pgt: Absolutely no action? How do you explain that we do use autopass in our game then? Without any action taken by Fencer?

Thad: You are correct. Fencer will implement what he wants to implement. Two years ago I gave up my paid membership and promised to renew it when there was a decent autopass facility. Despite a lot of great suggestions (at the time) as to how this should be done, there has been absolutely no action And I have saved 2 years subscription!!

No offense to everybody, but this will never happen. Fencer does what he wants and he'd never take the time to study the math to do all that's involved here. I'm not speaking for him, of course, I've just been here long enough to know how he operates.

A better strategy would be to ask Fencer to give us access to player statistics (but no personal information) and then someone could program up any stats we want. You could have any or all of the ideas mentioned below. Since all the info relating to past moves and current games and such is already public (except for private games), Fencer would not be giving anyone access to information that isn't already available, so it shouldn't be a problem.

That's my $.02.

grenv: I like the idea of coming up with a formula to rate how quickly players move for several reasons. It helps solve the problem of ending up in tourneys with those people who abuse the system. It also gets us away from trying to come up with a way to limit these abusers that doesn't punish the rest of us. I'm not disagreeing with what you are trying to do, just with one of your presumptions.

The only concern I have every time this conversation comes up is the desire to make a set of rules to deal with a small few abusers. I see this in many situations. You can never set the rules perfectly enough to weed them out without injuring innocent bystanders. The best you can do is inform yourself of who the abusers are and how to identify them. That is what you are suggesting, and that's why I think it's a good idea. But like anything else, set the standards too high and you pull in the innocents, set it too low and a few abusers get by. It's a delicate balance. That's why these discussions are helpful.

(BTW- I apologize if I'm rambling, I'm studying for finals and have been immersed in theology for hours and half my brain is still there.)

UzzyLady: I apoligize - I thought playbunny was making a joke... outlier is a fairly common word. And as you showed the internet makes all words knowable in a few seconds anyway - why wait for me to respond?

I am making an assumption - it isn't a perfect system. It is, however, better than the one in place now - which is nothing. Come up with a better formula and I'll back it up.

grenv: You said "the fact he has 200 games now is vitally important. In this case he will be twice as slow because he has twice as many games". I respectfully suggest that you are making a huge assumption that isn't necessarily correct. It may mean the player knows they have some time off so want some more games, or the 100 games weren't nearly enough to keep them busy. It also doesn't take into account the type of game being played. 100 new chess games is completely different than 100 new Ludo games. The player may be one who moves once a day in each game no matter what. Just because their game load doubled does not mean he will be twice as slow. There are too many variables involved to make that jump.

Oh and playBunny I had to look up outlier myself.
Outlier- a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample

grenv: Nice try, but you know what an outlier is

Nice try? What's being tried? Oh, you mean trying to get you to expand on your use of the word? Yeah, I do that when I'm not sure exactly what someone means. It doesn't tend to work when that someone assumes that I should know what they mean and must therefore be asking for nefarious reasons.

And if that's the attitude then ... yeah, whatever you say. You're right. Great idea, grenv, perfect choice of metric, it should work wonderfully. No more exploration is necessary.

playBunny: Nice try, but you know what an outlier is. I would use this as a filter for tournaments or waiting games for example.

grenv: Okay, but I'm still not clear why "too many games" is relevant. I'm also still wondering about where the speed-of-play information is to be displayed and how and when is it to be used? Oh, and what's an outlier? ;-)

playBunny: Too many in this context simply meant the number that starts to affect your ability to keep up. If I play 10 games I may do all my moves quickly, going to 20 may be the same (I just play 2x as many moves to make up for the extra games), however if I go to 1000 games it's unlikely I'll be moving 100x faster to compensate.
I may move a little faster though, which is why the average can't be over too long a time.

paully: In my mind that makes you an outlier, not to mention annoying if I happened to also be online.

