[TOURNAMENT] 1st Pop-a-Lympics, August 22nd

Ducky and I are going to host a tourney on Sunday, August 22nd.

Eno (if he can make it) has got admin rights to assist in case of lost passwords, etc. I proposed 20:00 GMT starting time, Eno prefered 18:00, any comments, especially from the other side of the planet?

As soon as we have agreed on a starting time (asap), please sign in to the tournament on the tourneysystem (url="http://"http://pop-pop.webhop.net")http://pop-pop.webhop.net(/url) Everyone is welcome!

Looking forward to an exciting tournament with lots of players!

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Quote

Originally posted by popeye:
**I proposed 20:00 GMT starting time, Eno prefered 18:00, any comments, especially from the other side of the planet?
**

It isn't necessary to start at 18 GMT for me, but if no one of Australia or someone else who needs to play at about 20 GMT will join I would love to play as early as possible. (down to 16 GMT)

Greets
Eno

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Enrico Enrco Enco Eno

Earlier is better for me as well, though I think I could do either time; I should be able to play any time starting at 17 or 17:30 GMT. And I'm sure looking forward to finally playing in a tournament again!

Also popeye, would you mind signing up on (url="http://"http://squibix.net/pop")my pop-pop page(/url) and writing a brief note about the tournament? I'm trying to get it going in real lively fashion, and also (as you can see) to make other people do my work for me. πŸ˜„

Being the only regular Australian of recent times (wherefore art thou Dingo?), it is nice to know that so many of you are considerate & willing enough to adjust your tourney time preferences just to accommodate me... sniff I feel so loved... It gets me right here... πŸ™‚

When choosing a tourney time, keep in mind that where I am in Sydney is 10 hours ahead of GMT, so for example 17.30 GMT translates to 03.30 Syd time, during which time I am asleep. If I had to, I could JUST tolerate 19.30 GMT (05.30 Syd), but 20.00 GMT (06.00 Syd) would be preferable.... That said, I am only one person, so don't ever feel pressured to inconvenience yourselves or anything for my sake.

...Although if you like, you COULD organise some fundraiser tourneys & buy me an airline ticket so you guys would never have to worry about timezone problems again... hey, a guy can dream πŸ™‚ I look forward to seeing the first of a series of "get eccles to Europe" tourneys πŸ˜„

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Hi. I'm up for this. I would have prefered 18:00 GMT but if it helps the likes of Eccles, I don't mind a 20:00 GMT start.

Hope we have as good a turn out as the last tourney which I missed.

Thanks for hosting popeye and Ducky.

Looking forward to giving you all a good SHOEING!

The Tourney is open.

We finally (after a lively discussion) compromised on a starting time: 19:30 GMT
This was made possible by great, sensitive understanding (Eno, Danny an SHOES, thank you for that) and unrivalled heroism (eccles, hope your alarm clock will work).

I'm very pleased to see that we managed not to disclose a whole continent (eccles) from our next tourney. πŸ™‚

For future tourneys I'd also like to propose to hold them alternating, maybe at 12:00/13:00 and 19:00/20:00 GMT, especially in winter time, when - for the northern, european folks - is not much need to leave the house during daytime. And: poping eccles while he's asleep doesn't bring us any further, too. πŸ™‚ Comments welcome.
For me any time from 10:00 to 20:00 GMT would do, as long as I don't have to play before I had a first cup of coffee.

@Ryoko: Any progress in setting up new rules for tournaments with large numbers of players (like last time)?

Please sign in all on the tourneysystem (url="http://"http://pop-pop.webhop.net")http://pop-pop.webhop.net(/url)

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(This message has been edited by popeye (edited 08-16-2004).)

Just one question: What exactly IS the Pop-a-lympic idea? ... aside from a clever title?

For me it conjures up the idea of having variations of the standard pop vs. pop battle... for example, the shooting event: Pick Tex and see who can plant the most six-shooters on the screen at any one time (the idea could be adapted for Ducky - who can plant the most rubber ducks? - although it can be difficult to count anything while in the thick of battle!) ... or while we're on the subject of Tex, both players pick either Tex or Mini-T and see how they do in a battle that consists entirely of the most annoying pop powers...

Or how about the no-power event: Players must refrain completely from using their powers in battle, therefore relying on sheer skill (no big sacrifice for Ryoko πŸ™‚ ). Any player who uses their power at any time during the battle is disqualified... and finally, there's the marathon endurance event: see who can best tolerate a game on "easy" level (guaranteed to test anyone's patience!) πŸ˜„

Those were just some ideas that the phrase "pop-a-lympics" brought to my mind... perhaps it might be worth trying one or two variations in future tourneys. In the meantime, I've signed up for the next tourney, so I will be sure to set my alarm clock and I hope to see many of you there!

