Finally reached level 40. Next step...level 41, I suppose
If you match my play history,k you're more likely to fall back to 37/38.
On the mini sub topic of leaderboard gaming history, back before what I would consider to be the current legit champions (Fabian / jonts / allfail / WanderingWinder / -Stef- (congrats today btw)) most of whom I have played and am convinced that they play at a higher level than I do, there were a few perchers who's play habits looked suspect. Larry was up there for a while, but there weren't many examples of him playing high level opponents. Some game logs looked suspicious. Then tat showed up, and was also someone it was very tough to get a match against. There were some folks who always played colonies.
At this point I had a "theory" that the top of the leaderboard wasn't appropriately reflecting true player skill, and since it was impossible for me to play these top players, I decided to see if I could do the same thing. Unfortunately for me, the username "theory" was already taken, so I entered as "conjecture". (Added bonus - everyone thought I was him!)
The theory was:
- Selection of certain cards can make the game more or less skill based. (E.g. a player who just buys 2 treasure maps and hits them on reshuffle 3, will probably win ~30% of the time, regardless of whatever the isotropic level difference rating formula says the true probability should be)
- There is a big gap in skill once players learn about big money.
So I said, I'll target low level players (ones who have actually played a decent # of games, vs. the players with a skill rating of 37 +/- 25), and I'll constrain my cards to avoid things that I considered to be "lucky".
This was basically: No potion cards, no black market, no tournament, and no treasure map.
I required colonies, because it makes the the game longer in general (avg. 2 turns), and I perceive that to reward skill over luck. I've heard counter arguments that the race to platinum makes the game swingy etc. I don't know who is right, this was just my thinking.
It took more games than I anticipated, and I tried to ensure that I was polite to the players I was playing with, chatting, discussing strategy after the game was over etc., and I made it as high as #2 (i think).
Unfortunately, Paralyzed had the same general idea at the same time, and took it a step further, explicitly selecting a kingdom in which if you didn't know what to do, you were almost certainly going to lose.
He passed me on 9/3:
http://bggdl.square7.ch/leaderboard/leaderboard-2011-09-03.htmlI already felt somewhat dirty about "cheating", and I didn't want to jump down to that level, so I retired the name, emailed Doug Z. to let him know what I had done, and suggested some possible ways that he might address ways in which leaderboard gaming was going on. (Since I didn't view conjecture as playing with more skill than Captain_Frisk)
We had a brief email exchange, and I'm not sure to what extent I influenced these changes, or if it was just Paralyzed's ridiculous ranking (65 +/- 15!) that finally pushed him over the edge to try some different variants.
On the plus side, I that the leaderboard as it stands now feels right to me. I have losing records against most of the people at the top that I've played, and I don't have the sense that any of them are ducking games etc. I've actually played against all of the top 10, and have no doubts that they are better than me. I suffer from FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome) way too much to be competitive.
Author
Topic: Attention-whoring thread.... I did it!! (Read 162087 times)