Of course we could apply advanced mathematics to this problem and get a better result, I can't be bothered figuring that out - until someone does my simple formula would be good enough for a start.

playBunny: I agree with playBunny that the average can be misleading.
The following is an example of how my play could give a misleading version of my rate of play

I have a tendency to play "next game with friend" and when I am online with the likes of Pedro Martinez for instance or AlliumCepa who are both on my friends list, it is common for me to play 100 or so moves against either player in quick succession to the detriment of non friends still waiting for me to make moves in my game.

grenv: I don't think that doubling the number of games will double the number of moves, but if it does then clearly that player isn't playing too many games.

What's the meaning pf "too many" and how is it relevant?

While I agree with the complaints that an average wouldn't be *exact*, I still think it's a better indication than nothing. I think you guys are talking about outliers.

Also, in response to the queries about number of active games: I don't want to know how quickly someone plays, I want to know how quickly someone plays *each game*. I don't think that doubling the number of games will double the number of moves, but if it does then clearly that player isn't playing too many games.

AbigailII: Such a single datum isn't really an improvement over an average. Consider our chess player with a 30-days chess game but who loves a quick game of backgammon.

I do think a time per match metric is better than a time per move one. Those 5 anti-backgammons with the friend would only be 5 matches rather than 500 moves and would therefore distort the average much less.

All: One think I'm not clear on, where is the information to be displayed and how and when is it to be used?

I am not really that interested in averages. I've encountered players that will maintain a high average, but still move slowly. Some people play games of one type rapidly, and of another type only when they're about to run out. Or they find the time to play 5 anti-backgammon matches in a day against their friend, and don't bother moving at their other games. High averages, but you don't really want to play them.

I propose the following statistic: given a game G a player has to move on, let T_G the time it has been the players turn. (So, if today is Dec 27, and his opponent has last moved on Dec 24, T_G is 3 days). Then let T_max the maximum of all T_G's of a player. A high T_max means the person is moving slowly in at least one game at the moment. If his T_max is close to when he last made any move, he's probably on vacation, or otherwise unable to play. If there's much difference between T_max and when he was last active, he has too many games running then he can manage.

Some considerations:

Whatever metric is chosen, there ought to be one for each type of game, or the games should be broken into categories. Ludo can be played in an instant but chess can take a while to ponder. A moves per day metric could penalise someone who likes to bash out a game or two of Ludo if they ponder long and hard in their chess games.

The metric also needs to be computationally cheap. If, like a moving average, it requires a fair bit of data manipulation per move then it's probably not a good idea. If, like a graph, it requires a lot of storage, ie. values for each move, then it's also very expensive. Bear in mind that the ratings graphs are just a couple of data per match. The utility/cost value for the speed graph would be very low, for all that it's an interesting graph at times.

Constellation36: In order to be clear about my:
like the tendency of "moves per day" (and yes this is an average obviously :-) ) when the number of games change, which is what you want.

"Moves per day" is an average as it is just a sample arithmetic mean(average) if we don't use all the active days the player has played games.

I guess your argument comes because actually when we speak about "moves per day" for a specific day and this is how you meant it i guess, that you mean "moves per 1 day" or moves that have been played in a specific day, so actually we divide by 1 so there is no actual average(mean).
And indeed if we speak about 1 day there is no real point for speaking about average, BUT mathematics are mathematics and definitions are definitions. :-) So "moves per day" for a specific, 1 day, it is an average(arithmetic mean). A trivial one.

It becomes non-trivial and worthful when we speak about "moves per day" over a period of time so if we have played 500 moves over 50 days we find the average 500/50 = 10 moves per day.

grenv: I disagree... the fact he has 200 games now is vitally important. In this case he will be twice as slow because he has twice as many games... This is meant to be something indicating *current* ability to play quickly.

Previously you proposed the indicator, let's say it S = (moves per day) / (number of games currently running) for measuring players speed ability to play games.
So what you say now about "the fact he has 200 games now is vitally important. In this case he will be twice as slow because he has twice as many games" does not make sense at all.

Reality is that if S is a good indicator, then it has to be kept almost steady, so if the player has double games to play than before, then the indicator S, estimates that the player will probably double his "moves per day" rate.

