The subject says it all. In one-on-one games ELO is easy and clear. But
in multiplayer games? If you score 0VP at a table did you loose against
all the others? Against the one with the GW (if any)? Against anybody
with a GW? And if you "win" (what is winning? scoring a VP? a GW?)? Are
additional points rewarded for going into the finals? Can your score go
down playing the finals e.g 5th place has a lower score than 6th
becasuse he lost the final (as it was the case with the old stupid system)?
[ quoted text not captured ]
And even more important: will people drop from the tournaments after
round one or two if they realize that their deck sucks and their rating
will only go down if they play further games?
[ quoted text not captured ]
1) Don't. ELO is designed for duels. It's not, repeat, not, designed for
multiplayer action where player number three could trash your game and
gain nothing for it. If, but only possibly if, VTES had given the VP to
whoever ousted a player would ELO be adaptable to VTES as jumping the
currently weakest player would normally always pay off, and then you'd
really lose against all others.
What people tend to forget is that duels always mirror a "last man
standing" way of measuring points. Lose, draw or win. Remake all the
rules and have first player ousted get 1 VP, second 2 VP etc and you
end up with a multiplayer game resembling a duel. Poker is a good
example.
2) I doubt players care about rating as it's not used for anything. I
mean, should I make the effort to run an invitational tournament where
you needed, say 100 rating-points minimum to attend, then I would most
probably not even be able to get a VEKN sanctioning of said tournament.
That means that organizing an invitational where you need to be rated
high enough invites you to a tournament which can't change your rating.
Sten During
mummy wrote:
> Sort of. What does ELO stand for?
ELO is actually a guys name--the system was invented by Mr. Elo. It is the
scoring system used, primarily, for chess rating. When you join the
Federation or whatever, you get a starter rating (1000?). When you play
folks, your rating goes up or down. When you play someone with a higher
rating than you, you are expected to lose, so if you do lose, your rating
doesn't go down much, but if you win, your rating goes up a lot. On the
other hand, if you play someone with a lower rating than you, you are
expected to win, so if you win, your rating goes up a little bit, but if you
lose, your rating goes down a lot.
So if you are a newbie with a 1000 starter rating (I don't know off hand if
1000 is the correct starter number, but we'll assume for now) and you play
against a mid level guy with a 1200 rating, and you lose, your rating only
goes down a bit (say, 20 points or something), as you were expected to lose.
If you win, your rating goes up a larger percentage (say, 50 points), as you
were fighting uphill. If you sit down and play against someone with some
crazy, like, 2800 rating or something, if you lose, you lose very little,
but if you win, you win a great deal.
Peter D Bakija
pd...@lightlink.com
http://www.lightlink.com/pdb6
"So in conclusion, our business plan is to sell hot,
easily spilled liquids to naked people."
-Brittni Meil
Sten During wrote:
> 1) Don't. ELO is designed for duels. It's not, repeat, not, designed for
> multiplayer action where player number three could trash your game and
> gain nothing for it.
That is an argument against rating performance at all, by ELO or any
other method, in any multi-player game that has any possibility of king
making. So either you abandon rating performance, or you accept the
level of king making that is possible in VTES as part of the "error of
estimation".
> If, but only possibly if, VTES had given the VP to
> whoever ousted a player would ELO be adaptable to VTES as jumping the
> currently weakest player would normally always pay off, and then you'd
> really lose against all others.
Nah. You'd still have king making there, too.
> What people tend to forget is that duels always mirror a "last man
> standing" way of measuring points. Lose, draw or win. Remake all the
> rules and have first player ousted get 1 VP, second 2 VP etc and you
> end up with a multiplayer game resembling a duel. Poker is a good
> example.
In poker, every ousted player gets $0 (bankrupted out of the game). The
last man standing takes all. Unless you're talking about some external
reward system.
But poker also has forced risk (ante). VTES does not, so implementing
such a VP payout scheme would kill the game (by making it a waiting
game -- first person to make a move loses).
[ quoted text not captured ]
The name of the band the guy was listening to when he created the
rating system.
Electric Light Orchestra.
http://www.elomusic.com/
enjoy
oscar
"Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message
news:dcq3pt$ol$1...@news01.versatel.de...
> The subject says it all. In one-on-one games ELO is easy and clear. But
> in multiplayer games? If you score 0VP at a table did you loose against
> all the others? Against the one with the GW (if any)? Against anybody
> with a GW? And if you "win" (what is winning? scoring a VP? a GW?)?
It's a good question. The original VEKN ELO system answered the question
by conceptually converting each multiplayer tournament game to a series
of two-player duels resolved by comparing the number of victory points
obtained by each of the two players and doing its rating calculation based
on who got more VPs. For example, say a five-player game between players
A, B, C, D, and E ended with player A getting 3 and 1/2 victory points,
players B and C getting 1/2 victory point, and players D and E getting
ousted without a point. This real game would be converted into ten
conceptual duels, rated simultaneously, with the following results:
A (3 1/2 VPs) defeated B (1/2 VP)
A (3 1/2 VPs) defeated C (1/2 VP)
A (3 1/2 VPs) defeated D (0 VPs)
A (3 1/2 VPs) defeated E (0 VPs)
B (1/2 VP) drew with C (1/2 VP)
B (1/2 VP) defeated D (0 VPs)
B (1/2 VP) defeated E (0 VPs)
C (1/2 VP) defeated D (0 VPs)
C (1/2 VP) defeated E (0 VPs)
D (0 VPs) drew with E (0 VPs)
A four-player real game would be reduced to six conceptual duels in
the same manner.
