...I just sneak on every now and again"
(Sorry if you had to re-read some things in there because of my bad sentence structure and what not)
-Brando

indiana wrote:

jeez. every time some one talkst to bring a idea that is like ibl and you come along and start talking how it not going to work with these players. ya, i know ibl was a pain in the ass and i know you and liz work hard at it and not a lot of people respect that for you. but, instead of saying "it won't work" why try to help fermat? you know, give him some advice on how it "should" work.
and saying it not going to work with these players is bull shit. ibl was a long time ago. and i don't really think you give enought credit to a lot of winboloers. i say fermat. go for it. im very interested and i am willing to help you if you need help.

well, I think you should scroll up, and reread my post, I didn't just say 'it won't work' I explained in some detail why it won't work. Try again. Fermat can easily formulate his own opinion based on the basic summary I provided, if he wants more detail, he can review the IBL after session summaries, or ask me directly. I didn't realize informing people about past events was frowned apon.

Min

Fermat...... go for it...... i'll play!

Thanks for all the replies. I've begun creating a web site, but there are quite a few details to work out.

1. Divisions and Enrollment

My initial idea was to have a preset number of divisions, and allow people to "enroll" during an enrollment period. Players could immediately see who was in each division before they enroll, and could begin playing others in their divisions immediately.

Some problems with this... What if too many people (or too few) enroll in a division? Should we allow split/join of divisions? And if we do, how do we split and what about games already played and reported? To avoid this problem, the easiest solution I can see is to put a maximum on the number of players per division. Once the max has been reached, the division will be "closed". Once all divisions are closed, enrollment is done, and I'll just have to create more divisions the next time.

An alternative method would be to NOT have a preset number of divisions and simply let people enroll based on their preferred timeslot. The issue here is it is harder to code a dynamic site for this, and requires more hands-on time from the manager (me). I'd like things to be as automated as possible.

Thoughts?

2. Game reporting.

My initial idea was to have games between WBN players (of the same division) automatically count towards the league, and then also have a web page where people could come in and report games manually, either because one or both of the players were not using WBN, or because the game didn't count as "official" for some reason.

Some issues here... If people report manually and it counted as "official", then it would be auto-reported and thus show up twice. We could simply warn people, but then it puts a lot of responsibility on them to know how things work. We could maybe ask for the [wbn] game log id... All games would have a game log id even if the players were not WBN registered.

Another question... For manually reporting, do we allow anyone (who is enrolled) to report, or just the loser of the game? So they could "report a loss". This would take away the temptation for some to incorrectly report games.

Another question... Do we require that at least one of the players use WBN? Disputes will not be resolvable otherwise.

Thoughts?

how do u think of these things to type?????

Ok, I have a working prototype for a league (FBL for Fermat's Bolo League?). You can click on the "league" link on my site:

http://fermat.winbolo.us/bolo

Or go here:

http://fermat.winbolo.us/bolo/leaguestandings.asp

This is a test only... Feel free to play around in there. I will welcome any suggestions and bug reports.

Keep in mind it is a work in progress.

-Fermat

Thanks Fermat for testing my point system suggestion ! Nice job :D