Final (31st May) standings for Div A of the insei league in my proposed system with bonus modifier down to 0.2 as suggested by haha:

1. Kalmah - 150.8 (16-14)
2. breakfast - 135 (16-1)
3. danigabi - 131.4 (15-3)
4. roln111 - 111 (14-0)
5. ha - 91.2 (8-8)
6. Syptryn - 82.4 (7-13)
7. Nata - 74.8 (7-7)
8. Teamrocket - 66.8 (6-8)
9. Arlequ1 - 54.6 (3-24)
10. fantastigo - 53.8 (4-11)
11. OohAah - 40.4 (5-2)
12. YraUkr - 35.2 (3-6)
13. RamenBoya - 26.4 (2-7)
14. DRHazar - 18.4 (1-3)

i'm affraid that with the current parameters, teachers easily finish first and second. Also, player will not be affraid anymore to play them so they will have a lot of games (perhaps even more that every player). So initial handicap must increase.
if we imagine top player playing his eight games against teachers and lose them all. With 30 games, let's say he will have 22/30. teacher will have 28/30, here again simulation is needed to put correct handicap (one who put top player above of teachers).

Meanwhile, let's see which rules breakfast will chose for June.

I want to offer next rating system:

- Each player has "personal rating";
- Each player has "league rating"
- Personal rating changes every game and reflects that players strenght (such as EGR);
- League rating resets to 0 every month and reflects current month league progress (instead of w/l ratio);
- Personal rating is calculated in Elo system;
- League rating is calculated in Elo system, based on Personal rating difference.

Hello, you raise some interesting points, and as I have experience as the founder of the ASR league system on KGS I will weight in. Disclaimer, I have not read the thread, only the OP.

First, in practice, the current insei league system is better than the old ASR league system when I was running it, because players are more free to play games with the same person, or other people. This leads to the weakness you pointed out that "players A, B and C will seek out only weaker players...". However (and I am sure someone else has pointed this out by now) this isn't a weakness at all - if those players are strong enough to go 12-0 against the other group members, then they deserve to promote or to remain at the top spot in the room. It's really that simple. And it will fulfill the purpose of the league, which is to facilitate learning by facilitating games between stronger players and weaker players. So in this instance, the weakness you pointed out is actually a major strength of breakfast's system.

Second point, the first weakness you pointed out. Again in practice this is fine. If a player is 12-0, why would they want to play more games anyways? They should be promoted and play in the next class (or at least take two teaching games). And if they won their teaching games, well, maybe they should quit the league? Yet, again, the existance of the theoretical (or in practice) 12-0 player is only a boon to the goal of getting stronger players to play weaker players for their benefit. This is why the 12 game rule is there, so people play a minimum number of games. That's fine, as long as they play the minimum number of games.

In general I understand the concern of your comments but as an experienced league-runner myself, I would point out that even if players are not seeded properly, in an ABCDE system they are guranteed to find their proper class within four periods. And as I'm aware players are seeded by their rating on KGS (or dgs). So after the first round they will get a good idea of their position in the league. The mythical 12-0 player could only be the top 1-2 spots in A league.. and again that can only be a benefit to the league system.

It's my opinionated view that a player who avoids playing certain people or tries to game the system by stopping at 12-0 will, in actuality, do nothing. Such a player likely misunderstands how insei-style leagues work on a fundamental level -- as in practice you will find yourself very quickly placed into a class where you belong, and the people who do not play find themselves dropping down as the people around them simply become stronger and are promoted.

Also something else just occurred to me. I'm under the impression that breakfast or the other moderators can request that people play, which would even out the system somewhat. Done strategically this is an excellent rule.

A final disclaimer is that I am not in breakfast's league although I have applied for it starting in september. I have very high hopes for it, from what I have read it is everything I had ever hoped the ASR league to be, and yet somehow so much more.

To continue my thoughts from earlier;

There is actually one other solution you might consider.

Rate players using SODOS -- i.e. sum of defeated opponent's scores.