If you disagree that the S indicator can estimate that, then you don't actually need such an indicator as it's useless to predict anything, like the tendency of "moves per day"(and yes this is an average obviously :-) ) when the number of games change, which is what you want.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Also about your:
"What happened to the idea of rating people... moves per day / # of games currently running.

If this number was >1 you would expect a move per day, but a number of 0.1 would be a move every 10 days and you could avoid those players."

This is not true at all. That would be true if the indicator was "moves per day" and not "moves per day per number of running games".

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The best indicator of someone's pace to play moves per day, is obviously the move per day indicator so what is best to do is to see::
•A Y-X graph of Y = moves/day and X = days (for example for the last 365 days).
•The standard deviation of the number of moves/ day, over the average moves/day for the last 365 days.
•The arithmetic mean(average) value of moves per day, over the last 365 days for example.

The number 365 of days can be changed to the most desired, for example to be done for the last 6 months.

If the graph is "rough" with Everest types of maximums and many zero valleys and the standard deviation large, despite the value of the average moves/day, then the player is not very trustworthy to count that he will play quick.

The above 3 indicators, make the number of games a player has irrelevant, since a small standard deviation with a large average (that means a not "rough" graph), means the player's history says that this player plays fast, always fast, no matter the number of games.

Just my 0.02c.

AlliumCepa: a graph is just a series of results, so my formula could certainly be graphed if you want to show history.

It isn't meant to be clairvoyant, so while doubling the number of games *may* not mean twice as slow, it's the best guess with the available data. Of course you could discount time where no moves are available if you want to be more accurate -
moves made / time with at least one move available, over, say, the last month.

"moves per day" = moves / days. It *is* an average. Otherwise I would say "moves made today" or something like that.

grenv: Quote №1: "In this case he will be twice as slow because he has twice as many games"
That's not true. You can't automatically assume that. You don't know how this player will perform with 200 games. All you can tell for sure is how he actually did so far, but not how he will do from now on. Maybe this player will get organized and starts playing even more than before, bringing his AR to say... 2! Why not? You can't say it's impossible. What if those first 100 games are "leftovers" from old 2005-2006 "30-days-per-move" tournaments and the poor guy is stucked with last-minute-moving oponents and it isn't really his fault for his low AR. Maybe he simply has no chance to play faster because he has to wait for his oponents to move. What if those new 100 games are his favourite kind of game and he spends all day clicking from now on?

How about the oposite case? Say we have a relatively quick player. But (such things happen all the time) poor guy gets hospitalized and his AR begins to suffer. In this case we should implement not a single number (the AR), but a graph (!) showing how a player's AR changes.

I see your idea is to display *current* ability. But you can't do that on a turn based game site where real people participate. They eat, sleep, take a p00p, do shopping etc. These are not machines that spend 24 hours per day in clicking. Instead, all we have different styles of playing. Some get early in the morning and do 20-30 clicks. Some use their lunch break. Some people suffer from insomnia and play all night. Others can afford to play all day... How can be defined their *current* speed?

Again, I repeat: do not assume. The most honest thing we should do is to quote how this guy has been doing so far.

Quote №2: "I would argue "# of moves per day" implies an average"
Yes, you could argue. But again, you wouldn't be right. If you really meant it, you should say it. I tried discreetly to skip this issue, but since you insist showing...

Forget it. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm tired of this.

AlliumCepa: I disagree... the fact he has 200 games now is vitally important. In this case he will be twice as slow because he has twice as many games... This is meant to be something indicating *current* ability to play quickly.

Also, I would argue "# of moves per day" implies an average (though I admit I needed to say over how many days - hence the mod later).

grenv: Quote: "TC: It's the same thing using different words."
No offence, man, but it makes a huge difference by adding the word "average". The way you stated it the first time ("# of moves per day"), it sounds like player's moves are calculated daily and reset at server's midnight. Maybe your idea indeed was to propose the "average daily moves during the last 30 consecutive days", but you didn't make it clear. All I did was to bringten up your idea, because the "average" thing wasn't too ovbius.

