Ladders

[Kilroy]

OK I have been fiddling around with the new Ladder software, and although it's designed for Online Computer Gaming, I think it will work ok for our ladder.

Unfortunately the tournament module is rather limited and it works in a few odd ways. Itseems to be set up only for teams of at least 4 players so we won't be using that to begin with. I'll look into it more when we get the ladder up and running.

We can have multiple ladders. Of course the first one will be Ottawa Match Play Net, but we could have Match Play Gross, Stroke Play Net Stroke Play Gross and Team Best Ball ladders too. What do you think?


I have it tentatively set up the Ottawa Match Play Net Ladder as follows:
Text in Green is an arbitrary rule not controlled by software - we can change or add to these before we launch
Text in Red is an adjustable parameter - Let's discuss what we want here
Text in Blue is fixed by the software.

Game Rules
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
» Non-Scheduled Matches are not allowed.

» Players must mutually agree on a course to play.
» Players should make every reasonable effort to schedule matches as soon as possible in order to keep the ladder moving.
» Men play from the White Tees or equivalent unless both players agree on different tees to play. Male players play from the same tees.
» Ladies may play from the Red Tees or equivalent if they wish.
» In the case bad weather on the day of play, or impending bad weather 24 hours prior to the match, either player may request to reschedule at the earliest opportunity within 7 days.

» Looser reports the loss.
» Winner confirms the win and reports the score.
» A win of 5 up with 4 to play would be entered as a 5 for the winner.
There is no other way to enter 5 & 4 as it wants a score for each team
» If the challenger wins the match they assume the loser's rank and the loser falls one position.
» If the challenger loses the match there is no change in ladder rank.


» You can challenge up to 10 ranks above yourself if they are free for challenging.
» The challenge should include suggestions for courses and your perference of time and day.
» The Challenged player should contact the Challenger to make arrangements BEFORE officially accepting the challenge in the ladder software.
» The Challenged player needs to officially respond/accept within 72 hours.
» The response will include the scheduled time & date of the match.
» The Challenger must then finalize the challenge within 48 hours of the challenged player accepting.
» The latest a match can be scheduled for is 14 days after finalizing.
» Match times can be between 6 am and 4 pm Eastern DST.

[Kilroy]

Other options not currently implemented to consider...

Inactive days until drop: This feature allows you to select how many days you wish to allow a team to be inactive before he loses some rank. Inactivity period is basically the period that the team has not played a match in. For example, if you set this to seven days and a team does not play a single match for seven days, then the team’s rank will be affected. This is a good tool for catching those who have a good rank but refuse to play any games. The amount of ranks dropped is defined in the next option. You can disable it using the disable option.
Inactive drop rank amount: Amount of ranks a player is dropped when he reaches the inactive period. Ignore this if you have disabled this feature already.

Inactive days until deleted: Amount of days you wish to allow a team to be inactive before being deleted from the ladder. It should be noted that; activity is defined by the number of matches played. Can be disabled using the disable option.

[Kilroy]

Handicaping
RM Handicapping is preferred. You are expected to be dilligent in entering all your scores accurately.
RCGA Members may use thier club or public player handicaps
NCGT handicaps are also accepted

[jvincent]

Dan, does the "non-scheduled match" rule mean that an unscheduled match cannot cause ladder movement?

Regarding the challenge/accept timelines, what happens if a challenge is not accepted?

Also the proposed timelines may be short for people who travel or don't have computer access 24/7. I'd suggest increasing them.

[Kilroy]

Dan, does the "non-scheduled match" rule mean that an unscheduled match cannot cause ladder movement?

Correct

Regarding the challenge/accept timelines, what happens if a challenge is not accepted?

Challenged player forfiets.

Also the proposed timelines may be short for people who travel or don't have computer access 24/7. I'd suggest increasing them.

Yah, but I don't want each match to hold up the ladder for a month either. 5 days to complete arrangements and then 14 more to get out and play it seems like a long time. Let's see what others think.

[Nat Williams]

i agree ... also, if you forfeit, you only lose 1 spot, so no big deal if you're forced to foreit from time to time.

[jvincent]

One more question, is the challenge-up number a hard coded number or can you make it a variable? I.e. ladder depth / N. Either way, I think 10 is probably a little high. I'd prefer something in the 6 to 8 range.

[Kilroy]

It's a variable. 10 was just an arbitrary number.

