17th LG cup main tournament about to start!!!!!!!

[Uberdude]

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!

[Joaz Banbeck]

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!

Let's not confuse meaningful low-probability events with meaningless low-probability events. In Feynman's case, the plate ARW 357 is no more significant than WEF 473, or any other plate. The particular plate has no more meaning than any other plate.
But suppose that John Wheeler's car had been stolen the day before, and its plate was ARW 357, and Feynman sees it in the parking lot. Then that plate is more meaningful than other plates.

In the LG cup pairing, about 9% of the possible pairings are meaningful in the context of avoiding same nationality pairings. And one of them occurred.

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BTW, it would have been a bit cleaner to refer to the 6 Chinese and 1 Taiwanese as simply non-Korean, ie: N1 through N7.

[hyperpape]

i don't know, do they repeat the random pairing in subsequent rounds? i was under impression that it is done only once at the beginning.

My understanding is that the initial pairing determines your spot in games 1 through 16, and so determines the entire draw. For example, you get the tournament table in http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/lg.html . But yes, I agree that it does seem a bit strange. Fair, though!

The tables at Mr. Kin's site often reshuffle between rounds. At least some of the time, he does not know how future rounds are going to be paired.

[Laman]

observation: the first round pairing had no avoidable in-country pairings. only one China-China, but that couldn't have been helped. also in the previous two years (i haven't checked further back) i couldn't find any avoidable in-country pairing. i won't compute the probabilities, but it doesn't look like a chance to me

worth noting is that this applies even for the first round, drawn randomly as we saw on the photos. possible explanation: divide the players in two groups of 16, one group from the most numerous nation (the Chinese here), the other with everyone else (plus randomly chosen Chinese over the number of 16), then issue two 1-16 sets of fans, one distribute in the first group, the other in the other

this is supported by the fact that as far as i can tell (i can't read Hangul and recognize only limited number of faces), if the Oro photos are shown in chronological or other logical order, there are first only the Chinese drawing numbers, then everyone else drawing numbers.

also it is nice system as at the same time balanced due to the pre-division and random, therefore fair

if i am correct, then it seems that the subsequent rounds are again paired randomly, with the same in-country avoiding criterion

is the system described in such a detailed way anywhere? i would imagine it should, at least in Korean. on the other hand, looking for ice-hockey WC format was not the easiest thing either, perhaps not everyone is as concerned with tournament systems as i am

[eoi]

i don't know, do they repeat the random pairing in subsequent rounds? i was under impression that it is done only once at the beginning.

My understanding is that the initial pairing determines your spot in games 1 through 16, and so determines the entire draw. For example, you get the tournament table in http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/lg.html . But yes, I agree that it does seem a bit strange. Fair, though!

The tables at Mr. Kin's site often reshuffle between rounds. At least some of the time, he does not know how future rounds are going to be paired.

Yes, actually I noticed that when I went back to look, the initial table didn't agree with trout's 2nd round pairing. My mistake! So do they re-pair after each round? I'm really totally ignorant of how these things work. Also, I just missed Baduk TV's hour of LG coverage, arggh.

[eoi]

The tom.com site seems to show that the games start at 9:00 am on 6/20 (they show Lee Sedol's game, and Gu Li's then), which is 9:00 pm on the east coast of the U.S. tonight, Tuesday the 19th. I think Baduk TV will broadcast a game, or maybe cut between 2 games, but is there any place that has all the games? Do the online servers like KGS or IGS carry the games?

Sorry to ask dumb qns; just a newbie.

[daal]

You can get the schedule for this week's games here: http://gogameguru.com/baduk-tv-guide/ if you want to watch live.

David, excellent idea to actually SHOW the Korean time on the TV guide page (and not write it's relationship to some other time zone), and to mark in red what is playing now. TV guides are supposed to make viewing easy, and yours does - good job!

[Laman]

The tom.com site seems to show that the games start at 9:00 am on 6/20 (they show Lee Sedol's game, and Gu Li's then), which is 9:00 pm on the east coast of the U.S. tonight, Tuesday the 19th. I think Baduk TV will broadcast a game, or maybe cut between 2 games, but is there any place that has all the games? Do the online servers like KGS or IGS carry the games?

Sorry to ask dumb qns; just a newbie.

ad go servers: yes, wbaduk.com has all or most of the games. possibly also tygembaduk.com relays some, never tried that one. i can recommend Asian servers very much for watching pro games, there are many of them

[Uberdude]

Joaz, the point I was making was you calculated the probability of a particular event after that event had happened without declaring the event beforehand. Humans are very good at spotting patterns (indeed that helps us beat computers at Go!) and there are lots of other interesting patterns that could have happened in the draw which didn't happen and whose probability you didn't calculate. The probability of there being an interesting pattern is pretty high even if the probability of each one is quite low.

P.S not that I am saying they don't pair to mix countries, but using probabilities in that way is not rigourous.

[hyperpape]

thing either, perhaps not everyone is as concerned with tournament systems as i am

no, you're in the exact right place.

[ez4u]

Joaz, the point I was making was you calculated the probability of a particular event after that event had happened without declaring the event beforehand. Humans are very good at spotting patterns (indeed that helps us beat computers at Go!) and there are lots of other interesting patterns that could have happened in the draw which didn't happen and whose probability you didn't calculate. The probability of there being an interesting pattern is pretty high even if the probability of each one is quite low.

P.S not that I am saying they don't pair to mix countries, but using probabilities in that way is not rigourous.

But isn't it quite common (not that it necessarily tells you anything meaningful)? It sounds just like a test question in a statistics class.
For the round of 32 --> You have an urn with 10 red balls and 22 white balls. In randomly drawing 16 pairs of balls from the urn without replacement, what is the probability that you will not draw any pairs of red balls?
For the round of 16 --> You have an urn with 9 red balls and 7 white balls. In randomly drawing 8 pairs of balls from the urn without replacement, what is the probability that you will not draw any pairs of white balls?

[Uberdude]

Sure, you can calculate a probability. But interpreting this as support for the hypothesis "pairing mixes countries" which was only made after the event is dodgy.

Obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/882

[hyperpape]

You're making a general point about statistical inference, Uberdude, but I wonder how much weight it holds in this case. The reason is roughly that while it's true that Joaz looked at the data and saw a potential correlation, rather than thinking of a question then looking at the data, there's also a limited set of patterns he might have noticed. After all, while it's true that there's some chance that players whose last names begin with A-G are paired with players whose last names are paired with H-Z, or some other silly pattern, it's unlikely that anyone will comment on that pattern if it appears. If there are a thousand patterns you might notice, then you do have to be highly sceptical if any appears. If there are two, then you only need to be slightly sceptical (where sceptical is a placeholder for various statistical corrections you might use).

I think there are really only three patterns that are highly likely to be commented upon: pairing strong/weak players against each other, pairing players of different nationalities against each other.

Anyway, we really should just hunt down information on pairing, and/or look at the previous years to get more data.

[ez4u]

We can just wait for the round of eight. As we all know:

Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." -- Auric Goldfinger

[bakekoq]

so, what's the update pairing for the next rounds?
can anybody make the tournament's tree?