Furthermore, to make the ratio more precise, there is one thing (that I can think of) to avoid. Here is an example: We have a player who had 100 running games during the last 30 days and he makes 100 moves per day. So as average, the guy has ratio=1. Now imagine on day 31st a huge tournament kicks in and suddanly there are 100 more games to play, totaling to 200. During our guy sleeps (and hasn't made any moves) his ratio will drop to 0.5, becouse "now" he has twice as much games as before. So my suggestion is: we don't make the formula "in real time", but rather a "moving average" that deals with 30 complete days in order to smoothen such peaks.

In other words, here is a sample "Activity Ratio" formula: AR=[Σ_i=1..30(M_i/G_i)]/30,
where:
i - day number, runs from 1 to 30;
M_i - moves made during day i. Calculated at server's midnight;
G_i - number of running games at the end of day i.

Of course, I don't pretend to be thorough.

First of all i have to say a big WOW and kudos to Brainking that added Fevga and Plakoto to the available games. 2 of the most played Greek games along with Portes(which is a slight variation of Backgammon).

It's now time people from all over the world to learn and play the King of Backgammon-type of games which is Fevga of course!! Its deep strategic nature is incomparable with any known Backgammon-type game and i'm glad Fencer has chosen the Greek version(Fevga) and not its Turkish brother Moultezim nor the Russian Narde.
The last 2 are equally good games and slightly different than Fevga, but the more simplistic/symmetrical/logical/strong(that create a slightly more strategical game) rules of Fevga make it the best!

Fevga is very difficult to master and there are generally 4 main different types of main strategies one can follow to play it. All have their + and - and it's difficult right now to explain all on detail. For now i will just say that this game is by no means to create a 6 prime or a 5-prime, etc. It's not about big primes at all! It's about a combination of controlling the tempo(the definition of it is big and complicated), controlling the key squares of the position(that vary strongly depending on the position) not necessarily by big primes, having flexibility(MUCH more important than in Backgammon) and controlling the critical area of the phase of the game which is different each time and depends on the overall position, usually the critical area of the game changes 1 to 2 times in each game.

Plakoto is a very good game also, but i prefer Fevga and Backgammon as it tends to be slower than Backgammon and not so strategic as Fevga.

There are some different variations of Fevga described on the WEB that suggest how this game is played by Greeks and add to the confusion about it. I(a Greek indeed) have posted information on REC....Backgammon of how the majority of us play it and thank God the www.bkgm.com has listened to me and added my sayings into their rules.
Bad thing is that they have not followed my words exactly and now they have 1 mistake, but my emails for some reason, do not arrive to them.

The same mistake and one more serious(in Plakoto) is on the rules for both games here in Brainking.

The Brainking rules for Plakoto say:
--------------
Plakoto:
"The last checker on your starting point is called the mother checker. If this checker gets pinned by the opponent before it has left the start, the game is over and the player loses the game. The only exception is if the opponent still has checkers on his starting point, since in this case his own mother checker is still threatened. A game in which both mothers are pinned is a draw."
--------------

•This is not true as there is a very rare case(the fact it is very rare is irrelevant) where if one pins your mother and has escaped from the starting point, there is still hope for the player that his mother has been pinned to win.
►Look for example the starting position:
http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc34/Crocodile13/11662.jpg

►And how the game evolved(with Red to move):
http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc34/Crocodile13/1166.jpg

►Red has pinned blue's mother and red has moved all his pieces inside his home board. Red rolls 1-1 so has to release the pin on the blue mother as this is the only move. Blue now rolls 6-6 and we have a good battle now. :-)
Many other such type of positions exist.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Brainking rules for Fevga say:
--------------
"It is allowed to build a prime (six consecutive blocked points) anywhere else (not in the player's starting quarter), but if opponent has collected all his checkers onto the one point behind player's prime, the player must unblock a point in his prime to allow the opponent a chance to move."
--------------

•There is a slight mistake on this.
The correct should be:
"It is allowed to build a 6-prime anywhere else (not in the player's starting quarter), but if the opponent for all possible dice rolls can't move any of his checkers (for example because he has collected all his checkers onto the one point behind player's prime), the player must unblock a point in his prime to allow the opponent a chance to move."

pgt: What? Give my carrots to those who are the cause of so much suffering and pain?

pgt: you thoughtb wrong LOL

playBunny: I would have thoughtb people like you would offer carrots :-)

grenv: Hmmm ....... let's see now .......... oh, I've got just the thing ...