I don't consider this to be an issue in the implementation of ELO
system for VEKN. Other issues, stemming from the necessity of entering
tournament results simultaneously, are problematic but not this one.
Granted, its not very intuitive and it lends itself to a fair number
of drawn results (for instance when one player sweeps the table) but
I don't see any actual problems with that. Because of the number of
duels rated, it weights five-player games more heavily than four-
player games by a factor of four to three. To me, that seems
appropriate, although you could also add a fudge factor to four-
player games to balance the weightings if you wanted.
> Are
> additional points rewarded for going into the finals? Can your score go
> down playing the finals e.g 5th place has a lower score than 6th> because he lost the final (as it was the case with the old stupid system)?
No additional points are rewarded for going into the finals. ELO is a
closed system - what one player gains, another player must lose. The
finals are rated the same as any other tournament game. But that doesn't
mean there's a penalty for going to the finals and losing. Because of
this close system nature, the expected outcome of playing any ELO rated
game should be zero. That's why ELO doesn't care how many tournaments
a player does or doesn't play in. If you're rated correctly, you
should have an equal chance of gaining points as losing points - in an
easy tournament, a hard tournament, a big tournament, a small
tournament, the finals of the Continental Championship, it doesn't
matter.
The better the players you play in any given game, the harder it should
be to do well in that game. But because their ratings are higher, this
will consequently get factored into the ratings calculations. So if
you did well, you would gain more points for beating better players.
But if you did poorly on the other hand, you would lose fewer points.
The *average* outcome - assuming all players are rated correctly at
the time they play - should be approximately zero.
Fred
LSJ wrote:
> Sten During wrote:
> > 1) Don't. ELO is designed for duels. It's not, repeat, not, designed for
> > multiplayer action where player number three could trash your game and
> > gain nothing for it.
>
> That is an argument against rating performance at all, by ELO or any
> other method, in any multi-player game that has any possibility of king
> making. So either you abandon rating performance, or you accept the
> level of king making that is possible in VTES as part of the "error of
> estimation".
I think you're right about the kingmaking, but I think Sten is right
that an Elo system requires some interpretation to apply to the scoring
system of multiplayer VTES. One logical way to do it might be to say
that you lose against the person who ousts you, and win against each
person you oust; your score doesn't change based on people at the table
that you didn't have an ousting relationship with. If you're not
ousted, perhaps either score a draw against each other remaining player
(if it's called on time) or score no change (if you withdrew)?
Another one might be "the old way", where you beat everyone with fewer
VPs than you at the end of a game, lose to everyone with more VPs than
you, and tie against everyone with the same number of VPs... but that's
rather less concrete in its claims of how meaningful your interaction
with the other players (who you might never have sat next to) was
during the game.
Yet another way could be to say that whoever gets the game win beats
everyone who didn't get the game win, and they all lose to him or her,
but aren't scored against each other. That might be the method most
closely tied to the normal definition of what winning and losing means
in VTES.
> > What people tend to forget is that duels always mirror a "last man
> > standing" way of measuring points. Lose, draw or win. Remake all the
> > rules and have first player ousted get 1 VP, second 2 VP etc and you
> > end up with a multiplayer game resembling a duel. Poker is a good
> > example.
>
> In poker, every ousted player gets $0 (bankrupted out of the game). The
> last man standing takes all. Unless you're talking about some external
> reward system.
In small games, sure, but in larger poker tournaments, surviving longer
normally means winning more money. If the tournament is large enough,
many places below first may be paid (e.g. at the World Series main
event this year, something like 560 people were paid, out of about 5600
entrants).
> But poker also has forced risk (ante). VTES does not, so implementing
> such a VP payout scheme would kill the game (by making it a waiting
> game -- first person to make a move loses).
Here, though, you're quite right, and it's an interesting point you
make, since the lack of forced risk in VTES is not infrequently a
problem in VTES games (especially tournament games, and even more
especially tournament finals). This is probably in part because VTES
has the Edge, which aids the person holding it, but no "Anti-Edge" to
force other players to either move the game along or be gradually
ousted.
It might be an interesting variant to add some kind of Anti-Edge to
VTES. Then again, it might turn out that an Anti-Edge would either be
too weak an influence (if its effects could be easily offset by, say,
hunting every turn with one vampire) or too strong (if it killed people
so fast as to make the game unfun and eliminate a lot of decks that
people enjoy playing)...
Josh
randomly speculating
"OrgPlay" <org...@white-wolf.com> wrote in message
news:1123086324.7...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
[ quoted text not captured ]
No wonder ELO formulae are so trippy... :-)
DZ
AW
In message <_Z8Ie.55036$4o.854@fed1read06>, Frederick Scott
<nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes:
>hat's why ELO doesn't care how many tournaments
>a player does or doesn't play in. If you're rated correctly, you
>should have an equal chance of gaining points as losing points - in an
>easy tournament, a hard tournament, a big tournament, a small
>tournament, the finals of the Continental Championship, it doesn't
>matter.
Could you explain what you mean by "ELO doesn't care how many
tournaments a player does or doesn't play in"?
In many sophisticated ELO systems, it requires rather a lot of games
played to get a high ranking. How many matches do you think a novice
chess player with a bad/starting rating would need to play in to hit
grand-master rating (assume he's playing against top-class players, if
that helps)? You don't suddenly go from novice to "Whoop, whoop, move
over Garry Kasparov" in chess ELO ratings if you beat him twice, or even
ten times.