Here's a sample score list:



Now, this is a hypothetical example whereby the strong have preyed on the weak.
If you organize the winners by score, (or winning percentage) it looks like this:

1. Arthur (12 wins)
2. Bethseda (12 wins)
3. Dimitri (8 wins)
4. Cervantes (7 wins)
5. Egon (5 wins)
6. Fauntleroy (1 win)
7. Gargamel (1 win)
8. Horace (1 win)

In the above example, Arthur and Bethesesa were clearly colluding to play only against the weakest players in the group. It works out well if the system uses winning percentages.

However what if instead of simply rating people by their scores, we rated them by the sum of their defeated opponent's scores? For example, Fauntleroy pulled off a lucky win against Cervantes (or maybe it was his skill). Cervantes has 7 wins, so fauntleroy's score is seven. Similarly, Gargamel beat Dimitri, so Gargamel now has a score of 8. And Horace beat Egon twice, so Horace's score is 10, since Egon won five times.

It is a little tricky but I have a spreadsheet that calculates this this automatically and spits out a sortable SODOS (Sum of Defeated Opponent's Scores) table.

If the above league was calculated using SODOS, Arthur and Bethseda would find themselves with scores of 4 each -- in this case, their wins against Fauntleroy, Gargamel and Horace being worth 1+1+2, or only four points. In this case their wins against weaker players were not worth as much to them as a win against a stronger opponent. Their strategy of preying on the weak failed. It would have been better for them to play each other, and a variety of other opponents as well!

In fact, the SODOS system strongly encourages players to play at least one game against every other member of their room. In an open system where one may play multiple games against other opponents (to a maximum of four) it also strongly encourages participation among active players!

It also does not punish losses. If you lose a game, your score doesn't go down. This removes the fear people have of playing games in the league.

Let's peek ahead and see what the league looks like using SODOS:

Promoted:
1. Dimitri 4d (32 pts)
2. Cervantes 5d (29 pts)

Remain in room:
3. Egon 3d (26 pts)
4. Horace 1k (10 pts)
5. Gargamel 1d (8 pts)
6. Fauntleroy 2d (7 pts)

Demoted:
7. Arthur 7d (4 pts)
8. Bethseda 6d (4 pts)

Who were the winners? The people who played a variety of players; some stronger, some weaker. Notably, Horace's two wins against a stronger opponent, and Gargamel 1d's lucky--or skillful--win earn them a right to remain in this interesting and challenging room.

Who gets demoted? The 6d and 7d who tried to game the system.
Who gets promoted? The strongest players who play a variety of opponents.

This system rewards players for demonstrating their skill. You can't do that if you only play weaker opponents. Note also that it does not discourage stronger players from playing weaker players, since weaker players may rack up a lot of wins by playing each other!

Perhaps SODOS is right for the Insei League? Breakfast! If you like I can E-Mail you the SODOS calculator I wrote for the ASR. I will also be using a version of this to run a 100 person league (eight rooms of 12 people) at a local high school. This method works well, that is my experience! We already have 82 sign ups for the highschool league! Well, that's another story. But yeah if you want a SODOS spreadsheet let me know It takes some learning but it helps doing the calculations.

Out of interest usagi, how much have you read the content of the rest of this thread?

I suspect everyone is familiar with SODOS involved in the league, and yeah, it has a lot of merits - have you read why the other proposals were put forward and what was being sought out for an "ideal" system?

Well, my idea is that above everything else, you have to ensure that everyone plays the same number of games. Secondly I thought SODOS would be better than winning, because it can remove the ability of stronger players to prey on weaker players. Those 2 ideas seemed to solve all of the problems people were bringing up about the current system which is why I mentioned them.

The other problems could be removed if teaching games are simply not a part of the league. You can comment them and review them, but I don't think it is really proper to include their results in the legaue. They're teaching games. Not really competitive games. I've put my thoughts forward on that with a solution (less prize money and higher fees for teachers) in another thread.

