Playoffs at WSC/WPC 2017 | |
WSC and WPC 2017 -> General Discussion about WSC and WPC 2017 | 33 posts • Page 1 of 2 • 1 2 |
prasanna16391 |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer Posts: 1806 Location: India | Hey Matus, As you have said there may be two ways to interpret what David said, and we discussed both options. Having a longer/harder round at the end while releasing partial results to raise the stakes and create anticipation is something we may consider as an alternative to playoffs. Having a round with inflated points at the end is not something we are considering because in some ways this is what a playoff is without the restrictions on puzzle order selection a playoff has. We would like to know why you think the former does not make sense. We also encourage David to elaborate his point further to make his thoughts on the matter clear. | ||
Fred76 |
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Diagonal Vision Author Posts: 337 Location: Switzerland | WaterlooMathie - 2017-01-14 8:09 AM then perhaps later rounds should be worth extra points to allow for more movement in the standings. prasanna16391 - 2017-01-30 6:23 PM Having a longer/harder round at the end while releasing partial results to raise the stakes and create anticipation is something we may consider as an alternative to playoffs. It's not evident that a longer/harder round provoques more movement in the standings, in my opinion. Statistics on previous competition could be done to answer, but I think short round can lead to as much movement in the standings as long round. We have seen in the past lot of cases of very good players loosing lot of points on a short round, because if something goes bad (mistakes for example), the player doesn't have time to recover and the round ends to be catastrophic for him. In my opinion, long rounds tend more to reproduce the hierarchy, producing less surprise than short rounds. Fred | ||
AndreyBogdanov |
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Snowmen Author Posts: 44 Location: Russia | It's very hard to balance interest in competition for top players and medium solvers. Leaders gain 2-3 times more points than the middle of the scoring table at WPC - I don't know other sports with such a difference. Having this is hard to be completely concentrated at the second day when you are around 50-th place after the first day - there is no real difference between being 60-th and 30-th. I think that the extension of playoff to more participants could extend interests for the middle of the table. But this extension should not lead to more solving time for leaders. Participant who finished at 30 place should start finals earlier and have less probability to win than leaders. | ||
detuned |
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Posts: 152 Location: United Kingdom | So one issue the playoff has to get around is that hours and hours of puzzle solving can potentially be overturned very quickly and give potentially unsatisfactory results. For example at the 12016 WPC, it was clear that Ken was by a mile the best solver - the gap between him in 1st and Ulrich in 2nd was as big as Ulrich in 2nd to outside the top 10. My personal view is that the playoffs failed in this case as it doesn't seem right that Ken did not win. From that point of view, the playoffs has to balance giving a fair advantage to those who deserve it, versus having a competition that is interesting. I disagree strongly with the opinion that playoffs should only give a marginal advantage because it demotes the importance of the main competition. If you are a top solver, and there is no advantage offered by the playoffs at all, then there is an incentive to do just enough to qualify for the playoffs, perhaps to the extent of skipping rounds (Ken could have skipped several rounds and still made the top 10), to make sure that you are well rested and well prepared for the playoffs. Its the kind of thing that would ultimately demean the integrity of the main competition. On reflection I think having more people in the playoffs is a bad idea. I think that 10 is probably too many, and the playoffs in recent years drag on for too long. If you want to make this media friendly then you probably want no more than 4 people to really focus on. I think in general in 2016 there were too many playoffs, and people who weren't directly involved got bored and did not watch. I suppose it's great for those who otherwise wouldn't be involved, but my feeling was the balance was not right. One good idea from 2016 I think was the "Tour de Senec" which introduces side competitions alongside the general classification - although as with everything the initial idea can always be refined and improved. I think that the closest sporting parallel to the WSC/WPC is indeed a multi-stage bike race and I think there's good scope to transfer over some of the devices of competition. One idea that comes to mind is to have the last round delayed until the scores to that point are available - that way the solvers know what they have to do. Then have a mad sprint round to see who comes out on top. | ||
