Here's one way in which losing can be to my advantage.

Suppose I'm playing the very last game of the preliminary round. I'm already assured of being in the finals. I'm playing against player X, who is in 6th place, but will advance to the finals if he beats me.

Suppose I already won my first game against X, so if I lose, my record against X will be 1-1. Suppose also that I lost both my games against player Y, who is currently in 5th place.

If I lose to X, I'll be 1-1 against the 5th finalist.
If I beat X, I'll be 0-2 against the 5th finalist.
Isn't it to my advantage to deliberately lose?

Here's another way:

Suppose player Z and I are fighting for the championship, and Z was 0-2 against X but 2-0 against Y. Wouldn't it make sense for me to deliberately lose - since that puts X into the finals instead of Y, thereby hurting my main competitor?

With any luck, none of this will be an issue. However, if we keep this league format in future seasons, then the issue is bound to come up eventually. When it does, things can get really ugly.

I like the way the preliminary seedings work, but I do see a potentially big problem with the current system. Since games from the preliminary groups count for the finals, you can easily end up with a situation where towards the end of preliminary play, a top player is better off losing a game than winning it. Any time you make that possible, you're asking for trouble.

It's too late to change that now, but I do think that problem should be addressed before next season.

Anyway, thanks for organizing the league. I really like the way the results are registered automatically and immediately!

I'd like a "no" vote on Bazaar. The problem with that game is that it's possible to sit down for 20 minutes to figure out the optimal strategy, so if I'm ever called on to play it seriously, that's exactly what I'd do. In my view, that's a fatal game design flaw. Even without that issue, the game just isn't that good, IMHO.

I vote "yes" on Caylus. The league has a little too many light, luck-based games as is, and we could use another "heavy" game that rewards skill. Duration really shouldn't be an issue, since every town should be able to find one player who can deal with it.

I won't pick a second "yes" vote, since I don't really know most of the other games. Let the issue be decided by people who actually have a firm opinion. 

[Result Recorded]

EnglishTown-Illuminati, Yinsh:

Bramblyspam - DerFinne 0-1

Can't win them all!

Result Recorded

[Result Recorded]

EnglishTown-Xenopolis, Yinsh:

Bramblyspam - Kikki 1-0

Result Recorded

sternsupermann (lvl 8, Armfeld) just logged out during a game of backgammon. There was plenty of play left, but I had just rolled double sixes and reached a very favorable position (with an excellent fence locking one of his pieces in my home).

As of this writing, he's been gone for over ten minutes and hasn't logged back on.


(08:31:56) -- The sheriff of city spectremac bans sternsupermann from EnglishTown.
(08:31:56) -- spectremac tells the city guards to refuse sternsupermann access to the city.
(08:31:56) -- spectremac commands the watch to send sternsupermann away with the following words. 'For leaving Backgammon game in losing position'

[Result Recorded]

City pokal, EnglishTown-DragonTown, Yinsh:

Bramblyspam - Amon 1-0

Result Recorded

[Result Recorded]

Englishtown-AnimalCity, Yinsh:

Bramblyspam - GeistEs 1-0

Result Recorded

Mime - thanks for explaining the importance of schedules in olympics. I understand and appreciate your point, even though it doesn't help me participate. I do plan on being in the next Yinsh liga season. I've won the CCJuS liga twice, so I'm not entirely new to ligas

Many English-speakers don't even know about ligas, and others are reluctant to participate. The language barrier is a big problem - news announcements about new liga seasons are in German but not in English, and if a liga web page is German-language only, that strongly discourages non-German speakers from taking part. I don't mean to criticize the liga organizers - they're volunteers, they may not even speak English, and running a liga is enough work just in one language. However, much of the English-speaking community is not being reached, and it does take extra effort to reach it.

The English-language community should also be able to do more to spread the word about ligas and tournaments. For example, we could have Archie (the EnglishTown puppet) make regular news announcements about upcoming ligas and tournaments, and we haven't been doing that. (I'm asking our mayor about that now).

In general, I feel there's a very large potential interest in ligas/tournaments among non-German speakers. We just haven't figured out how to spread the word about it yet.

I've been babbling a bit on how the Olympic scheduling largely prevents non-Europeans from participating, over in this thread in the Olympics forum. I'm posting this link just in case some of you would like to weigh in on the matter. 

