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This discussion started in the Leaderboard thread.
I'm looking to build a tournament structure for this game that is as close to the main game as possible. Hopefully, a simple meta-rule placed on top of the main game (for determining winners) would be all that's needed.
There are several reasons for this:
1. Simple for people to learn and understand who are already playing the main game.
2. Skills in the main game directly translate into skills in the tournament, and vice versa.
3. An already-tested server-side implementation (server is already working for the main game, no need for a bunch of extra tournament-only alpha testing).
4. Special rules, bracket matching, time-triggers, and so on are potentially fragile (handling disconnects when a player is assigned a bracket partner, etc.) The existing main game free-for-all is robust (you can switch partners whenever you want, recover from disconnects, etc.)
Tools that are already in place to help with this are:
--Server setting for setting a fixed-size initial deposit (e.g., $5 tournament entry fee) and limiting the number of (or blocking) re-buys.
--Server setting for controlling max/min game stakes (or setting one fixed stake size, e.g., everyone playing 10-cent games).
--Server support for force-ending all games and blocking the start of new games (so that the tournament can start and end at a given time, but deposits are allowed before the start).
These features are in place, though they are manually triggered by the admin for now. Still, the client supports them. So, a tournament could be run on the current server code through some manual orchestration by the admin (for example, manually ending the tournament at the deadline).
I'm concerned about collusion through multiple accounts during a tournament. One account could pass its bankroll to another, thus giving the other account an advantage or outright pushing it up the leaderboard into a winning spot.
Being able to pick your opponent, through your game stakes, obviously makes collusion easy. Randomizing pairings would fix this, and I think that already pretty much works if we use set game stakes (everyone plays 10-cent games, no one can pick their opponent, and they get assigned to whoever is waiting for a game).
Timing could possibly be used to pair yourself with your co-conspirator (in a moment where there are no games waiting, if we both create a game at the same moment, we are likely to be paired together). A random waiting period upon creating a game could make this harder.
Of course, the ability to leave with little penalty could allow conspirators to keep trying until they find each other (with only a one-chip penalty for each game that they leave).
For tournament mode, perhaps there can be a fixed "table rake" that happens at the start of the table (so each player starts with only 90 chips instead of 100).
We could adjust this table rake to make leaving tables repeatedly in search of a conspirator unprofitable (if we have to try at least 5 times before we find each other, we've already burned 100 chips total in order to pass 100 chips between accounts).
If the "table rake" goes to the last player still at the table, then this is even worse for conspirators (they're giving 20 free chips to other players each time they fail to find each other).
Anyway, this kind of stuff seems like it's getting closer to something that would allow a "meta" tournament to run on the existing server code without collusion giving too much of an advantage to unskilled players.
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Server setting for controlling max/min game stakes...
Wait, are you going to implement tournaments using separate servers? I remember there was briefly a permadeath server in TCD, but IIRC the real money contest ran on the regular server in parallel with the normal game. The latter seems more palatable to your average player.
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Yeah, I was thinking about doing it on a separate server. Then I could really control the structure, entry fee, and so on.
Otherwise, people would be starting with varying balances, etc.
BUT, I have been thinking of ways to run a tournament for "everyone" on the main server. Not sure what the win criteria would be.... profit since the start of the tournament?
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Anything without a fixed buy in seems easily exploitable.
Sounds like separate servers is ideal, but I would hope for some nice way to change servers through the UI. Something like a list of named, trusted servers that come bundled with the game and still have it so the tournament server is only available when activated. I don't know if any of this is feasible through the current framework, but it'd be a lot better than editing text files.
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Been trying to come up with some good ideas, but find it pretty difficult without some more specific parameters for how you'd want to run tournaments. I imagine some of these questions may be hard to answer individually, but it might at least clarify some constraints on the ideas.
Questions like:
How long would a tournament run for? Hours? Days? Weeks?
Would there be a minimum/maximum number of matches/rounds/coins?
Could you win the tournament by winning just a couple really good matches?
Would or should you ever play a match against the same person twice?
Why allow leaving a game?
Would it be better to only count matches played until someone hits 0 coins?
Could that be exploited to purposely drag a game on by constantly folding 100 rounds?
Can someone enter the tournament at any point or would there be a buy-in window?
How would the prize work?
Would it be funded by entries?
Would there be a minimum number of players required to start a tournament?
The simplest approach I can think of is a special time windowed leader board that works as follows:
- Fixed stakes, determined by how pro you want the tournament to be ($0.10 casual tourney, $10 pro tourney, etc)
- During the tournament window the CM "lobby" displays a specially marked stakes game like "Tournament: Stakes [$0.10]" that is like a stickied open match. Non-tournament (user created) games still show up as normal.
- Joining the stickied game starts the Waiting for Opponent screen and will only match you up with another player you haven't already played during this tournament (that means at most you can only play with colluding accounts once during the tourney).