--
James Coupe
PGP Key: 0x5D623D5D YOU ARE IN ERROR.
EBD690ECD7A1FB457CA2 NO-ONE IS SCREAMING.
13D7E668C3695D623D5D THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.
"James Coupe" <ja...@zephyr.org.uk> wrote in message
news:G6QyYPYF...@gratiano.zephyr.org.uk...
> In message <_Z8Ie.55036$4o.854@fed1read06>, Frederick Scott
> <nos...@no.spam.dot.com> writes:>>That's why ELO doesn't care how many tournaments>>a player does or doesn't play in. If you're rated correctly, you
>>should have an equal chance of gaining points as losing points - in an
>>easy tournament, a hard tournament, a big tournament, a small
>>tournament, the finals of the Continental Championship, it doesn't
>>matter.>
> Could you explain what you mean by "ELO doesn't care how many
> tournaments a player does or doesn't play in"?
>
> In many sophisticated ELO systems, it requires rather a lot of games
> played to get a high ranking. How many matches do you think a novice
> chess player with a bad/starting rating would need to play in to hit
> grand-master rating (assume he's playing against top-class players, if
> that helps)? You don't suddenly go from novice to "Whoop, whoop, move
> over Garry Kasparov" in chess ELO ratings if you beat him twice, or even
> ten times.
Sure. Note the caveat I wrote at the start of the sentence: "If you're
rated correctly...". The formula starts novices at an average score (as
designated by whoever sets up the system) which, unless they happen to be
perfectly average players, is wrong. So as they play games, the point of
the formula is to correct your ratings towards what it should truly be.
As more and more games are played, the weight of the original dummy
average rating gradually decreases towards zero as at a speed determined
by the coefficients chosen by whoever set up the system. (If fact, those
coefficients regulate the whole issue of the value of recent games vs.
older games. That was what was wrong with VEKN's original implementation:
the coefficients placed far too much weight on recent games given the
amount of luck Jyhad involves.)
So the short answer is, the coefficients determine how long it takes to
move from your dummy average score towards your approximate true rating.
If you're a terrible player or a great player, it will take you longer to
get there than if you're an average player. So yes, in a technical sense
it DOES care how many games you've played - to a point. I wasn't trying
to maintain that it didn't; just ignoring that issue for simplification.
But once you've hit your approximate true rating, it no longer cares.
Or at least, it doesn't unless something causes an anomaly that changes
your ability a great deal in a short amount of time. ("HEY! STEALTH
AND BLEED REALLY WORK GOOD TOGETHER!!! I never realized that!" ;-) )
Fred
Peter D Bakija wrote:
> mummy wrote:
>
>>>Sort of. What does ELO stand for?>> were fighting uphill. If you sit down and play against someone with some> crazy, like, 2800 rating or something, if you lose, you lose very little,
> but if you win, you win a great deal.
>
All of this is correct, but one very important part of the ELO system is
that it forces the better player to win.
Let's assume (in chess, which I did play on tournament level at younger
days) that I have 1400 and meet someone at 1900. Should the match result
in a draw I gain some 15 points and my opponent would drop the same
amount.
Now, convert this to VTES, as it used to be. I build a cap 1 deck with
only Concealed Weapon, Saturday Night Special, Bum's Rush, Dragon's
Breath Rounds and forget my Effective Management because I don't
understand the engine needed for this kind of deck. Just before the
third prelim I get this nasty suspicion that for an unknown reason
I won't be able to oust before I'm ousted, so I spend the game rushing
upstream hoping I'll oust every predator and win (which won't happen).
The likely event is that I'll oust my predator, more or less no matter
what he she plays, and after that I'll be ousted myself. If said
predator was much higher ranked than I was I'll "steal" rating from
him/her.
Needless to say this was bad :)
Sten During
LSJ wrote:
> Sten During wrote:
>>>1) Don't. ELO is designed for duels. It's not, repeat, not, designed for
>>multiplayer action where player number three could trash your game and
>>gain nothing for it.>
>
> That is an argument against rating performance at all, by ELO or any
> other method, in any multi-player game that has any possibility of king
> making. So either you abandon rating performance, or you accept the
> level of king making that is possible in VTES as part of the "error of
> estimation".
>
Agreed, but the current system doesn't punish a draw forced upon the
player with a higher rating (0 VP versus 0 VP gains neither player,
bur nor does it lower the rating of the better player).
>>>If, but only possibly if, VTES had given the VP to
>>whoever ousted a player would ELO be adaptable to VTES as jumping the
>>currently weakest player would normally always pay off, and then you'd
>>really lose against all others.>
>
> Nah. You'd still have king making there, too.
Yes, but to a lesser degree. Multiplayer games rewarding the one who
kills the weakest player, or at least punishes players in the order
they are ousted tend to make players more eager to go for a kill
(and to a degree to gang up on the strongest player)
>
>>>What people tend to forget is that duels always mirror a "last man
>>standing" way of measuring points. Lose, draw or win. Remake all the
>>rules and have first player ousted get 1 VP, second 2 VP etc and you
>>end up with a multiplayer game resembling a duel. Poker is a good
>>example.>
>
> In poker, every ousted player gets $0 (bankrupted out of the game). The
> last man standing takes all. Unless you're talking about some external
> reward system.
