NARMA Dec 28 2023, Minutes

Members PRESENT

David
Edwin
Bichen
Aldwin
Luke
Nima

Members MISSING

Public Meeting

Dave: Scheduled discussions are: current tourney WRC qualifier approvals. Possible national ranking system.

Tamas: Here for answering questions about DC and also interested in 2025+ process

Dave: question about DC's structure. There was some amount of round robin, then there's a cut, and then there's only one hanchan for an elimination.

Luke: The tournament guidelines state that you can't use a single hanchan to permanently sort a group of people up/down if you do a points reset. You can bring points in from a previous round. You can do a 2-hanchan semis. Can you clarify the 1-round Top 16?

Tamas: Take top 16 people according to their ranks and they play a regular hanchan with top 1 move up

Luke: This effectively is a 1-game cut with no carryon, and disallowed by WRC.

Tamas: What if we reversed this? But then at that top level, the single game is not enough to choose between fourth and first. Should we do 2 cut then a 1-game final?

Luke: If they play that final with no carryover points, it would also not be allowed. However, you can carryover points. I would suggest halving more more so that the final counts "as much" or "more" than the carryover, so it is competitive.

Tamas: Are these rules written down somewhere?

Luke: They're on the narma website

Tamas: Missed the suggested playoff rules

Dave: Key problem was scheduling?

Tamas: we only could have 3 hanchans post cut, so we needed some way

Dave: On Sat, you start at 9 and Sunday at 10. Could have 4 post cut hanchans if you started Sunday at 9

Luke: Regarding alternatives, there are many: 2 hanchan then half points then 1 hanchan. If you start at 9 am and do point reset then 2 then point reset then 2, that also is great. Other than that, the rest of the tournament is great. These were the instructions given from WRC. These are the guidelines that we have to use to make the tournament allowable.

Tamas: 1. Having multiple hanchan for each cut. 2. Taking round robin points to semi-final rounds. 3. Moving start time back to 9 am. Could we get an expedited review on this?

Dave: That's a totally sensible thing. Take any one of these remedies.

Luke: We will make a list of "auto approved" options in the second half of this meeting. anything other than that is probably still reasonable after a discord discussion. Also: If you think that we should ask WRC about clarifying the "boundaries" of these events, please let us know and we can reach out to them officially.

Tamas: Yes please do.

Tamas: Also, you said rankings? I'd like to help with that.

Dave: Thank you for your desire to help out with rankings. Right now it's very preliminary. Any other public thoughts?

Closed Meeting Agenda Listing

Ratification of additional qualifiers
Expansion of points table for larger qualifiers
Preliminary discussion of national ranking systems

Ratification of Additional Qualifiers

(DC questions had been discussed in the public segment of this meeting as well)

Private section

Dave: First issue is ratification

Luke: RIT? Also note, I will be heading up another qualifier submission later on in the year at Hammergirl Anime, let me know now if that's a problem.

Everyone: should have no problems with running 2 in rochester

Dave: cuts look good.

Luke: I am okay going to WRC and getting more relaxed cuts. WIth a low uma, a top 4 cut is pretty aggressive. This is a really good tournament to point out. A 40-person tournament with a top 4 cut is a very tiny topcut. This is a literal test case. I don't think 40 to 4 is the best top cut, but it's the fairest way to do it under the rules now.

Dave: Max player count?

Luke: Should be on their form. 240 if you want a number, but even beyond that is doable. Rooms are attached and expand. I have tons of available staff, and experience in running large competitive events. If 120 people show up, no problem. Is this going to happen? Probably not.

Dave: as long as min cap is 32, then it's okay. Any issues? No? Sounds like we can ratify RIT. That can considered approved.

Dave: Let's list out the ways DC can adjust their tournament. Start at 9 am to do 2 + 2.

Luke: According to rules, no matter how you do seating, 1234/5678 or snake seed, you can't pick 1 person out from 1 hanchan.

Dave: it's fine if you're doing an exhibition, but it's not fine for a WRC qualifier. Extending the schedule is the best idea.

