[deL]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Your concern for LAN starcraft in Australia is genuine. But I have to disagree with your statement regarding top players wanting more money. I suggested what I suggested purely because I can forsee the incoming abuse and motivating mediocre players that you don't need to work hard to get big prizes.

Coming 1st in your school Athletics carnival should not equal to getting a Silver medal in the Olympics - The marketing scheme to get lesser-skilled players to be awarded is fine, to award them ALMOST the same as the top players makes me want to compete in the Silver division.

Exactly, the kind of players who would qualify for silver (assuming groups are accurately seeded) would be guys who don't really win any prized online tournaments so they are going to be happy with whatever they get, even if it's a $50 mouse or headset. It seems weird that the "best of the worst" is rewarded more than a "mediocre good player".

Originally Posted by avanar

you said that if you start making the prizes for div1 too good only the top 8 players will go, thats not true because i know for one im not a top 8 player and if i could i would go just for the fun of it and the fact that it is a lan and lans are so unbelievably fun, im just curious have u ever been to a lan?

I think you have to consider that not everyone has a large, tight-knit social clan like TA that you have, and that could influence how likely you are to attend LAN events.

[dippa]

Originally Posted by avanar

you said that if you start making the prizes for div1 too good only the top 8 players will go, thats not true because i know for one im not a top 8 player and if i could i would go just for the fun of it and the fact that it is a lan and lans are so unbelievably fun, im just curious have u ever been to a lan?

LANs always entail some degree of masochism - people who aren't top 8 but will continually strive to break through regardless - but eventually, if the value isn't there, yes, people will stop going.

have i ever been to a lan? yes.

[dippa]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

Your concern for LAN starcraft in Australia is genuine. But I have to disagree with your statement regarding top players wanting more money. I suggested what I suggested purely because I can forsee the incoming abuse and motivating mediocre players that you don't need to work hard to get big prizes.

Coming 1st in your school Athletics carnival should not equal to getting a Silver medal in the Olympics - The marketing scheme to get lesser-skilled players to be awarded is fine, to award them ALMOST the same as the top players makes me want to compete in the Silver division.

cityhunter isn't running the olympics; they're running an event, which needs to be paid for. in turn, that requires an equal level of support from the community in order to make it financially sound.

if it's not viable, they won't continue to run the event. to that end, they need a good turnout - and that involves giving prizes to the second division.

the notebooks are not the same model. this we already know. five seconds research also reveals that the cost of the netbooks will most likely be less than $500 for both divisions, with the second division prize likely to be under $250.

The graphics cards are about $260-270, if they're awarding the same models given out in their poster. How much is the "whole PC" worth? Could be anywhere between $750-1250. We don't know yet, although it's safe to assume that it's the most valuable prize on offer.

With that in mind, the prize breakdown is:

Division One
($750-1250) + $200 store credit = $950-1450 value
($400-450) + $100 store credit = $500-550 value
($260-270) + $50 store credit = ~$350 value

Division Two
(~$250) + $200 store credit = ~$450 value
($260-270) + $100 store credit = $360-370 value
Promotion Helicopter(?) + $50 store credit = probably ~$150 value

How far does the store credit go? Not that far; it's not enough to buy a monitor, although you could buy yourself another SC2 account if you wanted.

Incidentally, sorry Light, you didn't deserve my earlier comments. (hence the removal via edit)

But I've seen this sort of thing before where people complain about the distribution of prizes and think, hang on a second, that's giving too much reward to players who don't deserve it.

You know what the problem is?

You're thinking about the event in the wrong way.

This isn't about what players deserve for their reward. If that was the case, we'd still be running BW tournaments for LAN. The point of this is to turn over a profit for Cityhunter. As gamers, we're going to get a good time out of that. I'm certain of it - I've been to enough Cityhunter tournaments in my time to know that.

But as, like I've seen in the past, gamers eventually skew things towards the top end, the bottom end stops coming. There's no value in paying $20-30-40 for an event when you only get to play a few games. You may as well stay at home and ladder on Battle.net, or try your hand at the many SEA and NA online tournaments we now have access to. This was the case in Counter-Strike - when competing in major online events in NA was an impossibility - and I cannot see how this won't crop up in SC2, especially when we can compete in all the major NA and SEA tourneys (besides that Nvidia pro-am. No Australia allowed? wtf -.-).