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Quote

Originally posted by eccles:
Just one question: What exactly IS the Pop-a-lympic idea? ... aside from a clever title?

Yes yes yes. The reason why I didn't come up with ideas like that yet, is that I didn't want to flood this place initially. But once you name it: Yes, this is part of the Pop-a-Lympic idea. It also may contain following variations: No nagnet, no keyboard, no hands or a vast number of combinations of all you mentioned. πŸ™‚

To be serious: Fighting for the crown of "pure pop" as I call it (fighting without pop powers) might be a reasonable variation. But that crown already seems to belong to Ryoko and I doubt if it EVER can be gained by anybody else... Could be pretty challenging though. πŸ˜‰

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Quote

Originally posted by popeye:
**The Tourney is open.

(snip)
@Ryoko: Any progress in setting up new rules for tournaments with large numbers of players (like last time)?

**

I do not think I'll be able to make this one, but I'll turn up if I happen to be around.

You can see Crono's and my ideas for team pop-pop on his mac account (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/rchristie/various/pop_pop/multiple.html")site(/url) as one idea.

The one I was discussing earlier though is a conversion of how they do bumps rowing races here. Crono-san was taking part this year which is what got me interested to find out about them... I'll run the original by you and then explain how it converts to pop-pop:

The bumps are done in eight's rowing boats, so you have eight rowers and a cox. Each division consists of about 20 boats that are equally placed along the river about two boat's length's apart from each other in a head-to-tail fashion. (not side-by-side)

At about half a minute before the start of the race, the boats are slowly pushed out into the the middle of the river, and then the gun goes and bedlam breaks lose as everybody rows like crazy! ^_^;; The object is simple - ram the boat in front of you before the boat behind you rams you.

When boats 'bump' each other (hence the name) then the two colliding boats are then out of the race (they must get over to the side out of the way) and in the next race, they swap positions, so the one behind that "bumped" goes in front of the one that got bumped.

If the boat in front of you bumps out (they catch the boat in front of them) then you have to carry on to try and either
(1) catch the next boat still in in front of you or
(2) get to the end of the race
before the boat behind you bumps you.

If you manage (2) then you have "rowed over" and you start at the same position as you did last time.
If you catch the boat in front of them, this is known as an 'over bump' (very difficult since there will be a long distance past the two (or more) that bumped out in front of you originally). You then get to jump and swap places with the people you over-bumped.

Next race, everyone starts over again in their new positions. Obviously the boat that is at the head of the river (At the very front at the start) has the hard job of trying to row over with the second place chasing them ever day (unless they get bumped off the head).

So... most of that is superfluous, but I thought you might be interested since I was! ^_^ Your question is how this can work in pop-pop, ne? O_O;

--

Well, the plan is that there is a league of players (boats) and each person plays the person on either side of them in the league (apart from the head and tail, who obviously only play one game). You try and beat the player behind you to stop them 'bumping' you and the player in front to try and 'bump' them.

The rules for 'bumping' are as follows:

starting from the second-to-front, if you beat the front person by more than the person behind you beat you (or you beat them too), you 'bump' up. Beating them show that you held them off while you caught the person in front. Not beating them, means they were closing... but you managed to get your bump first... phew ^_~

otherwise...

if you beat the person behind, then you stay put (you held them off and rowed over). If you lost, you may be bumped depending on how well the person behind did compared to the person behind him/her (using the same set of rules) - they might have been caught before they caught you.

by 'more than' there I mean a larger round difference - e.g. if you beat the the person above you 3:0/3:1 and were beaten 3:2 by the person below, you are better. In the event of a tie (of any number of places) then the top of the tie list who can bump moves up if they can, and everyone else stays put.

So in short, out of your two games:
- If you win against the person below you, you can at worst stay put (row over)
- If you win both, you probably move up (depending on whether the person above you beat the person above them by a greater difference), but at worst may stay put.
- if lose the one below you, you may move down (possibly multiple places, see 'overbumping' below) - but if you win again the person above you, you could go up or down depending on other people's scores
- if you lose both, you are almost certainly going down, but you might get lucky and just stay put.

Examples

initial line up (Front) A B C D (Back)

if the scores were :
1 A vs B 3
3 B vs C 2
2 C vs D 3

so - B beats both A and C, and therefore bumps A
C loses to both B and D, so D bumps C

final line up: (Front) B A D C (Back)

OR

if the scores were :
1 A vs B 3
2 B vs C 3
3 C vs D 1

so - B beats A (3:1) but loses to C (2:3)
however, the win against A is better, so B bumps A
C beats B (3:2) but not enough to bump. C beats D (3:1)
so C and D stay put

final line up: (Front) B A C D (Back)

OR

if the scores were:
3 A vs B 2
3 B vs C 2
3 C vs D 2

then we have a straight tie. A cannot bump as he/she is front of the river. B Cannot bump because he/she lost to A. C bumps B because C is the highest player than can bump. D (and if anyone else participated below D and had the same score) stay put.

final line up: (Front) A C B D (Back)

OR finally if the scores were:
3 A vs B 0
3 B vs C 1
3 C vs D 2

everyone stays put.