Luke: In effect, you're playing 1 game against the king of scramble for a chance at WRC points of 100 to 0 points. You're guaranteed to get complaints. It's a event regulations choice between "make happiest players as happy as possible" and "making the least happy person as happy as possible".

Dave: "But if you had restructured the tournament this way, I woulda done better!" - well yeah, but that's not the rules of this tournament. So should we change the rules to make it better?

Luke: List of things they can do that are auto-approved: 2 semis, 2 finals. For 1 semi then 2 finals, DC must pass points from the qualifiers to the semis. Look at the range of previous 6-hanchan scrambles. At a certain amount of uma, the rankings stop changing. If you look at a lot of scramble, a person doing +5 every round is probably going to get in.

Dave: Half seems too much.

Luke: 1/6th means 1 "game amount of points" from scramble, with one game to be played.

Edwin: Couldn't you do a 4th?

Luke: That means scramble matters more, unless you do a 6th which makes it even. (one game going in, one game to be played)

Dave: If the spread is 100, then I've effectively already lost if I'm 16th, even at a quarter.

Luke: If you quarter the points, snake the seeding, then-

Aldwin: 60 players, top 8, 7 games coming in. Just 1 semi and finals. With that carry over, it didn't matter. 25% did not matter.

Bichen: Because the points spread was less than uma

Luke: From RRO, Saikouisen 30/10 uma was better on blunting single-game runaways, but bottom gets super wrecked. If it's 30, then people like to secure their placement.

Luke: Back on topic: Option 1, 2+2. Option 2: quarter points to go into 1 hanchan semi. Option 3: 2 semis then keep X% of those points into a finals. X can be 25%, 33%, 50%. Pick any of these and it's okay?

Dave: yep, any of these. Prefer extending the schedule. The Narma tournament page doesn't have the info?

Luke: Yeah, there are two Narma pages that have contradictory info

Dave: We can do a once over of this doc later. We are covered RIT and DC

Edwin: Chase was the one that submitted the application, but we have a 2 round semis and a finals. I thought we had top 2.

Dave: What was submitted was 6 round scramble and then it wasn't clear what the cuts were after

Edwin: If we wanted cut 2 then 1, what do we need to do?

Luke: As long as you bring some amount of points, it's okay. If you do 25%, it's almost effectively a full reset.

Aldwin: Regarding an event I was in, The reset, 2 semis, then reset then 1. It went well. Felt satisfied.

Luke: How many points would 4th have gotten if this were a WRC qualifier?

Edwin: award points to top 8.

Luke: How many points does 4th get? (research: 40, vs 100 for 1st) One game is giving out 60% of your points. This is why single game finals are problematic. Based on the way points are awarded, you are putting 60% of the points at 6-8 hands of mahjong.

Luke: As a reminder, it will be eventually be top 64.

Edwin: There are a lot of tournaments and will have a good chance to get top 64.

Dave: It's less than 50% of the entire tournament on the top table as 5th-16th gets quite a few points.

Luke: What is the unpublished estimated cut line?

Bichen: like 2x. Like 23 ish. Assuming 10 tournaments this year. If there are more, like 3x. Like 34 or so.

Luke: Are you okay using this? Is Nationals figured out? If a 64-person Nationals isn't figured out, then this is deck chairs on the Titanic.

Dave: Let me come up with a proposal for nationals.

Aldwin: Working on it already

Luke: Just make sure your 64 person tournament follows the standards regarding "games needed to advance players" that were agreed to. Each one of those cuts is a few games.

Dave: we should have that proposal is done asap.

Luke: Regarding the one-round cuts: By WRC rules, bring some points into top cut then it's fine.

Expansion of Points Table for larger qualifiers

Dave: More points for bigger events?

Luke: Not more points at the top for a bigger event, just more "kicker" spots with points for lower-ranked players. This is just a math problem.

Dave: Do we want to create this next level?

Bichen: didn't expect 200+ person events

Dave: Give me the numbers and we can put it in

Luke: another thing is that not having 24 people , if you don't have X people and don't get points, turns off small places to get them. No one will prep to go to an event that might not have enough people.