>
> But poker also has forced risk (ante). VTES does not, so implementing
> such a VP payout scheme would kill the game (by making it a waiting
> game -- first person to make a move loses).
>
All agreed. I was thinking of the big Texas Hold 'Em tornaments for the
simple reason that rating is geared towards tournament play.
Each player gets a position, and on each table that position is
determined by reverse order of getting ousted.
I should also clarify one thing. Nothing I write here implies any kind
of wishes for the rules of VTES to change. I'm merely making examples
using VTES because people here are familiar with the game.
ELO is in my view not suitable for multiplayer games, and even less
so for VTES because of its mechanics.
Sten During
[ quoted text not captured ]
Do I have to mention that the "E" in Elo, Keit Emerson, sometimes used
to stick knives in between the keys while playing his keyboard in live
performances? Doesn´t this say all about the ELO system :-)
--
johannes walch
Frederick Scott wrote:
> But once you've hit your approximate true rating, it no longer cares.
The problem is that for V:TES there can never be the "approximate true
rating". In chess only one skill is required: making your moves better
than the opponent. V:TES consists of many skills: playing the cards
without errors, "reading the table", dealmaking, anticipating the
metagame, building a good deck. In chess you have a very static setup,
each game starts the same (there is only one little factor - who is
beginning) and the variables is the opponent. In V:TES you have a very
dynamic setup, the variables are in no specific order: your deck, your
opponents decks, your opponents, the relative position of your
opponents, the metagame, whether your playing round 1 or round 3 (in
round1 everybody goes for the GW in round3 often enough people try to
get some more VPs) and probably some more. This leads to two
conclusions: on the one hand your performance in a game is often not
determind by your skill but by luck. If you get dealed out, no chance,
no matter how good you are. On the other hand your skill level is
usually different depending on the afformentioned parameters. Therefore
your rating might be correct for the current metagame (e.g many
intercept decks resulting in many deals) but for the next metagame (e.g
lots of S&B, hardly any deals) it might be wrong, because you are a good
player and a brilliant dealmaker.
That makes ELO very unsuitable for a multiplayer game like V:TES.
--
johannes walch
Johannes Walch wrote:
> Frederick Scott wrote:
> > But once you've hit your approximate true rating, it no longer cares.
>
> The problem is that for V:TES there can never be the "approximate true
> rating". In chess only one skill is required: making your moves better
> than the opponent.
I suspect that one skill could be broken down into many smaller skills
like you do with V:TES.
> V:TES consists of many skills: playing the cards
> without errors, "reading the table", dealmaking, anticipating the
> metagame, building a good deck. In chess you have a very static setup,
> each game starts the same (there is only one little factor - who is
> beginning) and the variables is the opponent. In V:TES you have a very
> dynamic setup, the variables are in no specific order: your deck, your
> opponents decks, your opponents, the relative position of your
> opponents, the metagame, whether your playing round 1 or round 3 (in
> round1 everybody goes for the GW in round3 often enough people try to
> get some more VPs) and probably some more. This leads to two
> conclusions: on the one hand your performance in a game is often not
> determind by your skill but by luck.
Agreed that V:TES has a lot of variables outside of skill. However time
has a dampening effect on them. Eventually, the luck disappears and you
are left with something that reflects your skill.
-Robert
Johannes Walch wrote:
> Do I have to mention that the "E" in Elo, Keit Emerson, sometimes used
> to stick knives in between the keys while playing his keyboard in live
> performances? Doesn´t this say all about the ELO system :-)
Keith Emerson was in Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP). ELO was the Electric
Light Orchestra, fronted by Jeff Lynde (sp?) who went on to be in the
Traveling Willburys with Dylan or Orbison. And all sorts of other stuff.
-Peter, who has a PHD in dorky 70's art rock.
"Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message
news:dcscg6$g7s$1...@news01.versatel.de...
[ quoted text not captured ]
I agree with many of the points you made above. But your conclusion
is just as valid for any other rating procedures as for ELO. So if ELO
doesn't work for these reasons, nothing elso could either.
And it is an overstated conclusion. Were it so hard for ELO to rate
players, I assert it would also be hard to intuitively know whether some
players were clearly better than others. But it's not hard to detect
player skill on an intuitive level, so I assert that skill will also
show itself over time in an ELO rating as well - as long as the
coefficients used to define the relationship between recent results
and older results are set correctly.
Fred
Peter D Bakija wrote:
> Keith Emerson was in Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP). ELO was the Electric
> Light Orchestra, fronted by Jeff Lynde (sp?) who went on to be in the
> Traveling Willburys with Dylan or Orbison. And all sorts of other stuff.
>
> -Peter, who has a PHD in dorky 70's art rock.
Sorry, I was totally confused for a moment .....
Frederick Scott wrote:
> I agree with many of the points you made above. But your conclusion
> is just as valid for any other rating procedures as for ELO. So if ELO
> doesn't work for these reasons, nothing elso could either.
I disagree. ELO rates negative performance. The current system doesn´t
rate negative performance as long as you attend enough tournaments.
Quite a difference. I agree with you that the current system does not
reflect the skill of a player very well who does not attend enough
tournaments. But with any sort of rating you need a sufficient sample
size to judge.
I dislike the idea very much that playing a tournament with a very
experimental deck can influence your rating negatively esp. when you
loose against a poor rated player (not necessarily a bad player!). Of
course it does affect your rating if you don´t play enough tournaments,
but when you attend fewer than 8 tournaments in 18 month you better
bring a good deck ;-)
--
johannes walch
Johannes Walch wrote:
> Sorry, I was totally confused for a moment .....
