Author Topic: Seating and manual set chips  (Read 5935 times)

grisu

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Seating and manual set chips
« on: July 13, 2008, 03:31:53 PM »
In last months we used the TD for many tournaments. I noticed that the TD likes to seat players with the same last name on the same table. So if we have a couple taking part in a tournament they sit at the same table almost every time. And in general
they are seated next to each other. We just had this yesterday.

Another point: When I change the personal chip stacks before the tournament starts in the tournament window are only the starting chips from the game sheet shown. I changed the chip count at the players sheet and they are shown coorrectly on the player rankings window.

Small problems but maybe you might have a solution.

Radium

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2008, 02:58:12 AM »
Now that you mention it I have the same problem at sorting tables, it does seem to put the same people with the last name on the same table...
Is there a work round for this?

Corey Cooper

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2008, 09:36:53 PM »
Ok, I hate to say this (again) .... but you guys are crazy.

The seating is random.  As random as it can be.  There is no affinity for player last names, or anything else.

Just to prove the point, I created a set of 85 bogus players.  Out of those 85 players, 22 share a last name with another player.  There are 8 pairs of identical last names, and 2 triples.  I seated these players 3 successive times, at 9 tables of 10 seats each.  Each time I started with no players seated and I pressed the "Seat Players" button (the "Suggest Movement" button - but it says "Seat Players" before the tournament starts).

In those 3 seatings, only once did 2 players with the same last name sit at the same table.  If anything, it feels less random because I would expect people with the same last name to randomly land on the same table more often than they actually did.  But it certainly doesn't feel like there's a tendency to seat player with the same last name together...

grisu: can you be more specific about the chip stacks?  Where on the Game Window are you seeing the chip counts [that are incorrect]?  And how are you setting them from this window?  (Ctrl+S?)  And what do you mean by "game sheet"?

grisu

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2008, 04:12:06 AM »
I try to do it better.
Maybe this comes from my more or less bad english...

I bought in a numbre of players with 2000 starting chips entered on the game sheet where you can set the event name...
After that I went to the controls sheet and clicked the Set Chip Counts button to set the chip counts (something between 2000 and 4000 chips per player).
Now I go to the tournament window and the chip count cell only shows the addition of 2000 chips per player.
I hope this was more specific.

The seating...
I believe this is as random as it can be. I'll have a look at it and if you are interested I'll let you know.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2008, 12:40:53 PM »
Oh I see.  Well, hmm, you've hit on an area in the software that truly IS kind of screwy.

The software was never really intended to track chip counts during the tournament.  Some people want to do this, but for most it's a pain in the butt and they really don't care.  Chip counts change too fast, and no one looks to the screen to see how many chips other players hold.  You would need someone doing this full-time during a tournament to keep it up-to-date.

What the software DOES track is how many chips a player receives when they buy-in, add-on, or rebuy.  By doing this, the software can quickly total up how many chips are in play.

The "current chip count" for a player is a feature that was added later so some could display this on the screen.  Again, the software doesn't know how many chips a player *currently* has, but only how many they received when they bought-in (and rebought and/or added-on).  A player's "current chip count" only gets set by the user, when they press the "Set Chip Counts" button (or the equivalent hotkey).  A preference was added that automatically updates a player's "current chip count" when the player buys-in, busts-out, rebuys, or adds-on.  This *helps* to keep a player's "current chip count" up-to-date - but it still takes manual updates from the user to keep them fully up-to-date.

So, the point of all this is: the "Chip Count" cell (and the <chipcount> token) gets a total chip count by adding up each player's actions (buy-in, rebuy, add-on).  Why use this instead of each player's "current chip count"?  Because the first way is always accurate, whereas adding up each player's "current chip count" only works if the user has been diligent in keeping the chip counts up-to-date.  And because few people do this, the "Chip Count" would be inaccurate for the vast majority of users.

So all this begs the question: if you buy-in players for 2000 chips each, why are you then modifying their "Current chip counts" to something different?


grisu

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2008, 01:05:07 PM »
This is a final and the players ahd the chance to play for an addition to these 2000 starting chips. So they gat a basic chip count of 2000 and after that they get different additions to that.

I am not interested in keeping every players chipcount actual during the tournament. Of course we will not be able to manage this. But for many players it is interesting to know how many chips are in play. That is what I would like to see in the "current chip count" cell.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2008, 03:16:48 PM »
You can "fix" this in a couple of ways:

(1) When you buy the player in, set their starting chips appropriately.

(2) After buying players in, edit the players on the Players tab and edit their buy-in, setting their starting chips to the appropriate amount.

(3) After buying players in, buy an add-on for players who received additional chips.  Make the add-on fee $0 so it doesn't cost them anything, and set their add-on chips to the additional amount of chips the players receive.

tandemrx

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2008, 09:54:53 PM »
Hey Corey,

I am one of the crazies too.  I do a lot of couples tourneys and it frequently seems that when I do my first seating that a number of the couples end up sitting right next to one another.

It really could be the randomness, but for as many times as I have done it I am always impressed at the number of couples being seated next to one another.

I have actually implemented a standard that I seat the players randomly, then I randomize seating again.  I do this all the time so that it a regular randomization system.  Call me crazy, but it seems to work better for me.  If after the 2nd randomization a couple is seated next to each other, then so be it (and certainly sometimes couples that weren't seated next to one another during seating end up getting moved next to one another after the 2nd randomization - but to me it seems to less of a problem than the number of couples I have seated next to each other after initial random seating).