LAN isn't kept alive because of players like glade, iaguz, yoonyj, edge, tgun, all the TA members and so on. Half of the players whose attendance is required to keep the event afloat are knocked out within the first four rounds.

Without those players, you don't have a tournament - so Cityhunter, rightly, has thought of a measure to try and placate those who know they don't have a chance.

You might not agree with it, but that's how it is. If you still want to compete in the "Silver" division based off that, keep in mind you're going to be sorely disappointed with your reward. And you'll have the knowledge that you chose to cop out to the lower division when you could have aimed for more.

For those who genuinely weren't in the hunt for first, this won't be a problem, but I think you guys know where I'm coming from. It's a bit difficult to put this all forward - I'm new here and all - but I've been around LANs for a very long time and the last thing I want to see is the SC2 community make the same mistakes BW and CS did.

(And Light, I'm truly sorry. Forums are a bad place for me :| Forgive?)

[deL]

dippa sure half the players are casuals who come and they keep the LAN events afloat, but I'd argue that the competitive or hardcore players are more important. They are the ones who come to EVERY LAN event where most of the others they cater to with these prizes will turn up once or twice and never again. Also the hardcore players are going to tell their friends and get more people to come to the LAN and help advertise it to other like-minded players. If you neglect the needs of this core group in any way you are damaging the longevity of such events - it doesn't mean throwing huge prizes at them, just a modest prize distributed in a well thought-out manner in a tournament that has a fair, seeded format is enough to keep these core players interested.

I'd say this brings in more support than the casuals even if they seem to make up 50%+ of the attendance, because without the hardcore players (or competitive level scene to watch on stream, etc.) these casual players would probably never hear or care about local events. Nothing makes you feel like playing more than seeing you local hero or favourite GSL player cut sick with some crazy strategies!

[aztecx]

Originally Posted by deL

dippa sure half the players are casuals who come and they keep the LAN events afloat, but I'd argue that the competitive or hardcore players are more important. They are the ones who come to EVERY LAN event where most of the others they cater to with these prizes will turn up once or twice and never again. Also the hardcore players are going to tell their friends and get more people to come to the LAN and help advertise it to other like-minded players. If you neglect the needs of this core group in any way you are damaging the longevity of such events - it doesn't mean throwing huge prizes at them, just a modest prize distributed in a well thought-out manner in a tournament that has a fair, seeded format is enough to keep these core players interested.

I'd say this brings in more support than the casuals even if they seem to make up 50%+ of the attendance, because without the hardcore players (or competitive level scene to watch on stream, etc.) these casual players would probably never hear or care about local events. Nothing makes you feel like playing more than seeing you local hero or favourite GSL player cut sick with some crazy strategies!

That's actually not true. It is because of the hardcore players and the overly serious environment that casual players choose not to turn up to these events. I remember playing in a war3 tournament years ago at the old iStar internet cafe. Whilst some players turned up with the intention to win, most turned up just to have fun. I remember people having a couple of beers during their games. Afterwards, once the event was down to the last bunch of players, everyone would sit around the plasma screen watching the games whilst a player observed with a mouse and keyboard. This was great because everyone could sit around, mingle and watch these entertaining games as a group - a sense of community. Standing behind a player game after game, bunched up against 5 other people just to get a glimpse of their screen gets boring quickly.

Another thing is, I feel that the top players you are talking about don't in fact have the personality needed to pull a crowd along to these events. They bring no drama or excitement to the game. I want to see friction between the top players, and not just a stupid 'GG' after every game. I remember PhilMiraldo getting the shits with PowerOrc on the war3 ladder after a loss. Most would consider this BM, but I would consider this personality and would make me want to watch their games so much more. For the casual gamer, it is hard to interpret the strategy used between two high-level players so the intricate details of a game don't really matter. Most casual players would rather watch Idra vs Cruncher than MC vs Nestea any day.

