[Grandpa Kim]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:

quote: Are you actually trying to say that winning a 20 person game is 19 times harder to do then winning a 2 person game?

Yes, Geo, that is exactly what I'm saying. And vice versa. Are you saying that if you have a 50% chance of winning a one on one game, you have a better than 5% chance of winning a 20 player game?


Uh, huh? I don't understand the point you are trying to make here. It's probably me though.

I can be obscure at times. The point I was making is that it is proportionately more difficult to win against 19 opponents than against one and the winner should receive full credit for this. I think he should get credit for 19 victories not a mere 3- victories. The rewards do not match to performance.
There is precedent though for your idea. In business it is common to add a fancy title and a slew of new duties but only a 10% raise in pay (or sometimes none). Not fair? Of course not, but it happens all the time.

The point I was trying to make though was in a 1v1 game it's easy to figure out the points. He lost, you were 100% responsible for him losing, so you get 100% of the spoils. If you have 20 players and one loses it's not so easy to say who is the most responsible. We could try to come up with some system to cover that, but it would be hopelessly complicated and very subjective. So the fairest thing in my mind is just divide the points up. Over the course of the game, the better player should Last longer and end up with more points anyway.

Here I agree with everything but the solution. In my mind since it is impractical to determine who really is most deserving (or least deserving) we shouldn't even try, but rather, just let the chips fall where they may.

Warning: The following is not intended as a slight or insult but only to help me make a point.

The system you describe penalizes the good players while rewarding the poor players. To me this sounds like communism or a welfare state. You've probably guessed, I'm not a big fan of either.

Even if you never met him? Even if you never met anyone? You could be stuck in a corner and not meet anyone before 2 or three players get knocked out of the game. That's fine. It's the luck of the draw and all. But you haven't exactly earned anything. Certainly not three victories.

Luck? Geo, luck has played a part in every single KOTH game I've played. Minor in a couple, moderate in most and the determining factor in at least two. In my very first game against Gozguy, I utterly creamed him without breaking a sweat yet I consider him my equal. I had plenty of systems with planets on my side of the map while Goz's was littered with empty systems. He didn't stand a chance and I walked all over him. ...But I did receive full credit for the victory while Goz took his lumps with a smile. Should a panel judge the game to determine an appropriate point adjustment? I think we will all agree that's not wanted after all this ain't figure skating.

The very nature of SEIV makes this inequity inevitable and has led yourself and others to find ways to eliminate the element of luck-- a project I heartily endorse! But make no mistake, you will never eliminate luck without changing the essential character of the game.


The chess rating system works perfectly for any solo (as opposed to team) competition that is scored by win/draw/loss. It would work great for tennis but not so well for the 100 meter dash (the time clock is best here) and very poorly for hockey (where personnel changes taint the result). It works better for chess then SEIV because of the luck factor. In chess there is no luck. In SEIV luck tends to keep Ratings close by allowing a very poor player to win more games than he should.

But frankly human nature is what it is. You can't deny it or try to fight it. No matter how ideal we'd like to think people act, there will be a tendancy for players once they get near the top of the Ratings to "do the math" and have second thoughts about whether joining a 20 player game is worth the risk of getting ganged up on early and taking a 300+ point drop in their Ratings. Do you honestly see no problem at all with this?

Alas, I see no foolproof solution to this. For practical purposes, it is unlikely to find a 20 player game with 20 rated players. Even 10 would be unlikely. Also, as a lower rated player, do you really want to grab the tiger by the tail? How reliable are your cohorts? And where the heck did the game hide his empire? No, these are not solutions but I for one, would be up for the challenge... if I had that high rating to go along with the bravado.

Finally, your latest suggestion would be very inflationary. New players joining the system would have an impossibly steep hill to climb.

Geo, I went into such detail regarding the FIDE system to emphasize the large point spread. Currently SEIV has less than 200 points between best and worst. What that means is our best player against our worst in a 16 game match would have a 10/6 result. Hardly remarkable.

The system is young, the spread will grow. A personal, 300 point drop does not scare me. Does it really scare any of you?