have fun with the tournies!!

Walter Montego: Of course discrimination exists on this site as it does everywhere else in the world. But I contend that discrimination based on rating is an entirely different ball of wax than segregation based on nationality. If you equate these two, i'm afraid nothing else I say will be of any value to you. So the Dark Chess tournament, had you been excluded on basis of being American, it would've been the same?

<Simple enough, so where's the problem?>
Oversimplification is the problem, and I do not see all types of dicrimination as ethically equal, even though they are functionally equal.

BIG BAD WOLF: that proves my point exactly. So I guess I'm not the only one who has a problem with this? Aux pays des aveugles, les borgnes sont rois!

the thing is, anyone of any race or gender can obtain a knight or above membership. Calling different membership levels segregation is a bit of a misnomer.

well, i guess it's all about segregation here now! am i the only one that has a problem with this?

hmm first Czechs only, now ladies. It's good to be a lady Czech on this site!

i think that if membership expires during a pond game, the nascent pawns should sluice into a new pond called the cesspool. It would be an extremely frustrating version of pond designed to take half a year or more to complete with 7 days per move. However, the winner, for resilience and fortitude, would be offered a knight membership equal to the amount of days they spent in the cesspool. What do you think, Fencer, is that a great marketing tool or what?

True, I just think any numbers one could come up with to weight the "value" of finishing first over 2nd, 3rd over 4th etc. would be too arbitrary. I'm curious too to see what, if anything, Fencer comes up with.

grenv: my nickname is stubborn in Korean. Well, actually "blocker." I'm extrapolating and OFF TOPIC now, never mind.

Walter Montego: all ratings systems have some validity, but I do like the one I proposed because it has no inherent weighting, instead, one can see the average placing and judge for themselves how good a player is, without need for an arbitrary multiplicative or log factor. Again, not to say logs etc aren't valid, but when I look at someone's chess rating and they got to be 2500, it doesn't tell me if they skimmed along beating 2100s consistently to get there or if they beat 2300s and lose to 2700s. I can make the value judgement myself, and I would like to do that if ponds begin to be rated.

I can see bwild's idea as making perfect sense, only winning counts. That's why we play, no one ever plays to come in second.

But I can also see why someone who consistently finishes 2nd, 3rd etc must be given their due level of respect as well! How much less respect than the winner? I think that is unquantifiable, and their mean place (M.P.) allows anyone to judge that for themselves.

how about an "average place" stat, which could be given any denominator. ie: someone finishes 36th in a pond of 96, and then finishes 2nd in a pond of 16. We would probably make 16 the base denominator (although others are possible) and from the above example give the player an average placing of 4/16, meaning thus far they have finished 4th on the mean for every 16 players in their ponds. Of course, not all examples will be whole numbers, so we could round off to whole or 1 or 2 decimals. That way, the average placing out of 16 participants could replace a cumbersome 4-digit number and wouldn't have to be weighted either. Of course, show the wins and total ponds and other cool stats too. But this one would, like the usual BKR ratings, give a reasonable expectation of how a 5.0 and 9.6 would do in the same pond...the 5 would be expected to finish 4.6 places ahead of the 9.6. And of course, as the sample set increased, the numbers would flatten out to more accurate measures. I believe comparing expected placements is better than BKR because it is not head to head by any stretch of the imagination. Also, extremely easy for Fencer to program.

i like it, the method and the acronym.

ok, i got the revised post. The inverted rating system is worth a shot, i'm trying to think of anywhere else a similar mode is in use.

EdTrice: in that way, there would very likely be a sizable population of negative ratings too after awhile, would you propose the floor be at zero? Are you assuming the base rating of 1200 like the other BKRs?

i don't like the idea of bifurcating boards as such, it does little to promote free exchange of ideas even though, ironically, that was his well-meaning purpose. It's akin to privatization.

aww my post doesn't make sense now..

the government is the servant of the people. Therefore it should let us get the bonus.

don't know but just noticed you're kicking ass! keep it up, Stevie!

no, you're right, men tend to intentionally overcomplicate things. Oh, wait, or was it women? Hmmm...never mind

BerniceC: well, a paradigm is like a mode of thinking or a belief system, and when you are forced to re-examine them and conclude you need to adopt something new, that's a paradigm shift.

it's initially such a counterintuitive bet that it probably was immediately discarded, but you've forced a paradigm shift already, i'll bet!

i know, but it's just so funny to see a bid like that so late. However, I wouldn't know much about surviving into late rounds...:)

that was really cunning grenv. You must try it again

yes, but in golf you are essentially competing against yourself. Here, who wants to play a rigged or fixed game, ranked or not? Now, of course, this is blown out of proportion, I know no one's doing it, but cheating ruins games, who cares if it's for rankings, it's still for posterity!

revisionism?

grenv: I empathize with you, and it was after my experience that I refused to play more than 3 day/move limits with unknown quantities. I thought Fencer banned all alter pawn egos?!

Stardust: you're right, it's not relevant to pond, but it does show a lot about someone's character if they do that and at the same time brag about being "unbeaten"! It's funny how the really good players never find it necessary to cheapen the games but the journeymen sometimes do.

you guys are all messaging each other to get rid of me. That's why I fell in the second round. You all conspired to bet more than 2, what are the odds of that happening without collusion! Cheats! fakers!

Do I have to add a joke tag?

Man, I suck at this game

trying to use a computer to win at pond is like using a prog to try and solve or beat poker. The best players have limited tells and a computer can't read them. Also, it just doesn't work because of a law, better than Nash's or anyone's theory: Murphy's Law. One of my extinction opponents recently pointed to inebriation as more powerful than any of that, though, which makes for a pretty unpredictable closed system.