I think they are doing a good thing with this second league, whether or not people agree with it. There is obviously an issue with player attendance at these tournaments and they are taking steps to try and rectify the problem. The 'local heroes' methodology is obviously not cutting it.

Quick Comments

deL:

I can talk out my ass too but I choose not to. Consider the same.

[dippa]

Originally Posted by deL

dippa sure half the players are casuals who come and they keep the LAN events afloat, but I'd argue that the competitive or hardcore players are more important. They are the ones who come to EVERY LAN event where most of the others they cater to with these prizes will turn up once or twice and never again. Also the hardcore players are going to tell their friends and get more people to come to the LAN and help advertise it to other like-minded players. If you neglect the needs of this core group in any way you are damaging the longevity of such events - it doesn't mean throwing huge prizes at them, just a modest prize distributed in a well thought-out manner in a tournament that has a fair, seeded format is enough to keep these core players interested.

Thing is, they're not neglecting the 'core community' by throwing PCs and a (good) netbook at them.

I've also found 'word of mouth' is a misnomer. If you promote the event properly, you don't need to rely on 'word of mouth' because you're in contact with everyone that wants to attend in the first place. Good promotion is part of advertising in places that aren't natural starcraft hubs, because there's a lot of forums that have starcraft fans unwilling to post or visit the normal sites (either because they feel alienated from the community, it's not their normal hangout or it's a multi-focus site like Whirlpool or something).

It's these people that are best served by the second division, and it's also these people that are best served by the competitions. Everyone here needs to understand: for the prizes to be really substantial, you need a healthy, strong turnout. I'm not talking 16, 32 people - I'm talking to the level where you're actually turning people away on the day. Once you get to that stage, then you can really start putting up prizes that make mouths drool.

As my little breakdown pointed out, the prize for the second division is modest. It's completely in line with prizes handed out for other second divisions at Cityhunter; it's certainly by no means the largest, which I would know since I've had the experience of running several competitions and a LAN league at their venue in Sussex St.

This is where the insularity of the community starts to breakdown. If you compare the prizes for this compared to what's been handed out for CH's DotA or previous CS tournaments, this is perfectly fine. There's nothing extravagant about it whatsoever. It's exactly what you're asking for; but you guys are just lacking the experience from other scenes to realise that.

Originally Posted by deL

dippa sure half the players are casuals who come and they keep the LAN events afloat, but I'd argue that the competitive or hardcore players are more important. They are the ones who come to EVERY LAN event where most of the others they cater to with these prizes will turn up once or twice and never again.

I've come across this problem a lot. The answer is pretty simple: value.

If you give people value for money and the admins do a decent job - make sure rules are handed out fairly, don't let players have the run of the venue and make sure that the event runs on time - then people will have a good enough experience that they will want to come back.

There are pricing issues. When I was running LAN leagues at and Cityhunter, I found that CS'ers were willing to accept a $10 weekly rego fee to play two matches. (This is a different format; I'll come back to the topic in a second, but bear with me here.) When we ran a second one at , I found that offering players three games a week for $15 - the same value, $5 a game - was actually worse.

Our specific problem there (my mate and I, genesis, wonderful bloke) was that two games gave people enough time to play their games without preventing them from doing things in the city. All-day competitions do that. Most of the time you'll be busy playing, eating or waiting to play your games. You certainly won't be able to go shopping or see a movie - there's just no room in the schedule for that. Players also felt drained after the first two games, particularly if they'd lost both of them. Losing one game doesn't really bother anyone - you know you have another game in reserve - but for some reason, that third was too much.

For the one-day competitions - which ran on a similar format to this - we found that the tipping point was to keep with the group format. That's exactly what Cityhunter's doing. I'm not surprised; it's the smartest option available. The value is about the same (I'm presuming there's no BO3 for groups, as it's not listed), with a minimum of three games costing players $10, or $3.33/game.

I think the 4 player groups might be a little small. BO1 + LAN + dirty cheese is not the best combo in the world. But Cityhunter have always been fantastic at melding competitions to the community's will, something you've already seen a little in this thread. If you allow around 45 minutes maximum for each game (which is a real upper limit) you could probably squeeze the groups to 5 or 6 and resolve things a lot sooner. It depends on how many PCs CH intends on using.