prasanna16391 |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer Posts: 1806 Location: India | Poll closedThank you to everyone for voting and providing input on this topic. We will discuss the polling results and comments, factor that in to our decision and announce it on 31st March. In the meantime, please look at our other ongoing interactive initiative, the Puzzle Innovations Contest. We will have announcements of more interactive contests and discussions soon, so check back regularly. | ||
anderson |
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Posts: 16 Location: United States | I just want to say that I strongly agree with forcolin's statement that "the playoffs should be videoed and broadcast for the audience (and potentially for TV recording/broadcasting)" and I hope the organizers take that into account if there are playoffs. I fully support something like having a camera focused on each solver's puzzle, while puzzle authors/experts provide live commentary, which is what I hear was well-received at the 2010 Philadelphia WSC. This is more tentative, but I wonder if live-streaming the playoffs would be a good idea. I dunno whether people not at the WSC/WPC would be interested in watching, but if you had live commentary while puzzles are being solved, and maybe interviews with the finalists or more commentary during downtime, I imagine it could be very entertaining (at the very least, I have a bunch of friends who'd enjoy watching something like this). You could also keep the videos for posterity, which helps with another publicity problem: there are almost no videos of previous years' championships, at least none that I can find. I would love to be able to search youtube for "world puzzle championship" and find videos of top puzzlers competing, but doing that right now only gives me some WSC 2012 videos and Stefano's recording of the WPC 2014 team playoffs. | ||
prasanna16391 |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer Posts: 1806 Location: India | Poll conclusionThe voting for this topic has been very closely contested, so we discussed it very carefully. There were three main factors leading to our decision.- The votes for the option of Playoffs vs No Playoffs are divided equally. - There has been a lot of valuable discussion on the pros and cons of all playoff formats that have been tried out over the years, so reaching a consensus on a universally agreeable system is still a work in progress. - We were angling towards not having playoffs originally and have thought of good alternatives to achieve the same goals and are confident that we can execute them. With all this in mind, we have decided to confirm that there will be no playoffs at WSPC 2017. As for what to do with the time saved, here the majority is clear, so we will not add too much extra solving time, and focus more on spacing the rounds nicely. Thanks again to everyone who voted. | ||
NikolaZ |
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Posts: 2 Location: Serbia | Oh, what a terrible news! Actually, for me this is not so bad because I've never done much in the playoffs, but I am afraid that this decision could kill the essence of sudoku and puzzle world championships. I still hope that you will reconsider the decision and change it. | ||
greenhorn |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer Posts: 164 Location: Slovakia | Spacing the rounds nicely? I can't believe it... This is the World championship, not a holiday. Edited by greenhorn 2017-04-01 3:56 PM | ||
rob |
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Classics & Regions (PR 2016/17) Author Posts: 170 Location: Germany | Just as a counter point, I like to hear the focus on spacing the rounds nicely. The schedule is one of the things that made me enjoy Beijing and London quite a bit more than Sofia and Senec. It would be good if you did not feel to have to say cut a team round from an adequate hour to 40 minutes just to fit in the schedule, and instead give a few more teams the chance to finish! | ||
tamz29 |
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Posts: 225 Location: Thailand | Playoffs give solvers, say, in positions 10-20 some incentive to try hard during the last few rounds to gamble and play aggressively to qualify for that top 10 finals. Without this, would be a shame :( | ||
Yuhei Kusui |
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Posts: 42 Location: Japan | prasanna16391 - 2017-03-31 6:04 PM - We were angling towards not having playoffs originally and have thought of good alternatives to achieve the same goals and are confident that we can execute them. At the present moment I can't say excluding play-off is a bad decision because I don't know what "good alternatives" are; they should be revealed as soon as possible, as new ideas require plenty of time to be understood. Edited by Yuhei Kusui 2017-04-03 12:24 PM | ||
Anonymous |