[Kilroy]

If you think you'd play in this please post. It would help to know how many we'll have to begin with to set the challenge up number. It can always change as it grows too.

Any interest in the other ladders I mentioned?

[Colby]

Dan,

One of the things that needs to be addressed when you think about the "challange up" is how many challenges the top guy is going to get. For example, I'm the top guy on the ladder and the challenge up number is 8. If I am #8 on the ladder, I'm not going to worry about #7, 6, 5, 4, 3, or 2. I'm going to challange the #1 guy. As is player #7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. The only guy who will challenge #8 is #16.

To ease this and to make people work their way up the ladder, the "challenge up" number is usually pretty low, say 2 or 3. If the number is going to be high, say 5 or higher, then there needs to be changes to the non-acceptance policy, for the top guy may have 7 challenges thrown his way if the number were to be set at 8.

[Colby]

Dan,

I'm interested in the ladders, but the gross ladders may have to be split up into handicaps as a B player will hardly ever beat an A player.

[Kilroy]

Good points.

Dan,

One of the things that needs to be addressed when you think about the "challange up" is how many challenges the top guy is going to get. For example, I'm the top guy on the ladder and the challenge up number is 8. If I am #8 on the ladder, I'm not going to worry about #7, 6, 5, 4, 3, or 2. I'm going to challange the #1 guy. As is player #7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. The only guy who will challenge #8 is #16.

To ease this and to make people work their way up the ladder, the "challenge up" number is usually pretty low, say 2 or 3. If the number is going to be high, say 5 or higher, then there needs to be changes to the non-acceptance policy, for the top guy may have 7 challenges thrown his way if the number were to be set at 8.

[Kilroy]

Could easily do that. but we'd need a lot of people playing. I'm thinking wait until people ask for other ladders at this point and start with the net matches.

Dan,

I'm interested in the ladders, but the gross ladders may have to be split up into handicaps as a B player will hardly ever beat an A player.

[jvincent]

If the number is going to be high, say 5 or higher, then there needs to be changes to the non-acceptance policy, for the top guy may have 7 challenges thrown his way if the number were to be set at 8.

That reminds me, does the S/W track or show who in the ladder has already got a challenge pending? If it does then this would limit the number of challenges the higher seeds need to respond to since once a challenge is issued that person would be "greyed out" for other challenges.

Sort of related question, am I correct in assuming the system web based?

[Kilroy]

Yes you can't be challenged twice at once, so if it were too low, there may be nobody for a player to challenge for a while.

Yes it is web based. I will roll it out once we define the initial parameters.

[LBH]

I'd be interested as long as time is on my side... I like the "rules" so far but agree that 10 seeds is a bit much. I would go 5. Reason being, suppose there is 50 players registered. You don't want #50 to challenge 5 times, win all and become #1. Should be more difficult.

[mpare]

Dan, I would be prepared to play in a ladder competition under almost any circumstances so long as the handicaps are monitored. By this I mean that if someone keeps playing under his handicap in a manner that is statistically anomalous, then his cap should be adjusted accordingly.

[Kilroy]

Agreed!

Dan, I would be prepared to play in a ladder competition under almost any circumstances so long as the handicaps are monitored. By this I mean that if someone keeps playing under his handicap in a manner that is statistically anomalous, then his cap should be adjusted accordingly.

[Colby]

Dan,

Why don't we start the ladders after the Match play brackets are finished. Then we would at least have some sort of seeding to start!

[Kilroy]

The match play series won't wrap up untill the end of August. It will be over for half the players in 2 weeks.

The software seeds players in the next open spot at the bottom as they sign up for the ladder. It's not really set up to start out with a pre-seeded field but we could do that is to have the first 8 or 16 players added in seeded order by an admin.

If we do not pre-seed and just open it up the ranks will sort themselves out in a month or 2. If we want to pre-seed I don't want to wait until the end of August, so any ideas on how to start?

[Big Johnny69]

The match play series won't wrap up untill the end of August. It will be over for half the players in 2 weeks.

The software seeds players in the next open spot at the bottom as they sign up for the ladder. It's not really set up to start out with a pre-seeded field but we could do that is to have the first 8 or 16 players added in seeded order by an admin.

If we do not pre-seed and just open it up the ranks will sort themselves out in a month or 2. If we want to pre-seed I don't want to wait until the end of August, so any ideas on how to start?