Also, a crucial question is: will CH have their own SC2 accounts available for use? I've been to events where hackers have forced the tournaments to be cancelled - and I'd hate to lose my SC2 account to a dodgy PC.

[CZE]

I can't agree more with dippa's argument. Giving incentive for the competitive yet not top top level players is paramount to feeding the community and growing it into something greater. Having experienced many many LAN competitions alex has run since 2004 (in CS 1.6 primarily) I know exactly where he's coming from.

I think you need to stop going over the top and saying it's ONLY going to be casuals playing in division two. That being said this competition looks awesome in both format and prizes. GL to all participating

[TAriiChard]

Just to start some controversy. If I get into an easy group where I know I'm going to come first ... I'm going to throw games away and come second so that I don't have to compete against the best (who are in the Gold Division). This way I can compete against casual players which increases my chance to win a prize from the Silver Division.



Discuss.

[dippa]

that only works if you're the only one who does it.

and if the second division is as easy as you're expecting it to be.

[deL]

Interesting about the percieved 'value' dippa. I think having regulars helps that too though - interaction with admins is pretty limited so having people that are fun to be around has more influence on having a good time.

Regarding the first part. The problem is not with the prizepool - I'd be happy with a total $250 prizepool - but with having a fair distribution and format. Nothing turns the hardcore players off more than being 'screwed' by the system. Sure everyone likes an upset or underdog but it's not exciting if the upset is caused by a faulty prize distribution (throwing matches), bad seeding or bad format. A $250 prizepool would be fine but not if it were $150 in gold and $100 in silver.

I know there are restrictions on the type of prizes you can get from sponsors but generally speaking spreading the prizes is good. Having a $50 headset or mouse for the top8 + the computer grand prize and laptop 2nd prize in gold is fine. Then with more $50 prizes for most of the silver event. That way no one is going to throw matches so the tournament doesn't lose any legitimacy and people who are casual are going to be really happy with a $50 headset anyway. It doesn't have to be a $250 prize for a casual player to be happy with winning something.

[nGenLight]

@ Dippa: Fair points and I do agree with the theory and incentive you are coming from. However, I do prefer Del's suggestion of having the prizes trickle down, with the bulk of it at the top end - The silver division still gets prizes worthy of competing for, but not enough for 2nd tier players to consider throwing games nor 1st tier players to feel sick watching the guy who came second to them pick up a laptop whilst they get 50$ in store credit or something.

However that said, hearing the different prices for the notebooks and your summary of prizes in your prior post does make it sound much better than vague prize distribution in the tournament announcement - But I guess this type of vagueness is required to attract the casual players.

Although I'm okay with how this event is done, I would still prefer reserving the top end prizes for the top end prizes. You don't need prizes as big as Cars(reserve it for the adults) to attract the children into an event, gaming consoles will suffice.

[dippa]

I'm not sure the vagueness is deliberate or necessary. It's still a netbook after all - those things can be pretty damn useful. Hell, you could do some hacking on one if you're geeky enough.

As for throwing games, if people are determined to throw games to help their friends, it's going to happen regardless. I've seen it happen at the largest tournaments (WCG national qualifiers) and smallest ones. There's nothing you can do to counter it.

Now, there's a small flaw in what deL and Light have just mentioned, so I have a question for you both.

If the value of the division two prizes is less than $500 for the winner - over two days of competition featuring 128 players - and a notebook worth less than $250 is deemed too valuable - then what qualifies as a worthwhile prize for the second division?

I believe we're all in agreement that a) a second division is a sensible, and necessary step for the growth of a healthy LAN scene and b) rewarding those players is a logical, economically sound move by Cityhunter to ensure they continue to attend LAN.

Just as a side note, I ran a LAN league once with three divisions (at Cityhunter's Chinatown store). Apart from the players enjoying the competition substantially, it also proved as an interesting recruitment drive for the higher divisions. It was scheduled so the third division would take place after the first two (giving the newer players time to observe and maybe incorporate last-minute strategies into their game for the day) and occasionally, the better players would hang around and watch the newer ones play.

