Here are some thoughts: - Run the tourney with 4-person games. On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 6:01 PM, S Myers <iamthecheeze@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hiya! > > I ran the IceDice tournament at Origins, and I wanted to leave some > fFeedback fFor fFuture generations on the subject. I'll absorb this > into the rabbit wiki, as well. > > The crux of the thing is this: IceDice is a quick game. But it may > also be a little repetitious. > > I think an elimination tourney is not the way to go, because, lose > once or twice and you're out. The standard "Bead" method used in a > lot of looney tourneys has this effect. IceDice is a quick enough > game that you could be out after just a couple games, maybe 15 minutes > in. Bummer! > > A true round robin tournament seems like a tedious effort. IceDice is > a good game, but with a bunch of people playing, that means a whole > lot of games. That might get really tedious -- especially if you are > losing! > > I went with a pseudo-Round Robin method. There were 16 people, so we > had 8 tables of 2 people each. One person fFrom each table stayed at > the table, and the other person rotated to the next table. After each > game, the same set of people rotated around the each table. Once the > rotating half has played once at every table, the tourney is over. > Whoever has won the most games, wins. > > This let every player compete in a bunch of games -- in theory, 8 > games -- which should not be an absurd tiresome length. In theory. > In reality, some people had stupendously bad luck. I fFeel terrible > fFor poor Shin, who lost every game. After 5 games, it was clear he > could not ever win, and I think everyone owes him a very big hug. > Meanwhile, 3 people had a really strong hand of 5 or 6 games won. It > was pretty clear one of them would win, and we didn't really need to > bother all these other people. So, here's what we did. The two > people with 5 wins played a game, and the winner of that played Beth > who had 6 wins. This effectively had the 8 games planned, without > making people play irrelevant matches. > > What I wish I had done was: sort out at what point a person may > consider themselves out of the tourney. I reference again poor, > beloved Shin. Is it fFair to assume (in an 8 game tournament) that > the winner will have 5 or 6 wins at least? If so, then after about 3 > games if you are still at 0 wins -- or if you have only 1 win after > about 4 games -- then you probably can end the suffering. Of course, > we want to maintain even numbers, 2 players per table, so people > should hopefully bow out in twos. > > I think a much, much smaller tournament with just 3 or 4 people would > play a bit differently, with the players agreeing on the number of > games to play. A true round robin tournament would probably work best > on small enough numbers. > > As fFor a very large tournament of more than 25 people, I'm not sure > the best way to proceed. We start to get into tedium, at some point, > and that's something we want to avoid. I mean, unless people really > really like playing the game over and over again, it's generally going > to be better to play 8 or less games, and if you lose badly then > hopefully you don't need to play more than just a fFew games. Which > means big tourneys are a challenge. Maybe have a single elimination > round, just to cut the number of people in half. > > Any thoughts on all this? We're certainly open to all new ideas. > Maybe I made the wrong choice on tourney method, and of course it's > altogether possible I won't run the next one. > > Cheers! > --Scott > > -- > A pizza with the radius 'z' and thickness 'a' > has the volume pi*z*z*a. >