Monday's Gladiatorial Combats

[PersianLord]

Well, I just noticed that there is not a scheduled tourney on mondays and thought it might be a good idea to create one to have the pleasure of having the week full of tournaments. In this thread, I would like to share my ideas with you fellow fibsters.

1- Tournament's name

I think this name, "gladiatorial combats", reflects the true nature of backgammon the best way. I have asked some experienced fibsters, such as "teyakis", "adrian", "papilion", "DeaDice", etc and they all liked the name. Yet, if you think this name is not suitable, let me know your much valued opinion PLUS your desired name.

2- Tournament's format

I had two available options: single elimination and double elimination. I think with the "gladiatorial" name chosen for tourney, it's better to go for the former as you will get eliminated by a single loss in your battles, as did the poor ancient gladiators! Also a single elimination tourney finishes much faster and this is a good factor for both players and directors.

On the other hand, since long (>5-pt) matches, in opening rounds make tourneys too long and we have to avoid this, luck always plays a deciding role in matches and thus, more skilled players don't get to the final rounds. To provide the skilled players with more opportunity to stay in the tourney, it would be a nice idea to set the format to "double elimination tourney" as they will have another chance if their underdog opponents in the 1st round had defeated them with the help of lady luck. So we have different arguments for choosing the tourney format.  which is more suitable?! Let me know!

3- Match length

I chose 3-pts for normal match and 7-pt for the final. 3-pt matches are surely longer then the usual 2-pts mini-matches, but it reduces the luck factor, as in a 2-pt match, a lucky underdog may win a gammon against the more skilled player and all would be over. But in a 3-pt match, even after suffering a gammon loss, the pre-match favorite player still has at least 25% chance to win the match and that's fine. Surely the underdog may win a backgammon, but trust me that it very rarely happens. 1-pointers are out of question as it eliminates the role of "cube handling", which IMHO, is more important then checker play in FIBS tourneys, as most of the fibsters enjoy a high level of skill in the latter. Longer matches are somehow impossible or very hard to manage, I think. The final is now set to 7-pt, but it can be longer if you want.

4- Limits

The current limitations are as follows:

- Minimum rating :        1400
- Minimum experience :  1000
- Minimum reputation:    5000

Again your input is appreciated.

5- Tournament's schedule

It can be played on any specified time on mondays. But as my local time is GMT +3.5, it would be better to set it for a specified time between 15:00 GMT to 20:00 GMT. Personally I choose 17:00 GMT.

6- Tournaments directors

Currently, me and Steve are the directors. But any other reliable fibster, such as don, adrian, deadice, 60, teyakis and the likes can be too.

7- Handling delays & droppers

I suggest any normal match should be completed in max 30 mins. If a player drops, we will provide him 5 mins to come back, otherwise a forfeit will be awarded . Also if a player drops 3 times during a match, the opponent will be awarded victory.

8- Handling bot-using issue

If a player feel that his opponent is using a bot, he should save the match file and send it via e-mail to tourney's directors. By later analysis, if it were found that the eror rate of the mentioned player is less than a reasonable amount, he will get banned for the next tourneys.

9- Awards

First and the most, FUN. For monthly and yearly awards, I suggest that the similar awarding rules of "bagolympic" tournament with these differences to be set:

- 1 pt for each participation
- 2 pt for each win
- 3 pt for the runner-up
- 5 pt for the winner

At the end of the each month, the player with the hisghest score will be the month's "ultimate gladiator". At the end of session, a special tourney will be played between the 12 monthly winners and the winner will get 50 pts. Then the overal winner with the most accumulated points will be awarded with the pompous title of "Spartacus". Also this tourney may get integrated with other tourneys to provide even more fun.

10- Hosting and record keeping

My suggestion is that it would be much better to create a website for this tourney. I'm ready to do my part by buying the domain and space. But as I know almost nothing about designing and management, I'll need help in this field. A volunteer designer and site manager is needed. It can also be done, using this forum, but I strongly favor a separate webpage.

Again, I'd like to reiterate that your opinions and suggetions are most appreciated. Thus, don't hesitate to leave your much valued comments.

Regards

[Sequit]

PersianLord,

I commend you for the a project to keep Fibs interesting. All ten of your points have good ideas, and I will participate however they are decided. For me though, a single elimination format is easier to schedule. The doubles can take hours, and I'm sure you will have large fields. Cheers to you and Spielberg; following your progress.

Nice Blog also, btw.

[PersianLord]

PersianLord,

I commend you for the a project to keep Fibs interesting. All ten of your points have good ideas, and I will participate however they are decided. For me though, a single elimination format is easier to schedule. The doubles can take hours, and I'm sure you will have large fields. Cheers to you and Spielberg; following your progress.