Something like this might crop up if the LAN SC2 scene flourishes in Sydney; but that's getting a bit ahead for now.

Anyway, back to the question.

deL, Light: you both have to keep in mind that Cityhunter's hands are essentially tied in terms of what they can offer as prizes. If they don't offer the netbook and the graphics card (which is almost certainly a less powerful one than the one being stumped up for the top division) - what are they supposed to offer?

Remember that these prizes are given to them by MSI, and as a result are essentially free. (Even if Cityhunter are actually paying for the hardware out of their own pocket, the point still remains that they would have budgeted for the allocation of prizes for this particular event and it would be difficult, or at the very least annoying for the person responsible, to change beyond removing the prizes altogether.)

I think you can both understand what I'm getting at now: this is the best available distribution that Cityhunter can possibly do with the resources allocated.

Brendan - I'm totally in agreement with what you're saying. It's exactly the way I framed prizes when I ran competitions myself. The three divisions-league I mentioned worked off something like $5000, $2000, $750. (Can't remember the last two exactly, only that some teams dropped out of the first division. I ended up coming second in the first division, and I took home about $250 which I used to pay for a new set of ATH-AD700 Audio Technica's, which cost around $220 at the time.)

I think the rule might be 60%, 20% and 10% for the allocation to prizes after expenses are removed (a. If it all went back into the tourney, it's 70-20-10. (Turns out it's actually Google's business model, and not related to tournaments, but whatever.) The 10% left over goes towards admin fees - things always run smoother when you have two or three people running an event, and the leftover money basically only covers your entry + cost of travel and maybe a KFC meal.

(Example: venue hire costs $400 [this is a ballpark figure]. 12 teams show up to pay 30pp, or 150 a team. $800 goes to first place, $400 to second and $150 to third - their cost of rego. The admins recoup the remaining $50 - two admins, let's say - and any overtime fees come out of the prize pool as a whole.)

However, the guiding principle is that if you offer someone a reward for winning they should always walk away from the event in the positive. I don't accept that people who have won their division should only receive $50. That won't even cover their cost to attend both days, when you factor in food, drinks and the rego fee.

If this was cash-only, this would be a completely different argument. But like I said, we're dealing with a fixed set of prizes here; that's how sponsorship works.

NB. Why am I being so stringent on this thread? Experience in how Cityhunter gauges the reaction from the community, I suppose. They're very pliable when it comes to supporting the community - I just want to make sure they don't get the wrong message.

(apologies to everyone for ruining the thread with walls of text, although i guess we're a little more acquainted with each other now name's alex)

[myth_au]

wow. i just spend 5 minutes reading everyones post (dippa, del and light).

Gosh. what an interesting dispute.

I don't understand what is wrong with the prizing at the moment. Is Light really going to throw a game to get to a silver division.

My honest view is if you have any credibility and respect for the community, you play the best. Whether you get into gold or silver division comes second. The issue with prizes, i would think if you are lucky to win a prize you should be fortunate and be happy with it (as many people didn't). I really hate the value arguement.

I don't think any respectable high level top players (pro-gamers) or what ever you want to call them will be throwing games. If they did man i would not respect them one bit. Shows they don't give 100% to the games they play and i would hope no sponsor encourages that.

The prizing is fine. IMO, i don't think all the casual gamers will be in the silver division either. i think and hope that it is a mix.

[Benji]

Originally Posted by riiChard

Just to start some controversy. If I get into an easy group where I know I'm going to come first ... I'm going to throw games away and come second so that I don't have to compete against the best (who are in the Gold Division). This way I can compete against casual players which increases my chance to win a prize from the Silver Division.



Discuss.

To be honest, I hope you to drop games and place in Silver. I mean zero disrespect but the odds of you taking top 3 in Gold is quite low with Light, Rossi etc around, and your chances of taking top 3 in Silver are very good. I'd also be very happy seeing you be rewarded for your skill as a player over the Diamond level player that turns up to his first LAN and gets a Laptop.

