[Fluffy]

Lol, when I was looking at the scores I though I'd see me and Codo at the bottom, but above GIB, but no , even GIB beat us lol. Nice job josh.

Congrats peachy and partner trully well done.

Also well done awn elianna hanp and jlol, even though you were the favourites (IMO) you still had to make your job to the top.


And finally thanks to Ben and Hanoi for the effort, I know this is not easy.

[hanp]

It ain't over till it's over.

[Hanoi5]

And two hands haven't been graded yet...

[JLOGIC]

Definitely not over lol...could do badly on the other 2 boards and there are still 10 pairs to go.

Also I dropped a ton of MP so congrats for us doing well goes to hanp!

[inquiry]

It aint over even if it is over...

Everyone moves to the second round (even those who for unknown reasons might not bid round one... they will assume to have a score of ZERO).

A couple of issues, we have changed the name of the two brackets formed in round 2. The one with the top ten scorers from round one will be called the "upper" bracket. Everyone else will be in the "lower" bracket.

Second, by request and because it might get too confusing on me otherwise, everyone will bid the same hands in Round 2. Please avoid the temptation to add up scores from round 1 and round 2 for someone if the lower bracket to compare with someone in the upper bracket. That is why I was going with two different hand sets, but with the pending frequent challenge the champ hands coming up, I thought I might not want to use them all up now.

Also, thanks to eugene hung for sending me a hand for round 2. Others are free to submit hands. I will not use a hand you submit in any round or competition in which you are bidding...

[hanp]

Ben, I don't understand your comment about adding up scores. Could you clarify?

[Hanoi5]

Say you get 120 in the first round and win it. You're number 1 in the "Upper" bracket. I get only 90 which makes me winner of the "lower" bracket.

On the second round you get only 50 and I get 90. Your two scores add up to 170 and mine to 180, did I do better than you? No, because we were in different brackets, even though we bid the same hands. What Ben doesn't want to happen is me saying 'Hey I beat Han 'cause he got 170 while I got 180'.

[cherdanno]

Once everyone is bidding the same hands, I don't see the point of having an upper and lower bracket.

Btw, Ben, did you get the results for Roger and myself?

[bluecalm]

Damn, this field is strong. Despite one huge disaster and few mistakes here and there I expected we've done much better

[Siegmund]

Pretty unusual, IMO, to have only 1/3 of the field advance to the upper bracket in round one of a five-round event. (But every time I try to figure out what the format is going to be I am stumped anyway, so do whatever works best on your end...)

[hanp]

Hanoi5, on Jul 21 2010, 10:54 AM, said:

On the second round you get only 50 and I get 90. Your two scores add up to 170 and mine to 180, did I do better than you? No, because we were in different brackets, even though we bid the same hands. What Ben doesn't want to happen is me saying 'Hey I beat Han 'cause he got 170 while I got 180'.

Yes this I understood, but what confused me was that there was talk about adding the scores at all. I thought that there was no carry over, and that the scores on the first round were completely irrelevant for determining who goes through on the second round. Is that not correct?

To cherdanno, these two brackets have been discussed in another thread. It's an unusual format and I don't no if there is a "point", but I also don't see anything wrong with it.

[kayin801]

Siegmund, on Jul 21 2010, 10:55 AM, said:

Pretty unusual, IMO, to have only 1/3 of the field advance to the upper bracket in round one of a five-round event. (But every time I try to figure out what the format is going to be I am stumped anyway, so do whatever works best on your end...)

Yeah, but the people in the upper bracket are "safe" and automatically in round 3, so it makes sense to an extent. The more people that are safe the less people can advance from the bottom bracket

Carry-over makes sense at least in the bottom bracket, cause then someone who didn't even participate in the first round (got a zero) could still advance out of the 2nd and if you have it in the bottom bracket then I think it makes sense to have it in the top? With a smaller group of people in the top the results should be closer from the first round anyway.

[inquiry]

hanp, on Jul 21 2010, 10:48 AM, said:

Ben, I don't understand your comment about adding up scores. Could you clarify?

Everyone bids the same 32 boards in new design...

Let's say in first set, you score 93 and ended up on the lower group, then in the second group of hands you smoke it, scoring 160.

So if one was keeping a running total, you would have 160+93 = 253. It is entirely possible that 253 would be a higher total than everyone in the "upper group" for both sets of hands. To avoid this, i had originally planned to use different hands for upper and lower groups, so your hypothetical 160 would have been on a different set of hands and thus not compariable. The 160 just means you "win" the lower bracket that round.

Perhaps it might be best to use different sets of hands, but I am still thinking we will stick with the new idea of the same hands to make life easier on everyone (me included).

