Yahtzee and Triple Yahtzee Ladder Rules

The Yahtzee and Triple Yahtzee Ladders are ways for comparing players performances in the two games over a series of games. Any player in the games is automatically added to the appropriate ladder.

If you do well in a game you score points and move up the ladder.

If you do poorly you lose points and move down the ladder.

Boasting and Whining rights acrue according to the height or depth of your position.

• Each player starts with 1000 ladder points. The total number of ladder points is always 1000 * the number of players in the ladder.
• At the start of each game, each player in the game puts 100 points into the pot. These points are then distributed among the players at the end of the game dependent on their relative rankings in the game.
• At the end of the game, the performance of each player is evaluated and the pot distributed as follows:
  
  1. The difference between a player's score and the lowest score is the player's spread.
  2. The sum of the players' spreads is the game spread.
  3. The player's performance rating is calculated as the (player's spread/game spread), expressed as a percentage.
  4. The player gets a percentage of the pot equal to their performance rating.
  5. All fractions are rounded down and the remaining points are distributed evenly among the top scoring players.

An example...

The game ends with the following set of scores...
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"></font><HR><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Missing Players

• If a player quits in the middle if the game, their score stands as it is (it will probably end up being the lowest anyway).
• If a player does not play in any games during any given calendar month, they forfeit 25% of their points which are evenly distributed between all other ladder players. [Extra points are allocated to the top ranking players.] The 25% loss of points is from their original score before they stopped playing, so if inactive for 4 months they will be removed from the ladder.

[This message has been edited by Pete Hat (edited 19 October 2001 at 09:51 AM).]

Cool Idea --
Although I'd suggest we make it two ladders in this case.
Having separate latters for Triple and Standard Yahtzee.

You think so?

Given that it's just the relative differetial (not the actual scores) in the game that ladder points are based on, I wouldn't have thought it was worth spearating them.

But if that's what people want, I'm happy to do it.

I agree with different ladders. Not sure you need the rule tinkering. Your fisrt method in complicated enough.. I suggest we stick with that and keep it simple.. the KISS solution.

The additional rules would make sense if this was a test of skill.. ie a sports ladder.. but I don't think you need that sort of adjustment for luck of the dice

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...Gypsy (Wizop)

gypsy@dreamlyrics.com

I'm up for doing a ladder... as long as you and your nifty Excell spreedsheets are keeping track of the positions. And I like the suggestion of 2 ladders, one for each game, just in case people ar in both games.

(Still waiting in the wings for TY.)

Gypsy, so you're for just the basic points, not the extras for veating people above you?

One last plug for a single ladder (I'm really just playing devil's advocate, I don't much care either way). I reckon the speed things are going, you can expect a game of normal Yahtzee to take about 3 weeks. For TY, that would be about 9 weeks. There won't be a lot of movement on the TY ladder, and combining the two would mean people move around a lot more.

Would the ladder work if a player is in both Yahtzee games? Would they be on the list twice with a suffix indicating each game ie. Player(Y), Player (TY)?

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-- Twilyte
"Let love rule your heart, logic rule your mind and faith rule your soul."
Twilyte's Zone

"After the winters of our lives -- all the disappointments, the lows, the losses -- spring will always come again." -- unknown

Pete,
Your arguement is exactly why I think they need to be separate.
If you can play 3 games of regular yahtzee in the time it takes to play
a game of triple yahtzee, then it's much easier to move on the ladder
relative to someone in a game of triple yahtzee.

The only way to handle this issue is to:
1) have separate ladders
or
2) have TY games have an "ante" of 300 points, rather than 100 points.
Of course the problem with this is that one or two bad games, and you
can suddenly be down at nothing.

That's why I think the separate ladders works better.
Either that or you have to get rid of the limit of a person being in only
one game at a time, and enable people to be in maybe one regular and
one triple game at once.

Twi, that would be more or less like having two ladders anyway.

Alduin, the limit of one game is fairly artificial anyway. I was just trying to make sure the same 6 people didn't end up in all the games. For instance, it looks like Twi at least will be playing in both. In fact, once everything is going well,I don't see why we can't have as many games going at once as we want.

I'm against the 300 point ante because it could make for massive swingsm especially since the point differential in TY games is likely to be much greater.

