Open Meeting
Kyle (DC Riichi Mahjong): A few questions arose. DC has a top 16 cut. What happens if we disqualify a top 16 person after the cut. How should we handle this? Before and after the cut?
Dave: This is a question for WRC. If you have something happen before the cut, then it should be fine to get 17th in. If it’s after a few rounds have been played, it probably should just be a substitute. I don’t want there to be a situation where someone could benefit from this. “A substitute plays instead” is most definitely fine. I can bring that up the chain to see if that’s okay.
Kyle: One additional thing is to differentiate between honorably discharged and dishonorably discharged. For example family emergency and cheating.
Dave: If there is an emergency out of their control (appendix exploded), they can just be put on the bottom of that tier (like top 16).
Kyle: Bad actors and cheaters: Should we be allowing spectating in the top 16 or top 4? We will not be able to provide a streaming setup. If people want to spectate, they would be within the room itself.
Dave: I feel fairly confident that as long that there are fairly fine as long as there’s reasonable precautions. Refs there to make sure there’s no comms and the audience can keep quiet. I actually had a relevant experience. The first time I was at the European Championships, I was tenpai for daisuushi and I had someone stand with their mouth open so you could tell that it was a big hand (though I guess not that unobvious with 3 calls), but it was annoying.
Aldwin: As someone who was in a finals last year, it was actually a joy to have people watching. And all having a good time around everyone. The whole reaction thing: don’t signal anything. We don’t want you to do anything. Ideally, we’re just playing against each other.
Edwin: We had people spectating ours (but had cameras so a little different). Oh, and make sure the judges are also not doing that either. They shouldn't be hovering over a table for too long.
Dave: Cameras are also stressful. Either way, it’s probably fine to have spectators.
Kyle: Thanks!
Phil (ARC): Sounds like there’s an important element of making sure that your judges know to ref the crowd and the table. If someone is not maintaining a poker face, they should move back.
Dave: Your job as the judge that you keep the environment as conducive to the tournament.
Adam: What happens in poker?
Edwin: The main table has a good amount of space between the audience. Anything on video is on a delay. As for the main playing areas I'm not sure, but I know if you are eliminated everyone leaves the room.
Adam: The stakes are much higher. Would look more legitimate if there are no spectators.
Dave: Valid approach. When it’s still a round robin, having people who finished their games wander the halls is not ideal. If the finals are happening, letting them have that is nice. It’s a balancing act between letting them spectate.
Edwin: Do not that even if they’re in a separate room, you might be able to still hear shouting. That’s why it should be all on a delay.
Phil: Only time there was a problem was during semifinals. When the whole room wasn’t taken up by the games and part of the room was chatting.
Dave: When it’s a single final table, it’s not so bad.
Kyle: If staff members can play as substitutes as needed?
Dave: This gets into exciting eurodrama! First question: context? Spotting 1 round? Or if 79 show up to a 80 expected tournament. If it’s the beginning of the event, then having a staff member turn into a regular attendee, then that’s fine. That staff member is a player and now are just a regular player. If you need a staff member to sub, then that’s exactly what staff is for. Staff doesn’t get any credit. Player gets a flat -30 for the hanchan.
Edwin: That's correct. We had a person in the Seattle tournament that had to dash out for lunch, and was trying to rush back but ended up coming back 9 minutes late, and therefore had a 9 point penalty. After 10 minutes, they would have just gotten -30. Oh, and as reference to everyone else here as it sorta came up for us, how should a substitute play? If I understand correctly, standard practice is have them play normally. Asking them to play them a different way could make their play worse.
Dave: Any time you have any restrictions, it makes it exploitable. You should just play as normal for that game.
Bichen: So you get a flat -30 for not showing up, right? Not the sub’s score minus 30 points?
Everyone: Yeah, it’s a flat -30. You don’t get positive points for having the sub get a million points and then take off 30. You just get -30 for the hanchan.
Jason: When will you decide about the location? Our quotes are going to expire soon.
Dave: Like to get an answer by mid february. We’ve got quite a few options in the last few weeks. If we can get it resolved by feb 15th?
Jason: Our space can hold more, but we would need more staff and equipment.
Dave: If all else is okay, then we can help out with staff and equipment.
Phil: Tournament organization how to get tables?
Aldwin: Don’t buy your own tables!!!
Edwin: Sakura con ended up buying a bunch of tables. Unique solution… I carried most of the 24 tables to the event - well joking a bit there. Only other thing I can think of is a party rental place.
Dave: I bought 60 of them and donated them at the end of the event
Phil: Invest in the tables and hope to run enough events for it to be worth it.
