Event History and Leaderboard - 2017

Thank you for your labours @MGleason! As part of my personality, I love seeing/tracking stats, leaderboards, points, and scenarios -- so your work is not unappreciated!

Thanks!

What about using the points system used in the FIA F2 championship?

Main events (top 10): 25, 18, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1

Extra events (top 8): 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1

Could it also be possible to award points in a separate leaderboard to rating sections (maybe U1600 and U1200); this will give more incentive to players who have little chance of finishing in the top 10 overall but still compete in their own section.

Also, what about an end-of-year playoff to decide an overall championship? Maybe every tournament winner, and then the top players in the leaderboard not already qualified.

Sadly I've been unable to compete in these so far, these do sound great though so I'll try to get involved soon. I'll also be happy to create a Google spreadsheet that might make this easier to follow (with full standings as well).

I'm sure we could come up with dozens of different scoring systems, all of them with some merit.  Another possibility would be total points earned.  But I'm not really convinced there's a whole lot of difference between them.

I'm not sure a separate leaderboard for different rating sections works well.  Too many people cross the thresholds back and forth as their ratings bounce around; what do you do with someone who's U1600 for some events and above it for others?  There are various solutions one could come up with, but they all take extra time, and I don't get paid for this.

As for an end-of-year playoff, I'm not sure.  I'm somewhat inclined to archive the leaderboard at the end of each year and start a new one, but I don't know that we need a playoff to determine the overall winner each year.  If it's close, than the final tournament is, in a sense, the playoff, as there's still a chance for the leader to be caught.  If it's not close, then the leader is far enough ahead they deserve to win outright without risking it in a playoff.

Three quick points:

Yes, there's a critical difference between setting up the leaderboard with weighted scoring for the Untitled Tuesdays compared to just adding total points earned. A player would run away with the leaderboard if they just consistently scored a few points every time there was an untitled event that wasn't held on Tuesdays. 

We need to weight the Untitled Tuesday events such that they are the main draw for the leaderboard

Secondly:

There's not much point of a play-off. There are play-offs every month. That's what Untitled Tuesday is all about. The winner of the tour, the leaderboard (which is a clumsy term), will be the person who scores consistently well. Usually the winner of those events isn't the best player, it's just the player who shows up the most.

Here's a third point to consider:

There are quite a few players who want rewards for "lower ranked" players. 

The tour can do this, but it involves more work. Set an average rating limit, say 1800, 1500 and 1000, and give class prizes for the lower rated players.

Another key way to keep score that will encourage greater participation from everyone is to tabulate the number of games played too. Pairing byes count as games played. 

These rewards all act as incentives for players to complete more games and not drop out of tournaments. These are all time-tested and have been used in both online and OTB tours. 

The only drawback is that it takes some effort to tabulate all of this.

Yes, simply adding up points earned wouldn't work unless we added a weighting factor for the Untitled Tuesday events.  But we had 60+ people for our Tuesday event this month, and the group is growing.  I don't really want to be counting points for what's likely to be 100+ people at a typical event in future, so I'm unenthusiastic about that method anyway.  That's also a reason not to tabulate the number of games played; it would take a huge amount of time.  The current scoring system lets me only pay attention to the top of the table, so it doesn't take any more time if we have 50 people or 500.  Class prizes would require digging deeper into the table, checking average ratings, etc.

Given the awkwardness of the different time zones, I don't want to emphasise the leaderboard/tour/whatever too much; many people will only be able to play in some of our events.  I don't want those who have to miss half the time to feel like there's no point in playing in the events they can make; I want the focus to still be on the individual events.  This can provide a bit of context to each event, but I don't want to emphasise it too much.

MGleason, I once ran the tour for an entire state for a year. It involved dozens of tournaments and several hundred players with place prizes in every class (200 rating point intervals). It really wasn't hugely time consuming. Here, we're talking about maybe 5 events a month at most. There's probably an easy way to scan the results into a tabulating document such as Excel, but I don't know how to do that. I think I'd have to enter the info by hand, but someone else might be able to have it all automated.

If a player were to change usernames during the course of the tour, that person would have to be declared ineligible. It would be just too hard to track multiple players and verify their identities. There would probably be other issues too, such as players gaining points due to other players being forfeit. 

But it's worth considering. 

I'll consider it.

We'll have probably an average of about 2.5 events per month; our major events after Titled Tuesday and the following Saturday, and sometimes an extra event later in the month; the extra event might follow the same format, or might be bullet, a variant such as 960, or occasionally even a variant such as KotH or Crazyhouse.  But the number of events isn't huge.  The number of players might get pretty high, though.

If they're not all standard blitz, though, we do have to find a way to determine which class to put people in, as they'll have different ratings in bullet or for the variants.

Someone who changes username would probably get two low scores rather than be ineligible.  If they let me know or I happened to spot it, that might be different; name changes are recorded in your admin log, so I can verify that if I know to look.

Please, don't include variants. In fact, it would be great if you only used one time control for the tour. That would make the tour MORE appealing because everyone would be compared using the same stick.

Hmm... I still think a big 20-round bullet tournament with a large number of people would be popular, but if I do variants (including bullet as a variant) for a special event, they probably shouldn't count for the leaderboard/tour.

Maybe I should just keep the leaderboard/tour for the event on the Tuesday and the subsequent Saturday, and any extra mid-month events will not be counted.

Sure, it'd be very popular! I'd play in it! 

But it doesn't belong in the same category of events as the untitled Tuesday 3/2.

That seems reasonable.  I'll plan on that: keep the leaderboard/tour for the main Tuesday/Saturday events, and exclude any extra events.

guys im cool

I've updated the leaderboard to show all three events (including the test-run event) counted as full events; extra events won't affect the leaderboard.

Thx, MGleason, but you forgot to add a weighted score for the Titled Tuesday event.

Or, is that what you meant, that you won't weight the main event?

I'm counting our Tuesday and Saturday events equally; not everyone can make the Tuesday time, so I see the Tuesday/Saturday events as equivalent.  I counted the test-run event as also equivalent.  But any extra mid-month event won't be counted at all.

Of course that's your decision, but the name of the group, the number of players, and the parent event all show that the Tuesday event is more important than a Saturday event would be.

Hmm... fair point.  I might double-weight the Tuesday events.

Thanks for providing the update! I still think the main event should be given extra weight (either double or perhaps an extra 10 points to the winner?).

I know, I'm speaking against my own interest.