AlliumCepa: its not a long journey for those who love driving.
I drove right through from Winnipeg to VCancouver a few months ago, only stopping in Calgary for a few hours to get drunk !!!!!!!!!

paully: That's odd, you make it sound a bit like you are bragging about driving while drunk

nabla: actually I had nowhere to stay in Calgary so I planned to creep out of town and park é sleep in a truck stop but I missed every one of them so just kept going.

Marian_colonelu has been offering a draw in a few of our games to avoid losing. Beware of this.

paully:

Look where he's (Marian_colonelu) from I know him as a cheater.

spirit_66: Are you trying to tell us that people from Romania are cheat(er)s

Pedro Martínez:
YES!!!!

spirit_66:

AlliumCepa: Bulgarians are no better than Romanians.

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:Children, children, ... play nice.

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.

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

Just finished a tournament that started in December, 2005!

7 Points BackGammon > 2100 1/4

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...

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.
:)

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...

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: 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.

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.

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.

:)

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

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

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.

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

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

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

A gibbet!

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

pgt: you thoughtb wrong LOL

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

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."

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).

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: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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: 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.

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? ;-)