Pike .......are you there uncle Teeks? Tikay : Yes Son, what can I help you with? Is it your Maths homework again? Pike : No, no.....Sam sam the mystical man has sorted that for me. It is this Micro League shambles that Rik is running. Tikay : ....go on, what is the problem? I thought it was running as good as the software is at the moment. Pike : The problem is that the big boys keep winning EVERY week and it isnt giving the weak players like me and Dues a chance of one of your tokens. I cried again when I did the Final Table yesterday. Tikay : Right. Gotcha. Wicked. Innit. I have a cunning plan.... Pike : Anything that makes me looks good will be great Daddy.....I mean, uncle. Tikay : How about picking YOUR best result from last night and making that count as the best? I am sure you could come up with enough waffle to confuse everyone in thinking it was a 'committee' run decision? Pike : BRILLIANT......I love you!
In terms of the new scoring system that is being trialled, I like it. I certainly think that this or perhaps an average points per tournament system is the fairest way to do it. Some people can't always play poker every evening, so it will at least give everyone a decent shot at the prizes if they get a few good results a week.
Firstly, thanks as ever to everyone involved in running this competition.
Regarding my thoughts about the old scoring system, my feelings were that, generally speaking, the players who played the most had better chance at winning. Just look at me for example. I am far from the most skilled player participating, but the weeks I managed near the highest volume, I was there or thereabouts at the top.
I am strongly in favour though of having a competition where all of the participants have a fairly even chance of winning, regardless of volume.
Though there still needs to be a healthy balance between volume and skill.
I have slight reservations about the new scoring system for the same reason for the current change. The players who can play all 7 days of the week will generally come out on top more often than not - especially if only the single best scores each day count (giving the players only playing a couple of days less chance to score points - even if they played the full MML schedule on each day)
Personally, I agree with @Asho28 about having some sort of scoring system based on averages.
But let's see how the new scoring system fares over the coming weeks, it's always worth experimenting, and as previously mentioned, can always revert to the old or tweak some more.
PS. I'm not sure how much of the results you keep on file, but would it not be possible to simulate the new scoring system with past results?
cant say i'm a fan of the new scoring format....we all knew the rules when we signed up for it, if you want folk to play less games then simply take a few games out...you could have a great nights poker n reach a couple of final tables n maybe even win both n not get the points rewarded for it....for the people who don't play every night they're defo now at a disadvantage
cant say i'm a fan of the new scoring format....we all knew the rules when we signed up for it, if you want folk to play less games then simply take a few games out...you could have a great nights poker n reach a couple of final tables n maybe even win both n not get the points rewarded for it....for the people who don't play every night they're defo now at a disadvantage
@warez the problem is almost like been stuck between a rock and a hard place, i posted my thoughts elsewhere so i will leave them there.
Running a league like this takes time and commitment and finding the right solution is hard. Some will like the changes others maybe not, i doubt in truth it will make much difference to the overall table, although it does actually take away the advantage of players who play every game, i guess this in turn helps the players with less volume.
Time will tell but i presume @NOSTRI has looked at the data he has and this produces a better scoring format overall. Either that or they did not want to produce a table on Monday showing me top and decided on the spur of the moment to change it.
Its an added challenge for all, helped and supported by sky poker.
yeah its a tough one. its never gonna suit everyone. soon ill be back at work and only be able to play 4 nights, maybe 3 a week. so i would never win with this new scoring system, as players who are good and play every night are sure to beat me now. but im easy. last system favoured grinders, who grinded the mirco stakes. which is the point of the league? people who play mircostakes get a chance to play a bigger game with the prize. new system favours people who play every night .
@coo1-um I play most nights anyway, am just thinking about the people who can only play a few nights a week and its probably around half of the leagues entrants....as you know I play the Mondays MTT so usually come Tuesday I'm already playing catch up....I feel the 9 games a night was far too much anyway, maybe 4-6 games a night would've been better, I still think the league is a great idea and I'll continue to play in it regardless of the scoring format but I can only see the number of games played decreasing but that's just my opinion.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I'm not going to go through them line by line, but here are some general comments regarding what's been said:
As @coo1-um has said, it is a bit of a rock and a hard place situation. I want the league to be fun and accessible to everyone, while still rewarding the best players and without surrendering the outcome entirely to chance. I feel strongly that casual players should have as much chance as regular grinders at winning the league and I don't mind experimenting a bit to get us closer to that.
So far, the top four have almost always simply been those who play the most games. No disrespect to the winners, who may well be deserving winners, but it seems clear that they are, in a way, brute-forcing their way to the top of the league by loading up on points in as many games as possible.