Understandable--thay are both ponderous and absurd. But ELO is a bit more
entertaining in the "goofy 70's radio single art rock" kinda way where ELP
are bit more preposterous in the "we did an entire album of Musgorsky
classical covers, but with electric guitars and a moog" kinda way.
[ quoted text not captured ]
Robert Goudie wrote:
> Johannes Walch wrote:
> > Frederick Scott wrote:
> > > But once you've hit your approximate true rating, it no longer cares.
> >
> > The problem is that for V:TES there can never be the "approximate true
> > rating". In chess only one skill is required: making your moves better
> > than the opponent.
Indeed, chess involves (very broadly clasified) at least two playing
styles (tactical, like Kasparov) and strategic (like Karpov), plus
several dozen of different openings (all of them with at least half a
dozen of minor variants), plus different involvement for the players if
they are in the opening, the middle-game or the ending (check Amazon
and you'll probably find lots of books written specifically for each
stage of the game).
Besides, pro chess players, have a pack of analyst helping them
designing strategies to beat their opponents, anticipate openings they
might use, etc, etc, et...
K.
Kalessin wrote:
> Robert Goudie wrote:
> > Johannes Walch wrote:
> > > Frederick Scott wrote:
> > > > But once you've hit your approximate true rating, it no longer cares.
> > >
> > > The problem is that for V:TES there can never be the "approximate true
> > > rating". In chess only one skill is required: making your moves better
> > > than the opponent.> > Goudie: I suspect that one skill could be broken down into many smaller> > skills like you do with V:TES.> Indeed, chess involves (very broadly clasified) at least two playing> styles (tactical, like Kasparov) and strategic (like Karpov), plus
> several dozen of different openings (all of them with at least half a
> dozen of minor variants), plus different involvement for the players if
> they are in the opening, the middle-game or the ending (check Amazon
> and you'll probably find lots of books written specifically for each
> stage of the game).
I think Google fouled your attributions. I said that Chess could be
broken down into smaller skills (and not Johannes' comment that was
attributed to me). The above version may be fixed (barring more Google
mishaps!).
-Robert
Robert Goudie wrote:
> I think Google fouled your attributions. I said that Chess could be
> broken down into smaller skills (and not Johannes' comment that was
> attributed to me). The above version may be fixed (barring more Google
> mishaps!).
>
> -Robert
Yep... you're right, sorry :(
"Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message
news:dcv99p$dbs$1...@news01.versatel.de...
> Frederick Scott wrote:>> I agree with many of the points you made above. But your conclusion
>> is just as valid for any other rating procedures as for ELO. So if ELO>> doesn't work for these reasons, nothing else could either.>
> I disagree. ELO rates negative performance. The current system doesn´t
> rate negative performance as long as you attend enough tournaments.
> Quite a difference.
I don't know what you mean by saying it doesn't "rate negative performances".
It rates everything. It may not use some performances if they're not on
your top eight list but a player doing poorly certainly pays opportunity
cost for it if nothing else: his score _could_ raise and it doesn't. This
is a cost.
In any event, you also don't explain how you figured out that because
the current system may not rate some tournaments that all that stuff
that bothered you about ELO makes no difference in the current system.
That makes no sense. All that stuff creates good scores and it creates
lousy scores. You need to explain the distinction you're making in
much more concrete terms.
> I dislike the idea very much that playing a tournament with a very
> experimental deck can influence your rating negatively esp. when you
> loose against a poor rated player (not necessarily a bad player!).
Sure. But you're naive if you thinking playing experimental decks makes
no difference in the current system - even if you play more than
eight tournaments.
Fred
Frederick Scott wrote:
> I don't know what you mean by saying it doesn't "rate negative performances".
> It rates everything. It may not use some performances if they're not on
> your top eight list but a player doing poorly certainly pays opportunity
> cost for it if nothing else: his score _could_ raise and it doesn't. This
> is a cost.
Of course it is an opportunity cost, but in the other system it would be
a "direct" cost.
> In any event, you also don't explain how you figured out that because
> the current system may not rate some tournaments that all that stuff
> that bothered you about ELO makes no difference in the current system.
> That makes no sense. All that stuff creates good scores and it creates
> lousy scores. You need to explain the distinction you're making in
> much more concrete terms.
See below ...
> Sure. But you're naive if you thinking playing experimental decks makes
> no difference in the current system - even if you play more than
> eight tournaments.
Yeah but it is a psychological difference. Opportunity costs are more
difficult to see and have a more long-term effect. In the current system
if you score a bad result you don´t realize the effect immediately, on
the other hand with an ELO system you have a direct negative impact,
both on the rating and most likely on the players motivation.
Of course this point is only valid from my position where player
motivation (also drawn from rating) is more important than "good"
rating. You seem to be more in favor of "good" rating than player
motivation.
--
johannes walch
"Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message
news:dd7g5k$s5m$1...@news01.versatel.de...
> Frederick Scott wrote:>> I don't know what you mean by saying it doesn't "rate negative performances".
>> It rates everything. It may not use some performances if they're not on
>> your top eight list but a player doing poorly certainly pays opportunity
>> cost for it if nothing else: his score _could_ raise and it doesn't. This
>> is a cost.>
> Of course it is an opportunity cost, but in the other system it would be
> a "direct" cost.
