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Puzzle GP divisions

Can the division eligibility be changed so that it depends on a more standardized metric?

For example, a participant will be in class A if their average score is more than 20% (or some other amount) of the top division A score.

I worry that the current structure could depend too much on the number of participants, rather than performance.

I think number of participants is better than a proportion of the top score. Suppose the top player gets really lucky; this would affect a lot of division eligibilities. Or suppose the round isn't weighted right and everybody gets 20% of the maximum score; suddenly everyone is in class A.

Number of participants has the feature that no one individual, or even small group of individuals, can easily affect the division boundaries.

Hi,

short question about the rules of classification.

If a class B competitor solves division B and maybe one day later decides also to solve division A for fun:
If the competitor would be in the top 100 of division A, his class for the next GP would change to A, right?

So as a consequence if a class B competitor wants to have a good overall rank in division B, he should not submit any results for divison A. Right?

Best regards,
Matthias

If I read the rules correctly, you will move from class B to class A only if you attempt and do well on division A puzzles in one of the first four GPs. On the subsequent GPs you can safely play division A puzzles and remain in class B.

But... the intent seems to be clearly that, if you are expert enough to be in class A, it is more "prestigious" to be there even if you end up ranked fairly low in it, than to be highly ranked in class B. You can still play division B puzzles and be in the unofficial ranking there.

We have yet to see how this will all work, but in principle I like the 2017 format much better than the 2016 format -- the biggest improvement of course is that one can do several of the contests sequentially and have a whole 60 minutes for each of them (instead of last year's format where one had to *split* one's 90 minutes between the two contests, leading to top players neglecting the "casual" section). Looking forward to actually playing the division B puzzles this year! (even if my ranking there will be unofficial).

Denis

TiiT's picture

Sorry in advance for my stupid question. But how do I know in which division I am? Especially if I'm somewhere close to the limits. Is it written somewhere or I just need to know what are my exact ranks in the past 3 years of contests?

The question is theoretical. I'm not asking this for myself.

Tiit

You can see your ranking for previous years in the Archive section.
For instance the ranking for 2015 is found here:
http://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/wpf-gp-puzzle-results-2015

Tiit: I'm working on the info so you will see in which division you are even before start of competition.
I hope that I will be able to finish it soon...

Karel (Admin)

Any progress on showing the info which division each player belongs to?

I guess you need this to have it anyway just to filter A solvers from B official results and A+B players from C results.

Working on it...

Unfortunately not very clever decisions about storing GPs' in DB in previous years make it a little bit harder :)

Karel (Admin)

sf2l's picture

I have opened the contest page.
I see I can only have access to puzzles of divisions A and B.
This seems correct, (I ranked 59th last year so I do not qualify for division A straight away but I qualify for division B). But I do not understand how I can compete unofficially in division C if I do not have access to the puzzles.
On the same subject, supposing that I will qualify for division A, will the puzzles of division B disappear from my menu?

Dear sf2l,

please see the News section:
http://gp.worldpuzzle.org/node/9220

Thank you for understanding.

Karel (Admin)

Division C has been published!
Good luck ;)

Karel (Admin)

You can find your current division in this News article:
http://gp.worldpuzzle.org/content/wpf-gp-puzzle-classes

Is there a new list for the changes in divisions after Round 1 ?
I will know if I can compete oficially for Div C Round 2.

I just finished the 1st puzzle gp round. I read the rules but I am still very confused. I am not on the list that you linked above. Does that mean I was only eligible to start in division C? I started with division C and solved as much as I could within the hour. Then, am I correct in reading that I had an hour to solve as much as I could in divisions A and B too? Is that a total hour or is that an hour each, making the total for the round 2 hours or 3 hours? I want to be sure I get it right next time.

Dear McKaveney,

if you are not listed there, you are participant in Class C.
It means, that you are eligable to play all three Divisions (all of them officially including ranking).

So you have three competitions per 60 minutes of solving.

For example if you'll be listed in Class B, you can play two Divisions officially (A and B) and you can play Division C just for fun (unofficial only).

I hope that this part is understandable.

Best,
Karel (Admin)

Thank you for responding. I think I understand about the classes but I am still unsure of the time. If I want to play all three divisions, do I only get 60 minutes total? If so, then the answer page was not working correctly for me today.

No, you get 60 minutes for each one. Your time for each starts when you get the password from the corresponding page.

sf2l's picture

Just a quick feedback on puzzle GP1
Many thanks to the organizers who must have spent a lot of time in preparing this contest (in practice there have been 3 independent contests, so 3 times the normal burden on the shoulders of the puzzle creators). Division A and B were as announced and as expected, but division C, which should have been the contest for beginners, has been the only division in which nobody managed to complete all the puzzles and claim bonus, not even former world champions participating unofficially. So it was the hardest. IMHO division C so conceived has not achieved its target and should be readdressed for future stages.

I don't think it's such a bad thing that nobody was able to finish division C in 60 minutes. The puzzles seemed to accomplish the task of being accessible to new solvers, and there was a good deal of variety so new solvers could try a mix of types.

It was certainly difficult to finish all of the puzzles in the time limit due to there being a large number of puzzles. But this way, you have some leftover puzzles to solve for the next few weeks.

I certainly had a bit of worry when the Serbian team submitted enough puzzles for the C division such that even a class A player would have trouble finishing them all. (Although, based on testing, I think it was possible.)

I considered removing puzzles to make it so that the round could be finished, but the gap between the expected solve times of the top C player and the top A player was so big this resulted in a rather small selection of puzzles.

So then I stepped back and thought, which is more fun for a C player?
(1) To be able to solve all the puzzles in 60 minutes and have the satisfaction of bonus points?
(2) To have a large selection of puzzles to choose from, so that there are many things to try and other puzzles to move to if you get stuck?

I decided that since C players are not as competitive, (2) is more likely to be the case. When you are competitive, having about the correct amount of puzzles to finish is important because I don't want the competition to be about strategy in choosing the most point-efficient puzzles. But for C Class, I think it's less likely for players to be annoyed that their competitors might be using that strategy.

Moving ahead, my plan is to continue trying to time Divisions A and B so that the top players in those classes will get bonus points, but to have no restriction on the number of puzzles in Division C. Of course it will be highly dependent on what the host constructors submit!

Incidentally, last year the constructors were asked to submit enough puzzles for two 90-minute competitions (Casual and Competitive). This year they were asked to submit enough puzzles for three 60-minute competitions. So I'm hoping that the burden on construction is about the same. Maybe a bit lighter because Division B is normalized by a factor of 3, so it is really a 20-minute "Competitive" division.