The advantages of what we are trying this week, as I see them, are:
Playing almost all the games to a reasonable standard doesn't essentially guarantee you top four
It should be harder for someone to run away with it on any given week, since scoring margins will be thinner
The final scores will be made up of the same number of fixtures for everybody
It is a reasonable criticism that people who can't play every day are at a disadvantage, but that disadvantage is surely not greater than it was when they couldn't play 40 games a week to keep up with the most prolific players. Infrequent players will always be at a disadvantage and that's not a problem I expect to "solve" or that I think can be solved. It's only right that playing more infers some advantage, it just shouldn't be a free win. That's the line I'm trying to find with this new format.
I'll quickly comment on the two other suggestions too. Taking games off the schedule is not a bad idea but I think the schedule is in a pretty good place, giving plenty of options at different buy in levels and formats, so I would rather keep that as a last resort. The other was using some kind of moving average of points per tournament. This has been discussed before. I don't love it because it obfuscates the results somewhat; I think it's more appealing for people to know they have scored however many points, and be able to easily understand how that affects their position in the league. When you start computing different metrics like that it gets just a bit more complicated, in my opinion. But I am certainly going to keep that in my pocket as an option.
yeah its a tough one. its never gonna suit everyone. soon ill be back at work and only be able to play 4 nights, maybe 3 a week. so i would never win with this new scoring system, as players who are good and play every night are sure to beat me now. but im easy. last system favoured grinders, who grinded the mirco stakes. which is the point of the league? people who play mircostakes get a chance to play a bigger game with the prize. new system favours people who play every night .
For what it's worth, it doesn't look to me like you'll have to play every day to win. But it will depend on how other players do, of course.
I am pretty sure this format favours grinders a lot less than the previous format. People can only get a one game lead on you in a session, as opposed to a 5+ game lead. Grinders may have more chances at putting up a good score each day, but binking a good result at some point in the week will now be much more impactful than it was in terms of your final score and competing with others. I genuinely think this is fairer and will see a much more varied podium at the end of the week.
But if I'm wrong, no harm done and we'll go back to the original format or try something else.
I am wholeheartedly for what you are trying to achieve, and will play the MML regardless of which scoring system is in place.
However, my mind keeps thinking of the most extreme examples.
There are 7 tournaments on the schedule that run each night of the week.
Let's say for example Player 1 [multi-tabler] can only play for 1 night of the week, and elects to play only those 7 tournaments. Imagine they either min-pointed or final tabled in every one. That player would only receive one set of points.
On the other hand, let's say Player 2 [single-tabler] only plays one of those tournaments each night [essentially playing the exact same number and tournament set as Player 1 over the course of the week]. Now imagine Player 2 also had the exact same results as Player 1.
From my understanding, Player 2 will now have a much much better overall weekly score than Player 1, even though they played the exact same tournaments, with the exact same results.
Also, if a player manages to Final Table or even win 2,3,4 or more (we have seen that happen already. @AMD68 I'm looking at you ) tournaments in any one night, then that success essentially counts for nothing, as only one result would count.
I feel some sort of scoring system that bridges that gap between Player 1 and Player 2 in the above example would be a bit more fairer all-round.
I am sorry if I sound ungrateful or critical of any change. I really do appreciate the time, effort and commitment needed to run this competition. It is definitely a difficult conundrum.
Remarkably enough, none of yesterday's top four scored a single point last night and they have all been overtaken. @johno77 binked the late deep stack, catapulting him into first. @spearsy136 took third in the 18:30 Bounty Hunter for a very cute 31 points, pushing him into second. Honorable mention for @aynaricol, hanging on until the final ten in the Mini.
This week, we are going to be trying a slightly rejigged scoring system for the MML. Instead of all of your results being counted towards your points total, only your highest-scoring result each day will count.
I appreciate this league and am under no illusions that I will ever win based on lack of volume played and the skill needed ☺but it will be interesting to see what impact the new scoring has.
As a half way house suggestion, what about taking everyone's best seven results of the week, regardless of if they were on seven different days or all in one multi tabling hot streak?!
It would be fair to low volume players like me ( playing on tablet ) and restricted to one game at a time and might appeal to high volume players as well as players who only play two or three nights a week.
I appreciate this league and am under no illusions that I will ever win based on lack of volume played and the skill needed ☺but it will be interesting to see what impact the new scoring has.
As a half way house suggestion, what about taking everyone's best seven results of the week, regardless of if they were on seven different days or all in one multi tabling hot streak?!
It would be fair to low volume players like me ( playing on tablet ) and restricted to one game at a time and might appeal to high volume players as well as players who only play two or three nights a week.
+1
Even if the magic number of 7 is tweaked, that idea actually sounds really reasonable to me.
