Tourney formats and time.

[Riley Scott]

I wanted to have a discussion about all the stop gap measure tournament formats we've been seeing recently.

While I fully respect that it's the TO's decision to make on how they run their tourneys, I would like to make a request:

 

Please stop.

 

We can all agree that FFG's tourney rules are kind of dumb. It puts too much emphasis on quality of win, which is aggravating. I don't think I like it, at all.

That being said, it's the official format, and since we are knee deep in regional season, it's what we should be preparing for.

65 minute rounds, two games, prestige, and no weird house mulligan rules. It's not great, but I don't feel like any of the homebrew formats are any better than FFG's.

 

I don't want to discount any of the homebrew format's that have been floating around, I actually think Prune's 'chess' rules would work really well as a league.

 

The other point I wanted to make was regarding time.

 

Net runner isn't a fast game, and since we are allowed 65 minutes to play two complete games, I think time should be a large priority to players.

I am also prepared to be the only one who has an issue with this.

I understand slow play, people don't want to make mistakes, and competitive environments do weird things to a persons brain space, I get it. On the other hand, a round only allows for 65 minutes to play 2 complete games, if my opponent's turns are taking 2-3 times longer than mine, this is going to aggravate me, a lot. I don't want to call anyone out or hurt anyone's feelings, but I want to figure out a way to avoid this, because not completing a match due to time is the stupidest thing ever.

 

I'm not just referring to the actual time spent playing a game either, I've noticed multiple occasions where rounds have started late for some players due to their opponent missing. Last week Veen and I waited a full 15 minutes to get a round started due to our opponents being gone. This one I'm ready to take a harder stance on. 

It is unacceptable, it's bad etiquette and creates a negative (non) play experience.

When the round starts both players should be seated and at the very least, shuffling.

 

Seattle ostensibly has one of the strongest environments in ANR right now, and I feel our conduct should reflect this.

 

PS I love you all.

[brendan]

This is to help with some perspective not put down any of the hard work people have put in. 

I will confess that the house rule tournaments have made me less than interested in coming to my first tournament. I wont say its the only factor or anything (not enough hours in the day) but it contributes and every little factor contributes to drawing new players out of the house. 

That goes to the second point. Being on time for a match is indeed just courtesy. I know that sometimes things happen ( I had to last minute cancel being in a tournament so I hope no one was waiting on me) but respecting the play environment makes people want to come back. If it feels like a clubhouse and you were not privy to the highest level of membership you just dont want to keep showing up. Trust me I say this with tons of personal experience that I dont care to go into on a mail list. 

anyway thank you all for being so active and hospitable it has made me feel extra guilty for not coming out yet, a problem I hope to fix in the next couple of weeks. 

[Prunesquallor]

Thanks for the feedback, Riley, we love you too :P

It looks like I'll put on a tournament in May - Sunday the 12th is the most likely date - and perhaps we can get one more tournament in for early June as a last chance to prep for the Regionals.  (As far as venue, I'd love to get at least one of these to happen at a Seattle game store, and have been reaching out to some of them but no luck yet in getting a commitment).

Leading up to the Regionals, any tournament that I run will be by-the-book with the FFG rules.

I've been thinking about time alot, and here are the decisions I've made about it for running a tournament :

1. It helps to have a realistic schedule that includes some breaks for meals; I'll try to do this next time, and I think it should go a long way towards having matches start on time.
2. Even with an odd number of players, the TO should not play in the tournament.  It both slows things down, and also makes it difficult for the TO to monitor slow play.  And this is something that the TO really needs to do proactively, rather than waiting for things to get bad enough during a match that a complaint comes in.  By then, it's often too late to salvage the match; and also many people don't feel comfortable about being confrontational and won't make the complaint formally.
3. I'll probably try for 70 minute rounds, but am happy to shift to 65 or 75 if people have strong opinions.  70 allows for 30 minutes per game, plus sufficient time for seating, set-up, clearing away the first game, noting the results.
   