--

Overbumping:

In order to over-bump, you must have:

(1) won your game against the person higher than you 3-0 and
(2) have beaten the person below you and
(3) there must be an stream of higher-player loses above you (e.g. 2 lost to 3, 3 lost to 4 and so on).

In this case, you can then over-bump to the highest multiple of 2 level of the person who first against the person below. (Remember from the rowing analogy, you could only overbump if the two boats in front of you bumped each other, and you bumped the one in front of them so if the boats were A B C D, and B bumped C, then D could overbump A)

e.g. (Front) A B C D E F (Back)

scores:
A 3-2 B
B 2-3 C
C 1-3 D
D 0-3 E
E 3-1 F

A beats B, so B cannot bump. B is beaten by C, but C beats B (3:2) and loses to D (3:1) - therefore does not qualify for the bump.
Likewise D beats C 3:1 but loses worse to E (3:0), so also cannot bump.
E beats D 3-0 and also beats F 3-1

The result is that E over-bumps up to B (the highest player in the lose streak) so E and B swap places. Since the overbump in rowing assumes that the boats you skipped must have bumped - then C is also assumed to be bumped by D here - which is okay since D did beat C anyway)

Final line up would be -
(Front) A E D C B F (Back)

had the scores been
A 3-2 B
B 2-3 C
C 1-3 D
D 0-3 E
E 1-3 F

then E could not overbump. The result would be that E bumps D (by normal rules) otherwise no change.

Finally if the scores had been
A 3-2 B
B 2-3 C
C 1-3 D
D 2-3 E
E 0-3 F

then it is F that can overbump
the higher player losses stop at B (being the last person to lose to someone above him/her) so theoretically F overbumps B... but that would mean that E bumped D and C was left out, (would be an odd number of people) so F can only overbump to C. B stays put (lucky πŸ†’

Sound complicated? It's actually not that difficult, just a little different, and presents the following advantages over normal tournaments:

- It scales well with large numbers of people - since each round cosists of only two games
- there is no 'knockout' so everyone can keep playing all the way through to improve their positions.
- the league rolls-over to next time, so there is some concept of a self-ranking system here
- chances are you will keep playing people about your level, since you will naturally find your natural height in the 'bumping' order.

Disadvantages:

- needs a good 8 people at least to be worthwhile
- may end up playing the same people frequently

Comments/suggestions? Reply and let me know ^_^ - especially if you think you can see any cases I haven't covered. ^.^;;

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Quote

Originally posted by Ryoko:
**Comments/suggestions? Reply and let me know^_^ - especially if you think you can see any cases I haven't covered. ^.^;;
**

Worked through it finally! Hard work reading it, but thanks to Ryoko for showing such a lot of Pop-a-Lympic spirit by introducing us to the higher levels of boat-rowing Poptournamentalism. πŸ™‚

Some thoughts:

(1) This could make up a new topic (@Ryoko: you maybe better cut it out and put it in a new topic, this dicussion could last a bit longer than the next tourney)

(2) I like the idea of a constant flow of ranks, but, for me, it also raises some questions:

- what if a player misses a tourney, where will he/she be sorted in next time?
- doesn't this provoke the need of an overall rank list (like you can find it at (url="http://"http://squibix.net/pop")http://squibix.net/pop(/url) , great site πŸ™‚ )?

- could this be fun to newbies?

- on the long run could this be fun to high-ranking players?

- who does the all programming work? (hy Hyko!) πŸ™‚

- could the rules be explained brief enough to encourage new players to join a tourney?

- doesn't a large number of players mean that the lowest-ranking player has got no chance to win a tourney (no matter how good he is) unless the number of rounds is high enough or he/she is verrrrry lucky? and doesn't this lead to the same problem: many players - long tourney?

- many more questions. I drop them at this point, don't want to get too pop-a-cademic πŸ™‚

(3) These (Ryoko's) rules could make up a great Pop-Pop-league system instead:

- every round could represent one week

- players that don't participate in a round automatically get bumped (like you don't row your boat) or could be scored 2:3 or 1:3 (this has to be thought over a little)

- there is always a Pop-pop champion (until he/she's bumped)

- crucial point is how to communicate with your opponents, problem if you get stuck within two absent ones

to be continued if there is need for it...

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(This message has been edited by popeye (edited 08-17-2004).)

Well, I'm signed in.

Edit, 1900 posts.

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(This message has been edited by nemo (edited 08-17-2004).)