Rules for game scheduling

[uuni]

What rules are popular for league game scheduling?
The CRP describes briefly some things in pages 30-31 to take note when organising a series of games or league. CRP describes a process that has first some games as the league season and then have some games as the end of season tournament. It describes that there should normally be about 12 games in season before tournaments, and offers 3 months of real time as a nominal for the season games.

The scheduling of league games is mentioned in the end and two methods of game schedules are mentioned: play-offs and scheduling with points. Finally, league challenges are described in the page 31. The general guide of the rulebook seems to be "Use the system that seems best for your Blood Bowl league.", which may be nice, as it leaves room for creativity.

In perpetual on-line leagues at least two methods have been popular for scheduling games: random draw and open negotiation. In FUMBBL, these methods appear in the form of divisions Blackbox and Rated respectively. Cyanide has their Matchmaker. These methods, however, have no description in the rulebook.

I would like to gather some of the experience of the community to know more about the subject. If this topic has been widely discussed before, I will be glad when someone points to relevant earlier discussion.

Please discuss of your opinions and experience about:

1. What methods of scheduling have you used?

2. What good things have you found about different methods?

3. What bad things have you found about different methods?

4. What method do you recommend to use in what king of league situation?

[uuni]

Perhaps I should start, as the silence is deafening.

1. What methods of scheduling have you used?

I have played tabletop BB with three different scheduling methods: Freeform, Round-Robin and Random Pairing.

In our freeform league there was a preset limit of 12 games per team per season, but any coaches could arrange their matches as they wished. There was also the rule that two coaches should not play more than 2 matches sequentially. Coaches could make new 1000k starting teams any time they liked as much they liked. Everybody could participate in the play-offs with their chosen team.

Currently I am playing in a round-robin scheduled leadue. Participating teams are listed before season and then the league commish decides the order of the games. All teams play each other team once. Points are calculated during the season, 3 points per win and 1 point per draw, and the 4 teams with the most points go to semifinals in the league.

I am currently testing scheduling with random pairing. In our test league, the games are organized into rounds that consist of two games per team. Coaches enlist their selected team to the round.

(I order the teams into a random order index and make two game schedules. In the first iteration, the first team plays the second, the third plays the fourth and so on. If the last team had no game in the first iteration, it is scheduled a game with the first team. After the first iteration, the team list is moved one space up so that the first team becomes the last team, the second team the first team, the third team the second team and so on. Now teams are again paired with their next team.)

2. What good things have you found about different methods?

Freeform was the most freely flowing type of arranging games. People could call and arrange a game for the current evening when they so decided. Also there was the least organizing about the schedule in that format.

Round-robin sets the pace of the play. Everybody is quite much guaranteed to have the same amount of games in the end of the season. There is no picking or avoiding opponents.

My idea for the random pairing is to have more flexible schedule than round robin but still avoid the pitfalls of freeform style. Coaches still don't get to decide who to play with, but the bottleneck games do not stall the whole league. Also the unpredictablity of the opponents may make the ideal team development more well-rounded than freeform, where you can elect not to play certain types of teams, or round-robin, where you know in advance the order of the future games, so you can pace your skill picks and player purchases according to opponents. The idea of random pairing is to have the flexibility of freeform and the "equality" of round-robin.

3. What bad things have you found about different methods?

With freeform play the coaches started to argue that there was cliques of coaches that mainly played among themselves and that there was preferrance of "easy" opponents and avoidance of "hard" opponents. Some coaches found it hard to find games and felt discouraged.

I feel that round-robin has had a problem with league bottlenecks. When sometimes a coach cannot play for a period, the whole league starts to lag, as the game order is preset, and later games must wait for the earlier scheduled games. Also, there is a notion that the game order is known beforehand, so you can sometimes finetune your skill picks or player purchases over few games with regard of the opposing teams, although this probably has only a very small effect. Round-robin has also driven away some of the more casual gamers as it requires the commitment to play the whole league through.

The random scheduling has the problem that it requires a quite big amount of work. The teams must enlist in fixed time to each round and not just once in the beginning of the league and the processing of the round requires some amount of handwork each round.

4. What method do you recommend to use in what king of league situation?

I feel that round-robin has probably an upper limit of teams in league of less than 15 teams. I feel that it is at its best in leagues with few amount of players, so that the bottlenecks do not create so big effect.

Freeform is probably the easiest model to upkeep. You just announce the limits and details of the league at the start of the season and people arrange games. If your coaches are passive, you may have to encourage playing somehow, perhaps scheduled group meetings or something like that can activate the coaches.

I have only begun testing the random draw on TT, so I have not yet much data about it. I hope that it will encourage people to play more actively, because they know that the arranged games are "soon" and there is less commitment required than in round-robin.

***

How do you feel about these thoughts? How have you arranged games in your league?

[Digger Goreman]

Please discuss of your opinions and experience about:

1. What methods of scheduling have you used?

Fixed in long past leagues and a challenge system in current ladder leagues....

2. What good things have you found about different methods?

In the fixed format, everyone played everyone twice and were matched by closest TV of someone you haven't played yet (or haven't played twice in the "second round")....

