From: "Frank Hamrick" Subject: RE: [BCML] Ways to handle unbalanced scenarios in a tournament Here's my proposal for a six-week, 8-player, balanced Battle Cry tournament: The Gettysburg Campaign. The first week - Scenario - McPherson's Ridge Game one - Players A1, A2, A3, A4 are CSA; Players B1, B2, B3, B4 are US. A1 vs. B1; A2 vs. B2; A3 vs. B3; A4 vs. B4. Game two - same scenario, but players move "down the table" as you mentioned: A1vs. B2; A2 vs. B3; A3 vs. B4; A4 vs. B1, etc. Games three & four - players continue moving until all A players have played all B players. Depending on the game length - this ends the first "tournament night" (but doesn't end the tournament). The second week - Scenario - McPherson's Ridge Game one - A players are US; B players are CSA Once more each person plays 4 games as in the previous week Games two, three, four - players repeat week one schedule, but are each playing the opposite side The third week - Scenario - Devil's Den Repeat the same procedure as in the first week. The fourth week - Scenario - Devil's Den Repeat the same procedure as in the second week. The fifth week - Scenario - Pickett's Charge Repeat the same procedure as in the first week The sixth week - Scenario - Pickett's Charge Repeat the same procedure as in the second week I realize this is a long time - and the problem is that some of our guys may have a problem meeting each week, but they should promise to "make up" the game if they miss the normal game night, before the next week's games, thus keeping everyone on schedule. Total flags won is the overall winner. You don't have to worry about scenario balance, as everyone plays everyone on the opposite sides. Finally - consider taking the A winner and letting him play the B winner in a championship game or games. Frank Hamrick -----Original Message----- From: Russ Williams [mailto:russw@austin.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2000 10:30 AM To: battlecry2000@egroups.com Subject: [BCML] Ways to handle unbalanced scenarios in a tournament Hi folks, I already posted this to rec.games.board, but I thought it worthwhile to post it to this list as well in case anyone missed it, and some of you might have some Battle Cry-specific feedback/ideas... I've been talking about this stuff with Brady, who's running a tournament this weekend! thanks, russ ----- My friend JP & I were talking about ways to have a tournament for a game like Battle Cry which has unbalanced scenarios. There are several well-known methods: (1) Play matches (i.e. play each scenario twice, switching sides), which has the disadvantage that each player must play the same scenario and opponent twice, halving the variety of the tournament or doubling its length. (2) Only play the most balanced scenarios. Disadvantage = the need to be sure that the scenarios really are balanced (gather lots of data beforehand, and trust its accuracy), and this limits which scenarios can be played. (3) Have players bid victory points to pick which side they'll play. Disadvantage = all players need to be quite familiar with the scenarios to bid intelligently. So we came up with a 4th scheme I've not seen before. (4) Divide players into 2 groups (call them group A and B). Play several rounds; each round pair off an A player vs a B player. The same scenario is played by all players in a round, and all the A players play the same side in a given round. E.g. in round 1, all the A players are CSA in Antietam. Next round, play a new scenario, and shift all the A players down one seat so they face a new B opponent. E.g. A1 plays CSA Antietam vs B1 A2 plays CSA Antietam vs B2 A3 plays CSA Antietam vs B3 next round A3 plays US Shiloh vs B1 A1 plays US Shiloh vs B2 A2 plays US Shiloh vs B3 and so on. Thus you get maximum variety: each player will never need to play the same scenario or opponent more than once. A player's tournament score is simply the total number of flags they killed in all their games. All the A players are competing (in the tournament sense) against all the other A players, and all the B players are competing against all the other A players. Thus it doesn't matter if the scenarios are balanced or not! After whatever number of rounds, pick the highest-scoring A player and the highest scoring B player. They go on to play a final round via a match (or some other "balanced" way). If there is a tie in either group, you could send them all up. (For this reason you might want to ensure that unbalanced scenarios get distributed both ways. If the A group scores range from, e.g. 4 to 12, while the B group scores range from 16 to 24, then ties would be more likely in the A group and thus unfairly give more A people a shot at the final round...) Alternatively, you could simply count victories and ignore the margin of victory, so a players score would always range from 0 to n in an n-round tournament. Hs anyone played a tournament like this, or know more about subtle details of running such a tournament? References or URLs are welcome... The only obvious disadvantage is the need for a final round that not everyone gets to play in, although many people consider that an advantage in a tournament since it provides an element of drama. A subtle disadvantage is that if the 2 best players happen to both be assigned to group A, then one of them will lose out to the best player from group B who might really be weaker than all the group A players but still end up with 2nd place in the tournament. A way to handle this might be to do a multiple elimination process, where after some number of rounds, the top half from each group progresses to the next round, where the sets are randomly chosen again. Another subtle disadvantage is that if one of the players in group A is much stronger than the others in group A, then the group B players who happen to get paired with him will be unfairly penalized in their scores vis-a-vis the other group B players who didn't play this person. So ideally you'd play round-robin (each group A player paired against each group B player). How thorough/careful/accurate you can get obviously depends on how many games can be played, i.e. how long the tournament can last. We got the basic idea of this from the Duplicate Go tournament at this year's Go Congress in Denver, where all the weaker players competed against each other in the tournament by playing out identical go endgames against all the stronger white players (who were also competing against each other in the tournament). Each black player faced off against each white player round-robin style (i.e. there were n rounds, and 2*n players total in the tournament). The 2 groups were simply separate divisions, each with a winner, rather than having a final round. russ http://www.kofightclub.com