I appreciate this league and am under no illusions that I will ever win based on lack of volume played and the skill needed ☺but it will be interesting to see what impact the new scoring has.
As a half way house suggestion, what about taking everyone's best seven results of the week, regardless of if they were on seven different days or all in one multi tabling hot streak?!
It would be fair to low volume players like me ( playing on tablet ) and restricted to one game at a time and might appeal to high volume players as well as players who only play two or three nights a week.
I like the idea of using an average points per game more than this.
The problem with this is it does actually give high volume players a fairly significant advantage still. Imagine your more casual players get in, say, ten games in a week. They play their 7 games, then have 3 chances to improve their scores. But then high volume players put their 7 games in and have maybe 25+ chances in the most extreme cases to improve their scores. I don't think it's even worth simulating this; I am certain the highest volume players would win almost every week using this format.
I appreciate this league and am under no illusions that I will ever win based on lack of volume played and the skill needed ☺but it will be interesting to see what impact the new scoring has.
As a half way house suggestion, what about taking everyone's best seven results of the week, regardless of if they were on seven different days or all in one multi tabling hot streak?!
It would be fair to low volume players like me ( playing on tablet ) and restricted to one game at a time and might appeal to high volume players as well as players who only play two or three nights a week.
I like the idea of using an average points per game more than this.
The problem with this is it does actually give high volume players a fairly significant advantage still. Imagine your more casual players get in, say, ten games in a week. They play their 7 games, then have 3 chances to improve their scores. But then high volume players put their 7 games in and have maybe 25+ chances in the most extreme cases to improve their scores. I don't think it's even worth simulating this; I am certain the highest volume players would win almost every week using this format.
@NOSTRI Whatever you decide is fine with me. I appreciate you running it and it was merely a suggestion to add in to the mix. As I said, I am never going to win it but I do like to try and make it at least into mid table obscurity each week! ☺
Comments
Pike .......are you there uncle Teeks?
Tikay : Yes Son, what can I help you with? Is it your Maths homework again?
Pike : No, no.....Sam sam the mystical man has sorted that for me. It is this Micro League shambles that Rik is running.
Tikay : ....go on, what is the problem? I thought it was running as good as the software is at the moment.
Pike : The problem is that the big boys keep winning EVERY week and it isnt giving the weak players like me and Dues a chance of one of your tokens. I cried again when I did the Final Table yesterday.
Tikay : Right. Gotcha. Wicked. Innit. I have a cunning plan....
Pike : Anything that makes me looks good will be great Daddy.....I mean, uncle.
Tikay : How about picking YOUR best result from last night and making that count as the best? I am sure you could come up with enough waffle to confuse everyone in thinking it was a 'committee' run decision?
Pike : BRILLIANT......I love you!
In terms of the new scoring system that is being trialled, I like it. I certainly think that this or perhaps an average points per tournament system is the fairest way to do it. Some people can't always play poker every evening, so it will at least give everyone a decent shot at the prizes if they get a few good results a week.
Regarding my thoughts about the old scoring system, my feelings were that, generally speaking, the players who played the most had better chance at winning. Just look at me for example. I am far from the most skilled player participating, but the weeks I managed near the highest volume, I was there or thereabouts at the top.
I am strongly in favour though of having a competition where all of the participants have a fairly even chance of winning, regardless of volume.
Though there still needs to be a healthy balance between volume and skill.
I have slight reservations about the new scoring system for the same reason for the current change. The players who can play all 7 days of the week will generally come out on top more often than not - especially if only the single best scores each day count (giving the players only playing a couple of days less chance to score points - even if they played the full MML schedule on each day)
Personally, I agree with @Asho28 about having some sort of scoring system based on averages.
But let's see how the new scoring system fares over the coming weeks, it's always worth experimenting, and as previously mentioned, can always revert to the old or tweak some more.
PS. I'm not sure how much of the results you keep on file, but would it not be possible to simulate the new scoring system with past results?
Running a league like this takes time and commitment and finding the right solution is hard. Some will like the changes others maybe not, i doubt in truth it will make much difference to the overall table, although it does actually take away the advantage of players who play every game, i guess this in turn helps the players with less volume.
Time will tell but i presume @NOSTRI has looked at the data he has and this produces a better scoring format overall. Either that or they did not want to produce a table on Monday showing me top and decided on the spur of the moment to change it.
Its an added challenge for all, helped and supported by sky poker.
As @coo1-um has said, it is a bit of a rock and a hard place situation. I want the league to be fun and accessible to everyone, while still rewarding the best players and without surrendering the outcome entirely to chance. I feel strongly that casual players should have as much chance as regular grinders at winning the league and I don't mind experimenting a bit to get us closer to that.
