New EGC Rules

[John Fairbairn]

Considering that the average number of relegation players is only 5.6, the BGA claim of a (very) large number of players losing their free day is totally wrong.

I'm not familiar with the prior history of the debate on either side, but on the evidence presented here this "totally wrong" is totally wrong. The BGA has listed three separate reasons. Each reason stands on its own. You have conflated two and here ignored the other. The BGA quote is below.

We strongly disapprove of this as a) it is possible that a large number of people may be involved with this, b) it takes up one of the allegedly free days of the tournament and c) we think that using tie-breaks is going to be good enough for the minor places in this play-off system.

I'm guessing, but on past experience I'd expect (b) to be the most important reason for many people. The EGF rules committee appears to have taken the stance that the system is the most important thing and the players are there to serve it, even if it means losing a day off. I imagine most people attending feel rather that the system should be there to serve them. Since attendance at a congress is basically a holiday and a strenuous diet of long games for many days is not normal for most amateurs, I'm sure that a rest day is seen as an important, and maybe vital, part of the experience. Spoiling a holiday even for just one person is surely not what the EGF wants.

[RobertJasiek]

on the evidence presented here this "totally wrong" is totally wrong.

If you read the discussion again, then you will notice that it refers to the number of players in relegation. Since the evidence is 5.6 on average, "very large number" is totally wrong.

You have conflated two and here ignored the other.

I do not participate in unnecessary meta-discussion.

I'd expect (b) to be the most important reason for many people. The EGF rules committee appears to have taken the stance that the system is the most important thing and the players are there to serve it, even if it means losing a day off. I imagine most people attending feel rather that the system should be there to serve them.

Here you write as if relegation games affected all congress participants. They affect 5.6 players on average.

Since attendance at a congress is basically a holiday

Presumably there are congress participants for whom that is so. There are also other participants for whom it is a combination of holiday and tournament play. Yet other participants consider the tournament play to be the major aspect of their congress holiday. Top players have yet another consideration: Participating to strive for winning the title.

It is only for the latter for whom relegation games can become relevant at all. That such participants belong to the latter group they express by signing to play in all rounds and wishing to play in the supergroup. Strong players not striving for winning the title do not need to enter the supergroup, and this has sometimes happened. Almost all are very eager to enter the supergroup though.

For players striving to win the title, you put up the consideration whether the players serve the tournament system or whether the system serves the players. Since those players are striving to win the title, a system that determines the title well is important to them. At the same time, the other direction also applies: Players do not want to play 18 hours per day in the championship. So surely there must be some balance. It is different for every player. Some strong players play in every tournament available - others play in only the main tournament. Some strong players play in Wednesday side tournaments - others don't. Therefore a general impression, which you try to paint, that strong players would per se not want to play in tournaments on Wednesdays is wrong.

There is good experience for how popular relegation games are among strong players: The Toyota-Oza-Denzo-Cup (or WTH was the name?) in Amstderdam was extraordinarily popular among strong players, although it had a dense schedule with relegation games after a heavy day during the evening before the first KO round. The relegation games were hard fought. From that, the most likely conclusion is: A tournament system with a profound seeding is very attractive for strong players.

[RobertJasiek]

From the statistics, there is another curious practical observation:

Relegation games affect only players with 4 wins in 7 rounds.

7, 6 or 5 wins are enough to qualify but 4 is still too weak a result. I think this is a very nice feature because players know when they have qualified for sure versus when they still need to show greater ability. Over 60% won games is the border.

Especially bad would be years in which most KO players would be qualified on 4 wins and SOS like in the years 2005 or 2009 with 5 such players.

[John Fairbairn]

I do not participate in unnecessary meta-discussion.

Since you are the one who conflated two independent things to create an unintended further and thus "meta" topic, I'd say you do participate, with relish. Unless by meta-discussion you mean anything you don't like.