Only thing I could suggest would be to open a registration and as people sign up seed them. But leave the #1 spot (or champion spot if there is one) to the winner of the match play. And I'd even suggest leaving the second spot to the runner up. So until we actually have a winner of the match play there is no top seed on the ladder. But people can jostle for position in preparation of challenging the eventual winner of the match play tourney. What do you think?

One thing I still don't agree with is dropping the loser of a challenge only one spot. If we have the 5 up limit, dropping 5 spots is not so bad.

Ex: The #5 has been challenged three times and won everytime, yet the #2, 3 and 4 seeds have been challenged and lost. The #5 seed is now the 8th seed without losing a match. How is that fair to him? He can no longer challenge for top spot, yet he's 3-0. I don't think its fair for someone to drop in the rankings without having lost a challenge.

[Hacker]

Ex: The #5 has been challenged three times and won everytime, yet the #2, 3 and 4 seeds have been challenged and lost. The #5 seed is now the 8th seed without losing a match. How is that fair to him? He can no longer challenge for top spot, yet he's 3-0. I don't think its fair for someone to drop in the rankings without having lost a challenge.

Good point there Johnston You are more than just a pretty face aren't you

[jvincent]

Ex: The #5 has been challenged three times and won everytime, yet the #2, 3 and 4 seeds have been challenged and lost. The #5 seed is now the 8th seed without losing a match. How is that fair to him? He can no longer challenge for top spot, yet he's 3-0. I don't think its fair for someone to drop in the rankings without having lost a challenge.

But he didn't beat #2, 3, or 4 did he? Why didn't he challenge any of those guys?

While this scenario might be a problem at the start of the ladder, it should sort itself out over time.

For example, if he now challenges the original #2 (who is now #3) and loses then maybe he should be ranked #8.

Ladders inherently require a certain number of matches to be played before they are "correctly" sorted. Even then, unless there is a fairly large variation in the skill levels there will still be a fair amount of movement within the ladder such that the difference between #3 and #8 is likely to be small.

[Nat Williams]

i'm w/ jvincent on this one, #5 shoulda manned up and challenged someone higher than him when he had the chance ... by sitting back and defending his spot, instead of trying to climb, he's let others pass him.

[Kilroy]

Only thing I could suggest would be to open a registration and as people sign up seed them. But leave the #1 spot (or champion spot if there is one) to the winner of the match play. And I'd even suggest leaving the second spot to the runner up.

We can't hold spots open. Ranking is controlled by the database and cannot be manually manipulated in that way.

One thing I still don't agree with is dropping the loser of a challenge only one spot. If we have the 5 up limit, dropping 5 spots is not so bad.

This is not an option that can be changed using this software. I also agree that if Joe blow wants to remain well ranked he needs to challenge and win, not just wait for someone to challenge him and wory about it only if he loses. Seems fair to me. The few ladders I have played on were all like that.

[Big Johnny69]

I understand what you are saying, but I'm saying what if #5 keeps getting challenged before he can challenge anyone? I know there are alot of variables and "what ifs" but that scenario is something that could play out. The way I see it, more challenges are going to come from people further down the ladder looking to move up quickly. The guys at the top are less likely to be making challenges because they are probably going to be challenged more frequently. So if we keep the challenge up limit to say 5, flip flopping the players depending on the outcome is not such a bad idea.

[geronamo]

This is just some fantastic discussion. I'm pretty much down with whatever is decided. Once I get to #1 I don't have to worry about many of these rules because I'll never lose.

[Kilroy]

I hear ya Geoff. As I said that's not something we have control of with this software.

OK so...
challenge-up set to 5
The challenged player has 3 days to communicate with challenger and set up the match, then officially accept and schedule the match.
The challenger has 2 more days to finalize match
Match to be played within 14 days

Lottery for the first top spots :

By Friday at Midnight : Posts in this thread will be in a draw for the top seeds.
I'll then PM the winners the order and you'll have until Saturday at midnight to respond and accept or decline your participation so I can seed you. Monday morning we'll open the doors.

So far:
Dan Kilbank
Geoff Johnston
Geronamo
Nat Williams
Hacker
Colby
mpare
LBH
jincent
Indio
lms
Wilster

[jvincent]

How do I stuff the ballot box so I get seeded #1?

[Kilroy]

Simple. Stuff my wallet.