Dave: Part of running the event is just having a large stock of tables. Venues just don’t have square tables. They just have giant large tables and long banquet tables.
Edwin: Those make sense since events mostly use those kind of tables. It is very hard…
Dave: Crate of hand shuffle tables. Would it actually be worth it to ship it anyway? Found some folding aluminum tables. Unfortunately you have to find a way to get the tables. Happy to help out with equipment. Venues don’t usually supply that kind of stuff.
Aldwin: Last time was the only time I had to get a venue. Only time I had to do venue shopping. When a venue has the right tables, that’s a sale. It makes it a lot easier!
Dave: Folding tables from japan. They have the undercarriage and you can take off the nuts.https://www.walmart.com/ip/PEXMOR-35-Folding-Mahjong-Table-Portable-Poker-Domino-Card-Game-Table-4-Player-w-Cup-Holders-Chip-Grooves-Foldable-Square-Blackjack-Texas-Hold-em-Jig/2956835108 Tables are good to stack. Folds up nice. Good table. And it’s one less junk mat you have to get.
Edwin: Played on one of those. It’s a bit awkward.
Phil: Corners are not exactly square and the tiles can fly off.
Dave: Can get an ATA case for a slim auto table. Having something like that to ship tables around would be super useful.
Phil: A lot of us might have more questions after a venue is selected.
Dave: Probably what will happen is working directly with the team is something that will happen. Gonna be an exciting time. If folks feel pretty good about things, we can close this public session and –oh wait we can go over the agenda. Committing to get a decision by feb 15th!
Closed Meeting
In attendance: Aldwin, Bichen, Dave, Edwin, Nima
New qualifier requests
Dave: Qualifier requests. RNO 2024 and UC Berkeley. 10 hanchan cumulative no cut. How can we approve this? If you’re doing a 10 hanchan round robin, then that’s fine. You are approved for a round robin, but we could ask for a specific way how the swiss system works and then could separately approve that.
Edwin: With 128 players could only get 8 rounds in before having issues. More random rounds or entire fields as one round for 3 rounds. This won’t work unless you get really large numbers. The issue is that chess in swiss you eliminate one person while in mahjong you eliminate 3...
Dave: Don’t want to dive too much into the details about swiss, need to focus on the rest of the proposal. I would say that this is approved for normal round robin. As for the swiss, when the system is defined, we would need to see that before approving that for use.
Edwin: I know the swiss is stil theoretical and I have done some simulations, but at the same time you don't know until you actually run it.
Dave: I don’t see why there wouldn’t be a swiss system. Just that we need to see it and then approve it. Players have to understand how that works and it has to be reasonably fair. Ok, the other one is UC Berkeley. Oh, a doc! Everything seems pretty standard. The only thing I find weird is that a head judge ‘can’ award the time.
Bichen: That should say ‘should’
Dave: Ah ok, otherwise I don’t see anything objectionable about this.
Edwin and Aldwin: No objections
Dave: How do people feel about this penalty structure?
Aldwin: What does the WRC document say about this?
Dave: This seems to be like an insurance policy. Some amount of discretion if I feel like they’re behaving badly. Fine with the lower penalty mod. And some guidelines around repeated offenses. Sounds pretty reasonable. Bad Behavior - don’t be awful. Don’t be bad. This sounds fine overall. Approve both tournaments. Swiss requires more info.
Inclusivity for preferred names
Dave: Broadly speaking, we’re all in agreement that it is good to use their preferred names. The challenge is allowing people who want to use preferred names versus using some joke name. Do we even care if people do submit under joke names? How do we allow players to submit using their preferred names.
Aldwin: We don’t have a requirement to check.
Dave: We can even make a form. At the core, we are fine with this, so we need to provide the tools to make that happen. If we are keeping records keyed by name, we need some system to make it happen.
Edwin: The way ARML approaches this is as long as you use the same name repeatedly when registering for other events, it’s fine.
Dave: I don’t want to say what names are good or bad. It’s rare to see a bad name like a slur. Do I care if someone wants to be Glutius Maximus? It gets us out of the business of telling people what’s right or wrong? Does we start assigning player numbers?
Edwin: When it comes to verification of residency for the invitational, I agree with Bichen that we can deal with that later as the process concludes. But, in the case of using say Glutius Maximus, how are we supposed to know this is the same person?
Dave: It is theoretically possible that people could share the same name/IDs. Unless we start locking down personal identification with like a photo ID, we can’t really solve this problem.
Edwin: It seems interesting that a while back you were under the opinion that we should have actual names because of online issues and now the stance is like this. Like for instance in the FGC you have players known by their handles, like Tokido, but when they have to register I would imagine they'd still have to use some form of official name - though I can't recall Tokido's is for example.