So far, the top four have almost always simply been those who play the most games. No disrespect to the winners, who may well be deserving winners, but it seems clear that they are, in a way, brute-forcing their way to the top of the league by loading up on points in as many games as possible.
The advantages of what we are trying this week, as I see them, are:
- Playing almost all the games to a reasonable standard doesn't essentially guarantee you top four
- It should be harder for someone to run away with it on any given week, since scoring margins will be thinner
- The final scores will be made up of the same number of fixtures for everybody
It is a reasonable criticism that people who can't play every day are at a disadvantage, but that disadvantage is surely not greater than it was when they couldn't play 40 games a week to keep up with the most prolific players. Infrequent players will always be at a disadvantage and that's not a problem I expect to "solve" or that I think can be solved. It's only right that playing more infers some advantage, it just shouldn't be a free win. That's the line I'm trying to find with this new format.I'll quickly comment on the two other suggestions too. Taking games off the schedule is not a bad idea but I think the schedule is in a pretty good place, giving plenty of options at different buy in levels and formats, so I would rather keep that as a last resort. The other was using some kind of moving average of points per tournament. This has been discussed before. I don't love it because it obfuscates the results somewhat; I think it's more appealing for people to know they have scored however many points, and be able to easily understand how that affects their position in the league. When you start computing different metrics like that it gets just a bit more complicated, in my opinion. But I am certainly going to keep that in my pocket as an option.
I am pretty sure this format favours grinders a lot less than the previous format. People can only get a one game lead on you in a session, as opposed to a 5+ game lead. Grinders may have more chances at putting up a good score each day, but binking a good result at some point in the week will now be much more impactful than it was in terms of your final score and competing with others. I genuinely think this is fairer and will see a much more varied podium at the end of the week.
But if I'm wrong, no harm done and we'll go back to the original format or try something else.
However, my mind keeps thinking of the most extreme examples.
There are 7 tournaments on the schedule that run each night of the week.
Let's say for example Player 1 [multi-tabler] can only play for 1 night of the week, and elects to play only those 7 tournaments. Imagine they either min-pointed or final tabled in every one. That player would only receive one set of points.
On the other hand, let's say Player 2 [single-tabler] only plays one of those tournaments each night [essentially playing the exact same number and tournament set as Player 1 over the course of the week]. Now imagine Player 2 also had the exact same results as Player 1.
From my understanding, Player 2 will now have a much much better overall weekly score than Player 1, even though they played the exact same tournaments, with the exact same results.
Also, if a player manages to Final Table or even win 2,3,4 or more (we have seen that happen already. @AMD68 I'm looking at you
I feel some sort of scoring system that bridges that gap between Player 1 and Player 2 in the above example would be a bit more fairer all-round.
I am sorry if I sound ungrateful or critical of any change. I really do appreciate the time, effort and commitment needed to run this competition. It is definitely a difficult conundrum.
Cheers for listening
It was a quiet night, as Tuesdays often are, with few results of note.
20:30 £2,000 Mini Gold Rush (448 runners)
10. @aynaricol (25)58. @WAREZ (10)
71. @spearsy136 (9)
18:30 £1,000 Bounty Hunter (203 runners)
3. @spearsy136 (31)12. @Boxster (15)
19:15 £300 Deep Stack (114 runners)
6. @WAREZ (16)13. @Boxster (11)
19:40 £100 Deep Stack (82 runners)
4. @gibbzy (17)21:15 £200 Deep Stack (88 runners)
1. @johno77 (35)Remarkably enough, none of yesterday's top four scored a single point last night and they have all been overtaken. @johno77 binked the late deep stack, catapulting him into first. @spearsy136 took third in the 18:30 Bounty Hunter for a very cute 31 points, pushing him into second. Honorable mention for @aynaricol, hanging on until the final ten in the Mini.
Boxxy
This week, we are going to be trying a slightly rejigged scoring system for the MML. Instead of all of your results being counted towards your points total, only your highest-scoring result each day will count.
As a half way house suggestion, what about taking everyone's best seven results of the week, regardless of if they were on seven different days or all in one multi tabling hot streak?!
It would be fair to low volume players like me ( playing on tablet ) and restricted to one game at a time and might appeal to high volume players as well as players who only play two or three nights a week.
Even if the magic number of 7 is tweaked, that idea actually sounds really reasonable to me.
The problem with this is it does actually give high volume players a fairly significant advantage still. Imagine your more casual players get in, say, ten games in a week. They play their 7 games, then have 3 chances to improve their scores. But then high volume players put their 7 games in and have maybe 25+ chances in the most extreme cases to improve their scores. I don't think it's even worth simulating this; I am certain the highest volume players would win almost every week using this format.