League General Discussion Thread

gamerman01

Also I do not consider myself dictator for life! And if a solid moderator or 2 comes along, I would be happy to step down and pass the baton. If not, I am also very happy to continue being the last word on everything and organizing everything - it has always been well worth it!

gamerman01

But I will do what I can to never allow this league to fall into incompetent or nefarious hands - not in my lifetime.
These moderator discussion words are not about MrRoboto or the current discussions - at all - they just need to be posted once in awhile so that you can be assured about the league stability.

MrRoboto

Thanks for the words, gamerman.
Especially the last post: The fact that you take your position seriously and will do your very best to ensure the integrity of the league is invaluable. I think most if not all here are very grateful for what you do here.

I do understand that it feels like a coup to you, I can absolutely empasize with you! That’s actually the reason why I did not express interest in comoderator. In no way do I want you to feel threatened by me, that’s certainly not my intention!

There’s always tension when change is proposed. There is a reason why conservatives all around the world usually are the biggest group - as long as the current system is not totally broken that is.
Humans tend to be reluctant with change, when it’s working more or less.
And I do acknowledge that the current ranking system is doing fine. Otherwise it wouldn’t have sticked around all these years.

However, some of the concerns have been raised years ago. I can remember a discussion about winning against low Tier being bad for PPG a couple of years ago already. The idea of ELO has been swirling around the forums for years too.
While I did take part in that discussion and voiced my concern back then, I never fully went forward and took matters in my own hand, partly because I didn’t feel I’m in a position to go up against gamerman. It feels intimidating to challenge a dictators system, after all ;-) (using your word, not mine!)

So far, I have seen only people voting for an ELO system or people who are open for it, but none has spoken against it.
I am interested in more criticism, so that we arrive at the best possible outcome. Jkellers feedback for example convinced me that lifelong rating is more useful!

The most important thing at the end: I don’t want this to be a MrRoboto vs Gamerman thing. On the contrary, I want this system to be as simple and optimal as possible and with him continuing to lead all of us. I can gladly take care of managing / maintaining the rankings but I’m totally fine with just setting it up and gamerman then being in charge.

MrRoboto

@mr_stucifer
That’s an interesting concept.

Upside:
Results would reflect the feat of overcoming an unusually high bid and still win or losing despite having big bids.

Contra:
It complicates the system.
It introduces math and more tactics into the bidding process and might lead to games with fewer bids, despite higher bids being necessary (giving the statistics).

Stucifer

@MrRoboto I think requiring a substantial tier differential and having a strict guidelines would make it fairly painless to implement, although deciding what those are is another matter. 😅

gamerman01

@gamerman01 said in League General Discussion Thread:

I am away from my computer and keyboard this weekend so won’t say much.

OK, I’m a lot more proficient texter now than I thought… :p :p

dawgoneit

I am not liking the long term rating. I no i’m way down tho rankings but a reset each year gives me a fresh start each year. I’ve been here a very long time. other than some medical problems I have no vanished like others have. i do believe I’ve lost more than anyone here. i’m not sure but I think I’ve also played more than anyone here. I have about double of the post than any one. point is with the ranking now I have a chance of having a good year and moving up. How ever the only problem that I see is I can’t have a chance playing a better player because they don’t want there ranking to go down. Even when they win.
also I noticed that when these top players get 3 games in they stop playing so they’re in the top tourney. I think we all should have a chance playing each other and someone like me have a good dice game and win. not likely but it could happen. Also I pay every year so we can keep this league going. I think we should get points for that. (Just kidding,) Lol. but we need to donate more so we can keep it going. I no servers cost good money.
As far as the ranking system goes. the one thing that bothers me is we can’t all play each other in the league. we should. I mean I pay to play.

MrRoboto

Thanks for your comments, dawg!

Actually, an ELO system would help all 3 points that you raised.