I can't say whether the majority of stronger players want to play every day if necessary, but it seems no-one else can either, short of a survey. However, they are a small sub-group relative to the attendance as a whole, and 5 or 6 of that small group may be a large proportion. Whether it is or it isn't, I can accept that a balance has to be struck and your solution may well be the best balance of all the requirements. But the real point here, surely, is that, on the face of it, the rules committee is unilaterally and even contemptuously dismissing the concerns of a national association. If the rules committee really wants to be respected for the merits of its proposed solution, at the very least a bit of diplomacy is necessary. The tail shouldn't be seen to wag the dog.

[RobertJasiek]

The brilliant relegation was invented by Matti.

The rules commission has not officially received the BGA proposal yet. Therefore we cannot meet its concerns as an NA yet.

[HermanHiddema]

The brilliant relegation was invented by Matti.

I actually made the exact same proposal for the 2008 AGM. I don't think it's particularly brilliant, it's rather obvious actually.

[topazg]

From the statistics, there is another curious practical observation:

Relegation games affect only players with 4 wins in 7 rounds.

7, 6 or 5 wins are enough to qualify but 4 is still too weak a result. I think this is a very nice feature because players know when they have qualified for sure versus when they still need to show greater ability. Over 60% won games is the border.

Especially bad would be years in which most KO players would be qualified on 4 wins and SOS like in the years 2005 or 2009 with 5 such players.

I don't consider it especially bad. To be honest, I don't even consider it bad at all.

What is objectively bad about a system that says "get 3 wins or less and you don't qualify, get 5 wins or more and you do, get 4 and the required names will be drawn at random from a hat - you may or you may not"?

No-one can complain about not qualifying unless they won every game they played (technically the most they could have achieved) and fail on a random selection, or even on a tiebreak. Anything else to me leaves no cause for complaint. You want to qualify, make sure you win at least 5 games next time, otherwise you may not qualify. As long as this clear, I see no failing in the system.

[gaius]

From the statistics, there is another curious practical observation:

Relegation games affect only players with 4 wins in 7 rounds.

Still: what happens if, let's say, eight players are tied for one place? Surely you cannot force them to play more than a single relegation game during the rest day. Is something like SOS, SOS-1, SOS-2 or some such system then used to determine who gets the right to play relegation and who doesn't?

[HermanHiddema]

From the statistics, there is another curious practical observation:

Relegation games affect only players with 4 wins in 7 rounds.

Still: what happens if, let's say, eight players are tied for one place? Surely you cannot force them to play more than a single relegation game during the rest day. Is something like SOS, SOS-1, SOS-2 or some such system then used to determine who gets the right to play relegation and who doesn't?

This is what Robert explained above. In this specific case, the best two based on SOS (or whatever the current tiebreak criteria are) will play relegation, the rest is out.

In all cases, relegation for X places will involve 2*X players exactly, based on tie-breakers.

[RobertJasiek]

I actually made the exact same proposal for the 2008 AGM. I don't think it's particularly brilliant, it's rather obvious actually.

Ok, then the honour goes to you! Sorry for having missed the fact!

It is brilliant because
- exactly 8 players are seeded as desired and in a natural manner
- the top MMS players are seeded as desired
- there are not too many relegation games as one could get if necessarily all "lowest" MMS players had to play relegation games
- number of wins gets a decisive meaning
- SOS is not overinterpreted in as great a detail as SOS numbers tempt
- the rough essence of SOS that there is some relation between greater SOS and greater performance is kept to a reasonable extent

[RobertJasiek]

What is objectively bad about a system that says "[...] get 4 [wins] and the required names will be drawn at random from a hat - you may or you may not"?

- 4 of 7 is a too small percentage to be respectable justification for qualification to a championship's final stage.
- 4 of 7 is as +1 only the smallest positive difference of wins and losses; this is not respectable either. It reminds more of noise. "Be an ordinary supergroup player and with some luck you win 4 of your 5 wins in 10 rounds McMahon during the first 7 rounds; then draw the right lot." (There is only one advantage: With some luck, even I would qualify to the KO because 5 wins in 10 rounds is common for me...)
- If you seed players with 4 wins, then such a player can win the title with 7 wins while a player seeded with 7 wins losing in the final will get 2nd place due to 9 wins. Such a thought makes me sick.

