State of the V:EKN - October 2013

Ankha wrote:

I dislike this idea, even if we restrict it to a continent (eg. considering only the top X European players for the EC) because it would change the nature of the Continental Championships. This is personal taste, but giving an equal chance to access the Day 2 to every qualified player sounds more fair to me than disadvantaging players (because there will be less open spots) that couldn't attend lots of tournament a given year.

Yes, my feelings, too...

@Fred : would the "rating" system be more fair if it only took into account the best result of each player over the past 18 months (instead of the top 8 results of each player) ?

How about the top 2 best?

Now, the question is, if we keep this philosophy of merely selecting the top N results of each player (this is debatable, but would need way more time than available), which N provides the fairest result?

johannes wrote:

Or like awarding a small subset of 2nd day spots to the top X (small being <=10%). Card art portraits are probably the best option of all because this is a non-monetary value outside of the competition.

I agree on both.

Lönkka wrote:

fredsct wrote:

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.

Actually, Chess is sports.
And when I reserved the ferry tickets to Team Finland for this year's EC we got a sports club discount which just proves that even mundanes think that we're sports...

Sure. And incidences of unbridled poker pervade the sports cable channels here in the United States. It's almost as inane as calling golf a sport. Fortunately, there are lots of cable channels and it's still easier to change your channel than shoot your TV set.

But I'm just saying, such analogies only lead to insanity. It's technically possible to overcome issues of effort. Like the guy who said:

Ankha wrote:

It may be harder for people from the US to be in the top 25 players (though not impossible at all)...

Of course it's not impossible at all. A U.S. player could quit his job, fly to Europe, rent a flat, and travel around to all the tournaments for 6 months or a year and if he was really any good, he'll have his ranking up in the top 25 in no time at all. Of course, some might then argue he'd become a Europen player but either way, it's not a value system most of us expect from a VtES player. In many sports and in the top levels of things like chess and poker, there's a different value system which doesn't apply to us - I least I hope! So such analogies should be entirely avoided, or at the very least, one needs to take the differences in value systems into account.

Fred