- Only these tourney matches count towards the tournament leader board and since stakes are fixed, can simply count total coins won during the tourney.
- Leaving a tournament match gives all of your coins (minus rake) to your opponent, so you don't have to play all the way to 0 if you just want to forfeit the match, but doing so is costly. I don't know of any tournament environment where you can leave a match partway without incurring some kind of loss.
- The winners of the tournament are determined by the most coins won tournament leader board.
The maximum advantage a player could get when colluding in this environment is 100 coins per colluding account. This also means that unless you want to give another player a potential coin advantage you'd want to carefully try and time your colluding match to ONLY play against yourself, which could be pretty easily flagged (any accounts that only play a single match during the tournament and give up their coins to their opponent). You could even potentially not count the coins won against a player who only plays a single match towards the leader board (don't add coins to the leader board until both opponents have played more than 1 match) so that you'd have to use your colluding account against at least 1 other player to gain any benefit from it, potentially diluting your advantage.
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Well, to answer Jere first, there would be no text file editing. I would simply provide a separate "tournament" download of the game. Because, after all, you'd be making a separate deposit for the tournament, so it could be a separate account entirely.
I was really looking for the simplest way to get tournaments off the ground. I don't know how well they'll work or how popular they will be, so I didn't want to spend loads of time coding custom stuff before I could test the waters. A separate download that points at a different server (CordialMinuet_Tournament_v11) is easy enough for everyone. People would just have two accounts.
Part of the skill of CM is learning when you're beat, so I'm not sure that forcing people to play to 0 is a good. In general, I'd like to have the same skill-space in the tournament that we have in the main game. I don't want there to be separate "tournament skill" like there is for poker, where the kind of hands you should play or fold are totally different in a tournament. I want the tournament to reward people who have "figured out how to do well in the main game," whatever that means.
The parameters that I'm thinking of are:
--Time limited, maybe a few hours to start with.
--A fixed entry fee (like $5), no re-buy.
--People can buy-in any time before the start, or during (though they lose time).
--A prize of some kind, but entry fees are gone (you can't withdraw your $5), probably tiered prizes for various places, maybe a fixed prize supplied by the house, plus a bonus depending on the number of players. You know, for first, second, and third place:
$100 +X
$50 + X/2
$25 + X/4,
where X is the number of players.
So, that was the initial idea. The question before us is: how to make this work without changing the game too much AND without rewarding collusion between multiple accounts. In general, it would be good if it were as much of a free-for-all as possible.
mzo, your idea for embedded tournaments is an interesting one.... BUT, doesn't a player who starts with a huge bankroll have an advantage? Yeah, their bankroll doesn't help them on the leaderboard, but it would allow them to play many more games, giving them more chances to raise their net tournament money, right?
Maybe not... if this could work and be fair, then it would really simplify things. It could be as simple as "anyone who plays a 43-cent game over the next two hours will be in the running for a special prize pool, based on their net outcome from all their 43-cent games." There could be a separate net-profit leaderboard for 43-cent games.
If people play by accident, so what?
This would be more like an in-game contest than a tournament (because there wouldn't be a separate entry fee, and the prizes would have to come from outside, because people would be keeping their "tournament chips" afterward). I'd also have to figure out the prize structure so I wouldn't get hosed (because I'd be collecting no entry fees, just the rake).
But people would have even MORE motivation to collude, because they could keep their "tournament chips" at the end, so passing chips to a friend to push them up the leaderboard is not even an entry-fee loss.
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If the advantage of a huge bank roll is being able to soak more losses and stay in the tournament then that also means you're also spreading that bank roll towards other (more skilled) player's leaderboard scores. While that may give a more unskilled player a chance to better "figure out how to win", they can't play against the same opponent twice. However I see no reason you couldn't still do a fixed buy in if bankroll really is an issue.
Would it be difficult to create a secondary "wallet" for players specifically for tournaments that cashes into their main wallet after the tournament is over?
If so then you could do the buy in and potentially not keep your left over chips. Perhaps a "participation prize" amount based on their leaderboard position.
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Would be kind of interesting to rake the buy-in and display a prize for the winner based on a percentage of whats been raked from entries so far. Kind of like a progressive jackpot.
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Yeah, raking into the prize pot---that's an interesting idea.
You'd have to track "total won - total lost" at the tournament stake tables. So, a high bankroll player could stand to lose a bunch before running out of money, but would still have to climb back out of a deep hole. So maybe the large bankroll isn't an advantage here, if we're actually tracking net outcome and not lasting power (I was thinking about Poker tournaments, where lasting is how you win).
I'd like to avoid a "can't play the same opponent twice" thing. I'm still hoping for a mostly free-for-all so exactly the same main game skills apply.
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