Distinction irrelevant. Cost is the noun.
>> In any event, you also don't explain how you figured out that because
>> the current system may not rate some tournaments that all that stuff
>> that bothered you about ELO makes no difference in the current system.
>> That makes no sense. All that stuff creates good scores and it creates
>> lousy scores. You need to explain the distinction you're making in
>> much more concrete terms.>
> See below ...
I see no explanation for this below. All of the stuff that you complained
about making a difference in the ELO system several posts back makes just
as much of a difference under the current system. The deck order, the
metagame issues, the opponents, the round of play - all of that stuff is
just as relevant to the current system as for ELO, for better or worse.
>> Sure. But you're naive if you thinking playing experimental decks makes
>> no difference in the current system - even if you play more than
>> eight tournaments.>
> Yeah but it is a psychological difference. Opportunity costs are more
> difficult to see and have a more long-term effect. In the current system
> if you score a bad result you don´t realize the effect immediately, on
> the other hand with an ELO system you have a direct negative impact,
> both on the rating and most likely on the players motivation.
What you're essentially arguing for, as far as I can tell, is the ability
to "take a tournament off" (I think is kind of an American way of saying
it). That is, have the ability to show up and do something that essentially
doesn't count. Except it does under the current system from the standpoint
of, if you are able to play the tournament, your rating would be better off
if you played the tournament seriously. Yes, I can understand that it may
"feel" better if someone doesn't see their number move downward on the day
they play. If that's your reason for liking it, that's not a thing I
can dispute.
> Of course this point is only valid from my position where player
> motivation (also drawn from rating) is more important than "good"
> rating. You seem to be more in favor of "good" rating than player
> motivation.
Exactly.
Fred
Frederick Scott wrote:
> "Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message> > Of course it is an opportunity cost, but in the other system it would be
> > a "direct" cost.
>
> Distinction irrelevant. Cost is the noun.
Distinction very relevent. Opportunity cost + direct cost > opportunity
cost. Size of the cost matters.
Also, the fact that the cost will be wiped clean 18 months from now
matters.
> What you're essentially arguing for, as far as I can tell, is the ability
> to "take a tournament off" (I think is kind of an American way of saying
> it). That is, have the ability to show up and do something that essentially
> doesn't count. Except it does under the current system from the standpoint
> of, if you are able to play the tournament, your rating would be better off
> if you played the tournament seriously.
If it's a large enough tournament to be worth more than you've earned
in your current best 8, sure. Otherwise, the opportunity cost won't
even show up until one of those slides off the 18-month window.
Depending on how soon that's going to happen, the opportunity cost may
only sting for a few months, as the current tournament will be wiped
out eventually. If you're going to be attending many larger tournaments
before those few months hit, you can probably reduce the opportunity
cost to zero (if the current tournament is small enough in comparison).
The current system lets people run abnormal decks in small tournaments
for essentially zero cost, provided they do well enough at enough
larger tournaments. This is only really a benefit for those who attend
many large tournaments, as it allows them to work the kinks out of new
ideas in a tournament environment without affecting their ratings.
You could realize a similar benefit under ELO if you could arrange
tournaments where you played only against those with a much greater
rating than your own (in which you tried to work out the kinks in your
deck) and then a bunch of normal tournaments to smooth out the
inevitable (but small) ratings drop that would result. This seems like
a much more difficult thing to do (and not even possible for the
top-ranked players), though it has the benefit of netting you a huge
rating increase if your wierd new idea works terrifically the first
time you try it.
Whether this benefit is worthwhile is an excercise best left to the
reader.
John
<jnew...@difsol.com> wrote in message
news:1123536335.5...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Frederick Scott wrote:>> "Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message
>> > Of course it is an opportunity cost, but in the other system it would be
>> > a "direct" cost.
>>
>> Distinction irrelevant. Cost is the noun.>> Distinction very relevant. Opportunity cost + direct cost > opportunity> cost. Size of the cost matters.
Maybe, but no one has yet stated why the size of the direct cost alone
should be relevant.
> Also, the fact that the cost will be wiped clean 18 months from now
> matters.
Huh? Why? This point comes completely out of left field. Even under ELO,
old results diminish in importance on a curve approaching nothingness as
newer results are recorded. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make,
here.
>> What you're essentially arguing for, as far as I can tell, is the ability
>> to "take a tournament off" (I think is kind of an American way of saying
>> it). That is, have the ability to show up and do something that essentially
>> doesn't count. Except it does under the current system from the standpoint
>> of, if you are able to play the tournament, your rating would be better off
>> if you played the tournament seriously.>
> If it's a large enough tournament to be worth more than you've earned
> in your current best 8, sure.
If you're talking about people at the top of the ranking chart, perhaps.
I was making more general comments about average players who aren't going
to have a best eight list which can't be cracked by a first place finish in
any given tournament they happen to be at. I'm pretty sure Johannes was
also speaking about the rank and file players, not the elite. Otherwise
his reasoning doesn't make much sense.
> The current system lets people run abnormal decks in small tournaments
> for essentially zero cost,
It does not. If you're attending an X-sized tournament, you'd have to
have eight better finishes currently on your chart and keep eight better
finishes on your chart for the next 18 months than you could possibly get
from winning it. That means eight first place finishes at a tournament of
size X or correspondingly higher*** for lesser finishes. Of course, don't
forget that in those eight finishes, it's a good idea to have won every
single game and done a complete sweep of all players in each victory or
you could conceivably do better than this and thus pay opportunity cost
if you fail to try.
