State of the V:EKN - October 2013

I will requote myself for emphasis:

Lönkka wrote:

fredsct wrote:

.. the point is that even if I found 100 VtES players here in Phoenix, AZ and many of them became addicted tournament players - something that will never happen - it STILL wouldn't be anything like living in an area concentrated with other cities that one could easily drive to in order to play in THEIR tournaments, too.

Well, Helsinki has some 20 or so active players at the moment (I'm counting only people who attend several tournament per year). We usually do get some people from out of city as well who drive some 2 hours to attend and often without these we'd have less than 10 people.

Right. Within a two-hour drive of Phoenix is a single other small city where fewer than half a dozen players who get together to play pickup maybe once or twice a year. They seldom drive to Phoenix for a tournament, although it has happened (usually just one or two people). And that's the only place. I drive six hours to play decent tournaments in Los Angeles because we can seldom assemble enough players in Phoenix for a four-player game, let alone a two-table tournament.

But it's a silly debate. You may well be at a disadvantage to other far more centrally located areas in Europe, I couldn't say. The only point that's relavent is that scoring ratings points this way can never possibly be fair because the level of effort to score the same number of points will always be vastly different depending on where one lives. Besides geography, there's also the issue of local organization: you suggest fixing our disadvantages by organizing - but players living in areas that are already well-organized don't have to do that. To suggest applying effort to fix this problem demostrates that you fail to grasp the problem: the difference in how much effort needs to be applied to score points IS the problem!

How about making the entire idea region based?

Let's face it: other than European players sometimes flying to Europe, and vice versa, to compete in in the Continental Championships, when was the last time an American player or European player traveled, on purpose, to Africa or ANZ or Asia or South America to play in their Continentals, or even the other way around?

It's not worth arguing, Fred. Look at the forums now. Each time there is a mention of some European event, be it a win or an announcement, a whole bunch of self-fiving happens. I'm not saying that it is not acceptable. It is human nature, after all, not to be invested in people you don't know. What I am saying is that the reality is that VEKN has already fragmented along geographical regions and chances of a true global player support group has already long sailed. You can argue until the cows come home, but in a democracy, the biggest group always win, even if it is wrong.

It is quite normal that the ranking system puts player with lots of tournaments first, because the best players are very likely to be found among them. You wouldn't expect to run the 100 meters under 10 seconds by practicing in your backyard and racing against your neighbours, would you? Why should things be different for VTES?

Moreover, any ranking system over a variable number of events must favor attending more events, because otherwise it has the reverse effect: if someone makes a very good result on his first tournament of the season and the ranking system does not have a bias towards attending more events, then his optimal strategy might be to sit on his result rather than risking to lower it on another event. And that is the last thing we need. Even ATP tennis rankings are skewed to allow the top players to enter more tournaments without risking to lower their ranking.

It is not the ranking system that is unfair, it is the fact that you cannot attend as many tournaments as others. When you think about it, it is a bit weird to have a world ranking when there is no world championship. Maybe more emphasis could be put on continental rankings, to rank players that can actually play against each other?

Non-existant user wrote:

It is quite normal that the ranking system puts player with lots of tournaments first, because the best players are very likely to be found among them. You wouldn't expect to run the 100 meters under 10 seconds by practicing in your backyard and racing against your neighbours, would you? Why should things be different for VTES?

This isn't sports, it's a hobby collectible card game named VtES and people don't behave the same way as famous athletes - so such comparisons are silly. Yes, if a very good player lives in an area with few good tournament players and not a lot of players, then neither his VEKN rating nor his attendance record will reflect his skill.

Non-existant user wrote:

Moreover, any ranking system over a variable number of events must favor attending more events, because otherwise it has the reverse effect...

So? All I'm saying is, don't give this system any more meaning than it has now. We don't need to debate any other systems.

Fred