After having been on the sudoku circuit for such a long time I am sure everyone realizes that having the experience is a huge advantage over participants who have only had the opportunity to solve classic sudokus.

So let us for a moment accept the fact that there might be people who can solve faster (especially in classics) but just have not had the right exposure.

So on one hand if we have an experienced solver who has other commitments and another solver who is less experienced but can be molded if he/she is committed to sudoku, I would prefer to select the latter from the perspective of the future of the Indian team.

Also the aim is to address the very first point that you made "Sudoku is not a recognised sport". It is our responsibility to make sure that it does not remain that way. We want to make it mainstream rather than remaining a niche sport.

Having said that it does not disqualify the experienced solvers from qualifying for the A team, let them fight for the two spots sponsored by TOI, or there is always the option of making it to the A-team through ISC, in which participants will have to sponsor themselves.

The first point - Amit himself has raised this problem while I think it can be worked around. What is important to understand is the goal here isn't for participation at LMI to increase (well, thats always a goal but its secondary here). Think of it this way. If we didn't have LMI, we'd probably be searching for a criteria, and would probably settle on the GP. In the end, we need a criteria to establish that a person is solving all year because otherwise any sponsor will question the motivation and as the structure is now, it does raise the question. Think of this as being concrete data towards that end. Also, if we are ever going to get recognized as a sport, it will start with us treating it like one rather than uninterested people with the authority to do so suddenly taking interest. I personally think we can be flexible with the experienced-regularity concept if a participant is active in other contests of the same level (GP) through the year and can show data proving the same (though this wasn't discussed and I don't know what others think). It is true that me and Rohan (and Rakesh) are usually helping out with LMI tests, and for me, Rohan and Rishi, participating in the GP is probably of more importance right now considering the perks of top 10 and so on. It will definitely help having the GP as a backup to determine regularity.

About peoples' motivations, each individual can only speak for themselves. We need to see this structure as a whole rather than considering individual feelings. If we are thinking long term, we now know the concerns of a sponsor, and some of the LMI selectors share these concerns, so even if we aren't motivated by sponsorship or publicity right now, the system in place now keeps that as a possibility. It is also important to note the value of practice of a contest at this level (LMI/GP) and not just solving Sudokus randomly. The WSC is a bunch of contests like the ones at LMI/GP, each a single round. I'd always feel practicing a contest as a whole is better for a WSC than maybe things like doing dailies (though I completely understand this is easier with gaps in between, etc.).

I would prefer to add a few of my thoughts to this ongoing discussion.I am not quite clear what turnover in the rankings is supposed to suggest?!Does it mean that the WSC India-A team is not showing considerable improvement in the overall rankings as a team or are the individuals not showing further improvement?If it's the former, I might add here that we finished at an unprecedented 6th in the WSC in the Team Table at London.So the improvement is certainly there.Just a bit more consistency is needed.If only the 4th best solver is as good as the top 3 or the third and fourth best solvers are as good as the top 2 we can certainly move up places on the Team Table(wondering a little....)

i)The whole concept of experienced and inexperienced solvers looks too fuzzy to me and until or unless clear demarcations are made which are fair and acceptable to all is laid out between an exp. and an inexp. solver ,it will remain that way to everyone.

Just so that this discussion gets more clarity and direction,

**An experienced solver can be termed as one who has represented the India A/B Team at-least twice in the past 4(or maybe 5 years which may be debated a bit and decided upon).I felt that it is necessary to keep the definition a bit tighter here so that the experienced/consistent/committed solvers from the past years are separated from the experienced solvers, whom I term as someone who has made it to the Team just once and might not have taken part the next and maybe the year after the next.It just didn't feel right to club the latter with the former to me.The above demarcation suggested by me also includes the possibility of a vicious circle where we end up having only experienced solvers who have atleast represented once and no new fresh faces.But I would still go with what I stated.

**The in-experienced category includes the rest.

ii)Now addressing the next issue, which is to determine the ratio of the experienced/inexperienced solvers from the national finals which again depends on whether TOI is bent on inducting fresh new faces into the team.I personally feel that a 3-exp/1- in-exp is the ideal ratio.This makes a fine balance between addressing the concerns of TOI and also without being too harsh on the experienced solvers(Imagine having a 2+2 and leaving out 2 experienced solvers who could just be as good as the rest 2 on their day).Here again, neglecting 2 experienced solvers just for the sake of inducting new participants does not feel right.

iii)Finally addressing the question of the regularity concept, I am strongly in favor of the following statement by Amit.

//"So on one hand if we have an experienced solver who has other commitments and another solver who is less experienced but can be molded if he/she is committed to sudoku, I would prefer to select the latter from the perspective of the future of the Indian team."//

The point is not just to find solvers who are right near the top in quality ,but to find solvers who are committed year after year in order to continue the tradition and to create a rich pool of talent from which the A-Team can be selected in the coming years.Indirectly, I am suggesting that LMI may in fact, reserve the right, to select someone who is a regular over someone who is experienced just as Prasanna put it in the first post.

