Paid Tournament Through Meta, Signups Open

[captainmeme]

Going to pause the by-country updates, but I'll get the round 2 scores in today.

Would people prefer fresh start for R2 or continuation of the previous scores?

[Sploack]

I don't have a real preference, but since the bot seems way different (and weaker) perhaps it's better to start from scratch to compare our performance with its new one?

[C0nd0r]

Are they still taking applicants?
I submitted my form about a day or so ago, but I have had no response.
If they still are, what time do the games start, I can't find that anywhere?

[Claesar]

Yes, they are.

Games start at 8AM, noon and 4PM Pacific time.

[C0nd0r]

Thanks Claesar!

Still no response though, should I expect it through email, discord, pm or something else?

I'm really keen to give the competition a go, it's incredible how 'smart' AI is getting!

[Claesar]

They will send an email.

[C0nd0r]

Ok thanks, should I expect it soon?

As I said I'm very keen to play speedboat, it's been a while since I last played one!

[Claesar]

I have no idea. I'd suggest sending another email to [email protected]

[Claesar]

I received the email quoted below, so they have all the data they need

"We would like to inform you that our tournament has finally come to an end and we are very thankful to all our active gamers who participated in Diplomacy game over the last several weeks. This would not have been possible without your support."

[Sploack]

Meta's plan:

1) Make an incredibly strong diplomacy bot that is statistically superior to very strong human players
2) Halfway through the tournament, substitute that bot with a newer, extremely weak one that will lose 90% of games
3) Make sure that the weak bot does not get any stronger over the weeks
4) ???
5) Profit!

[Polynoamial]

Thanks for participating everyone!

For the second half of the tournament we put in a couple different "baseline" bots to see how they compare to our main bot. The idea is that in addition to showing that our bot beats strong humans, we also want to show that other bots *can't* beat strong humans. That indeed appears to be the case, at least for the two bots that we compared to.

[Sploack]

Oh, very interesting, and good to know.

I was just making a joke of course

[pyxxy]

Ok thanks, should I expect it soon?

As I said I'm very keen to play speedboat, it's been a while since I last played one!

For you or anyone else who wants to keep playing speedboat, the Nexus Leagues discord runs a speedboat league:
https://discord.gg/GeWhNMWeBC

Some quick info about NL speedboat:

- games are organized in the discord
- uses Backstabbr, not WebDip
- spontaneous games, not scheduled (although staff helps fill the games!)
- fixed Winter 1912 end date, so that games only take 2.5-3 hours at most
- custom scoring system and standings, with ~2 month seasons + a post-season
- players from different timezones but currently most active during NA hours