[Javaness]

The rules commission does not have any published contact details, as can be seen from the pages
http://www.eurogofed.org/egf/commissions.htm and http://www.eurogofed.org/egf/rulescom.htm
However, I would have thought that emailing both members of the commission to say "Is it possible to suggest improvements for the document at http://www.eurogofed.org/egf/ecrules.htm , because I find it hard to read in places." to be fairly direct. I am sorry that you felt this was indirect.
-edit- Hmm, I notice that the Executive/Contact page has the role "Executive Officer: Rules" I don't believe that, under the constitution, such a role exists as no such election was recorded at the last AGM, but it does contain what might be a contact address for the Rules Commission, although it is not marked as such. Is this the contact address? If so might I suggest that it is labelled as the contact address for the Rules Commission.

As I have stated here already, I believe appearances are important. If an organisation presents itself well, then it may be treated with more respect. This rules document is not well presented, it is in written in less than perfect English. Therefore I offer to improve it, in the interests of improving the EGF. You reject this offer, which is your choice of course. I am surprised that you would reject this offer, since it would be a very small task and would require very little work to approve.

To clarify what I offer, in the main I would simply rewrite each rule so that it could be easily understood by somebody for whom English was not their first language. However, as some parts of the text do not make sense in English, it would obviously be necessary to re-write those. It is not my fault that the Rules commission has published rules which do not make sense. That is the fault in part of whoever wrote them, and in part of whoever approved them.

You say that the text must be opened for discussion at AGM. This is correct, and the AGM has still not discussed or approved this rules document in its current format.

This is quite an evasive reply Robert

As evasive as you not contacting the Rules Commission as a commission yet and asking us whether your complete language rewriting would then be discussed in the Rules Commission and then in the EGF Committee for possible adoption.

Recall that we are not discussing only my personal opinion but you want to change (rather than only comment on) an official EGF rules text. This means a) the text must be opened again for change by the EGF Committee or AGM and b) there must be a majority in the Rules Commission for accepting external input and for this, since I am open to such input, Matti Siivola needs to be convinced. Last time I tried to convince him to allow external input before submitting to the EGF Committee for adoption, I failed to convince him.

Toni Atkins corrected almost the same as the final document; only a few changes he considered necessary.

[Javaness]

Did those present at the AGM of 2010 vote for this system?

I actually made the exact same proposal for the 2008 AGM. I don't think it's particularly brilliant, it's rather obvious actually.

Ok, then the honour goes to you! Sorry for having missed the fact!

It is brilliant because
- exactly 8 players are seeded as desired and in a natural manner
- the top MMS players are seeded as desired
- there are not too many relegation games as one could get if necessarily all "lowest" MMS players had to play relegation games
- number of wins gets a decisive meaning
- SOS is not overinterpreted in as great a detail as SOS numbers tempt
- the rough essence of SOS that there is some relation between greater SOS and greater performance is kept to a reasonable extent

[mumps]

From the statistics, there is another curious practical observation:

Relegation games affect only players with 4 wins in 7 rounds.

Still: what happens if, let's say, eight players are tied for one place? Surely you cannot force them to play more than a single relegation game during the rest day. Is something like SOS, SOS-1, SOS-2 or some such system then used to determine who gets the right to play relegation and who doesn't?

This is what Robert explained above. In this specific case, the best two based on SOS (or whatever the current tiebreak criteria are) will play relegation, the rest is out.

In all cases, relegation for X places will involve 2*X players exactly, based on tie-breakers.

Perhaps someone could explain what happens in the following two conditions as it's not clear to me from the exposition so far:
- more than 2 people are tied under all the tie-breaking options for a single place (I assume this is theoretically possible, but since I haven't studied this in detail don't know if it is)
- some players refuse to play their allotted games in the Relegation system

[HermanHiddema]

Perhaps someone could explain what happens in the following two conditions as it's not clear to me from the exposition so far:
- more than 2 people are tied under all the tie-breaking options for a single place (I assume this is theoretically possible, but since I haven't studied this in detail don't know if it is)

Not possible, placement into the knock-out is based on MMS, then SOS, then Rating, then Lottery.

- some players refuse to play their allotted games in the Relegation system

Erhm, the same thing that happens when any player refuses to play any game, i.e. they lose by default?