Aldwin: FGCs pretty much just use screen names as display all over the place.
Dave: Well that was then, and back then one of the things I want to avoid is screen names. Now we have multiple levels of challenges. I don’t want to make a tournament filled with discord handles.
Edwin: Again I think as long as you use it regularly, then it’s fine.
Dave: 1. Sign up to events with the name you want to use. It doesn’t have to be the one on your driver’s license, but it shouldn’t be a screen name. 2. If you for some reason and want to change your name, tell NARMA I used to be known as A and now I want to be known as B. And we have no reason to ever say no unless it’s a slur or something offensive.
Aldwin: How should tournament organizers submit results?
Edwin: Well, in order to convert from preferred names you’d have to do is have their actual name connected. We would know it but nobody else would.
Dave: Let’s say Edwin you ran a tournament and they both were named Adam Smith. I run a tournament and both Adam Smith joins, how do we differentiate between the two?
Edwin: Well, we had a case in ARML where we had two players with not only the same name, but from the same state. We had to differentiate them by club affiliation in the end.
Aldwin: We might be real late on assigning player numbers.
Edwin: Are we really late? We’ve only had one tournament so far.
Aldwin: To keep names on a spreadsheet, they’re assigned IDs anyway.
Dave: It is a better way. We need a way to communicate this number. Email is a good one. A clear key. We are cool with people signing up with whatever they want. At some point we need to see a document proving you are a US resident, but at no point we require you to use that name.
Edwin: Yeah, I guess when you leave things to interpretation, things can get mucky pretty easily.
Dave: We are not going to be the name police and reject any name unless it’s actually offensive. No easy answer, but let’s be as inclusive as possible. You are not bound to use the name on your ID and can show it to us privately.
Invitational tournament details and format
Aldwin: Document! Simplest tournament is the WRC emulation. 2-day plan, 3 day plan. Is what it would look like either way. If we should X out 2-day plan, then we just decided on that. This document is just options.
Bichen: I believe Luke wanted a cut-only tournament with no scramble
Aldwin: There is also the idea of an elimination tournament, but like if you lose the first game you're just out and you travelled all that way to get eliminated quickly.
Edwin: Ah, well I had a system where you have repechages and such such that people would keep playing, but when I was originally working on it it got a bit wonky.
Dave: Part of me is like ‘yeah you got eliminated’ and part of me is like ‘well they put in a lot of time and money in this event…’ Doing this like the WRC does make the most sense. Both approaches have some merit. Next question is location and dates.
Aldwin: Dates are november.
Bichen: Do we have until end of Jan or is end of the year maximum?
Dave: WRC Wants us to have the names by Jan 1st, so before then.
Aldwin: All autotables?
Dave: Can do autotables past 32. Past any cut, it is possible. I don’t think it matters if it’s autotable or not.
Aldwin: Games can go much faster with autotables
Edwin: So I managed to work out the numbers, and with 64 people by Round 10 you had your final table. The problem is that the next group down in the scenario has 20 people, so how do we determine who gets what place?
Bichen: Then all four top place people need to play for 5-8th and then all the next place players need to play for 9-12th, etc.
Edwin: Oh, so what you're saying is that there needs to be extra rounds then to determine those tables.
Bichen: Yeah.
Edwin: Well, I guess if we were going to have extra space we could have a 4-round final table as well...
Aldwin: Do we know how many seats are going to be allocated to the event?
Dave: It’s going to get all the quota. Alright, need to wrap this up, what else have we figured out? Veteran’s Day. Who wants to run this?
Bichen: Should just let Dave run this.
Dave: Gonna be in NY on veteran’s day.
Bichen: It should be 3 days.
Edwin: We should try to make sure that it ends early enough on Monday to get most everybody home that night.
Dave: Nov 9th - 11th. Fly to new york then. See if I can get some cool special guests. Luke probably has some input on this, so the format can be discussed later.
NAO proposals
Dave: Really 3 events. PML, Mid-Atlantic, and Atlanta. I'm looking through the proposals and Atlanta is the one I'm most concerned about. They haven't run a major tournament and some of the things here are a bit concerning.
Aldwin: Maybe we should have them run an open first before trying to run a major tournament like the NAO.
Edwin: Yeah, there is something to be said for having experience running a tournament.
Dave: Otherwise all the proposals have the player cost as 100-130 so nothing too crazy.
Bichen: Philly convention center is very cheap and has a lot of hotels. Wait 20,000 sq ft? 16k catering budget?????
