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 :)