Dave: In my mind, balancing making sure it's open enough and fair enough.

Luke: Going forward if you want to promote that, The response to your issue is that players can't count more than 1 low-level tournament. If your tournament doesn't give 100 points or more at top, you can only get one of those in your qualifying count.

Dave: my gut feeling is for post 2025. One is because we don't want to change it just yet. Another is that we can use 2024 for data for the future. More holistic and pointsy for the future anyway.

Luke: not asking for a change for this year's system. Secondary attempt to get clubs that on the map. WRC quals this year is great for big clubs, but not so great for smaller clubs. After post-WRC season, Narma can't go dead, we gotta keep working.

Preliminary Discussion of National Ranking System

Dave: the idea isn't 'let's fix this today' but my intention is to have 3 years to figure out who's doing it in 2028 and to establish a national ranking system.

Edwin: Wouldn't we have it figured out before 2025?

Dave: we have a year, right? That's why we want to get people thinking about this before 2025

Luke: During Pandemic, many clubs agreed to the system in and put their data in riichiout. We can go forward from this. It's just based on similar systems used for decades across america.

Dave: Is there a document on how it works?

Luke: Yes, on the site. Do you want a verbal example?

Dave: Yes.

Luke: This was originally with the idea of submission as a rakning system, but then pandemic. These days it is not as important with the rise of self-sufficient mahjong communities and the explosion of Mahjong Soul as a part of western mahjong.

Here's an example with an egg carton. Short form: Everybody has an egg carton that can hold, say, 24 eggs. The total amount your egg carton is worth determines your ranking.

The bigger the tournament, the more eggs it gives you.

The better you do at that tournament, the more those eggs are worth, from 0-100.

So think of 0-100 as 0 to $1.

If you go to a 16 person tournament and win, the eggs from it are worth $1. It gives you, say, 1 egg. Get 2nd? maybe $0.95. 7th? $0.45 egg. last? $0.10. the exact falloff from 100 to 0, first to last, don't worry about it for the example. check the pdf if it matters to you.

If you go to a 200 person tournament, it gives 4 eggs. Get first? $1 eggs. 50th? $0.75 eggs.

But, you can only fit so many eggs in your carton. So you take your best eggs - all your $1 eggs, then your $0.99 ones, etc. In the end, you might only take 2 eggs from a 4 egg tourney to finish off your carton. If you don't have a full carton, then every tourney helps you. If you have a full carton and do poorly at an event, it doesn't hurt you - you just don't put those eggs in your carton.

Luke: That's the basic overview. now, to cover common concerns with rankings.

Tourneys count as "more eggs" based on the number of people at them, and it tops out exponentially, so you can't fill your carton with perfect eggs from a single big event.

You can't count more than so many eggs from the same club / tourney. So you can't just go to one club's events over and over.

You can't count more than so many eggs from online events.

Eggs vanish over time. So a 4-egg tournament from early 2023 becomes a 3-egg tournament in early 2024, so you can't just use your older eggs forever. Eggs never fully go away, so like no matter how old the event, you'll still have that 1/100th of a perfect egg in your carton just so it always says "you got first place at Super Old Tournament X".

Luke: There was another major part that I really pushed for that I liked. To explain it in the same example format: If you run or staff an event, you get $0.50 eggs from that event just like you played in it. Now, this won't matter at the top of the rankings, but it rewards people for working.

Luke: So yeah, that's the idea. PDF is on the RiichiOut.com site. Lots of people came together during the pandemic to agree to it, I'm super proud of it. You need a system? Use that, just give all the folks credit.

Dave: Interesting foundation and want to learn more about it. I hope that we're all aligned that this is a good idea. Moving on from 2025, we have the structure for the future for some long term broad qualifiers.

Luke: Afterwards, narma is freed up to do narma-y things instead of just WRC.

Dave: Are there any other orders of business-

Dave: Just got word that DC is doing a 2 hanchan semis, so that gets an auto-approve.

Dave: Are there any other orders of business?

(none apart from personal matters)

Dave: Meeting over.