[TAriiChard]

Originally Posted by Benji

To be honest, I hope you to drop games and place in Silver. I mean zero disrespect but the odds of you taking top 3 in Gold is quite low with Light, Rossi etc around, and your chances of taking top 3 in Silver are very good. I'd also be very happy seeing you be rewarded for your skill as a player over the Diamond level player that turns up to his first LAN and gets a Laptop.

Haha no disrespect taken. God with all these good players in the Sydney scene it's soooo tough to get a good placing especially when the game is still so volatile with players being able to be cheesed out of the tournament. With that said I don't think any of the "competitive" players would be throwing any games away just to increase their chances of winning a prize in the Silver League.

[ToR.Arnor]

hey guys I apoligise if I missed any other questions but as someone mentioned there alot of walls of text out there, I address the main argument in a bit

Originally Posted by dippa

Also, a crucial question is: will CH have their own SC2 accounts available for use? I've been to events where hackers have forced the tournaments to be cancelled - and I'd hate to lose my SC2 account to a dodgy PC.

we have some accounts (I think around 2 dozen) all i can say is we've run 3 tournaments and had countless people use their own cd-keys at our stores and no1 has ever lost an account, the only instance of any cdkey being hacked in our store in the last year is someone losing their RIFT account and that was due to them clicking a phishing link in game. In saying that there are always scumbags who try and take advantage and find a way to ruin the fun.


As for people's concern regarding the division 2's prizes, the original intention was to hold two leagues e.g. B,S,G,P and a D,M,GM after discussing it we figured what people were saying above would hold true for this format pros will use other peoples accounts, buy a new account or lie and say they dont have one (and use ours instead) just to get into the newbie division. I guess what it comes down to is WHY you attend LANs and WHY we are holding them.

The 1st can only be answered by the individual, for us we want to do a couple things 1) Give back to our loyal customers, hold an event they will enjoy, 2) Help grow the SC II community

Lets face it the average SC II customer who attends City Hunter regularly isnt the best player this event is designed so that atleast they can play someone at their level, and maybe get a prize

MSI will also be giving everyone who competes a small prize (fairly sure its just a USB with a couple Gs of memory BUT its something) Our overall goal isnt to reward to top 3 players in NSW because truth be told they most likely only come down 4x a year when we do something with SC II, we want to grow the community it order to do that all levels need to be catered for.

City Hunter is the only cafe in Sydney (that I know of) that holds regular SC II events that actually have prizes on offer, they are also significantly bigger than what our competitors hold (The 10k event was not held by a cafe it was held by NRG, said cafe was just a venue it would be like saying the WCG NSW qualifier being held at our store this Saturday is a City Hunter event, its not we're just the event partner/venue).

as for being vague on prizes, I was vague because I wasnt given the specs, Ive asked Dave and Ive said what he's told me, He isnt here today but I will push him to tell me the model numbers etc, here's what I do know

The parts of the Whole PC
- i7 processer
- Razer Mouse
- Razer Keyboard
- 1TB HD
- 4G RAM
- DVD Drive (thats also a burner)
- 560 GTX (im only 95% sure of this one as it isnt sitting beside me)

- The Note books
1st Division- one catered more towards gaming (although how good it is I am not sure)
2nd Division- very basic but good for any student/ office worker who like to work on the go

- The Graphics Cards
- now I think they may be the same I am not sure Im fairly sure they are not as good as the 560 but still decent

If you want to throw matches feel free to, but know you are selling yourself short and you are damaging the community we are trying to grow.

[nGenLight]

@Chris "Lets face it the average SC II customer who attends City Hunter regularly isnt the best player this event is designed so that atleast they can play someone at their level, and maybe get a prize."

Very nice intentions and agreeable. What is mainly being disputed is the size and distribution of the prize awared to the top and casual players.