(*** - For these purposes, you'd have to consider that a 3R+F tournament
would be "larger" than a 2R+F because the extra round allows for a higher
potential point total. This roughly corresponds to the higher potential
yield in finalist points offered by a larger tournament, so it's a fair
way of thinking about that issue.)
> You could realize a similar benefit under ELO if you could arrange
> tournaments where you played only against those with a much greater
> rating than your own (in which you tried to work out the kinks in your
> deck) and then a bunch of normal tournaments to smooth out the
> inevitable (but small) ratings drop that would result.
No, you can not - at least, not in theory. All games ought to be just
as important as all other games. You apparently misunderstand ELO. If,
for instance, you arranged to play only against those with a much higher
rating than your own then in theory you should have a much lower chance of
getting a positive result, exactly balancing the potential payoff you'd
get. There's no reason you wouldn't lose the same ratings points playing
your experimental deck against great players or bad players or anything
in between.
(What actually might make a difference is whether you play *against* other
players who were using experimental decks and thus possessed ratings
higher than they merited under the circumstances. Alternatively, you might
have the misfortune of running up against players who were coming out of
a period of playing experimental decks and now could be more formidable
than their recent play record justified - either because they had
successfully tuned the deck in question or because they had given up on it
and switched to a more dependable deck. But assuming you face opposition
at random as you play tournaments, this should cancel itself out over
many results.)
Whether the theory works or not depends (as a wrote in reply to Robert
Goudie's post last week) on whether one's chance of beating another
player of a given accurate ranking is truly a straight-line curve or
not. That might be a questionable premise, I'd agree. But I'd have to
hear some convincing argument why it would be a terribly curved line
to believe ELO wouldn't normally give at least a pretty good number
corresponding to player's skills. The current system makes no pretence
of rating only skill so there's obviously no comparison. And the real
issue is what it truly does rate - which, AFAICS, is nothing.
Fred
Frederick Scott wrote:
> <jnew...@difsol.com> wrote in message
> news:1123536335.5...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > Frederick Scott wrote:
> >> "Johannes Walch" <johanne...@vekn.de> wrote in message
> >> > Of course it is an opportunity cost, but in the other system it would be
> >> > a "direct" cost.
> >>
> >> Distinction irrelevant. Cost is the noun.
> >
> > Distinction very relevant. Opportunity cost + direct cost > opportunity
> > cost. Size of the cost matters.
>
> Maybe, but no one has yet stated why the size of the direct cost alone
> should be relevant.
Not size of direct cost. Size of cost. There's a lower cost for losing
a game/tournament when the direct cost is eliminated, provided the
opportunity cost hasn't risen by the same (or greater) amount. The
opportunity cost, as should be clear from the rest of my post, is
dependent on the number and size of tournaments you attend compared
with the size of the current tournament.
> > Also, the fact that the cost will be wiped clean 18 months from now
> > matters.
>
> Huh? Why? This point comes completely out of left field. Even under ELO,
> old results diminish in importance on a curve approaching nothingness as
> newer results are recorded. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make,
> here.
The reason it matters is that the cost may *never* be realized. In ELO,
it's realized *right now* and must be earned back through sufficient
play.
> >> What you're essentially arguing for, as far as I can tell, is the ability
> >> to "take a tournament off" (I think is kind of an American way of saying
> >> it). That is, have the ability to show up and do something that essentially
> >> doesn't count. Except it does under the current system from the standpoint
> >> of, if you are able to play the tournament, your rating would be better off
> >> if you played the tournament seriously.
> >
> > If it's a large enough tournament to be worth more than you've earned
> > in your current best 8, sure.
>
> If you're talking about people at the top of the ranking chart, perhaps.
> I was making more general comments about average players who aren't going
> to have a best eight list which can't be cracked by a first place finish in
> any given tournament they happen to be at. I'm pretty sure Johannes was
> also speaking about the rank and file players, not the elite. Otherwise
> his reasoning doesn't make much sense.
Okay. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not so much defending his
reasoning as playing math major. You made some bad assumptions to
refute him, I'm correcting the assumptions. Whether a system which
allows the elite to experiment more (under certain circumstances) with
less (or no) penalty is good, bad, or unimportant, is a totally
philosophical discussion and I'm not really in it right now.
Meanwhile, I'm going back to the math.
> > The current system lets people run abnormal decks in small tournaments
> > for essentially zero cost,
>
> It does not.
If you snip the part where I say "provided they do well enough at
enough
larger tournaments," then you appear to have rebutted me. Meanwhile,
what I actually wrote is true, for some value(s) of "enough". I suppose
I should have said "small enough tournaments" and "large enough
tournaments" as well, but the point holds.
Under certain circumstances, in the current system, the opportunity
cost of playing poorly or trying something uncertain can be brought to
zero. This is different from ELO, where both a direct cost and an
opportunity cost are imposed on every game played for rating points. It
benefits those players who play (and do well) at many large tournaments
and also play small tournaments.
> (*** - For these purposes, you'd have to consider that a 3R+F tournament
> would be "larger" than a 2R+F because the extra round allows for a higher
> potential point total. This roughly corresponds to the higher potential
> yield in finalist points offered by a larger tournament, so it's a fair
> way of thinking about that issue.)
Yes, larger means points-wise larger, not necessarily body-count
larger.
