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Posts: 16 Country : United States | anderson posted @ 2017-03-02 4:30 AM I just want to say that I strongly agree with forcolin's statement that "the playoffs should be videoed and broadcast for the audience (and potentially for TV recording/broadcasting)" and I hope the organizers take that into account if there are playoffs. I fully support something like having a camera focused on each solver's puzzle, while puzzle authors/experts provide live commentary, which is what I hear was well-received at the 2010 Philadelphia WSC. This is more tentative, but I wonder if live-streaming the playoffs would be a good idea. I dunno whether people not at the WSC/WPC would be interested in watching, but if you had live commentary while puzzles are being solved, and maybe interviews with the finalists or more commentary during downtime, I imagine it could be very entertaining (at the very least, I have a bunch of friends who'd enjoy watching something like this). You could also keep the videos for posterity, which helps with another publicity problem: there are almost no videos of previous years' championships, at least none that I can find. I would love to be able to search youtube for "world puzzle championship" and find videos of top puzzlers competing, but doing that right now only gives me some WSC 2012 videos and Stefano's recording of the WPC 2014 team playoffs. |
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Posts: 1800 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : India | prasanna16391 posted @ 2017-03-31 6:04 PM Poll conclusionThe voting for this topic has been very closely contested, so we discussed it very carefully. There were three main factors leading to our decision.- The votes for the option of Playoffs vs No Playoffs are divided equally. - There has been a lot of valuable discussion on the pros and cons of all playoff formats that have been tried out over the years, so reaching a consensus on a universally agreeable system is still a work in progress. - We were angling towards not having playoffs originally and have thought of good alternatives to achieve the same goals and are confident that we can execute them. With all this in mind, we have decided to confirm that there will be no playoffs at WSPC 2017. As for what to do with the time saved, here the majority is clear, so we will not add too much extra solving time, and focus more on spacing the rounds nicely. Thanks again to everyone who voted. |
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Posts: 2 Country : Serbia | NikolaZ posted @ 2017-04-01 6:30 AM Oh, what a terrible news! Actually, for me this is not so bad because I've never done much in the playoffs, but I am afraid that this decision could kill the essence of sudoku and puzzle world championships. I still hope that you will reconsider the decision and change it. |
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Posts: 164 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : Slovakia | greenhorn posted @ 2017-04-01 3:55 PM Spacing the rounds nicely? I can't believe it... This is the World championship, not a holiday. Edited by greenhorn 2017-04-01 3:56 PM |
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Posts: 170 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : Germany | rob posted @ 2017-04-02 10:19 PM Just as a counter point, I like to hear the focus on spacing the rounds nicely. The schedule is one of the things that made me enjoy Beijing and London quite a bit more than Sofia and Senec. It would be good if you did not feel to have to say cut a team round from an adequate hour to 40 minutes just to fit in the schedule, and instead give a few more teams the chance to finish! |
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Posts: 225 ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : Thailand | tamz29 posted @ 2017-04-03 9:41 AM Playoffs give solvers, say, in positions 10-20 some incentive to try hard during the last few rounds to gamble and play aggressively to qualify for that top 10 finals. Without this, would be a shame :( |
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Posts: 42 ![]() ![]() Country : Japan | Yuhei Kusui posted @ 2017-04-03 12:17 PM prasanna16391 - 2017-03-31 6:04 PM - We were angling towards not having playoffs originally and have thought of good alternatives to achieve the same goals and are confident that we can execute them. At the present moment I can't say excluding play-off is a bad decision because I don't know what "good alternatives" are; they should be revealed as soon as possible, as new ideas require plenty of time to be understood. Edited by Yuhei Kusui 2017-04-03 12:24 PM |