I haven't asked around, but I'm pretty sure that Asians/Americans would have serious medal contenders for virtually every game on BSW. I suspect that the games that are most popular overall would also be most popular among Asians/Americans, so those would be the ones to schedule for weekends. It wouldn't be of much help to me personally, but at least a few more non-Europeans would be able to play.

I really, really would prefer to have finals without a specific scheduled time slot, since that would allow everyone to participate. However, it sounds to me like the olympics won't be making that kind of a change.

As for Asian/Pacific games, I certainly don't feel ready to be in charge of running the whole affair! After all, I've never run a BSW tournament of any kind, or even participated in a swiss-style tournament. However, if the organizers need another volunteer, I'd be happy to help out. 

Here's a topic on a different kind of problem that I brought up in another forum. It's not a technical/mechanical issue, but it's still one that concerns a lot of non-Europeans.

A quick summary:  most non-Europeans can't play in events like the Olympics, because the finals have to be played at a precisely scheduled time that doesn't work for them.

Possible solutions:  Hold separate "Pacific Games" for non-Europeans, or alternatively, change the Olympic format.

Also, one of the big problems is that non-German speakers have no awareness of any discussions on these forums. if we want English-language people to read the forums and take part in the discussions, it would probably be best to concentrate English-language topics in one forum. If we scatter them among 20 different forums, each of which is 90% German, then naturally very few non-German speakers will ever read them.

I know I never even looked at the AG forum until someone pointed me here. I wouldn't have stumbled on this place by myself - the very title of the forum is German, so why should I expect English-language discussions here? 

Of course, 09 is no good for anyone who needs to work, and 00/24 is no good for anyone who needs to sleep (especially if they work the next day). I really don't think it's possible to have a prescheduled, fixed-time final if you want a championship that everyone can play in. Weekends might be okay, but you can't schedule every final for the same time. 

Here's an indicator of the size of the problem: In a typical month, EnglishTown gets at least half a dozen medals in multiplayer games, and I've seen us get as many as ten. In the last olympics, Englishtown got one medal, and that was because an E-towner in the Attika guild got to schedule the time of the Attika final. That should make it obvious just how big an issue scheduling is for non-Europeans.

Thanks for the suggestion on the internationalization AG. I took a look at it, but from what little is posted, it seems to focus mostly on translation issues. That's important to deal with, but it's not what I personally want to focus on. If I get involved in running something, I'd rather have it deal more directly with games - perhaps Pacific games, perhaps something else.

If we want more active english-language forums, it's probably necessary to concentrate all the english-language stuff in one forum. If we sprinkle English-language issues between 20 different forums that are all 90% German, then of course very few English-language players will read them, or even be aware of them. (Yes, I see the irony in what I'm saying - perhaps this thread doesn't even belong in this forum?)

Of course from my perspective, there isn't much attraction in having "one great event" that I can't even participate in. 

It's understandable that people don't get excited about reading boards, when 80-90% of the posts are in a language they don't even understand. Most people don't even know how/where to find the specific boards for, say, EnglishTown, and I'm sure very few people even read the official English language boards. (I only go there once every few months myself).

For announcements, I think the best we've got is Archie, the EnglishTown puppet. He announces the news every hour in the E-town channel, but needless to say, a lot of the people who'd be interested in Pacific Games aren't in EnglishTown.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I'd rather find solutions than whine about problems. What can we do to make things better?

Perhaps more specifically, what can *I* do to make things better? Who do I talk to, and what do I do?

I think we all agree that it's very difficult to schedule people on different continents for a specific time slot. I'll admit that I hadn't even considered games that take more than two players. 

It's not hard to play in preliminaries. The problem with preliminaries is that there's no point in playing in them if you already know that you won't be able to play in the final. I still feel that if your preliminaries leave you with somewhere around 6-10 players, you should be able to let those players play in a liga-style final without any specific time slot (at least for 2-player games). Determining a champion might take months instead of weeks, but if the alternative prevents half of BSW from even participating, I'm okay with letting the events take a little longer.

I know there are problems. I've never run a tournament on BSW, or even played in one that used a specific time slot, so I'm sure I don't fully understand all the problems involved. I just think it should be possible to come up with a system that works better than the current one.

Pacific games would be nice. I have no idea how to arrange them, but I don't want to whine about problems, I'd rather try to find solutions. I know I'm not prepared to run the whole affair, but I'd be willing to help out, if someone else lets me know what I need to do.

How would one even go about creating a "Pacific Games Committee"? It's hard enough even making people aware of this sort of thing: most non-German speakers don't even read the news or follow discussions on the boards.