4. The FFG floor rules don't actually provide any good guidelines for dealing with slow play,   I'm trying to come up with some.  What I'm thinking is this :
1. Assess whether a game is running long by looking at agenda points scored vs time left.  I'd expect roughly one agenda point per two minutes in a close game that goes down to the wire; if a game is significantly behind that pace, the TO should watch a few turns
2. Using a stopwatch or timer, look at how long the players are taking to take their turns.  I need to figure out how many turns happen in a long, close game, so I can determine what some guidelines are for how much time a typical turn should take for a game to finish in 30 minutes; data or input here is welcomed.  Give a warning when a player is going past that guideline.
   
3. After warning a player two times, continued slow play can result in them ending their turn after a time limit even if they have clicks remaining, or even forfeiting the game at the TO's discretion.  I think the warnings are important, because the problem is not when someone takes longer on a single turn - that is OK and to be expected, some turns involve much more difficult decisions than others.  But when the pattern emerges of slow play across several turns, that's when there's clearly a problem that needs to be addressed.

Lastly, I'll make three comments about the experimentation I've done with format so far :

I'm still in favor of dropping the 2 point Prestige bonus for the match win, but am not as strong on that as I was a couple of months ago.  In the last tournament at Third Place Books, the top two players would have been the same with or without the match prestige point bonus.  And that was a pretty good example of what can happen, Veen's corp deck was a quick agenda grab that didn't win many of its games, but he still came out in the top 2 whether or not the match point bonus was used.

The format I ran in Tacoma, pairing for a game at a time, is not a way to run an entire tournament.  It's more work, and leads to some weird judgement calls that a TO shouldn't have to make on the fly.  However, I do think it's a good way to do the first two or even four games in a large tournament, simply to get more information more quickly, and get people into the right pairings earlier.  I don't anticipate running anything this way anytime soon - it'll be by-the-book through and including Regionals.  But I would like to see a big tournament (over 16 people) start with a single game pairing (2 prestige at stake), which leads to a Swiss pairing for a seccond single game (again 2 prestige, everyone switiches sides and gets a new opponent), which leads to standard match pairings for the remaining Swiss rounds.  A smaller tournament doesn't need to do this.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for their patience as the TO's have been exploring what does and doesn't work.  It's given us (me at least) some valuable insights into ways to improve the current floor rules, and hopefully has still fostered some good competitive play.  But, as Riley rightly asks, it's time to standardize so people can prep for Regionals.

[yuri tolpin]

I honestly don't think we need to worry about intentional slow play in Netrunner since the community is so small and the stakes are so low.  It's not like pro tour magic where players are willing to cheat for large amounts of money and prestige.  As for players who just generally take longer to play I count myself as one of them.  I don't play net runner very often and when I do I like to think through all of my options and do the best job I can.  When people ask me to play faster it throws off my thought process and makes it harder for me to concentrate.  It's even worce when the judge watches the game.   At the last tournament the judge watched an entire game of mine and and it made me play even slower.  When there are spectators I get self conscious about making mistakes and it slows me down considerably.   Honestly, I think the best way to deal with slow players and just to be patient with them.  If you are nice and make them feel comfortable they will generally relax and play faster.   

[yuri tolpin]

I also really like the idea of a scheduled lunch break for locations that don't have immediate access to food.  Not something we needed to worry about at third place books.  

[Patrick @ Uncle's]

Uncle's is more than willing to host any events you want. We may not quite be Seattle area for your June event but if you give me a couple weeks notice I can guarantee more space for play than any other store you'll find.  An entire section of the Mall has been transformed into pure Tabletop gaming space and I can use it for any events you want, just let me know.

[Prunesquallor]

Yuri, to your points :

The stakes are higher for Regionals.  There is an entry to the world championships at stake (November in MN), and we have numerous players locally that would be contenders for that competition.

The regionals will also have a fair bit of limited edition prize support that is only available at a Regional competition, and so it's nice stuff that is otherwise very hard to find.  I expect some of the prizes will go for good prices on eBay.  (just a note, the venues hosting regionals had to shell out in the vicinity of $200 for the Regional prize support package).