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Playoffs is equivalent to the finals of a Championship. And playoffs must involve a good majority (if not all) of the participants. But, off late, very few people turn up for the playoffs...because there is probably nothing to watch. Except for the players and the organizers, others have minimal involvement with the event. Except for the knockout playoffs in 2012, which appealed to some extent to the audience. So, it may not be a bad idea to have a championship without a playoff and see how it works. And, having multiple playoffs - for Sudoku GP, WSC, Puzzle GP and WPC - brings down the interest levels as well. In 2016 also, there were a bit too many playoffs perhaps. The two playoffs for the GP should be good enough and the remaining time can be utilized to probably execute something more interesting and, more importantly, which involves a majority of the community. | |||
NikolaZ |
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Posts: 2 Location: Serbia | I agree with Anonymous that maybe there is too much playoffs. I suggest to cancel live GP finals from 2018. Grand Prix is a tournament, an excellent one, but only a tournament and we are bringing it here because it is an annual world meeting. Please, be honest with yourself, who wants to replace their participation in world championship finals with the participation in the tournament playoff? WSC and WPC playoffs are great culmination of biggest world events and they must be preserved. Formats of the playoffs should be altered every year since, as I already said, the perfect system is not invented yet. | ||
Kalaiyarasan |
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Posts: 1 | I agree | ||
Fred76 |
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Diagonal Vision Author Posts: 337 Location: Switzerland | It's a courageous decision, that breaks the tradition. Please let me do a few comments (in english, sorry for the non english-speakers):
So in my opinion, if one of the playoff should be remove, it's better to be the world championship playoffs than the GP finals. I agree with the fact we need such competition with the best players during WSC/WPC, it can be excited, but it also should be used by the WPF to make more advertizing/promotion. Fred | ||
prasanna16391 |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer Posts: 1806 Location: India | Fred76 - 2017-04-09 3:11 PM
Hi Fred, I checked in with the WPF Board on behalf of the organizing team earlier this year about a few things, including this topic of whether playoffs are a must. I also communicated to them that we plan to have a poll to this end. The Board confirmed that playoffs need not be held and that the organizers can make a decision either way, and it was only after this that we started the poll. | ||
prasanna16391 |
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2021 World Sudoku+Puzzle Convention Organizer Posts: 1806 Location: India | Yuhei Kusui - 2017-04-03 12:17 PM At the present moment I can't say excluding play-off is a bad decision because I don't know what "good alternatives" are; they should be revealed as soon as possible, as new ideas require plenty of time to be understood. Hi Yuhei, The alternative we are thinking of has been mentioned before, but I will elaborate once again. We are going to have an evening event, a Player vs Player knockout event open to everyone. As I have indicated before, we have a set system for this which worked at the National level last year and we are confident we can replicate that. This event will be exciting, fun, can be used for media and publicity, and most importantly, everyone can participate without worrying too much about 'fairness' and 'choosing a worthy World Champion'. | ||
onigame |
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Posts: 18 Location: United States | I'm very very late to this discussion but I highly approve of the removal of playoffs. In my opinion, the playoffs have never been a good indication of choosing the best solver. Everyone has just gone through a dozen rounds of competition, and the dozen rounds are then condensed into less than 5 minutes of playoff advantage time. It would be like if you gave students a test, and the first 100 questions were worth 5% of their grade while the last 10 questions were easier questions and worth 95% of their grade. The advantage of playoffs have always been for the spectators, to see what the best puzzle-solvers in the world can do, and a little bit for the players in position 10-20 to feel like they still have a chance of catching up and getting just the right amount of luck. But as the WPC puzzles become less and less accessible to the majority of casual viewers, they cannot understand what they are seeing in the playoffs. Without the playoff-solving being on camera, there is even less for the viewers to see. Ever since I stopped being good enough to qualify for playoffs, I discovered that I really didn't enjoy watching the playoffs. I would much rather take the playoff puzzles and solve them by myself. :) | ||
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