Admins Work to make matches fairer (for friendly matches)

Have you ever worked with the opposing groups game admin to even the players before locking a game? This is pretty common, as large/old teams tend to have lots of high rated players, and it is only fair to ask them to make adjustments, (which we will ask our members to do to even games also). That way nobody plays someone more than X points above them, with X being about 50-100 points.

In a Group (STTCL) Presentation of Chess Statistics (By Ambassador_Spock), It went like this (approximately):

200 Points difference, 23% chance of winning

100 Points diffeence, 40% chance of winning

50 Points difference. almost 50% Chance.

Which is fair? Ideally 50%. You decide, or admins (who usually form an admin group (started by a SA) for these kinds of discussions). I teach admins in most of my 29 groups I am SA of to aim for 50 points, and don't be unreasonable if 75 is proposed by the other team. Cooperation is the goal, and if they say no, we can cancel if it is not what we think is fair. I advise not to lock too fast, till after negotiations are done.

Edited by Commander_Scott
Oct 22, 2015, from work by Ambassador_Spock

This post was originally posted in the ACTC club. It will be given here as open-source and with explicit permission for admins of Club Admin to maintain this the first post.

I often ask a larger team to lock early. That gives the smaller team a chance to recruit more.

Yes I’ve organised that.   Even prior to a match being accepted it is arranged with opposing admin and usually a note is sent in the challenge that the match will be organised to ensure close games and a close competition so members are aware in the match header when they join of this.  They all still seem to join and are happy for the matchups to be organised and never even had one complaint from someone removed   

Only happens for friendly matches of course.    Suspect in clubs which worry about their win percentages this would be rare as there is more chance of an unpredictable outcome.  

Probably this type of match would be only 10-20% of matches organised.  Maybe for a special ocassion.   We organised one for International chess day between one club of 300 players and one with thousands.  They wanted to play and it was the only fair way.   Or between a club with a close relationship to yours.  Like opposing regional clubs with a connection.  Or clubs you have regular matches with and you want to keep that special relationship continuing.  

I personally do not like the idea of removing anyone from the roster. I think if person joined to the match he wants to play, and if you remove him he will need to look for another match. Do you plan to track all players that you're removing? Could you be sure that you will not remove the same player from roster (in different matches), for example, three times in a row? It would be quite annoying for me...

Moreover, thinking now about it, I assume that as a post-effect it makes peoples from your club "less active" (to avoid the word "lazy"), because it does not matter how many of them will come, anyway everyone will have an appropriate rival. I'd rather prefer to think about a new match as about a battle: you go to play against whoever your rival is, you fight till the last pawn and if you lose you go to analyze, where your mistakes are. Only a game versus strong opponent makes you stronger, not versus the same one. For sure, it is not interesting for me (rating~1600) to play against 2300+ opponents, but 200 points difference and 1/4 possibility to win totally suits me. I have such matches, where I won, and I have matches versus 1100+ opponents that I draw (I think they took it more serious than I expected).

Ok. Coming back to the topic. I never tried to organize matches in a such way. But I think it's admin's job to do a preliminary investigations of both clubs and organize a match with proper initial parameters to make it fair (limit of rating and maximum number of players, set starting date sooner or later). Check this one for example:

Team Russia vs Oracles: https://www.chess.com/club/matches/1076012/games

Despite of the difference in clubs' sizes, it was organized in a way that match can be equalized if team really want it.  So due to the fact that Oracles raised to fight, statistically expected outcome of the match is currently 24 vs 26, that I count as a fair one. For higher ratings you can open several matches versus the same club with narrow rating limit (like 1800-1900, etc).

I guess different admins may have different perspectives about the purpose of a match. I like big matches with many participants who are either perfectly balanced or reasonably balanced. I also help with friendly banter and jokes for the match home page. For me, such matches are fun and exciting and should ensure that your group wins around 50% of the time.

To balance matches:
If my team is out-rating the opponent, I send less news blast about the match and word them less desperate and I may offer to lock match early. I have also advised the other team to send more news blast if they are larger than my team but appear slower in match recruitment. I also consider asking a few of my high rated to quit just before the start, if my team completely overwhelm the other team.

If the other team is outrating my team, I will send more news blast worded with urgency, communicate to more members 1-1 and ask opponent team to lock early or try to recruit more new members. Finally, I will approach the other teams SA if they might be willing to drop a few players prior to the match start.

I often have a discussion about balancing match (locking early, dropping players) with the opposoing team's match captain admin prior to match start.

The problem with this is that some tournaments forbid the removal of players 

It is usually only about 10% of the total matches and there is plenty of super competitive league matches and tournaments for all.  Usually for a special opponent club or ocassion.  So it doesn’t affect member morale.  

@blackfirestorm Nothing in this topic is about matches from tournaments (at least as far as I understand it). It's obvious that in tournament you do not want to organize an equal match, you want to have as much advantage as possible, calling everyone to join and win! The discussion is only about friendly matches.

Ah my mistake.

Most of this discussion seems to be about how to balance a match while signups are in progress. How about before the match even begins? If you're a small team, you can still challenge a big team. Just narrow the parameters to something like 1600-1700 only, and/or max 25 players.

But of course, many times with matches, even with reasonable parameters and roughly equal teams, it may get out of hand. I agree with some strategies brought up, such as locking the roster of the stronger team, and getting the weaker team to recruit more signups.

This discussion is only relevant for friendly matches.  For a competitive tournament match, it's not reasonable to expect the stronger club to intentionally field a weaker lineup.

Hm I never did that.
As MG said though, It's quite interesting for friendlies.

" For a competitive tournament match, it's not reasonable to expect the stronger club to intentionally field a weaker lineup."

I agree and at the same time, if my club clearly dominates a line-up for a, say, TMCL match, few days before match start, I typically stop recruitment. For me, it is enough to win a TMCL match, I do not need my club with win with a huge and humiliating margin.

Yes, and it's also not worth the effort or worth asking people to take on more games - you might prefer them to save space in their game load for another match.

But some clubs do try to ambush their opponents with a last-minute recruitment blitz.

I modified the thread title to clarify that this is only for friendly matches.  In a tournament match, obviously, you want to bring a strong team and try to win.

👍🏼

It's an interesting topic but my problem is getting players to actually sign-on to matches so asking any player to leave before the start of a friendly to balance ratings would not happen. VirtualKnightJ's suggestion of just less promotion of an unbalanced friendly match would be as far as I would go.

Hello everyone. I realize I'm 4 years late to the conversation, but this topic is near and dear to my heart. It is the sole responsibility of the groups' leadership to make matches that gives their group a good chance of winning. There are over 10,000 groups on this site go and find one that is your size and speed stop trying to take on super groups and expect them to bend themselves down to your level. You have the ability to make matches with rating windows stop accepting Open rating matches with groups that list +1000 members, and you only have 200 on a good day. Stop making/ accepting like <1800 matches when you don't have a lot of folks that are at least +1600. You have the same amount of time to call up your team to the match as your opponent. You have the ability to set the number of players for each match. I would never in a million years ask or cut someone that came and played for the group because the other team didn't have someone within 50 points of them. That is the sole responsibility of the leadership, if you made or accepted a bad match take your spanking and move on and do better next time. Everything I'm saying I have lived. Before I left the site 7 years ago, I had a group that was in the 108th spot on the group points leaderboard. We got there because I made and accepted matches that were good for the group.