So, we are coming up on a point in time where the stakes are higher, and where there can be some incentives for unsportsmanlike play.

I do recognize that being more strict about time, while it helps defend against that, also has some negative consequences for the good-but-slow player.  And really that's just too bad.  I'd rather have a situation as a TO where a good-but-slow player gets knocked down a bit, rather than having another good player get pulled down in the rankings because of unfinished games.

[yuri tolpin]

In that case I highly recommend increasing the time limits for regionals.  

[Prunesquallor]

Longer time limits aren't really feasible for Regionals or any bigger tournament.

First, the official rules that we're supposed to run under say that rounds should be 55-75 minutes long, with a recommendation of 65 minutes; and the Regionals have to run by the book.

Second, let's say that we have a great turnout, and there are 40 people.  After 4 rounds of Swiss, there will still be people undeafeated who have not played each other, and so a single-elimination final is necessary.  Let's say the top four players make the finals, so we have two more rounds (btw, no time limits apply in the final championship match).  That's 6 rounds of play.  Using the max round length of 75 minutes, and assuming we run things extremely tight, that's a 8+ hour event.  Meanwhile the time budgeted for the regionals by the our host is closer to 6 hours.  So, if anything, the time pressure during the regionals will be even more than in our more casual tournaments.

Ultimately, it comes down to this - for the upcoming level of tournament play, the winners will be the people who play the best and who play quickly enough.  If you find that your matches take longer, you need to practice on ways to improve the time that you take.

[Brendan Keating]

I agree with prunesquallor's assessment, except for one caveat... the winners will also likely be playing AGAINST fast players as well. Has the idea of turn time limits been tossed around at all? This idea runs in to problems in the subject of runs...

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[Prunesquallor]

Chess clocks have been discussed a fair bit, there are numerous threads on Board Game Geek, go have a look there.

For immediate purposes, we need to get ourselves trained for an official event under the current offical floor rules, which don't support any kind of chess clock, so it's really a theoretical discussion for now; I'd suggest taking any further debate on those kinds of things to the Rules subforum on BGG.

On Friday, April 26, 2013 11:53:36 AM UTC-7, Brendan Keating wrote:

I agree with prunesquallor's assessment, except for one caveat... the winners will also likely be playing AGAINST fast players as well. Has the idea of turn time limits been tossed around at all? This idea runs in to problems in the subject of runs...

On Apr 26, 2013 11:18 AM, "Prunesquallor" <bea...@jazzbud.com> wrote:

Longer time limits aren't really feasible for Regionals or any bigger tournament.

First, the official rules that we're supposed to run under say that rounds should be 55-75 minutes long, with a recommendation of 65 minutes; and the Regionals have to run by the book.

Second, let's say that we have a great turnout, and there are 40 people.  After 4 rounds of Swiss, there will still be people undeafeated who have not played each other, and so a single-elimination final is necessary.  Let's say the top four players make the finals, so we have two more rounds (btw, no time limits apply in the final championship match).  That's 6 rounds of play.  Using the max round length of 75 minutes, and assuming we run things extremely tight, that's a 8+ hour event.  Meanwhile the time budgeted for the regionals by the our host is closer to 6 hours.  So, if anything, the time pressure during the regionals will be even more than in our more casual tournaments.

Ultimately, it comes down to this - for the upcoming level of tournament play, the winners will be the people who play the best and who play quickly enough.  If you find that your matches take longer, you need to practice on ways to improve the time that you take.

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[Anthony Giovannetti]

I am going to be frank. 

I think in regards to the issue of slow play and time, it is a tangible problem. It is perfectly possible to play a match in 65 minutes, if certain players are consistently having problems running into time, then the problem lies in their play. Everyone else ( and especially their opponents) should not suffer because of slow play. Being able to decide things in a timely manner is part of being a good player. 

I think excessive slow play should be warned and then punished with game losses if necessary. That is how it is in Magic, and I don't see why it should be different here.

-Anthony