Infinity Tournamnents

This is a wonderful website, but I'm utterly baffled by the lack of an explanation of Infinity Tournaments.

Could an admin please add an explanation of Infinity Tournaments to the FAQ?

Thank you.

I doubt an admin will add an explanation there, but perhaps others will. This is how _I_ believe the infinity tournament works:

You sign up for the tournament. After some time, a new "round" starts. Exactly when a new round starts is unclear; perhaps after a certain percentage of the previous rounds game was finished, perhaps after a fixed time period - I'm not sure. But it does start before all the games in the previous round is finished, at least.

In a round, every player is teamed up with another player. If there is an odd number of players, one player meets "system", which basically means he gets a walk-over. Who you meet is related to your performance in the infinity tournament, but the exact rules for this seems unclear.

You then get points as usual: 2 for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loss (except for Soccer, I guess, where the scoring is different). At some point, your "percentage" of wins counted, but now I think only your total score counts (so people who joined from the start has a much higher score than people who joined later).

The tournaments can be joined in the "Tournaments" section. I wouldn't put too much weight on who is on the top of the infinity tournaments. The Championships and rating lists are better indications of who are the best players in the various games. The infinity tournaments are just a nice way to start games against more or less equal opponents with at more or less regular time intervals, without having to play an entire tournament (in the other tournaments you have to play against all the other players in a tournament, which means at least eight games for the championships).

Thank you Marius. So if I understand you correctly, I will only be playing one game at time per tournament? That's great. I love playing a wide variety of games and I love tournaments, but sometimes I get overloaded by the sheer number of simultaneous games I'm playing.

One of the interesting and quaint things about this site is that it takes years to understand it....just enjoy the games!

I think (...) I know how the score is computed. I verified it with my two Einstein tournaments: In the top left corner there is a tekst like "IR = 10".
That means that your score is the sum of the last 10 games you played in this tournament.

Thanks Marius, I have been wondering about this too.

One correction, one amplification:

A game starts every two weeks -- although every once in a while the server hiccups and they don't start when they should.

Therefore, you can be in the middle of more than one game at once -- especially in 19x19 go.

And, yes, Paul is correct in his surmise. Just to flesh out some details:

IR for a tournament is based on the number of players currently enrolled in the tournament.

The score is based on the most recent "IR/10" games which you have finished, when ordered by their start dates (equivalently, when ordered by their horizontal position on the grid).

The shark is right, you may be playing more than one game in the infinity tournament.

Also, the total score that each player has in an infinity tournament is the running total of the points he won in the last (N) games he has finished. For example in the Shogi-3x4, tournament the N=7 (notice the IR 7 at the top.

The score in parenthesis is (I think) similar to the SON score. It's the sum of your (last N) opponents score.

Mind my previous post. The shark's explanation is more accurate.

Also see http://www.littlegolem.net/jsp/forum/topic2.jsp?forum=1&topic=2647

Especially the formula for IR is: IR = 2 x log_2 (number of players)

Thanks a lot everyone. I think I get it now. Great concept for a tournament format, and like I said before, perfect for those of us with several favourites.

Cheers!

A returning player named "observer" who can not post asked me to post a few questions about infinity tournaments :

Hello fellow DB players,
I just started playing recently here and i noticed few changes from the last time i was here, in particular, as the subject title suggests, infinite tournament.

I do not understand the concept of it.
Just to list few questions:
if i start an infinite tournament and a game starts with a player, what happens if i withdraw from the tournament?
I will only get the point for the one (or few) games that i played before withdrawing?
Even after i withdraw, will i still play the other players on the list?
How come it is only one game at a time?
How does the point system work in this kind of tournament?
If i withdraw and join again, will i be in the same tournament or a different one?
Over all, im very clueless about infinite tournament, so any details (or all, preferably) would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I still have no clear idea how infinity tournaments work. But, hey, one game starts every two weeks, in an obscurely competitive environment. It sounds just fine if you want to play not many games of a given type. I do not really care about the detail. If I did I would enter the championship.

No problem, Observer.

1. If you withdraw from the tournament, any games you are in the middle of continue (unless you resign them separately).

2. You will get points of all finished games, including those finished after you withdraw. However, your score will not be visible (i.e. you won't show up in the ranking).

3. No new games will be started after you withdraw.

4. The idea of the infinity tournament is like a swiss system with an infinite number of rounds. I believe the point is to give an alternative to people who find the championships too "feast or famine".

5. Each player accumulates points based on their recent performance (details earlier in the thread) which is then used to form the pairings

6. There is only one infinity tournament per game, so you will be in the same one.

Thanks Shark! Those answers were really helpful. (and i completed 10 games, so i can finally post :D)

I don't know if it's good thread here to complain, but I wish to increase number of your last games that count. Now it's only last 21 games. It's problematic and unfair for games with big IR and long duration like GO. This cause that you have to finish 14 of your 21 last games, and that mean your games are longer that 6-7 months(what is very likely; for GO, for e.g. chess it is about 4,5* months) you don't obtain fair 14 games, by this way non-fast(players that make more than 1 move per game per day) players are in dishonest(if I understand honesty correct) disadvantage. This is main reason why I don't play in any infinity more.

\* (21-12)/2=4,5
This division results from starting game every 2-weeks instead of month(or 4 weeks, I don't know)

I think 10-15 more games should be enough, let's hope Richard will share my opinion and change this.