Anyway, it seems clear to me that we should go for two ladders, so I'll set them up sometime soon. These first two games will be the start of them.

I've updated the above rules to reflect the simple version of the rules, and have opened up two threads to keep the ladder scores in. Good Luck everyone!

Pete,
I know you might not want to change this now.. but just a thought.
You had earlier suggested something which sort of benefitted those with
lower scores beating those with higher scores.

Since this wouldn't effect the scores of the current matches, and if
you wanted something similar we could do a pro-rated "ante" rather than
a flat 100 points.

I.e. Everyone ante's 10% of their score when they enter the game.
So someone worth 1500 points would risk 150 points.. someone who only had
750 points would risk only 75. And the total of all those antes is distributed.

The only question would be when this 'ante' occurrs.. and I'd say it's
at the end of the game (when the changes are being effected) so that
if a person is in two games, their ante into the second game is based on
what their score was when that game ended (not when they signed up for it).

[Possible downside is that if a whole bunch of low ranked players get
in a single game, there's not going to be a whole lot of movement]

Just a random thought I had and figured I'd see what people thought.

Sounds OK to me. Depends on what others think

I'm not so sure... and I can talk from a position of strength being last in our Triple game ... but to me a ladder is there to compare positions of the results.. not to try to even things out. I don't mind being at the bottom.. and I would not expect to be in a favoured position.. I would prefer in fact to compete on even terms with everyone else.

Winners paying large amounts and losers smaller amounts has a way of equalising things.. which is not fair to those who are winning. If someone has a streak of luck.. well, good for them! Let them keep it!

If you are concerned about one person having a early streak and hogging the top position.. just make the ladder go over a set number of games and then restart. At least the winner can have their moment of glory rather than having to fight an uphill battle in unequal terms to retain his position.

Just my two penneth!

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...Gypsy (Wizop)

gypsy@dreamlyrics.com

While I think on this, Gypsy brings up some good points. If I'm at the bottom of the ladder, so be it... I'm where my scores say I should be. I'm not looking for a score handicap just because I happened to run into some bad dice rolls. It just doesn't seem fair to the others who had a lucky streak or were a bit more strategic abuot where they placed their rolls and gathered their points.

Just my nickle-ninety-eight's worth, for whatever it's worth.

<devil's advocate>
It depends. I thnk there's a fair amount of skill, even in standard Yahtzee. Sure luck plays a big part too, but deciding where the rolls get scored and which dice to reroll etc does take some smarts.

I'd tend to agree if people think it is mostly luck that counts, there'd be no point in having any sort of equalization. Time itself should do that.

But if people think that the skill is a big part too, then beating someone way above you on the ladder should pay off a bit more.
</devil's advocate>

On another point, having thought about it, if we do decide to do something like this, the ante should occur at the start not the beginning. Otherwise if you were in two games at once, and you were doing well in one and badly in the other, you'd want to delay the good game so that it finished after the bad game. That's hardly fair on other players.

I tend to agree that there is a strong strategy element.. but I think it's
clear Pete that my idea is not highly supported, so let's just drop it and
go with the flat rate.

I don't think it really makes a big difference.. I was just trying to avoid
the idea of someone getting negative scores for a streak of bad luck...
but hey what does it matter. It's just numbers however we rank it.

How do the bonus points get distributed in the event of a tie?

In game 37, there will be a tie for second. Unless Lisa scores a Yahtzee with her last turn, there will be 2 bonus points.

I always distribute 1 to each of the leaders. In your case, give the 1st and 2nd place finishers each 1 point.

As in what happened with the "3" bonus points for game 32?
--
[posted with DreamPlay OLR 2.21]

Well, this seems to have become a non-issue for game 37 anyway.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"></font><HR>As in what happened with the "3" bonus points for game 32?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Game 32 was an odd case. Since there were 3 bonus points to be awarded, normally the top 3 finishers would get 1 each. However, since there was a tie for 3rd, there was a problem. I couldn't give Lisa & Pete 1/2 point each. I talked it over with Pete and he said he didn't care if I gave Lisa the point and none to him, but that didn't seem right. So I pulled an extra point out of the air, and gave it to Pete.

Weez