As you may have heard, the tournament is progressing very slowly. Many of the first round matches have not begun yet. However, unless you specifically forfeit, you won't be kicked out of the tournament. While I personally enjoy the aesthetic commitment to a long, drawn out, single elimination tournament bracket that depends on one match to finish before another can begin, I am open to hearing others opinions about the tournament organization and rules. Perhaps we could establish a time limit for each match. Or, to preserve the integrity of the tournament, we could leave it as is, but begin another tournament or league with different rules. One possibility is a round robin tournament, in which you play each other player one time and a loss does not knock you out.
Many of the matches have taken place on Dailygammon.com, and while I've yet to play my first tournament match, I've started playing on this site. They host regular tournaments of various lengths, and there is a robust community of regular players. You can also challenge other players to individual matches, and I've played a few matches against other E Bob Tournament participants, including two 25 point matches against TheMichaelPhelan. That's his Daily Gammon handle, mine's Sleevie. I give you now a direct hyperlink to my Daily Gammon page, where you can challenge me to a match AND see my all time statistics versus my #1 Daily Gammon Arch Rival, TheMichaelPhelan. http://www.dailygammon.com/bg/user/15026
I love Daily Gammon right now, but a few things about how it runs took me a little bit to figure out:
-You do need to register for an account to access any part of the site, and they don't give you a password right away; you've got to wait for the admins to email it to you, (at max 24 hours).
-There are no email notifications about games, invitations, messages, or turns. The only way to know anything about your account is to go to the site.
-Each action you take in a game (rolling, doubling, submitting moves) is submitted to the server and saved. So if you roll your dice, get a 6-2, but then you have to run to take your spinach puffs out of the oven, and you don't come back to the game until the next day, it will still be exactly the same with that 6-2 waiting for you, even if your computer shut down in the meanwhile.
-To make the matches move faster, the computer running the site uses a clever method ("computer guessing") to give you likely scenarios and ask you what you will do. You often take more than one turn in one sitting. Above the board it may say "What will you do if the game proceeds this way?" I can explain it in greater detail, and you can read about it in the Dailygammon help section. Let me assure you that it is fair, it's not magic, and you are not playing against the computer.
-When you're making a move in a game, the game is not sent back to your opponent until you come to the two bubbles that say "Next Game" and "To Top" and press one of them. Once you do get to that point and press one of those options, the game is sent back to your opponent.
Ratings and Experience
Your Daily Gammon page lists your rating and experience, both based on the FIBS rating system explained here: http://www.fibs.com/ratings.html#explained
-Only official Daily Gammon tournaments count in the ratings and experience. So when TheMichaelPhelan beat me in our two 25 point matches, our ratings and experience did not change, but when I beat him in Round 1 of the Strawberry Stratified 2434 15 point tournament, our ratings and experience did change. That's why some people in the E Bob Oboe tournament have experience of 0 despite playing matches on Daily Gammon.
-Your experience will increase by the number of points to win a match after the match finishes.
-Your rating will go up or down based on experience, the compared rating of you and your opponent, and on the points to win the match.
-If experience and compared ratings were not a factor, and you won a 5 point match with a score of 5 to 4, your rating would go up 5 points, and your opponent's rating would drop 5 points. If you lose a match, you don't get any credit for the points you had in the match. You lost. A 21-20 loss will affect you exactly the same as a 21-0 loss.
-A forfeited match will affect your experience and your rating.
-You can export finished matches and analyze them with backgammon computer software. GNU Gammon does this, and it is free.
Enjoy the moon! In a few days it will be new.
My spinach puffs!!!
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