> > You could realize a similar benefit under ELO if you could arrange
> > tournaments where you played only against those with a much greater
> > rating than your own (in which you tried to work out the kinks in your
> > deck) and then a bunch of normal tournaments to smooth out the
> > inevitable (but small) ratings drop that would result.
>
> No, you can not - at least, not in theory. All games ought to be just
> as important as all other games. You apparently misunderstand ELO. If,
> for instance, you arranged to play only against those with a much higher
> rating than your own then in theory you should have a much lower chance of
> getting a positive result, exactly balancing the potential payoff you'd
> get. There's no reason you wouldn't lose the same ratings points playing
> your experimental deck against great players or bad players or anything
> in between.
>
> (What actually might make a difference is whether you play *against* other
> players who were using experimental decks and thus possessed ratings
> higher than they merited under the circumstances. Alternatively, you might
> have the misfortune of running up against players who were coming out of
> a period of playing experimental decks and now could be more formidable
> than their recent play record justified - either because they had
> successfully tuned the deck in question or because they had given up on it
> and switched to a more dependable deck. But assuming you face opposition
> at random as you play tournaments, this should cancel itself out over
> many results.)
Okay, whatever. It depends on your assumptions. I mean, if you assume
that even you're experimental deck is going to kick the ass of a bunch
of newbies, then you minimize rating flux by picking on them with it.
If you've already decided your first few games with it (in a tournament
setting) are lost, then you minimize the loss by picking a fight with
the biggest fish you can. If you're wrong in the first assumption,
however, you lose a whole lot of points to a bunch of new players,
whereas when you're wrong on the second assumption, you win big - it's
the "safer" bet.
My point had more to do with eliminating the *short-term* impact to
your rating. As you say, ELO will average it out in the long term.
>
> Whether the theory works or not depends (as a wrote in reply to Robert
> Goudie's post last week) on whether one's chance of beating another
> player of a given accurate ranking is truly a straight-line curve or
> not. That might be a questionable premise, I'd agree. But I'd have to
> hear some convincing argument why it would be a terribly curved line
> to believe ELO wouldn't normally give at least a pretty good number
> corresponding to player's skills. The current system makes no pretence
> of rating only skill so there's obviously no comparison. And the real
> issue is what it truly does rate - which, AFAICS, is nothing.
That's the issue you're really interested in, truly.
> Fred
<jnew...@difsol.com> wrote in message
news:1123545978.4...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> The opportunity cost, as should be clear from the rest of my post, is
> dependent on the number and size of tournaments you attend compared
> with the size of the current tournament.
...
> Frederick Scott wrote:>> <jnew...@difsol.com> wrote in message
>> news:1123536335.5...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > Frederick Scott wrote:
>> >> What you're essentially arguing for, as far as I can tell, is the ability
>> >> to "take a tournament off" (I think is kind of an American way of saying
>> >> it). That is, have the ability to show up and do something that essentially
>> >> doesn't count. Except it does under the current system from the standpoint
>> >> of, if you are able to play the tournament, your rating would be better off
>> >> if you played the tournament seriously.
>> >
>> > If it's a large enough tournament to be worth more than you've earned
>> > in your current best 8, sure.
>>
>> If you're talking about people at the top of the ranking chart, perhaps.
>> I was making more general comments about average players who aren't going
>> to have a best eight list which can't be cracked by a first place finish in
>> any given tournament they happen to be at. I'm pretty sure Johannes was
>> also speaking about the rank and file players, not the elite. Otherwise
>> his reasoning doesn't make much sense.>
> Okay. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not so much defending his
> reasoning as playing math major. You made some bad assumptions to
> refute him, I'm correcting the assumptions.
I made some assumptions that may be considered "bad" were they tested only
in the corner cases you're suggesting. In terms of the more general
conditions that matter to almost all players almost all of the time, I
guess I think it's picking nits to worry about.
> Whether a system which
> allows the elite to experiment more (under certain circumstances) with
> less (or no) penalty is good, bad, or unimportant, is a totally
> philosophical discussion and I'm not really in it right now.
More to the point, such a caveat would make his reason to favor the system
incredibly ludicrous - or incredibly self-serving. I don't think the
discussion would be 'philosophical'. 'Silly' is the adjective that comes
to my mind.
> Meanwhile, I'm going back to the math.
>>> > The current system lets people run abnormal decks in small tournaments
>> > for essentially zero cost,
>>
>> It does not.>
> If you snip the part where I say "provided they do well enough at
> enough larger tournaments," then you appear to have rebutted me.
All right, sorry. Missed it (my bad) and didn't think anyone would
really want debate it from such an angle. But sure, I now see what you
mean.
> Under certain circumstances, in the current system, the opportunity
> cost of playing poorly or trying something uncertain can be brought to
> zero. This is different from ELO, where both a direct cost and an
> opportunity cost are imposed on every game played for rating points. It
> benefits those players who play (and do well) at many large tournaments
> and also play small tournaments.
Those are pretty stringent requirements, however. You'd have to do
sufficiently well in at least eight of the larger tournaments to best any
possible finish you could make at the smaller ones you attended. I don't
think that's likely to be very easy. I guess I find it believable that
certain guys (and Johannes may be one of them) who are good enough and
energetic enough to be finalists in eight large tournaments over 18
months may earn enough finalist points to cover any sub-optimal game
results in those tournaments and make it impossible to improve on them
in smaller tournaments. That's not a viewpoint that the vast majority
of players ever need worry about, though.
Fred