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Subject: Re: CCT8 Update: New entrant

Author: Peter Kappler

Date: 20:57:51 02/15/06

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On February 15, 2006 at 23:26:28, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On February 15, 2006 at 17:35:06, Peter Kappler wrote:
>
>>On February 15, 2006 at 17:13:54, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On February 15, 2006 at 16:24:20, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 15, 2006 at 15:18:56, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On February 15, 2006 at 13:19:35, George Tsavdaris wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On February 15, 2006 at 12:59:32, Peter Skinner wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On February 15, 2006 at 12:55:56, Peter Skinner wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Hello all,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>As promised by Vincent last week, he has entered Diep into CCT8.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Nice but what hardware he will use? Any huge one or normal(fast).....?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also is this the most large number of participants for a CCT or there have been
>>>>>>and any larger....?
>>>>>> I remember very recently Hiarcs and an experimental Junior participating. Did
>>>>>>that happen in the last CCT or in another different than CCT tournament.....?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also 9 rounds with so many participants seems a bit short for me. Do you
>>>>>>consider increasing the number of rounds.....?
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>9 rounds is enough to find a clear 1st place for 512 opponents.  :)
>>>>
>>>>This is correct if one program wins all the games but it will probably not
>>>>happen.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>By the time this event ends, the top group will have all played each other.
>>>>
>>>>I am not sure of it.
>>>>In theory it is possible to have 10 winners with 6 out of 9 and in this case it
>>>>is clear that they need to beat weaker programs to get more than 4.5 out of 9 so
>>>>not every pair of winners played.
>>>>
>>>>Uri
>>>
>>>In practice this doesn't happen.  The real problem is that by round 6, the
>>>winner is pretty certain, although three games against weaker opponents are
>>>left, and there the luck factor often lurks behind a pawn and jumps out to
>>>present a surprise and knock one of the top players off.
>>>
>>
>>I have to believe that you're half-kidding here.  Surely you don't believe that
>> adding 3 more rounds increases the variance of the final result?
>>
>>-Peter
>>
>
>Yes, it absolutely does.  Simple example:  4 strong programs, 12 weak ones.
>after round 1, you have 8 with 1, 8 with 0, the 8 with 1 include the top 4.
>After two rounds, the top four have two, the bottom four have 0, and the rest
>have 1 (assuming no draws).  after 3 more rounds the top four have played.  What
>now for those other 4 rounds?  Other programs?  With the luck factor increasing
>variance?
>


What is this "luck factor"???

If one of the strong programs loses or draws against one of the weak programs,
that's not luck - it's a signal that the program might not be as strong as you
thought.

It seems obvious to me that increasing the number of rounds always reduces the
variance of the final tournament standing, regardless of the distribution of the
participants' ratings.

-Peter



>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>log2(#players) is a good number of rounds for starters.  one more gives a couple
>>>of more top finishers a better final result.  But too many and many of the final
>>>rounds are simply meaningless, as we've seen multiple times.  For example, at
>>>the last WCCC they tried to fudge the round-robin pairing to put a few of the
>>>"interesting games" on the final few rounds.  Didn't work out at all and the
>>>event was over early...
>>>
>>>There can always be too many rounds in a Swiss.
>>>
>>>9 is on the edge.  Both in final results and in total time required to play 9
>>>games...



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