Divide up the global comptetion price into top 3

Hey all,

With respect to the global competition that everybody is participating in, I feel like it would be more fun if the price pool would be divided over the top 3, top 5 or top 10. For example:

1: 7000,-
2: 2000,-
3: 1000,-

or

1: 5500,-
2: 2000,-
3: 1000,-
4. 500,-
5. 500,-
6. 100,-
7. 100,-
8. 100,-
9. 100,-
10. 100,-

If I would win there would be no real difference between 10.000 and 5000. “still a huge amount of money”. But It would leave a bad taste for second or third spot. I feel like there could be a solution where all the top people should be rewarded for their effort at least a bit. It also loosens the requirement of the developers to make a “perfectly fair” ladder.

Any thoughts?

7 Likes

This is a good idea if no one has several accounts. I think having multiple accounts should be restricted anyway.

1 Like

I didn’t think of that, excellent point. Going more in depth however, the worst case scenario would be the best guy to make 10 accounts with the same algo, and dominate the first 10 spot. And then it would be exactly as before: the top dog would get 10.000. However, you can force competitors to be unique persons, with separate bank accounts, and maybe a separate interview to force them to explain their algo. That way it increases the effort of cheating. Including the risk of losing everything if found out.

But if we go further into the concept of cheating. Theoretically someone could make a bunch of extra accounts that with really good algos (high ELO). However the code recognizes the footprint of the algo you want to win the whole thing, and then they just play worse to let one algo win. ONly a slight change can be enough as you can test beforehand with both algos. As the top price is quite a lot of money it is more prone to abusing the system now.

I think there are many issues and solutions to be raised here, but I feel like a bit more thought could be put into this.

A lot can change in 60 days, but the way the leaderboard has been in the past week suggests that it may be hard to have a definitive #1 on an arbitrary competition end date.

Looking at @876584635678890’s awesome charting:
https://876584635678890.github.io/#leaderboard

There could be a situation where the #1 spot at midnight on 12/31 isn’t the #1 just an hour later. Dividing the prize would make everyone a little more at ease over such a situation. If we’re voting, I like the split across the whole top10. With the recent change to matchmaking, it’s clear there are a bunch of great algos jockeying for position on the leaderboard and even $100 prizes would be a fun way to reward the success. I mean, as much as I’d love to walk away with a giant prize, even just winning $100 at the end of the year would be fun for me.

On another note:

I think it’d be awesome to do feature interviews with the final top X algos where they get to present their winning strats at the end of the year. It’d be a great way to educate and propel the competition further ahead in 2019.

3 Likes

Yeah exactly. I would also vote for full top 10 with prizes. It would also encourage newer or lower ranked players to put in the extra effort, as a top 10 seems much more reachable than top 1. I think it would also encourage top players to be more open in communicating their ideas and strategies if they are not afraid they might give a way too much and lose out on 1st spot. The top players are usually the power users, so this could give a more positive and cooperative vibe to the community.

3 Likes

I brought this to the team. We are going to make a poll/discussion about it. Look out for it on the forum today. (Very soon)

3 Likes