[inquiry]

cherdanno, on Jul 21 2010, 11:44 AM, said:

Once everyone is bidding the same hands, I don't see the point of having an upper and lower bracket.

Btw, Ben, did you get the results for Roger and myself?

I withheld scoring some people's hands to avoid causing them embarrashment........




Just kidding. I did get them, but I forgot to transfer your scores from to the excel spreadsheet, so yours has not been tabulated... (as of yet)... when I add your names to the locked thread, I will position you in the right place.

[bluecalm]

I think KO or double KO idea is not the best for this type of contests.
Afterall we want to determine who is the best at bidding given problems and KO system just introduce some randomness (by giving bigger weigh to problems in first batch) and doesn't really help with anything.

It seems to me that some kind of survivor is the best as it eliminates pairs which may not be very motivated to play with weak score and what is much more important cut the work for organizers. Make it for example 50% cut every round (or only 25% for first round so I could qualify ).

Just an opinion. Participating in this is great regardless of what system you choose.

[awm]

I'm surprised Elianna and I are doing as well as we are; it seemed like we made some silly mistakes. Maybe one of our bad boards is in the pair yet to be scored.

Anyway, as to the format it does seem like there is some question about how this thing should work. It seems like the idea is to select a "champion" and then have a continuing contest where one or two pairs "challenge the champs" each week and take their place if they win?

In this case there is some sense to avoiding "cumulative" scores since in the long term it's just a round by round competition. The idea would be that anyone who did badly in two different rounds is eliminated, and that while one can in principle compute "total scores" it doesn't make much sense to compare total scores when one pair is eliminated and the other is still in. The lack of "carryover" also potentially makes the contest more interesting.

Perhaps one thing to do is just rank all the participating pairs each round (current round scores only, not cumulative) and put an asterix or something by those pairs who have had a "bad" round (bottom half or whatever) with pairs being eliminated when they have two bad rounds. This is slightly different from Ben's prior format since there aren't really "brackets" per se but should have roughly the same effect.

Anyway, I don't really care what the format is and it was fun bidding the hands.. thanks to Inquiry, Hanoi, Jillybean, and others for serving the bidding tables. It would be nice if the format was set in some way to avoid controversies later though, I'm sure whatever Ben wants to do is fine.

[inquiry]

Well the biggest controveries are yet to come...The reason being, I alone have scored the 16 hands. Sure, a lot of them the top spot is clearly obvious. others there is a questions, but let's assume for a second everyone agrees with the top spot that I pick on each of the boards (I am fairly certain this will not be the case). Then each not quite optimal contract has a score that i picked where there could be endless discussion. The difference of a "3" and a "5" on the one of those or a 1 versus a 4 could easily move someone from say 11 to 10th or 2nd to 1st

Here I think there will be a lot of discussion, not to mention two hands where the optimal spot is not as clear as I would have hoped. Hands selected from now on will be cleaner top spot at least.

An added benefit for using the same hands for upper and lower group is that we can start round 2 while still "debating" the scores of round one (this is not possible if the contestants have different hand as the bidding would have started).

As far as optimal methods, no the current system is not "optimal". I guess we could declare who ever won the first 16 boards as champs and stop. That should satisfy bluecalm's complaint and would certainly be "fair" as everyone bid the same hands. But I don't like that idea. Another way to be optimal would be real brackets with two pairs bidding one set of hands, the next two pairs bidding a different, and so on. At the end of the first round, the winners move up in a swiss type thing, the losers go to repechage bracket (each round) so that double ellimination exist. This is what I wanted to do with 8 pairs or less in the competition, but so many people wanted to compete, that idea went by the side. Perfection is the enemy of getting something to completion -- and in this case with 29 or 30 contestants, and the need to have a table host, and match up everyone's time, perection had to go out the window a long time ago.

The perfection will come after we have a champ... then we can have challenges to them in true one-on-one competition.

[bluecalm]

I didnt' mean to complain at all. I just wanted to describe my point of view.
I like it no matter what scoring system you choose as being able to bid at least 32 hands and then share thoughts with some awesome players here is quite a deal for me.

[JLOGIC]

I like the system, I don't think everyone just bidding a bunch of hands would be fun. Sure it would be more accurate, but at some point you want people to get eliminated, some people to get heads up, have some excitement and also some randomness. It also gives everyone something to play for every set of 16

[hanp]

I think there have been enough threads about the format. Ben is doing a terrific job, the hands are difficult, the competition is exciting and I am sure that the discussions will be interesting. When I log on to BBO I have interesting chats with forum members I rarely talk with. It's a lot of fun to talk about how others bid the hands (especially with jdonn and clee in action, but that's for later).

If somebody else wants to do it differently they can next time, but let's follow the way inquiry has set it up. It's good.