ODC 2019 Tournament Start

[Durga]

Congrats to Your Humble Narrator on his solo! We've got one game left for this round friends.

[ChippeRock]

Fascinating. Thank you to everyone for putting in the work to make this a success.

A mild caveat: the players in the last two games know exactly what they need to do to go through; a luxury that was denied the speedier finishers. In Round 2 is there a case for keeping results secret until all are finished?

Yes I'm happy to enforce that. There's a reason I never posted the score for this round. Perhaps I should have been stricter when it came to other people doing it

It only makes the information harder to attain - not impossible to attain. I can still go and compile all of the scores and simply keep it for myself and not post them.

There's unfortunately no real way to eliminate this advantage of dragging out games longer through pauses and the like. You can suppress the distribution of the information, but the information still exists. The only other real solution would be to cut down on the amount of pause time given to players.

[SimonMH]

It only makes the information harder to attain - not impossible to attain. I can still go and compile all of the scores and simply keep it for myself and not post them.

There's unfortunately no real way to eliminate this advantage of dragging out games longer through pauses and the like. You can suppress the distribution of the information, but the information still exists. The only other real solution would be to cut down on the amount of pause time given to players.

Is there not a way to make the games private so that only those who are playing can see them?

[ChippeRock]

It only makes the information harder to attain - not impossible to attain. I can still go and compile all of the scores and simply keep it for myself and not post them.

There's unfortunately no real way to eliminate this advantage of dragging out games longer through pauses and the like. You can suppress the distribution of the information, but the information still exists. The only other real solution would be to cut down on the amount of pause time given to players.

Is there not a way to make the games private so that only those who are playing can see them?

Sure there is, but the gameID's would have to be significantly different from each other - otherwise people could add/subtract a couple numbers from their games and find the other games. Even if you do space out when you create the games, I just don't think there are enough games that could be created in between that would make it a frivolous pursuit to try finding the other games based off of gameIDs.

[Claesar]

Is there not a way to make the games private so that only those who are playing can see them?

No, that feature currently doesn't exist.

[ChippeRock]

Actually, Durga could simply pause the games when someone's soloed or if everybody drew the game - than unpause and reveal identities when the games were all done.

This might take some help from the mod team though to draw the game if everybody votes draw or somebody solos.

[jmo1121109]

We can't really do it, the tournament is hidden draw vote so doing mod intervention would be nearly impossible. I proposed a technical solution in the discord the other day that I think will solve this though and should be available before the next round has games finishing.

[SimonMH]

What limited mathematical abilities I ever had are now pretty much restricted to backgammon equities and bridge percentages. I would be interested to know what people think is the odds-on score to reach the final table.

I may even offer a small prize in gratitude to the responder with the most accurate answer.

[Claesar]

What limited mathematical abilities I ever had are now pretty much restricted to backgammon equities and bridge percentages. I would be interested to know what people think is the odds-on score to reach the final table.

I may even offer a small prize in gratitude to the responder with the most accurate answer.

I'll calculate something for you if you'll play a few hands of Bridge with me online.

[90kicvesb]

As someone who uses stats every day at work and used to play bridge regularly, the mere existence of Claesar's post makes me happy. My guess is 48.

[Claesar]

Wait, were we talking final table, or second round?

[90kicvesb]

I was talking about the final table. Since ~25% of the field advances in each round by my understanding, I expect similar thresholds.

[teccles]

Here's my crack at this; it has simulations and stuff! TL;DR - 47.2

I assumed that:

• The players are assigned randomly to games.
• Each game has a random result, drawn from the (finished) results of the first round, except that I reduced the probability of solos to 1 in 6, because my understanding is that this should go down as the field gets stronger.
• The results are randomly distributed among the players in the game.

I then simulated 1000 semi-finals. For each, I took the qualification threshold as halfway between the 7th and 8th best player. The final threshold - 47.2 - is the median of those thresholds.

Some other things:

• To qualify 95% of the time, 51.1 points should do it.
• To miss out 95% of the time, aim to get less than 39.2 points.
• This threshold actually barely varies with solo probability; there's only a very slightly higher bar in a zero-solo world, and very slightly lower in a half-games-solo world.
• I also tried out a model where the players have varied skill, so win probabilities weren't uniform. This also has remarkably little effect on the points needed to qualify.

[SimonMH]

What limited mathematical abilities I ever had are now pretty much restricted to backgammon equities and bridge percentages. I would be interested to know what people think is the odds-on score to reach the final table.

I may even offer a small prize in gratitude to the responder with the most accurate answer.

I'll calculate something for you if you'll play a few hands of Bridge with me online.

Now there's an offer I can't refuse!

[SimonMH]

Here's my crack at this; it has simulations and stuff! TL;DR - 47.2

I assumed that:

• The players are assigned randomly to games.
• Each game has a random result, drawn from the (finished) results of the first round, except that I reduced the probability of solos to 1 in 6, because my understanding is that this should go down as the field gets stronger.
• The results are randomly distributed among the players in the game.

I then simulated 1000 semi-finals. For each, I took the qualification threshold as halfway between the 7th and 8th best player. The final threshold - 47.2 - is the median of those thresholds.

Some other things:

• To qualify 95% of the time, 51.1 points should do it.
• To miss out 95% of the time, aim to get less than 39.2 points.
• This threshold actually barely varies with solo probability; there's only a very slightly higher bar in a zero-solo world, and very slightly lower in a half-games-solo world.
• I also tried out a model where the players have varied skill, so win probabilities weren't uniform. This also has remarkably little effect on the points needed to qualify.

Now that is a comprehensive answer! Thank you!

[SimonMH]

There is a fine fellow called Teccles
(I'm told he lives somewhere near Beccles)
His great simulation
Gave us elation
I regret this reward's not in shekels

[teccles]

Why, thank you! And by chance (or more sinister forces) the rumours are true... I do live within 100 miles of Beccles, which isn't bad going with the whole globe to aim at.

[Ogion]

Did this tournament die?

[teccles]

No, there’s just one game going on much longer than all the others

[Durga]

Aight this isn't school of war so let's not publicly comment on the games