Anyways here's my take on what was said so far re: sodos

It was said that SODOS doesn't punish losing to weaker players. An example was given that someone might win a game against a stronger player but lose against three weaker players. The problem with this idea is that you are assuming the results of the league before the league is finished. If someone wins five games and doesn't lose any, and another person wins 13 and loses only one, you have absolutely no way to compare those two results honestly. That's because the second person may well have been 7-0 or 8-0 before losing a game. Wasn't their result better? So, that is one reason why you need same # of games.. but more than that you cannot presume that anyone in the league is weak or strong until that period of the league is finished. Just because someone is 8d or 4d doesn't mean that you can assume they will or will not win a league either. When the league is finished, then and only then can you know the final result. You cannot decide the results beforehand and then use that to criticize the results of the league. If said player is truly weak, they will demote next period and not re-promote. So in that sense, I do not really understand that criticism being made about SODOS.

A somewhat related criticism is that SODOS doesn't punish people for losing. I am not sure whoever said that really understands how SODOS works. Let's say you have two players, both are 6-5. Assume both of their scores are even.
Both of them play a game; one plays someone with eight wins, the other plays someone with nine wins. The one who plays against the person with more wins has a higher score in the end. But assuming everyone plays the same number of games, against the same people, it doesn't matter if they play these games first or last; the results aren't known until the end. That's because everyone who won against those players will now increase in score as well; which pushes the two players who just lost their games down. That is why SODOS does, in fact, punish people for losing. Although it does it in a way which is somewhat difficult to see at first.

Here is my experience about running leagues. First, the only way you are ever going to be able to run a perfectly fair and proper league is if everyone plays the same number of games. You simply cannot allow one player to play eight games and another, twelve. Or twelve and sixteen. If you do that, it is unfair on one level or another. Look at the results above. ha, with six games, had a score above dangnabi, with fourteen games. What you don't see is that no system can possibly fairly score those results. Ha needs more games, plain and simple. If ha plays more games, he will certainly win against more people, and his score will improve. So he lost a bunch? Are we saying that the result of his win against dangnabi is invalid?

The problem is that there is no way to filter out such results because it is a subjective perception. Ha needs to play a total number of games like dagnabi. Fourteen and no more. Look at roln111's results. 4-0. Just not enough games compared to others. So you have to understand, no matter what you ever do to the math, if half the people play five games and half play fifteen, you will never have an accurately scored league. That's my experience running two large (and I daresay extremely successful) leagues.

My idea isn't the only or best way to run a league. It's just what I like best.

Unfortunately you cannot solve all the problems. I think SODOS + same # of games solves far more problems than it creates.

I don't think this is viable - nothing can make the players keep to the same games as each other, and availability will always make this unachievable in practice.



In the top league, they are competitive games, in the others, they are already handled (points awarded for the win, result ignored for a loss)



You can only work with what you have. You need to accept that in the insei league people aren't going to play the same number of games, and handle a system that can rank as fairly as possible anyway. The incentive to allow people to play as many games as they can has overriden a fairly ranked league (and, IMHO, I think this is probably the right decision, as the more games that are played the more improvement can be achieved).

All of your proposals are assuming that same # of games will happen - I don't think anyone is wanting this for the league at the moment ..

Unfortunately you are right, that's the same problem the ASR had. The ASR faced the same problems and used a 2 points win, 1 point loss strategy. It seems to have worked well, active players would sit in the room and get their games done often within the first few days or a week. I saw many other players sit in the room and not play games they could have played. So go figure, incentive/disincentive - people are paying $100 a month here. If that isn't incentive enough I don't know what is. I think same # of games is ideal but maybe it only works out in real life when everyone has a regular meeting time.

I think that all things considered, maybe Breakfast's current system is fine? If it was using SODOS that might be better, since players with only 4 or 5 games couldn't promote anyways. If players can't even get 12 games in the current system I don't think they belong in the league. Secondly, there is some incentive I don't think anyone has mentioned. Someone with a low number of wins has an incentive to play someone else with a low number of wins so one of them can promote. This can threaten people mid way up who may then need to play another game in order to keep their spot. This leads only to the problem of the supergroup. Unfortunately if you then mandate that they play other people, there may be scheduling conflicts there. But what else can you do?

