@bmnielsen:
A few ideas about the playoffs.
Great, thanks!
First off, the 8 game rule. Would it make sense to relax this a bit for returning players who have consistently performed well? For example, players who qualified for this season’s playoffs only need to play 6 games to qualify for the next season’s playoffs. My understanding is that the rule is in place to ensure players are ranked accurately before allowing them into the playoffs, but this isn’t an issue for already-established top players.
Good point - I think there is a secondary reason - to encourage more participation in the league. Gives players more chances to play regular season games against the top players.
My reason for bringing this up is pretty clear from the current standings. I personally would hate to see Gamerman miss out on the playoffs by missing one game, though it looks like he might just get in under the wire :)
Oh! I’ll make it in, thanks to Juan’s very good sportsmanship. He just posted today, that he would be willing to play 4 straight hours with me Thursday, and yes I’ll probably have my 8th game done, barely. But it’s mostly my own doing that I’m close to not qualifying. Part of the reason is (I did glance ahead and see you raise this issue) I played 3 heavy playoff games during the 2015 league season. This made it less easy to finish 8 games this year, and I had the exact same issue 2 years before when I won the championship. I was 1 game short of qualifying for the playoffs in 2013 (Not a problem necessarily, because I didn’t want in badly)
I was having similar thoughts for this year (didn’t really want in badly), but thought if there were people who encouraged me/wanted me to participate in the playoff again (defend my title and all that), that’s all it would take for me to make sure I got 8 games done. Even if that means resigning 1 game that wasn’t really done.
Second, 8th place tiebreak. There should probably be an extra tiebreak option in the case that the first two still leave it tied, which would be the case if the playoffs ended now. I think normally the last tiebreak option in competitions is to just decide it by chance, so in our case rolling a virtual two-sided die would likely suffice.
Won’t say much since I’m not 100% sure of your meaning, but the tiebreaker is basically just by most games played, which makes sense. Ahh, now I see your vested interest :-D You are at 4.00. If the season ended right now and if you assume I have 8 completed games, then we would have a 3-way tie for 8th, with Rasmustb getting in, because 1) there were no head to head results among the 3 players and 2)he has 13 games to Snake and nielsen’s 10. Again, the idea seems to be encouraging more participation in the league and rewarding those who have played more games.
What is not clear is when there are 3 or more players tied, how do you apply “head to head play”. I think the simple solution to this is to reverse it. #1 factor is most games played, then if there is a tie, look at head to head.
A caveat - This was my first year as co-moderator, so many of the rules are carryovers from before.
I think an improvement on the tie-breaker rule would be to have the #1 tie-breaker be who has played the most tier 1’s. Then if it’s still tied, go by most games played. If still tied, head to head (assuming there wouldn’t be more than 2 tied at this point). If all else fails, then die roll.
Since you can still participate in an 8-man playoff even if you narrowly miss the main official league playoff (to name league champion), my opinion is that it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. I mean, you still get fun playoff action. The bottom seed has only won the Super Bowl once, to my knowledge. My point being that it is unlikely that the 8th seed will win it all.
Finally, call this beating a dead horse if you must,
For the record, that was Jennifer :-D
but I still think playoff games should also count for the league standings. Our league is not analogous to professional sports with a distinct regular season and playoffs, since we always have a season running. As such, the season should reflect the overall performance of each player over the time period the league runs for, and since playoff games fall inside that time period, they should be counted as well.
A couple of real-world things to back this up.
In chess, rankings are done continuously. When a tournament rolls around, the top X players are invited based on their ranking, and the matches played during the tournament count for their rankings. In other words, there is no distinction made as to what venue a match is played in. As long as the match conforms to the rules of the federation, they count for the player’s rating.
Another example is tennis. The top 8 players in the points ranking participate in the end-of-season finals tournament (sound familiar? :)). The tournament itself also awards points, that then count for the rankings in the next season.
Very well stated. I agree. And if this change is implemented, then that’s another reason the 8 game entry requirement could remain unchanged (I would have 10 games completed).
My only reservation to this is the double reward/punishment pressure of the playoff games.
Imagine getting diced in a playoff game - not only are you disappointed at being knocked out of the playoffs before your otherwise sure championship win :-D but you are hung with a loss on next year’s regular season too. Do you know what I mean?
And, as I said, double reward if you get lucky.
Difference from chess is that their chess rating is based on hundreds or thousands of games. If somebody like me loses a playoff game and plays about 8-12 games a year, that’s a pretty significant setback on next year’s rating.
Like I said, I still tend to agree with counting it towards next year, but what I just described, is the biggest negative I see off the top of my head
Thanks again for a well thought out and intelligent list of ideas!
As far as the imminent playoff games counting toward 2015 regular season (this could be done for the additional playoffs as well, not just the main one), that needs Jennifer’s approval as well. I’m not opposed. I would like to hear the opinions of players like Me1945, Zhukov, Ghostglider, I already know Boldfresh is in favor, Hobo, Wheatbeer, Rasmustb, Snake11, and the other players who have signed up for playoffs before actually deciding for sure. (Mr. Roboto doesn’t count because 1-3 games would have almost no effect if he plays 50+ games again :lol:)
I know there was a lot of discussion on this topic earlier in the year. I could go back and see who said what.
If there is a significant majority for or against, from the people it would actually be affecting, I would think Jennifer would also agree that we would go with that. It’s the players’ league.
