<Dmitri & Walter,

The problem with the All-Star game wasn't that it ended in a tie. The problem is that the idiot we have for a baseball commissioner changed the rules in the middle of the game!!

You can't do that!!!

I think they should make the All Star game, and the All-Star game only, end after 11 innings if it's a tie. That way, managers can plan appropriately to use all their players without significant risk of injury or overuse, etc. Yes, it would be a tie, but it's an exhibition game anyway. The point is to see some top quality play by some top quality players, not who wins or loses that game. BUT, we'd need to know the game was going to be played that way from the start.

I agree with Walter that 'This whole culture of insisting on having a winner cheapens a lot of sporting contests.' College football's tiebreaker, to use Gary's words, is 'detrimental to the long term development of the game'. The scores & player's statistics are artificially inflated and as Walter said, games are 'played with some other version of football after regulation time to determine a winner'.

In response to Dmitri who said:
>>Why are so many people against the idea that some people are going to win and some people are going to lose? I don't asee how breaking a tie in any way cheapens anything.

I read about a game once played by a bunch of kids in a youth soccer league. They played the regulation time to a tie. They played two sudden death overtimes to a tie. They had not one, not two, but three shootouts. Results every time...tie. Finally, whoever was in charge decided to flip a coin to decide the winner. They flipped it, but it landed in the grass on an angle and couldn't be called as a heads or tails...twice! Finally, they declared the game a tie. Now how do you those kids who would have been on the losing team would have felt if they had lost after regulation, two overtimes, three shootouts and a coin toss only to lose after that??? The game was a freakin' tie!! Let it be one! Sometimes a game is a tie and it's just something we have to deal with.

I think hockey has got it right, although they have tweaked their rules in the past few years and are starting to mess up a good thing. They play a short overtime period during the regular season. If that ends in a tie, so does the game. In the playoffs, they play full length periods until someone scores. I watched a five overtime period game once. It was phenomenal. I had to become a hockey fan before I appreciated the beauty of playoff hockey and long, long games, but it's a great system. But, if they played all the regular season games out this way, it wouldn't work, because whoever played either team next would get an exhausted opponent and have an unfair advantage. So the ties are needed.

I agree with Dmitri that draws in pente at IYT should not be permitted. Since you can't play to a draw, you shouldn't be able to agree to one. I haven't looked to see if we can do that here. Can we? I can see an instance where you might want to agree to a draw so that a friend can win a tournament section or tie for top honors or something when he otherwise wouldn't. While it's nice to do for a buddy, it hurts the other player who really deserved the top spot and shouldn't be permitted.

Walter,
I didn't choose to engage Gary for three reasons:
From what he said, it seemed like he just wanted to get into it with me for the sake of having an argument/debate/call it what you want and I don't play that game. I have better things to do than argue just for the sake of arguing. Perhaps that's not what he intended, but that's how I interpreted what he said.

2. Gary, applies reasoning to his points in his arguments selectively, NOT in a consistent, logical manner. For example, in one post, he wrote that no respectable pente site allows the unrestricted opening moves. In the same sentence, he promoted the upcoming OKC tournament and that the opening restriction would be used there and that the mighty World Pente Federation would be having it's first meeting there. I replied by posting about pente.net, which allows several variants of pente. Gary's reply was that pente.net doesn't count because it's a mom & pop website.

What a crock!! If pente.net is mom & pop, then what does that say about the OKC tournament and the site associated with it, playpente.com? The tournament is limited to twenty-five people max!! Measure it by daily visits, bandwidth, whatever you want. I'll bet pente.net's use FAR exceeds playpente.com's, yet the site he mentioned counts and the one I mentioned didn't!

In another post he said that any game currently being played on IYT and here was valid. Further, challenged everyone to find a game that met a list of criteria, claiming that any game which did, was invalid. I told him that his premise (and challenge) ITSELF was invalid. Let's say we did find a game played here which fit his list of criteria, what would that prove? According to his premise, it would prove that the game was invalid, but he had already said that all games played here are valid. A game can't be both valid and invalid!! Therefore, HIS PREMISE WAS INVALID. I tried to tell him that several times, but he didn't get it.

3) Gary uses a lot of bad logic, but buries it in long posts so most people don't notice. Here's an example:
Gary said, 'Draws should not occur. Yes they would be quite rare in Poof Pente, but the fact that they WOULD be rare is a good reason to not have them at all.'

So if draws are rare, we should get rid of them altogether? Where's the logic in that? I'll tell you where, nowhere. Why should we get rid of something just because it's rarely occurs? Lunar eclipses are rare (there's one this week, it's the first in three years), I guess we should move the Earth so they don't occur anymore, 'cause Gary says, 'the fact that they [are] rare is a good reason to not have them at all.'

Obviously moving the Earth to avoid eclipses is ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than Gary's statement, and that's my point here.

Now, about this World Pente Federation, is it really an organized entity? Or just a bunch of guys who decided to form a little group? Does it have by-laws or certification of any kind? Or just a bunch of guys who decided to form a little group? Do they have any connection to the legal rights holder of 'Pente'? Or just a bunch of guys who decided to form a little group? And finally, will there actually be significant representation by anyone from any part of the world outside North America? Or just a bunch of (American) guys who decided to form a little group?

A final note: I showed my wife the thread about draws and my & Gary's comments and how I declined to get into it with him. She responded that Gary wouldn't like that. I said why? She said that if Gary doesn't want draws, then he'll be mad at you for leaving the debate where it is. Again, I said why? She said, 'Because it's a draw!' LMAO!!! ROTFMLAO!!!!!

Thad