It would give incentive for top and medium players to play against you. I have not challenged you for a game this year because of the known reasons
Your PPG is kinda set after a certain number of games. Your 28 games brought you 75 points for example, which is 2.68 PPG. Even an extraordinary feat like winning against Adam, Gorshak or ArthurBomberHarris would only give you 8 more points, so 83 / 29 = 2.86 PPG.
So your PPG would barely move, that’s why it’s hard for you to climb after a certain number of games. The reason: the current ranking represents the AVERAGE yearly result, not the current one.
With an ELO-based system you ALWAYS have the chance to climb, at any point. There is always motivation for you to reach certain goals you set yourself. A win against a top player would catapult you quite a lot!
You are correct, sometimes 3 great results are enough for a good spot. And players could abuse it. Right now, Gorshak is #1 with his 3-0, even though none of the 3 wins were against top8 players and one was against #34.
One could argue that scoring 8-1 is a bigger feat.
So, without saying that’s what he is doing, it would be in Gorshaks best interest (if the goal is to optimize ranking) to stop playing for the year.
An ELO system works completely different. More wins will always put you further and stopping at 3-0 will never get you a top spot.

So all of your points are arguments FOR a ELO rating :-)
And lifetime or not won’t be a huge difference there… It will only make the rankings more accurate

Ghostglider

A way to ensure everyone can play against everyone would be to expand our playoff from 8 persons to 16 or 32.

This would only result in additional 1 or 2 extra games for the winner and if playoff games are prioritized I am sure they can be played fairly quickly and therefore allow for the additional game(s) during the year.

wizmark

For those of us with a non chess background, (maybe only me) can you explain what ELO is? In the words of Midge Ure ‘this means nothing to me’!

dawgoneit

I have no idea either.

MrRoboto

I am working on the post to show it to you, as we speak!

MrRoboto

PLEASE everyone have a look:

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40302/proposal-for-a-new-elo-based-ranking-system

Feedback is not only appreciated, but highly sought after! After all, I want this to be OUR system, not mine.

gamerman01

The following is written with the caveat that I haven’t had time to thoroughly look over everything MrRoboto has done - he has really been a busy bee the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been moving to a new house and focusing on the championship game.

Hi guys,

I am very excited with what MrRoboto has cranked out - he is very high energy and doing a lot of work to improve the league.

The final product of this effort is going to be awesome but it’s not going to be rolled out until I’m satisfied and also the majority of league players are happy. Or in other words, until we don’t have many dissenters. No one wants a change that a lot of people don’t like.

I’m only going to post publicly right now, that I have major concerns about an ELO system because I think you can only rise or fall a certain number of points per game, and few games are played by most players because a game of G40 takes a whole lot of hours as we all know.

It’s not chess, and it’s not a sport league where everyone plays the same number of games. This is what jkeller and farmboy have chimed in to say, also. ELO doesn’t work very well when few, or varied numbers of games are played.

I am writing privately with MrRoboto a lot, in order to make sure I understand this beautiful ranking spreadsheet, before saying much more. We will work together and keep communicating to you guys so you are kept in the loop. There’s got to be a way to level things out for vast differences in number of games played. The system we’ve had does a pretty good job of achieving this equalization.

gamerman01

Also, I anticipate a very new system will be rolled out, but of course it will wait until 1/1/24.

dawgoneit

gamerman01 I am 100% happy with what YOU decide.

gamerman01

This is where the action in the league, on revamping the old rankings system is.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40302/proposal-for-a-new-elo-based-ranking-system/2?_=1698764284876

This morning I just saw a whole new outcome when 2022 and some of 2021 data was added, and now I know that this revamped system is coming to all of us in 2024. Further improvements will be accomplished during November and December.

MrRoboto

We now have the data for all games since Februar 2021, more than 650 games.

Included are 140 PtV games played.
Interestingly the Axis have an even higher win% in PtV than in the other types.
I guess statistically we should stop giving Axis bids and play PtV with no bids or even Allies bids.

And balanced mod is properly named, having almost a 50:50 split with the current average bid of +18.7!

ArtofWar1947

@MrRoboto

My sense is that PTV is most balanced game because it takes only a small bid to make the game even or fair for both sides. The ideally balanced game would not require bidding at all, and PTV seems to have a chance of achieving this.

Stucifer

@MrRoboto Also surprised to see the average bid in PtV is only -6.6, I thought I was seeing a lot more 9-12 bids than that. However there were several 0-bid games from Regularkid and Adam514 that might have skewed the average down while the median is probably 8 or 9.

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