A gibbet!

playBunny: yeah, but I was thinking of something you could use to limit players in a tournament for example.

grenv: At GoldToken there is a clock value shown for each player which gives the amount of time that the game was waiting for that player. Although there's no average available, examination of a few games can show you whether a player is a cheetah or a sloth.

Here, for instance, is a perhaps an extreme example, but one that would pale against some of the BrainKing players, - a player who has taken 105 days versus his opponent who has taken only 16.
http://www.goldtoken.com/games/play?g=4665387

TC: It's the same thing using different words.

# of moves per day (i suggest calculating the last months average rather than entire history)

divided by

number of games you are playing now

The "now" part is very important... since it will show the real time value. if someone pares down his/her games the number will go up.

AlliumCepa: Just as you fixed:"average daily moves / total started games" ratio is simple short but more useful.

grenv: I second it too. That's very helpful..

grenv:Great idea! This "average daily moves / total started games" ratio could be a part of every player's Profile page.  

What happened to the idea of rating people... moves per day / # of games currently running.

If this number was >1 you would expect a move per day, but a number of 0.1 would be a move every 10 days and you could avoid those players.

:)

I agree that tournaments should not be arbitrarily shortened.  I have no particular problem with tournaments that last years; I have gotten myself into tourneys with 7 day timing and regretted it, that's for sure.  There are some players on this site who will always use every available minute, that's the main reason these things are as drawn out as they are.  The only way to avoid it (if you want to) is to play tournaments with short timing and relatively few points per match; it helps if you know who the sluggards are and can avoid playing with them.

grenv: how would a player feel if they were fast movers but a tourney they were about to win got cancelled because of a time limit. I feel they might be very displeased about such an event and it is not fair on them.

lostpawn: Sure, but in the history of sports, games etc... is there any precedent for a competition lasting more than a year?

My fault I guess for joining a tournament with a 7 day limit... but it was more than 3 years ago when I didn't know any better.

Even something simple like starting the next round when winners are known in the current round would probably make a big difference.

And, yes, 1000 games seems silly - how is that fun? Surely 100 is enough so you always have a turn waiting - more seems like a waste.

grenv:
I don't think this is a solution because the "spirit"of tournaments is to have a winner. i think that paying members should self restrict their games to a number they are capable of playing.I've met with players having 1000+ games going on. I don't blame them,they want to have alot of games to play.That's their problem.But when it comes to having timed out 2 or three times,then they should understand that they have to lower down the number of games going on...

alanback: I'm still playing in a tournament that started October 2005!!!! It's called "the first doubling cube tournament" or something like that.

I think tournaments probably should blow up after a year and running games continue on as "friendly's" on the assumption that nobody cares about the result any more.
:)

alanback:
I got stuck to similar situations before. Some players are really slow on playing, and for this reason, I play only elimination tournaments now...

Just finished a tournament that started in December, 2005!

7 Points BackGammon > 2100 1/4

I count that you have bore off 11 and have 4 left to bear off

Fencer: Exactly. Thanks for understanding.
Anyway, I'll take alanback's advice and just take it easy.

AlliumCepa: I think Pedro's point is that spirit_66 suggests that all Romanian players are cheaters (which is how it really sounds like it). And such remarks should not be posted anywhere.

Pedro Martínez:Children, children, ... play nice.

AlliumCepa: ME jumping to general conclusions? ME being insulting? LOL You are either kidding me or there must be a few brain cells missing inside your skull.

Pedro Martínez: Do not jump into such general conclusions - it's insulting. You don't know all Bulgarians, neither all Romanians. It's like the statement that "All black people are criminals."

AlliumCepa: Bulgarians are no better than Romanians.

Pedro Martínez: If you don't believe, check those two players: Iana Florin and Iana Florin 1. He told me himself these two accounts are his.