Change to thew arena format.

[euklid314]

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I totally disagree with you.
The arena mode with 1pt games only did not make much sense to me, as 1 pt games are much more luck involved than 3 pt games. Still I played it, as I love competition.
With 3 pts to be reached a lot more tactical themes come into play, and the doubling cube is a main part of playing backgammon. It requires a lot of more skills.
Also 45min for one game should not occur very often, thats dramatized.
So 3pt games are a very very good compromise and ideal for Arena mode imo. Like this it reflects a lot better who is really playing good backgammon.

By the way, a sentence like "The arrogance of youth" IS pure arrogance.

Every Arena Backgammon game is now - for me - over 40 minutes unless someone goes crazy with the doubling cube.

Just because something doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it isn't happening for others.

My last three Arena matches were 20mins (match of 3 games), 9mins (match of 1 game), 16mins (match of 2 games). I will write down my times for the next Arena games too because I am interested myself.

Since one of the results of doubling is passing, often the single games are shortened. If you are leading with a win percentage of, say 80%, you can take away the rest of 20% from your opponent by doubling and you will not have to play out a possibly long endgame. I think that is the reason why my 3-point matches are not so long.

But we don't have to discuss all that in detail. Those that like the changes will now play more Arena games. Those that dislike the changes will now play less Arena games. This thread is important to show all the different opinions and will hopefully guide the gurus decisions. We don't have to convince each other, though, that our approach is the correct one. My post is not supposed to be read this way.

[sepasch]

But we don't have to discuss all that in detail. Those that like the changes will now play more Arena games. Those that dislike the changes will now play less Arena games. This thread is important to show all the different opinions and will hopefully guide the gurus decisions. We don't have to convince each other, though, that our approach is the correct one. My post is not supposed to be read this way.

As always with Euklid: well thought out and well spoken. I just think that players will not play Arena less or more, but rather all or nothing.
And to do a little statistics:
In the last three Arena seasons we had an average of
888 and 977 and 1733 games per day.
In the current season it is 484
In Germany we say: "The customer votes with their feet"

[Paikea]

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I totally disagree with you.
The arena mode with 1pt games only did not make much sense to me, as 1 pt games are much more luck involved than 3 pt games. Still I played it, as I love competition.
With 3 pts to be reached a lot more tactical themes come into play, and the doubling cube is a main part of playing backgammon. It requires a lot of more skills.
Also 45min for one game should not occur very often, thats dramatized.
So 3pt games are a very very good compromise and ideal for Arena mode imo. Like this it reflects a lot better who is really playing good backgammon.

By the way, a sentence like "The arrogance of youth" IS pure arrogance.

Every Arena Backgammon game is now - for me - over 40 minutes unless someone goes crazy with the doubling cube.

Just because something doesn't happen to you doesn't mean it isn't happening for others.

I never said it "doesn´t happen to me"... so that post of yours is absolutely nonsense.

[Paikea]

But we don't have to discuss all that in detail. Those that like the changes will now play more Arena games. Those that dislike the changes will now play less Arena games. This thread is important to show all the different opinions and will hopefully guide the gurus decisions. We don't have to convince each other, though, that our approach is the correct one. My post is not supposed to be read this way.

As always with Euklid: well thought out and well spoken. I just think that players will not play Arena less or more, but rather all or nothing.
And to do a little statistics:
In the last three Arena seasons we had an average of
888 and 977 and 1733 games per day.
In the current season it is 484
In Germany we say: "The customer votes with their feet"

Also this post makes not much sense, because: if players play longer games, as 3pt matches are longer of course, they cannot invest the same amount of time for the same amount of games.
1pt match = best of 1
3pt match = best of 5
So if you assume that an average best-of-5-match has 4 pts, or contains at least (per average) 3.x games played, and you multiple 484 with 3.x, we are right where we have been before.
In any case, you need to look deeper than u have done, that´s what I want to express.

[sepasch]

Thank you for your *, the second lecture in this thread...
The statistical value used by Bordgamearena in recent years is per game, not per match. That is a fact. I will end the conversation here.

*moderator edit: please remain polite in all communication

[Paikea]

Thank you for your arrogant lecture, the second lecture in this thread...
The statistical value used by Bordgamearena in recent years is per game, not per match. That is a fact. I will end the conversation here.

That´s a really non-friendly post and an absolute no go, like that a discussion on a topic like this is useless.

Instead, you could have clarified, how you differ between game/match, then, where you have that information from.

Apart from that: I played 3 arena matches today, they lasted 20, 18 and 14 minutes, so far away from the once mentioned 45min. But of course 45min can happen if nobody uses (or knows how to use) the doubling cube and/or at least one player is playing really slow.

[JohnnyCyclops]

Belatedly (by around 40 years!) I’ve now learned what the doubling cube is for and also learned the Crawford Rule. The first website I found on it looked great but completely got the wrong end of doubling and Crawford. A couple of excellent short online videos got me in the right direction. I’ve now played and won two Arena matches with some doubling thrown in.

I do see how it can add to the drama, rather than just a single game or a best of 3/5/7 games with a single point per game. Playing matches with doubling active also now brings relevance to winning by a gammon or a backgammon with multipliers of points by x2 and x3 respectively.

Likely the BGA rules wiki would benefit from an update to reflect match play games, although there’s material on the interweb to be found, as I discovered.

Finally though, I will play Arena less, simply because the time commitment has gone from 10-15 minutes for a single game to 20-40 minutes for a three point match.

[daveted]

I've played at a face to face backgammon club.....badly. I got destroyed regularly. And the standard is with the doubling cube to 7 points.
And the games were fast. That's the biggest letdown on BGA. If the turns for Backgammon were quicker, these 3 point games would be over fast.

I welcome the doubling cube, and wish it was 7 points. it really does minimize the luck factor.

And the Crawford rule is great. It's there to prevent the losing player from just doubling on their first turn if the opponent is 1 point away from winning, regardless of how bad an opening they have. If they're going to lose 1 point they lose the match, so why wouldn't you double blindly. The Crawford rule prevents that.

[geodorksupreme]

I generally only play Arena turn-based. For personal reasons, I don't have the luxury of uninterrupted time. Adding the cube has added to the length of the game immensely.

I prefer without the cube for that very reason. Backgammon is now one of the longer games that I play on BGA in arena, where it used to be one of the shorter/medium length games.

[sirivanhoe2]

Arena is meant to be a competitive mode. That requires skill differences between players to make a noticeable difference in the outcome.

Backgammon is already very heavily luck based. So 1-point matches simply aren't suitable for the arena format.

Ideally you'd want 5-point minimum to get a good show of skill out of arena rankings. But even 3 points makes skill significantly more of a factor over single games.

I hate it. Much longer game instead of a nice fun break

If you're just looking for a fun break, why does that need to be Arena?? Get your casual games at the regular tables as intended, and let arena players play a suitable arena format.

Completely agree. The luck fest that is a 1 point game, turns me off. Gave up playing it on bga without the cube. Suddenly it's worth playing again.
1 point games are just for fun. So why insist it should be in a competitive 'arena'?