//"A relevant point made here, not related to TSC itself (thanks to K. Ravichandran for this suggestion), is to have a place for handing out pamphlets about Sudoku Mahabharat and other LMI events during the TSC local rounds. This sounded like a very doable idea, so the same person taking up the PPT for sponsors mentioned above can also probably take up this pamphlet (or just edit and update the current LMI brochure)"//

I am in favor of the above but wouldn't it be much better to advertise first about LMI in general because I remember from the past years that when the following question was raised from the dias :"How many of you are familiar about LMI?"

I remember about 70-80% of the hands not being raised.So to address this issue,LMI can be made known either through the pamphlets stated above or by means of a short PPT(abt 5-10 slides briefing about what is LMI , what you can expect at LMI and at the end of the PPT ,maybe a few feedbacks from the top solvers just to create that extra curiosity and interest).This PPT session of approx 5-10 mins can be scheduled just before the start of the regional rounds.For instance, if the rounds start at 9:30AM, the PPT may be handled by around 9AM.

This way ,we lay out a path for more and more people to get committed to LMI and to sudokuiing in general.After all ,it's only through LMI that I have reached the point that I am in now and I am sure that there might be many more in the pipeline who are just not aware that such an excellent platform for sudokus and puzzles exists.

I am interested to see more thoughts coming in so that the whole concept acquires even more clarity.


Edited by kishy72 2015-05-15 5:28 PM

My few points on the publicity of LMI just before the preliminary rounds.

The people from the Times group has absolutely no issues with the way the event held and their only concern is the time and probably the winners. As Kishore and Ravi Chandran suggested, we can run through a PPT (cheaper option compared with pamplets) listing down LMI and its works, WPF, WSC and finally the format of TSC. This makes sure that the participants can get details on LMI and the event more than through word of mouth.

The Delhi venue does not have a projector, neither does the Bangalore venue. We can't use powerpoint there. I'm not sure about Chennai/Mumbai.

Even otherwise, I think pamphlets are better. Interested people can take them home and check. With powerpoint , they have to first listen to the powerpoint at a point where they are more keen on starting the competition and then remember the links etc.

We need to make the pamphlets catchy e.g. give couple of attractive sudoku variants

Edited by debmohanty 2015-05-16 6:45 AM

Let me make one thing very clear. LMI holds the right to decide anything and everything here including the selection procedure, even if it may seem illogical to me or anyone else.

I am just voicing my thoughts and do not even want to get into a discussion on this. However, I find it immature when people say that if a player has "Other commitments" then they need to be overlooked. My statement on Job and family was more from the perspective that we all need to earn our bread and butter outside of sudoku. If anybody is expecting Sudoku to take precedence to "other commitments" is naive and stupid, to be honest. Regular participation does not ensure a player is better. You cant kill the present to have a better future. In that case why not even start having an age limit since older men wont be around for long and younger ones will be the future.

As I said This is not a discussion from my end so I do not need nor are others required to present a justification. As I said LMI has all the rights to take any call and irrespective of whether anyone likes it or not, we will abide by it.

Rishi

This wasn't what was said though. I feel you're still reacting to it from the eye of an individual rather than noting the system itself. The system as it is currently does help someone who has gotten that WSC experience to keep qualifying for the WSC with minimal efforts and then having the same level of performance at the WSC. This is NOT stating that X or Y does this. It is merely an observation of the system. Anyone who sponsors us and basically any kind of growth depends on scalability, turnover, etc. which the current system doesn't encourage as much. Even at the TSC level, it is only the National finalists getting the experience to improve year after year, whereas the ones who miss out don't do that. The choice is merely for sponsorship, and for sponsorship we are weighing up the benefits of sponsoring (not selecting, selections can still amount to 8 players, and even the A team need not be the sponsored one) someone new and 'free-er' to pursue this, with a good amount of raw talent, over someone who has already developed an interest, but is finding it a bit more difficult to pursue it. Like I said, in the end, if we are to grow, if we are to ever get this recognized as a sport, and if we are to get sponsors, we need to start treating it like a sport. With regular 'training' and so on. The system should 'encourage' regularity, and this isn't overlooking irregularity.

Also, of course LMI has rights, that's stating the obvious, but we're here on a forum discussing it and nothing has been finalized yet. Lets at least try to note that a) LMI is even holding an open forum before making a decision which most organizations do not do, b) the suggested decision itself may be a serious bargain on what Times of India themselves want and c) This is ONLY for sponsorship, not for team selection. I think the latter point is very important to remember, because while LMI has a right towards team selection, LMI isn't the only one who can decide who to sponsor, and mostly isn't even the primary one to decide that if push comes to shove (and thats actually fair, ToI's money, they should have more say on where it goes).

Firstly, this has nothing to do with Indian team's performances. It would, if LMI were suggesting not selecting the best 4 experienced as the A team. All LMI are suggesting is that 2 newcomers get sponsored. They can be on the B team. The turnover is more in terms of people gaining experience to the WSC, rather than the Indian team doing well/not well. I feel this is relevant to a lot of your later points too. All of them would be good valid points if team selection centered around this categorization. As is, LMI will try for a scenario where the A team still gets selected by LMI, which will be the 4 best solvers. Its just that some of them may not be sponsored (which is a big deal, but not the same as not being selected or team being compromised).