In the ladder (current) leagues, the lowest league rated team gets first right of challenge and then choice moves to second lowest team, etc.... Gives the lowest teams the most power in choosing their opponents....

3. What bad things have you found about different methods?

Fixed format, people not showing up and the occasional w i d e disparity in team values even while trying not to do so....

Ladder format (and this may be a meta-coaching issue), low-league-rated TV bloated teams unwilling to trim positions so as to challenge from a TV underdog position (for more possible ladder points) or "rising" from the cellar a point or two at a time (while being 50-60 points off the lead).... Lesser teams playing kingmaker....

4. What method do you recommend to use in what king of league situation?

For the little nits we're still picking on, our League Ladder is still the best I've seen.... The only thing I might change is that we went to a tie as counting half a win for the underdog TV team and half a loss for the overdog.... Perhaps we'll go back to half a win for both....

[PercyTheTroll]

1. What methods of scheduling have you used?

I'll start out and say that I've never scheduled a BB league. However I was until recently the Events coordinator at FreeAllegiance so my experience here is arranging squad leagues/tournaments (in Allegiance a squad is like a clan in Quake etc.). Games would be played once a week on a Sunday evening.

I used a variety of different arrangements over the years, round robin, divisional round robin and double elimination tournaments.

Round Robin has already been covered but with 10+ participants and 2 games with each opponent I found it very hard to cram in all the games needed without a solid calendar.

So I took the rankings from that and went forward with a Divisional Round Robin. Essentially you split into two divisions and play two games against each division mate and one game against each team in the other division.

Double Elimination Tournaments work pretty well as an improvement over the standard. Essentially you have a knock out tournament but when you lose a game you go into a second bracket that keeps playing and you're only eliminated from the competition as a whole after losing a second game. The Wikipedia article is pretty good for the details.

2. What good things have you found about different methods?

Round Robin is very even and pretty hard to game for advantage.
Divisional Round Robin worked well to keep the number of games down and worked well with the clear division in skill that allowed the less good teams pair up more often than they got stomped by the big bads.
Double Elimination Tournaments are a neat way of having an elimination tournament without the annoying "one unlucky game" aspect. You can even go to triple elimination to make sure people get lots of games.

3. What bad things have you found about different methods?

Round Robin makes for a lot of games if you play 2 games per opponent.
Divisional Round Robin can be demoralising for a team in the lower division as they know they're in the lower division. Of course you could split the divisions randomly and have a play off at the end to decide the winner. In a BB context it's probably better if you have a lot of players.
Double Elimination Tournaments have weeks where some teams don't play whilst others make up games in the other bracket.

4. What method do you recommend to use in what kind of league situation?

How many teams do you have and how many games do you want them to play? That should determine the arrangements more than anything.

[harroguk]

I am the Commisioner of the TGV league in Daventry and we run a Round Robin System.

In order to stop the lags that people have spoken of above I run it like I total Facist.

You have 2 weeks to play your game and if you dont get it in then the rules below apply. At first my players thought it was overly harsh but after living with it for 6 seasons they now just accept it and everyone makes a best effort to get their match played.

• Unplayed games by the end of each window (Both coaches are unable to agree on a time but are approximately equal in availability.).
  • No MVPs
  • No Gold
  • Match is reported as 0-0
  • No penalties
  • In the event of a Cup game the winner will be decided by a Dice roll, 1-3 Player 1 wins, 4-6 Player 2 wins.
• If it is the case that one coach has consistently tried to organise the match with no response or little help from the other coach (This also covers occasions where one coach is available for the majority of the time but the other isn't, like a 2 week holiday).
  • Two MVPs to available coach.
  • 1d6x10k gold to available coach.
  • Match is reported as 1-0 to available coach.
  • No penalties.
  • In the event of a Cup game the available coach will go through to the next round.
• If one coach fails to turn up to a game that they have organised without prior notification to their opponent (Notification is deemed at least 1 hour).
  • Two MVPs to available coach.
  • 1d6x10k gold to attending coach.
  • Match reported as 1-0 victory to attending coach.
  • Missing coach is penalised 2 fan factor (To a minimum of 0).
  • Missing coach is penalised 60k gold (Alowed to take team in to negative treasury)
  • In the event of a Cup game the attending coach will go through to the next round.
• Match was played but not completely logged by Sunday 2359Hrs. (The match needs to be logged in full or there is no point)
  • 1 x MvP for coach that was not responsible for logging the match.
  • No Gold.
  • Match is reported as 0-0
  • No penalties
  • In the event of a Cup game the winner will be decided by a Dice roll, 1-3 Player 1 wins, 4-6 Player 2 wins.

It is the winners responsibility to log matches however, if you feel that your opponent is unreliable then you should log the match yourself or copy his match report out after the match.

[LaserJon]

I am the Commisioner of the TGV league in Daventry and we run a Round Robin System.

In order to stop the lags that people have spoken of above I run it like I total Facist.

He ain't kidding, he has us Goose stepping all over the place. The rules are there for all to see before they join the league so they know what to expect when they sign up. Enforce them and the league runs smoothly. PS Whats the next round event Harroguk?