@Dippa I don't think we have an argument here, basically we are just disagreeing/debating on whether the prizes are distributed in a way that will award the top players and attract the casual players alike. From your summary (especially about the rigid prizes) and Chris' confirmation, it doesn't actually look too bad. I'm okay with it, especially seeing the differences between the notebooks. I just ought to make a point so that in the future event holders don't start going in the direction of awarding huge prizes to the casual players. However, I do respect your concerns for the LAN scene and keeping the casual players interested. I think a midpoint would be the optimal, and we have to consider other factors that will attract the casual players aside from the prospect of winning something.

[nGenLight]

Originally Posted by riiChard

Haha no disrespect taken. God with all these good players in the Sydney scene it's soooo tough to get a good placing especially when the game is still so volatile with players being able to be cheesed out of the tournament. With that said I don't think any of the "competitive" players would be throwing any games away just to increase their chances of winning a prize in the Silver League.

Haha I'm considering!

[Tom]

Some very rough game theory!

Interesting game theory exercise actually, but only for the top players.

Div 1 Second Prize = Div 2 First Prize.

Probably poses a conundrum only for the top 3 players, assuming all have a roughly equal chance of beating one another.

If no players throw a game, one is guaranteed a chance at missing out on a computer. If one player throws a game, everyone gets a computer (and one player gets a great computer). If two players throw a game, one gets a great computer, one gets an okay computer and one misses out on a computer. If all three throw a game, two miss out on a computer.

Optimal result - three top players get together and one agrees to throw a game. That player is "insured" by being compensation (to some degree) by the lost opportunity to compete for the best computer. The two competing players need not be compensated because the result is determined by skill.

Solution (non-cooperation) - do not let any player know the results of the qualifying games until all players have finished their game. Top players must then deal with the conundrum that if everyone (or even two) of them throw a game, there is a significant risk (1 in 2 or 2 in 3) they will miss out on a computer entirely. If all players compete to the maximum of their ability, all three have a 2 in 3 chance of getting a computer! By preventing any player from knowing the results of qualifiers in advance, the top three players are better off (3/3 or 2/3 versus 1/3) playing to the best of their ability.

Solution (cooperation) - planned "throwing" of games do ensure top three players all get a computer. This collusion cannot be prevented and (while I am not advocating this), the top three players' interests are maximised by colluding such that one player agrees to throws a game and receive compensation from the other two.

In terms of how this applies outside the top 3, I think if you restrict information about results, this will also have a trickle down effect to weaker players. This is because it may in the interests of a strong (but not top 3) player to throw a game, to get the best shot at a notebook. This is especially so if the top 3 players are rational and all play to the best of their ability to ensure at least a 2/3 chance at getting a computer. The issue then is that the (lets say top 4) player will probably get the Div 2 computer. Accordingly, players below the top 4 should also play from the strongest division to try and get a Prize 3 or 4 in Div 1, knowing that the "rational" fourth best player will aim for Division 2, thus freeing up a prize in Div 1 for them!

The organisers would dramatically increase the odds of most players trying their best by increasing the number of (low value) prizes offered in Div 1. This would mean it would only be worthwhile for 1 or 2 good players to "throw" a game to have a shot at the Div 2 notebook. Once this player throws the game, all the weaker players might as well just try their best to try and get a low value Div 1 prize.

TL;DR

Best way to get legitimate play - do not let any players have access to game results until everyone has qualified! This will not prevent private arrangements between players (but these players run the risk of someone not "honouring" the bargain).

Based on the prize structure, the top 3 players have an incentive to play to the best of their ability, assuming none have access to information about the other players' results.

The "fourth best" player is best off "throwing" a game, no matter what.

All other decent players might as well play their best. The way to maximise this is to offer some additional "low value" prizes for 5th, 6th etc in Div 1.

[ToR.Arnor]

Originally Posted by nGenLight

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Very nice intentions and agreeable. What is mainly being disputed is the size and distribution of the prize awared to the top and casual players.

the current prize set up has the prizes distributed as roughly 80% to the top comp and 20% to the 2nd comp, so what should it be reduced to 10%? 5%? 0%? please tell us so we know for future reference?

All other decent players might as well play their best. The way to maximise this is to offer some additional "low value" prizes for 5th, 6th etc in Div 1.[/QUOTE]

4th-8th all go home with a electronic helicopter