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Anonymous | Anonymous posted @ 2017-04-03 7:49 PM Playoffs is equivalent to the finals of a Championship. And playoffs must involve a good majority (if not all) of the participants. But, off late, very few people turn up for the playoffs...because there is probably nothing to watch. Except for the players and the organizers, others have minimal involvement with the event. Except for the knockout playoffs in 2012, which appealed to some extent to the audience. So, it may not be a bad idea to have a championship without a playoff and see how it works. And, having multiple playoffs - for Sudoku GP, WSC, Puzzle GP and WPC - brings down the interest levels as well. In 2016 also, there were a bit too many playoffs perhaps. The two playoffs for the GP should be good enough and the remaining time can be utilized to probably execute something more interesting and, more importantly, which involves a majority of the community. |
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Posts: 2 Country : Serbia | NikolaZ posted @ 2017-04-03 11:59 PM I agree with Anonymous that maybe there is too much playoffs. I suggest to cancel live GP finals from 2018. Grand Prix is a tournament, an excellent one, but only a tournament and we are bringing it here because it is an annual world meeting. Please, be honest with yourself, who wants to replace their participation in world championship finals with the participation in the tournament playoff? WSC and WPC playoffs are great culmination of biggest world events and they must be preserved. Formats of the playoffs should be altered every year since, as I already said, the perfect system is not invented yet. |
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Posts: 1 | Kalaiyarasan posted @ 2017-04-04 1:45 AM I agree |
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![]() Posts: 337 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : Switzerland | Fred76 posted @ 2017-04-09 3:11 PM It's a courageous decision, that breaks the tradition. Please let me do a few comments (in english, sorry for the non english-speakers):
So in my opinion, if one of the playoff should be remove, it's better to be the world championship playoffs than the GP finals. I agree with the fact we need such competition with the best players during WSC/WPC, it can be excited, but it also should be used by the WPF to make more advertizing/promotion. Fred |
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Posts: 1800 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : India | prasanna16391 posted @ 2017-04-10 11:37 PM Fred76 - 2017-04-09 3:11 PM
Hi Fred, I checked in with the WPF Board on behalf of the organizing team earlier this year about a few things, including this topic of whether playoffs are a must. I also communicated to them that we plan to have a poll to this end. The Board confirmed that playoffs need not be held and that the organizers can make a decision either way, and it was only after this that we started the poll. |
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Posts: 1800 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Country : India | prasanna16391 posted @ 2017-04-13 8:32 PM Yuhei Kusui - 2017-04-03 12:17 PM At the present moment I can't say excluding play-off is a bad decision because I don't know what "good alternatives" are; they should be revealed as soon as possible, as new ideas require plenty of time to be understood. Hi Yuhei, The alternative we are thinking of has been mentioned before, but I will elaborate once again. We are going to have an evening event, a Player vs Player knockout event open to everyone. As I have indicated before, we have a set system for this which worked at the National level last year and we are confident we can replicate that. This event will be exciting, fun, can be used for media and publicity, and most importantly, everyone can participate without worrying too much about 'fairness' and 'choosing a worthy World Champion'. |
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Posts: 18 Country : United States | onigame posted @ 2017-09-01 1:50 PM I'm very very late to this discussion but I highly approve of the removal of playoffs. In my opinion, the playoffs have never been a good indication of choosing the best solver. Everyone has just gone through a dozen rounds of competition, and the dozen rounds are then condensed into less than 5 minutes of playoff advantage time. It would be like if you gave students a test, and the first 100 questions were worth 5% of their grade while the last 10 questions were easier questions and worth 95% of their grade. The advantage of playoffs have always been for the spectators, to see what the best puzzle-solvers in the world can do, and a little bit for the players in position 10-20 to feel like they still have a chance of catching up and getting just the right amount of luck. But as the WPC puzzles become less and less accessible to the majority of casual viewers, they cannot understand what they are seeing in the playoffs. Without the playoff-solving being on camera, there is even less for the viewers to see. Ever since I stopped being good enough to qualify for playoffs, I discovered that I really didn't enjoy watching the playoffs. I would much rather take the playoff puzzles and solve them by myself. :) |