Dave: Food. Atlanta sounds like they’re in a world of pain with that food budget. I respect their ambition, but my fear is encouraging them to do it but then they go off the deep end financially. That would be rough. I can talk to them and ask them if they really know what they're going through.
Edwin: Well, you can say to them that there are some here who have experience planning for a tournament and that the proposals are raising red flags, and then ask them about if they know.
Dave: I really appreciate their attitude, but there are a lot of red flags everywhere. Because of that, you don’t know. They can do a medium-sized event first before jumping into something this big. I worry for them out of genuine concern. I can reach out to Atlanta.
Aldwin: What’s the NAO format?
Bichen: Probably just scramble plus cuts.
Dave: All right, looking between Bichen's and the combined East Coast proposals, they look pretty much the same. Atlanta again might be biting off more than they chew.
Edwin: Well, we could have it on the West Coast because of all the tournaments on the East Coast.
Bichen: But there's Berkeley and our open. How many does the East Coast have?
Edwin/Dave/Bichen: There's Philly, DC, New York and Riichi Nomi.
Bichen: That's only 4.
Edwin: Does Columbus count?
Aldwin: No, they're closer to me in Chicago.
Edwin: But they're in the same time zone!
Aldwin: Still no.
Edwin: That's still 3 tournaments on the West Coast. We could have the NAO even out the tournaments.
Bichen: But what has been the biggest tournament on the West Coast? The largest we've ever had is like 100? We're going to lose a lot of people coming to the West Coast. And look at Riichi Nomi, they sold out 100 in like, what an hour?
Aldwin: Well, the previous one was on the east coast...
Dave: That’s not a make or break for me. It is easy for the east coast, but a bunch of east coast tournaments happen anyway.
Aldwin: What about international, are we going to get people coming in to snipe from say Europe?
Dave: Sure, but at the same time you could have the Japanese trying to snipe if we had it on the West Coast.
Edwin: Would the Japanese really come to the US to snipe a spot?
Dave: You'd at least get people from that side to come.
Edwin: Well, I guess looking at it we're going to lose some people unable to travel to the West Coast, and there would likely be a greater US player base to attend if it were on the East Coast, but as I've said before it's rough for us on the West Coast to continue travelling over there.
Dave: It can’t be the only place the events happen.
Edwin: I guess another argument is, ah well maybe not for everyone, but that the Invitational is going to happen in NY now, right? So we could have the NAO on the West Coast to balance it out.
Dave: Well, we still need to get feedback from the others.
Bichen: Well how soon will we know? I have one of the locations really getting on my case.
Aldwin: Which one?
Bichen: The San Francisco one, as they told me they have another event looking at those dates. I would prefer it in San Jose as is a lot better for me logistcally, but transit is not so great there, while in SF it would be right at the airport. It would be really tough to get to San Jose from San Franciso airport.
Dave: Like what would it take?
Bichen: You'd have to take a train down to San Jose, and then up to the location.
Edwin: What about flying into San Jose, is it somewhat accessible compared to San Francisco?
Bichen: Well, you can at least get there if you transfer from say Chicago or Texas, but you wouldn't be able to get there from like Nashville or something like that.
Dave: Either way, I'll get in touch with Atlanta, and we'll get input from the others soon. We need to figure this out by February 15th.
NAO Format
Dave: We should pick the group and then have them write the format. Luke will have some thoughts. We should make it like WRC.
Edwin: I'll get something put up for the repechages and such for everyone.
Post-Meeting NAO Vote
The vote for NAO location was performed outside the meeting as some members were unable to attend the meeting itself. Results are presented here.
Total votes were [5 for PML] [1 for Philly] [0 for Atlanta]
Bichen: Abstains due to personal interest
Luke: [PML]. PML beats out Philly on the tiebreak with geographic distance from previous NAO, large event experience, and relative inexpensiveness for travel
David: [PML] PML for national balance, IMO Philly is a solid choice but I’d rather have events spread out a bit more. Atlanta, as mentioned - love their spirit, would love to support them running events, a little worried they don’t have the infra to do this
Nima: [PML] Agree with having the NAO hosted by PML for the sake of spreading the qualifying events across the country
Aldwin: [PML & Philly] PML by virtue of the “West Coast” problem regarding limited events in the region. However, Philly does have a strong bid with support from Riichi Nomi, where the event would be very large. [editor’s note - this vote was not a ranked/multiple choice vote]
Edwin: [PML] I’m still going to vote for PML, but appreciate Bichen for biting the bullet to run it since Seattle cannot. If we had another viable option on the West Coast I’d choose that mainly because of the discussion in this channel yesterday. But barring that, and trying to give the West Coast equal footing, it will for this iteration need to be PML.