Well whatever solution you come up with, I am sure it will be great I just really hope I can play in the league in September. Personally I don't really care what system they use, I aim to play a wide variety of people and win the majority of my games.

I had a few more ideas I would like to toss out there.

First, I went back and modified the SODOS calculator I wrote for the ASR to work with the insei league. here are the results for june:



What I found most interesting about using plain old SODOS is that if you won games against a small number of strong players (like flashback) you could still do well, and you could also do well by beating a lot of weaker players (like kalmah) or you could still lose a lot but beat some strong players and stay in. But, you couldn't really prey on weaker players. Also, if you also lost a lot of games (again, like syptryn) this ended up pushing you down, as your score got added to the players above you. You can see this in the difference between roln111 and kalmah, not only did roln111 beat a stronger set of opponents, he lost fewer games, pushing down the people he beat versus everyone else (by denying them points).

But then I had an even better idea. What if we invented a system where we used SODOS, but also winning percentage, and yet, we didn't have the problem about incentives or disincentives based on # of games played? Wouldn't that be perfect? for example, SODOS-DOG -- SODOS, but distributed over the number of games you played. This way, playing stronger players (in general) is desirable, but not necessarily playing someone stronger than yourself. Here's the June results using SODOS-DOG (SODOS divided by games played):



A question here is what to do with players like snowbars or artem92. What would happen if snowbars lost a 12th game? Should we count artem's results at all? The problem here is what is the rule regarding minimum number of games. We have to agree on a rule and stick to it. We can't allow someone to have 3-3 and another 1-1 and 3-2 and say this is a league, when other people are playing 12, 15 and 20 games. So, if we stick to a minimum game rule, we are faced with a situation like if Snowbars had won a 12th game he could stay in A-room. But this is not a fault of SODOS or SODOS-DOG. But, in this respect I don't like SODOS-DOG as much as SODOS. There are other problems.

Finally, I had a third idea. Something unique. Please comment on this one! I think I've really done it this time!

You see, I played World of Warcraft for a number of years, and I was in a top raiding guild on a top server. The idea I had is based on a DKP system. To explain quickly, a DKP system is a system where by the players who are present for the event acquire points they can use to spend on valuable in-game items. The idea I had is related to how items are spent. When a player spends an item, they pay the item's cost (going negative if they have to) but the point value of the item is then re-distributed among all the other players who attended the event. In this way players who contribute receive a portion of the reward based on their contribution.

So the way I thought of applying this was to award each player who did not play at least twelve games a loss for his missed game. In this way they "spend" the right not to play a game. Then, for every loss awarded this way, award a fractional win to every /other/ player in the system. This can easily be done by adding to the players wins the number of awarded losses in total (minus their number of awarded losses) divided by 13 (for a 14 person league). Then you calculate the "new winning percentage".

um, like this:

New Losses = MAX (0, 12-games played)
New Wins = Old Wins + ((sum of awarded losses) - (player's own awarded losses)) / 13
New Winning % = (New Wins / New Losses) + 1% for each played game

here are May 2010's results in this system.


And here are June's:


I have, of course, numbered the players by promotion (1-4 promote, 9-12 demote).

Now, if you wanted to apply SODOS to this system, here is my suggestion. When you award a fractional win, the "defeated opponent" is the average SODOS of the room, not including the SODOS of the player for which you are calculating the value of the fractional win.
I.E. Player's SODOS, plus: Fractional Wins * (sum of all SODOS - player's SODOS) / players / *(total of all games played - player's games played)

It's easier if you do it with a spreadsheet.

Here are the results I came up with using my new SODOS-DKP calculator:


In practice, this system is the same as SODOS or SODOS-DOG, but if players A and B both win and lose the same number of games, but one of them lose one more game, it will properly differentiate between them. And if someone wins 2 and loses 5, and another wins 2 and loses 10, the one who lost 10 will tend to be placed below the one who lost 5. Assuming they both played the same people, the one who lost 10 will be rated lower. So I think there are a lot of advantages to this one as well, but the math is very complex.

Maybe because of that the version using winning percentages is better, but this final system seems to me to solve all of the problems mentioned so far in this thread.