Nice Blog also, btw.

Many thanks for the kind words and suggestions, dea. 

Hope to see you as a female gladiator soon   

[spielberg]

Many thanks for the kind words and suggestions, dea. 

Hope to see you as a female gladiator soon  

MMMMMMm --- Dea in gladitorial wear -- sorry just too much of a stimulus for me not to respond.

I agree single elimination's the way to go. I don't think it really needs its own web page - why don't we just use a thread here like 60 did for the Bloody Marys?
I'm not sure on the match lengths tho' - I agree we shouldn't do 1 or 2 pointers obv. its just there seems quite a difference between the 3s and a 7 point final so I'd tend towards either the 3/5 used in the bagos/Sunday/F3 etc or we could try a 5/7 ? Last but not least we need to set a time for it --- PL is on GMT+3 I think and I'm officially on GMT (my lifestyle tends towards EST tho) so 5pm GMT?

[PersianLord]

MMMMMMm --- Dea in gladitorial wear -- sorry just too much of a stimulus for me not to respond.

I agree single elimination's the way to go. I don't think it really needs its own web page - why don't we just use a thread here like 60 did for the Bloody Marys?
I'm not sure on the match lengths tho' - I agree we shouldn't do 1 or 2 pointers obv. its just there seems quite a difference between the 3s and a 7 point final so I'd tend towards either the 3/5 used in the bagos/Sunday/F3 etc or we could try a 5/7 ? Last but not least we need to set a time for it --- PL is on GMT+3 I think and I'm officially on GMT (my lifestyle tends towards EST tho) so 5pm GMT?

- 3/5?. I think the longer the final the better. But 5/7 will take too much time. But if you like it, let's give it a try.

- 5 PM GMT is equal to 17 GMT I guess. That's fine.

[cassandra]

I don't think it really needs its own web page...

i agree, you may ask donzaemon

[teyakis]

PersianLord,

I commend you for the a project to keep Fibs interesting. All ten of your points have good ideas, and I will participate however they are decided. For me though, a single elimination format is easier to schedule. The doubles can take hours, and I'm sure you will have large fields. Cheers to you and Spielberg; following your progress.

Nice Blog also, btw.

I agree with Dea & Spiel...single elimination is the way to go...I know that myself and many others wouldn't be able to stay for for a double elimination format.

As for match length...as you mentioned Spiel... F3, bago, etc all use the same match lengths...might be nice for a change to have a 7pt final?!!

Looking forward to the Combat, PL! 

[don]

I have an idea that may not produce the most participants for every tourney, but might include more players around the globe:

• The tourney would run on the same day but different times each week;
• Say the first tourney is run on a Monday at 00:00 UTC;
• The next week's tourney would be 01:00 UTC;
• And on to 02:00, 03:00, ...., and start over;
• With 52 weeks in the year everyone in every time zone would have two chances to play at their best time of day--a truly global tournament;
• If the first tournament were played at 15:00 UTC it would tweak it a bit to more participants in the initial stages;
• A website might be better than FIBSboard for maintaining stats since a single bookmark would be required to click on and find time of the current week's tourney;
• Unless Tomawaky or Webrunner could be persuaded to provide the space and the clock!

Just a thought because I AM SPARTACUS!

--
don

[PersianLord]

I have an idea that may not produce the most participants for every tourney, but might include more players around the globe:

• The tourney would run on the same day but different times each week;
• Say the first tourney is run on a Monday at 00:00 UTC;
• The next week's tourney would be 01:00 UTC;
• And on to 02:00, 03:00, ...., and start over;
• With 52 weeks in the year everyone in every time zone would have two chances to play at their best time of day--a truly global tournament;
• If the first tournament were played at 15:00 UTC it would tweak it a bit to more participants in the initial stages;
• A website might be better than FIBSboard for maintaining stats since a single bookmark would be required to click on and find time of the current week's tourney;
• Unless Tomawaky or Webrunner could be persuaded to provide the space and the clock!

Just a thought because I AM SPARTACUS!

--
don

I agree to  each of your points, dear don. Many thanks for the nice input.

[PersianLord]

I agree with Dea & Spiel...single elimination is the way to go...I know that myself and many others wouldn't be able to stay for for a double elimination format.

As for match length...as you mentioned Spiel... F3, bago, etc all use the same match lengths...might be nice for a change to have a 7pt final?!!

Looking forward to the Combat, PL! 

Shokran jazilan teya!

