As some of you already know, i an amature programmer and have been working on a pet project - Team Gammon. The first try was a complete bust, having a captain responsible for the two other players was never a good idea. So i decided to make it more like flg, where everyone has to register, and all matches will be reported and confirmed. So..... Rev 2 is ready for beta testing.
The format is three players on a team, each player playes three bg matches, one with each of the other players. If a team wins 5 out of the 9 bg matches, they win the team match.
Since, the players do not play the same match lengths, where you place your players (player 1, player 2, or player 3) matters.
Read the rules for a much more complicated explination.

The looks are still a little rough, i simply went with the defaults for this web site so far, if there is enough interest in Team Gammon, i will improve the looks and i welcome all input and or critisizm. There also of course may still be bugs, so please bear with me, i am only a beginner.

Link to main page (please refer people to here) http://www.anncordova.com/Backgammon/TeamGammon.aspx
Please sign up (one account per email) and try it out, i will try to be around most of the weekend to activate accounts, for questions, comments, suggestions and/or general abuse. (and to fix any bugs that may arise, check home page or here for announcements on known bugs and or fixes)

Woo Hoo! i now have 6 people signed up. This makes a match possible. I'm not sure how many match possilities there r now. but i know with each three players, there r six teams possible.

I now have 8 players registered, but no teams created. Has anyone besides me tried? if you have tried, was it self explanitory or do i need instructions somewhere? Did you try and not succeed? or did no one try because they don't know where to start?

I sense a resistance to commitment here at FIBS
First - Signing up at Team Gammon does NOT automatically join you in a team or league, it merely lets you use the site.
Second - creating a team does NOT commit you to playing any games with that team, it allows you to issue challenges and accept challenges - everyone on the team must accept a challenge match, including the two other team members of the challenging player. When/if i start a league, teams will have to register (meaning all three players will have to accept).

So, please people try it out, there is NO commitment to signing up or creating a team!

when you try to create a team, the drop down lists will display all avail (registered and active) players (i will make this alphabetical soon

Ok, this helps - will give it a go 

Woo Hoo! i now have 11 people signed up! moonshadow and BackgaMother were both able to create teams, all players must accept for the team to become active, pls check your Create/View Teams to see if they invited you.

another milestone, the second team is now formed - "The Calithumpians" - moonshadow, diane, and WildThing (from the home page, you can click on Complete Team List to see the teams that are formed)

we also have two matches in the challenge stage (both "Triple" vs. "The Calithumpians")

ok people, we r almost to the fun part!

team gammon strategy:
(from here on out i will refer to a backgammon match as a game, and a team gammon match as a match)
i will use the current match between "The Calithumpians" and "Triple" as example.

Round 1:
Team 1 Player 1 vs Team 2 Player 3 - 9 ptr
Team 1 Player 2 vs Team 2 Player 2 - 7 ptr
Team 1 Player 3 vs Team 2 Player 1 - 9 ptr

i expect most first rounds to end with one team winning two games, the other team one game. Your strongest player should go in the player 1 slot, so, your best player in the longest game should beat a player 3. (player 3 should be better at the long games, not always ranked 3rd, but if the teams are about equal - player 3 will usually be ranked lower than other teams player 1)

so in the first round the "swing" game will most often be player 2 against player 2

of course if either team wins all three games, it will probably not go past the second round.

moonshadow beat BackgaMother so "The Calithumpians"  are ahead with one win. (points are not important with 9.7.5 matches and above, it always takes 5 games to win) - this is the "expected" result (by expected result or when i say usually, i mean the higher ranking player wins and both teams are of about equal rank)


if blotsalot beats WildThing the match between diane and me will decide who goes to the second round with the advantage, if WildThing pulls off the upset, I can still "save" the round from total disaster by beating diane.

Rickr, i love your enthusiasm, but beware you are treading on thin ice letting a bot shout .. look at all the criticism MissManners gets, think about how you feel when you see NacciBot spam (or my tourney spam), remember JokeBot, and even don's lyric bot which was quite cool, imho .. so, good luck if you choose to put angel into the shouts fray .. she and you may need to toughen up

i had some ideas regarding how a bot might be able to help with tournament participation:

• Build a "subscription" list of anyone who plays in tourneys for sending reminders in FIBS messages 24 hours in advance of a tourney .. of course, such a "subscription" list would need a cancel function and an ability to not leave more than a few messages when a user has not logged in for a long period of time
• an InviteBot when a tourney opens .. it would be nice to send tells to anyone that might qualify for a tourney .. such a bot would need settings such as Exp, Rep, rating, and phone user to qualify the invites as well as an ability to subscribe/unsubscribe
• ReminderBot (Tom has this implemented in TourneyBot when a long running tourney is ongoing, TourneyBot will advise on login of whom you amay have an unfinished tournament match) - you could do one for Team Gammon matches
• PhoneBot - a bot that identifies phone users for sending them tells specific to tournaments for phone users only (or tourneys where they might be welcome), article links at fibsboard,
• much more, but can't recall at the moment

rickinsf

Several days ago, while watching a FIBS match, several of us were discussing  “Team Gammon” and you asked for feedback.

I had found the site to be extremely confusing and difficult to navigate, but I didn't think it fair to state that without making an effort to explain why I found it confusing or without offering a few suggestions as to how it could be improved.

Although I declined give a quickie superficial response in kibitz, I agreed to put something here on fibsboard, where I can give a more thoughtful and hopefully constructive response.

1.   The name “Team Gammon” is a confusing choice for the project name as it infers “Team Gammon” is one of many “teams”, including the current team Callithumpian or team Triplet, when in fact “Team Gammon” is not a team at all, but a league.

 “League Gammon” would perhaps be a more logical and semantically apt descriptor, as a “league” can be comprised of “teams” but a “team” cannot be comprised of “leagues”.

2.   The use of “match” to describe what is actually a tournament is confusing, especially how they are used in menu headings. When one team comprised of 3 players challenges another team to a series of matches, as for example a 9-7-3 match length format, that competition  cannot be called a “match”.

Two teams of 3 players each playing individual matches in successive rounds of play until a certain number of points are accumulated and a victor declared would best be described as a “tournament”.

For the sake of clarity and consistency I suggest a changing wherever you have used “match” or “matches” to “tournament”.  “Complete Match List” would therefore become “Complete Tournament List”, “View Your Matches” would morph into “View Your Tournaments”, etc.

Team is to league, what match is to tournament.

3.   I found navigation to be difficult and not very intuitive.  This is not related to programming per se, but more to do with organizing information in a manner so that it is readily accessible. With that said, and after having spent some effort thinking about how to improve site navigation, I’ve come up with the following suggestions for possible consideration.

 The menu headings facilitate navigation and are hopefully organized to avoid going down dead end cul-de-sacs. For the information on each page I've put actual links from the current site to indicate what information would go under a particular grouping of menus.

==========
HOME PAGE

SIGNUP   RULES   LOGIN

==========
TEAM PAGE
HOME   PROFILE   RULES     CREATE TEAM   TOURNEYS   LOGOUT

http://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonTeamList.aspx

==========

CREATE TEAM PAGE
HOME   PROFILE   RULES    TEAMS   TOURNEYS   LOGOUT

http://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonUserPage.aspx

==========
TOURNEY PAGE
HOME   PROFILE   RULES   TEAMS    CREATE TOURNEY    LOGOUT

http://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonActiveMatches.aspx

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CREATE TOURNEY PAGE
HOME   PROFILE   RULES   TEAMS    TOURNEYS    LOGOUT

http://www.anncordova.com/FIBS/TeamGammonNewMatch.aspx

==========


Hope this is helpful and constructive,

moon