You make a good point about advertising LMI before Sudoku Mahabharat, BUT, think of it this way. The people coming to the Times Sudoku Championship aren't looking for a site dedicated to Sudokus & Puzzles of all levels, and forums, and whatever other benefits we know LMI has. They are simply looking for the next Sudoku competition to do with minimal effort in terms of reading instructions/format. Because of this, I think a direct pamphlet about a contest can be more of a hook than a website as a whole. This is definitely open to discussion though.

On a side note, one thing I remember is the suggestion to have different levels of difficulty for Experienced and Inexperienced. This I am definitely against. Here are reasons why -
- We aren't sure of the numbers in the experienced category, no matter what categorization we make. This means, it is entirely possible that a city has 0 experienced solvers, in which case we are selecting even the 'experienced' quotient based on easier papers, OR we are having more inexperienced contenders for two spots and lesser inexperienced contenders for two spots in the National finals.
- Conversely, this also works against inexperienced solvers, because someone who might have beaten an experienced solver in the local rounds has to show it at a different level unnecessarily. Kishore for instance, if he takes part, would most likely be among inexperienced solvers, whereas he is fully capable of being in the best four Indian solvers outright. It ensures concentrated growth rather than overall growth, I think.
- At some stage we need to ensure escalation of difficulty for the newcomer too, because no matter what, we can't change the WSC booklets. If they aren't exposed to some level of variants and so on, then we are banking on them being active on the forum in the months leading up to WSC and using the practice material, which isn't a given, because a newcomer poses an unknown element of how much time and effort they can put in, so eventually if they are unprepared they will be found out badly at the WSC and demoralized, maybe beyond repair. That defeats the entire purpose of having a newcomer represent India at the WSC.
- Raw talent in Classics does not essentially mean they can be molded into excellent overall solvers. IF this was a definite, then I would be all for the experimentation here. But we have enough top solvers who had real raw talent in Classics but couldn't translate it (not just from India) and also enough top solvers who have never been sprinters on Classics but yet have strong showings because of their overall capabilities. Overall I don't think the pursuit of raw talent in Classics is a good enough reason to ignore the points made above. This is of course just my personal opinion.
- Overall, it just makes it easier for selection with the same answer booklets across the two categories. If someone is good enough to be on the team by merit they aren't ignored. With categorization of difficulty, we can't really ever put an inexperienced solver in the A-team, even if they are actually good enough. I really think this shouldn't be the case. We can be far more flexible with the same answer booklets.


I'll also list points made by the people in favor of this -
- It enables LMI to keep harder difficulty for experienced solvers which is more difficult to finish, thereby eliminating the big risk element that comes with finishing early and big bonuses.
- It enables LMI to reach out to the newcomers with more doable content.
- We can find out someone with raw talent in Classics who we can mold. If this had variants, which aren't very easy, then we may miss out on someone with raw talent.

Feel free to add more, it looks like I've shortchanged the points against my side on the matter :P

It is indeed true that they are not entering into a competetition looking for a site of that sort.But it ALSO true that they wouldn't be cognizant of what is awaiting them .The situation is in no way analogous to a case where a bunch of students are stuffed in with last minute questions and lots of information in addition to the amount they already have and eventually creating a situation of total panic and chaos.
Hell no!
It is a scenario where a large group of enthusiastic people are looking to compete,have fun time and also harbor high expectations of ending up in the top four .In such a situation ,I certainly don't think that we are diverting the attention or the concentration of the people too much.Besides,there is always an explanation session just before the start of the rounds where the rules of even Classic sudokus are explained.This can be clubbed at the end of the PPT session and by means of this we still manage to make the whole chatter/talk very coherent.

But like Deb pointed out, the availability of Projectors looks like the major issue here to me.I did not think about the projector at all.We need to think of a way to tackle this.If there is no other solution to the projector,we may,in addition to the distribution of pamphlets,obtain the email-ids of the participants in their sudoku booklets and later forward the PPTs to them.No one here is lazy enough or not have the time as to not see a PPT containing hardly 5-10 slides about sudokus and stuff and a beautiful website dedicated to that.

Edited by kishy72 2015-05-16 8:34 PM

I think there are good points on either side on this one (LMI PPT vs Sudoku Mahabharat Pamphlet) so I think we should look at projector availability/cost analysis/etc. In fact, if we can show a PPT, the ideal thing to do would be to show a PPT about LMI and then direct participants to the pamphlets on the side for SM and SC (since I'm sure there'll be some U-18 participants or parents participating) so that something of focus is given while also showing there's more if they wish for it.

If I'm not wrong, we have already had an email space in the Times Sudoku rounds, and we have sent emails and smses to participants in the previous years without much response. This is why I feel a written pamphlet might go a longer way since these are mainly Sudoku fans coming from the written newspaper background, and probably rely on that more. Worth a try anyway :)