Yes, it seems that the single elimination is much better and suitable. It's also truely "gladiatorial" 

Agian thanks for the inpit, teya. 

[teyakis]

"gladiatorial" 

Am I the only one having difficulty pronouncing this word without stuttering?!!

[PersianLord]

FIBS means First Internet Backgammon Server.

[don]

Actually it's gladitorial, and refers to people bashing each other, much like FIBS.  The difference is no starved lions and virtual thumbs.

--
don

[PersianLord]

I would like to inform you that now we have the needed permisson to host the tourney here at fibsboard, as webrunner kindly offered it today. Thus we now have two real options for hosting: Fibsboard or a separate webpage.

I still favor the latter, because I'd like to have detailed information on separate pages on various aspects of the tourney and the related stuff. So, if we can find a volunteer designer and site manager, I'll go to buy the domain and space.

@ don, I'm not sure whether it's "gladiatorial" or "gladitorial" as you said, but just googled them both and noticed that the results for the former outnumbered by a far margin. Let me know which is more correct if you're doing a research plz.

Regards

[playBunny]

It ain't http://www.onelook.com/?w=gladitorial 

[playBunny]

I'd like to have detailed information on separate pages on various aspects of the tourney and the related stuff

No promises, in fact take it that I'm asking on behalf of anyone who might be interested and available..  What would you want, how do you see the site working, etc...? The more detail the better. A secondary question would be what's the budget for the site?

[socksey]

Cheers and kudos to PersianLord for the effort to put together a new tourney!  

My preference would be 3/5 (no longer), but will participate, when possible, with whatever format you decide.  A set time is also my preference.  Fibsters have trouble remembering a tourney time that has been running for years, so I would assume, they would never be able to keep up with varying times as don suggests, although that is a novel idea.     I also like Fibsboard for posting results to keep things in one place.  

I love the tourneys!  The more the better as far as I'm concerned as long as they don't conflict with one another!

socksey



"Politics is just show business for ugly people" - Jay Leno

[spielberg]

What about retaining the theme idea for the tourney and remove the potential adjectival confusion by calling it "the Colosseum" ?
I think don's idea on a variable time interesting yet agree with sox that a set time is more likely to draw a regular crowd. Look how much confusion occurs just when we have a change to summer time in the other tourneys?! How about we set the time of this one fixed perpetually to the real clock and make no summer time adjustments?
On the match lengths yes let's try a 3 / 7 --- this also will encourage more of an audience  for the final and being able to watch (and argue about!)good play is good for all of us. Also in a 7 pointer we're more likely to see unusual cube windows.
When we start let's do it unseeded as that's Tourneybot's current mode but can I suggest we switch to full proper seeding when Tom adds that?

[PersianLord]

No promises, in fact take it that I'm asking on behalf of anyone who might be interested and available..  What would you want, how do you see the site working, etc...? The more detail the better. A secondary question would be what's the budget for the site?

Thanks playbunny for the clarification of the tourney name. 

I know your web designing capabilities well, so I'll be really glad if you volunteer for the job 

About tourney's webpage, I would like a page like FLG's page, but with different features. For instance I'd like that the front page of site would just contain the tourney's logo and an "enter" option. In the main page, we would jusy need few links : About ,Rules, Statistics, Standings, Hall of fame and news. I'll definitly would like to log all the final matches and publish the analyzed HTML files on a separate page.

For the time being,   I think having these featues would suffice, until we receive more ideas from other fibsters.

Again thanks for the help playbunny 

[PersianLord]

Cheers and kudos to PersianLord for the effort to put together a new tourney!  

My preference would be 3/5 (no longer), but will participate, when possible, with whatever format you decide.  A set time is also my preference.  Fibsters have trouble remembering a tourney time that has been running for years, so I would assume, they would never be able to keep up with varying times as don suggests, although that is a novel idea.     I also like Fibsboard for posting results to keep things in one place.  

I love the tourneys!  The more the better as far as I'm concerned as long as they don't conflict with one another!

socksey



"Politics is just show business for ugly people" - Jay Leno

Thanks for the kind and encouraging words, socksey. 

- I think 3/7 is, as Steve has said, better as it will attract more attention for the final match and will provide more educational opportunities for all of us, provided that skilled players participate in whispers.

- Agreed for set time. I think that most of fibsters are of European or American origin, so a specified time between 15 GMT and 20 GMT would attract the most attention. Although implementing don's suggestion would require moderators from Easter Asian time zone, in which at least I don't know any reliable fibster to choose. I think Steve's suggestion for having a fixed time that doesn't get adjusted during the year is the most suitable.

Regards