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Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 23 March 2022, 12:23
by msclark
There are still a few weeks to go, but I have to admit that the Decathlon idea was a bit of a failure in the end, presumably because of the decision to go for purely random games. It sounded like a good idea at the time but ended up meaning there were too many games that nobody knew/liked/wanted to play a lot of and very few people have even given it a try. The season's not over, though, so if you're interested check out the other thread - a top 5 spot is very much up for grabs, though you'll have a hard time catching the clear winner - steve5332! A very impressive performance from him.

Code: Select all

Name        Elites  Score  Guildes    7WD  Caravan ToeShamBo Hugo    Xidit  Insert Quetzal  Nippon  Palace
steve5332     10    15958    1543    1707    1603    1705    1528    1555    1599    1551    1532    1635
msclark        8    12803    1620    1720       0    1572    1573    1563    1642    1559       0    1554
qwertasdfg     5     7766       0    1527       0    1569    1622       0    1453       0       0    1595
But I still like the idea and am keen to give it another go. I enjoyed learning some new games, even if a few of them weren't the best, and I think the fix is pretty easy: let's only select popular games this time.

What's a "popular" game? I've defined it as a game that's had more than 500 tables played in the Arena season (either this one or last), with at least 10 people making it to Elite. This gives us a list of 148 games, which is a little over a third of the 380-odd games in Arena. I'm sure they won't all be everyone's favourites, but they're not obscure and you would expect to be able to start Arena games reasonably regularly. This may be somewhat of an over-correction, but better that than another season with hardly any participants. We can always widen it out again in future if this picks up any steam.

Like before, I selected 10 games at random, with some minor tweaking to make sure there was a good balance of short/long games and abstracts/euros/card games, and I'm publishing it early to give people the chance to get to 100 Elo before the season kicks off. This is the list:
  1. Stone Age
  2. Can't Stop Express
  3. Clans of Caledonia
  4. Res Arcana
  5. Dragonheart
  6. Trek 12
  7. La Granja
  8. Santorini
  9. CuBirds
  10. Papayoo
To enter, all you have to do is play! At the end of the season, I'll compile the rankings of all the games and come up with a combined ranking like the one above. If you don't want to play all ten, you don't have to; see how many you can achieve before the end of the season. I'll rank you if you can get to 5. Best of luck, and maybe I'll see you at the tables.

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 23 March 2022, 18:43
by Meeplelowda
Thanks for organizing this. I may have a go at it next season.

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 25 March 2022, 06:05
by RebaSheba
Thanks for organizing the Decathlon -- and for the thoughtfulness in selecting games for Season 2 that are played with more frequency than those in Season 1. I've been trying in Season 1 but only reached Elite in 2 so far. For me, it's been extra-challenging because I much prefer real-time games. Still, I enjoyed learning the new games I've tried and look forward to learning some additional new ones in the next season.

Cheers to you!

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 25 March 2022, 11:35
by msclark
RebaSheba wrote: 25 March 2022, 06:05 Thanks for organizing the Decathlon -- and for the thoughtfulness in selecting games for Season 2 that are played with more frequency than those in Season 1. I've been trying in Season 1 but only reached Elite in 2 so far. For me, it's been extra-challenging because I much prefer real-time games. Still, I enjoyed learning the new games I've tried and look forward to learning some additional new ones in the next season.

Cheers to you!
Glad to hear it, RebaSheba. And yes - it should hopefully be a lot easier to start real-time games this time around.

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 12 April 2022, 17:02
by msclark
It wasn't the most exciting finish to our first attempt at a Decathlon season but these were the final scores:

Code: Select all

Name        Elites  Score  Guildes    7WD  Caravan ToeShamBo Hugo    Xidit  Insert Quetzal  Nippon  Palace
steve5332     10    15958    1543    1707    1603    1705    1528    1555    1599    1551    1532    1635
msclark        8    12803    1620    1720       0    1572    1573    1563    1642    1559       0    1554
qwertasdfg     5     7742       0    1527       0    1569    1622       0    1453       0       0    1571
Chauff         3     4842       0    1685       0    1569       0       0    1588       0       0       0
Tulivuori      3     4640       0    1537       0       0    1547       0    1556       0       0       0
Huge congratulations to steve5332 for completing the set in a very tricky selection of games. That's highly impressive. Does this make him the best all-round games player on the site? I don't know, but why not join in this season to see if you can do better? The list of games is above!

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 12 April 2022, 18:26
by Chauff
Yep, that's pretty incredible, congrats Steve!

I'm happy to end up 4th by targeting three games. Thank you Msclark, and see you in season 2 ;)

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 12 April 2022, 19:17
by Jellby
As well-rounded as a decathlon of 10 games sounds, I believe it's too many. A pentathlon may be easier to fulfil and offer more incentive.

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 12 April 2022, 21:36
by msclark
Jellby wrote: 12 April 2022, 19:17 As well-rounded as a decathlon of 10 games sounds, I believe it's too many. A pentathlon may be easier to fulfil and offer more incentive.
Pick your favourite 5 and just play those?

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 25 April 2022, 09:41
by Meeplelowda
1 elite down. 9 to go....

Re: Decathlon Season 2

Posted: 26 April 2022, 04:20
by Meeplelowda
I'm having trouble even getting a game of Papayoo started. On the configuration page for manual setup it says "80 players available for this game," compare to CuBirds which is "374 players available for this game." I've spent 15 minutes sitting around waiting for a game to start.

Is there a way to see what proportion of the number of arena games (which was used to decide the popularity of the games) included turn-based games?