Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year’s Eve celebration. Also wanted to share a few notes:

1. The two finalists for December are “Evil, PhD” and “mleher”. They will face off in a final contest, and I’m leaving it up to them to decide if it’s a single match, a best 2 of 3, or a sumo wrestling event. (You guys should initiate a game 1 now and use chat to decide up front whether you’ll plan for a series or not).
2. I’ve initiated a new daily challenge series for January. If you choose to join it, you won’t be assigned an opponent until midnight Pacific.
3. The December daily challenge remains open for recording of yesterday’s match results only; it will automatically close at midnight Pacific and no further editing will be possible, so finish those games if you want them to count for your win %.

Hello, All. I’m pleased to see so many people still engaged in the November Daily Tournament. I will keep it going in January. However, due to my ridiculously busy life, I will NOT be initiating another Monthly Tournament (i.e., best 2 of 3 elimination format) this January.

At this point, unless one of the two top competitors chooses to play another regular daily game and risk losing (and why would they?), we know who the finalists are. Only two players will finish the month with perfect 100% win ratios: “Evil, PhD” and “mleher.”

Opus61 was stopped, just 3 games short of reaching the final, by debbyoc. Debby is dangerous, so that’s not surprising. But that development probably came as a huge relief to the members of the 20+ 100% club.

lbonomo is another whose would-be perfect record was thwarted by a loss to — you guessed it — debbyoc. Maybe we’ll call debby the WWF dreamkiller, LOL! Just kidding! Debby’s a fun competitor and a great sport.

Just saw the November playoff bracket. Nice job, bshaw94!

I must admit that I was rooting for comedypace, since he and I had a few enjoyable games a while back; it was good to see him get to 2nd place. Joel, I think you could take a monthly.

Honorable mention to Miikal1, too, who bested the champ, Opus61.

But the day belongs to bshaw94 — look out, everyone!

As with any loophole or ploy, there is a risk in addressing it openly (i.e., 95% of people would never have considered it), but to establish clear expectations for all, I’m going to do so.

Please do not withdraw from the Daily Challenge tournament with the sole intention of skipping the nightly random matching. I realize some players might do this to time the notification of a new opponent, or perhaps to avoid drawing the same player twice, or maybe escaping the dreaded duplicate assignment. However, it appears to some that you’re trying to draw newer and/or less committed players to gain an advantage.

I haven’t figured out a way to prevent this practice, and I don’t want to over-police (that’s no fun), so just let it be known that you can and should withdraw only to take a break for at least one round.

By the way, I have gotten player complaints about this, which prompted this clarification. Thanks for your cooperation!

Right now I’m averaging the points spread on WON GAMES ONLY to calculate MOV. However, I’m considering whether the points spread should be based on wins AND losses. For undefeated players this has no impact, but on the rest of us, it will bring our MOV down a bit, perhaps better reflecting our skill by factoring in how badly we lost those games (or from another perspective, how close the losses were).

NOTE: I’m not going to factor in scores from games ending in forfeit or no-show or incomplete. Those tend to be lopsided results that are not indicative of actual skill.

So, should I update the calculation to include points spread on lost games too?

Also, you might be wondering why I calculate MOV at all, since it encourages people to spike their scores on players of lesser skill. Well, I’ve taken MOV out of the picture in terms of determining the champion for the daily challenge (it’s based on win %, then a playoff/championship if needed). However, I do think MOV has a valuable place in determining a player’s skill ranking. So, at this time I’m electing to keep it; however, I am interested in formula changes that make it more relevant and accurate.

Again, feedback solicited. Thanks!

Here are the screens from the November Monthly Final. Enjoy!

OK, as you know Opus61 prevailed in the Nov BAM. But we decided to have a little playoff fun, and here’s the bracketing. I know the scrollbars aren’t pretty, but it works…

Hey, Gang. I just heard from Marcus Robinson. He’s going to kickoff the challenge for November’s top players at 8AM Pacific tomorrow, so just wanted to let you know. You’ll get an email at that time if you were in the top 16 in November (see a few posts back).

Thanks for your patience. The bracketing in Challonge! will add a neat dynamic. Marcus is sending me the script to embed results on my site here.

Have a great day!

MARGIN OF VICTORY – Note that I’ve changed the rules such that a playoff will determine the champion in the event multiple players have the top win percentage. Margin of victory means NOTHING with regard to the championship from this point forward — so go easy on the players of lesser skill, and focus on just winning games.

Also, I clarified a few things regarding slow players. Please note:

• The editing range for updating scores is still only 3 rounds. That is, you can edit the current round, as well as the prior 2. This nets out to about 72 hours from the time of round cycling (midnight Pacific). Although, keep in mind that sometimes you don’t get a player at the midnight cycle (e.g., re-entries and late comers), so you must mind the clock.
• Time to complete games is 48 hours from when a game is launched on your device — which means you CAN declare a victory due to “Time Ran Out” if your opponent is primarily at fault for slow play. This shows as an “Incomplete” on the history, but awards you the win, regardless of which player was ahead in points. This is incentive to finish on time.

I am terribly busy these days, so please don’t ask me to update scores if you and your opponent miss the reporting window (I’m such a meanie, huh?)

Anyway, thanks for making this fun, everyone!

Got to some maintenance today on the Daily Challenge…

• You can now click on the tournament’s title in the Results tab, and this will show you current standings for the Daily Challenge. This uses a primary sort for win % and secondary sort for margin of victory (or MOV).
• Daily Challenge results are broken up into those with greater than 20 games (thus eligible to win), those with 4 or more games (i.e., ranked), and finally those with fewer than 4 games (i.e., unranked).
• Moved the “Withdraw” button to prevent accidental selection.
• Implemented the option to edit scores for the current and two prior rounds — WITHOUT rejoining and WITHOUT drawing a new opponent. Thus, you can take a break and still be able to record scores for your games as they wrap up.

I still need to update the RULES for the Daily Challenge, because it’s no longer going to be based on Win % (with tie break by MOV); instead, it’ll be a top 16 playoff. This helps de-emphasize MOV and make it almost a non-factor. I’m also wondering if I shouldn’t make MOV based on wins AND losses, whereas it’s currently factoring only MOV for games won.

Last topic for now: People have asked for greater reach in updating prior rounds. I have struggled with this, and my conclusion is this: If you cannot post on time, you either need to invoke the 48-hour time limit on your opponent, or you need to just play faster. To avoid being swamped with manual updates, I’m going to have to start saying no to email updates.