I agree is seems goofy and I have always assumed it was just the nature of the random events - but I have to at least throw it out there that there are other crazies who also see the same thing (I hear voices inside my head too, so maybe this isn't surprising  ;))

grisu

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #8 on: July 16, 2008, 03:30:42 AM »
Thank you for the information.

By the way, I use 2.5.3 and I love it!

Corey Cooper

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #9 on: July 16, 2008, 11:43:59 AM »
I have no doubt that seating can seem non-random - or maybe more accurately - poorly randomized.

I'm pretty sure I've addressed this before somewhere in the forums, so if I'm probably repeating myself.  Nevertheless...

I will not venture to discuss the merits of the random number generator within Windows/Windows Script/Internet Explorer.  Whichever one the TD ultimately uses, I believe it to be sound, although of course without studying it I cannot be certain of its strength (or weakness), and that involves time and, frankly, skills that I don't possess.  In previous discussions of this, I have searched [the web] for mention of any issues in the RNG, and have not found any.  While this obviously cannot does not guarantee the RNG is sound, the lack of discussion of problems with it implies it is OK.  This may be a false assumption, but for our purposes, it is an assumption we must make (because if something IS wrong with it - well, we're stuck with it anyway).

This means that the TD code must somehow have this affinity.  It must utilize the RNG in such a way as to tend to seat players with the same last name at the same table.

When you tell the TD to do the initial seating, it goes down a unique code path.  It recognizes that you are seating ALL the players for the first time in the tournament.  This is basically a special case, and it does this strictly for speed.  The general "table balancing" algorithm will seat any unseated players, so it will work in the case of all players being unseated, but it goes through a lot of "balancing" code.  As the number of players in the tournament increases, so does the algorithm's time (it's probably O(n^2), or similar, which isn't good, but whatever).  Therefore, there's a "shortcut" path for initial seating, which does it very quickly.

This is actually a good thing, because it means the path we're going down is MUCH simpler.  The gist of this part is: get the set of tables that best fits the number of players we have.  Then run through each seat at each table (table 1, seat 1, table 2, seat 1, table 3, seat 1; table 1 seat 2, table 2 seat 2, table 3 seat 3, etc).  For every seat, pick a player at random from the list of players and seat them at this table/seat.  Continue until all players have been seated.  This is an easy way to randomly seat everyone and ensure that the tables are filled and balanced without any additional work.  As you can see, it's quite a leap to think there is some kind of bias injected into this process.

Some things to note:

- Humans don't think too randomly.  The more something looks random, the less it usually is.  And vice versa.  Additionally, our brains are wired to recognize patterns.  Just because we see a pattern doesn't mean it isn't random.

- If you insist on seating players more than once (seating them, unseating them, seating them again), in a way you're actually *decreasing* the randomness, because you are insisting that the random seating align itself to a pattern that you've predetermined.

If you do insist on seating multiple times to avoid (or reduce) players with the same last names sitting at the same table, I would suggest coming up with a clear, known rule beforehand.  Like "continue randomly seating players until no more than 2 players with the same last name are seated at the same table".  This would help to prevent players from thinking you may have a personal bias, and are continuing to randomly seat players until that personal bias is satisfied.

tandemrx

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #10 on: July 16, 2008, 12:34:07 PM »
That is why I have come up with this scheme where for every tourney I seat the players (randomly), then I don't unseat them, I just hit the randomize seating button to randomize them again.

So I do have a rule for doing this.

Now, in essence, the couples tourneys are pretty casual low buy-in and nobody knows what is going on in terms of my seating rules anyway, but I like to have a "rule" that I do follow for each tourney.

This method does seem to reduce the number of couples sitting next to one another (could totally be my imagination - as a scientist I certainly understand that it is easy to see patterns, not easy to see randomness).  Its not a big deal, but it kind of makes the social part of the game a bit better if I start out with couples not together as much . . . . of course that can change after a few bust outs, but there you go.

It is interesting to find out that the RNG comes from Windows or IE.  I figured it was something you built into TD yourself.  I didn't even know that Windows or IE had a RNG somewhere in there.


Corey Cooper

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #11 on: July 16, 2008, 05:19:34 PM »
I noticed that you had your own rule as I was posting that, tandemrx, but I was really stating my suggestion for the benefit of others.

The "Randomize Seating" button, by the way, simply unseats everyone and then calls the table balancing method, which goes down the same code path.  I misspoke slightly in the previous message.  The unique path is invoked if everyone who *can* be seated is currently *not* seated.  Doesn't matter if the tournament has started, or this is the first time players have been seated.  If there are enough seats, and everyone in the tournament is unseated, it will go down the "quick seating" path.

As stated before, the TD runs inside of IE.  It utilizes the Jscript Math.random() method for its RNG.  This method does not need to be seeded (rather, it is automatically seeded).  The question is, how did Microsoft implement this method?  The ECMAScript specification does not specify its implementation.  As a matter of fact, its specification is very brief:

Quote
Returns a number value with positive sign, greater than or equal to 0 but less than 1, chosen randomly or pseudo randomly with approximately uniform distribution over that range, using an implementation-dependent algorithm or strategy. This function takes no arguments.

FourAcesPoker

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #12 on: August 22, 2008, 07:52:39 AM »
i'm not sure if you answered this question already, but here goes... In December I will be having a "Tournament of Champions", where I give out chip bonuses to anyone who has won a monthly event and a regular stack to people who finish top 3 twice. Then I have "Wild Cards" who receive a 20% smaller stack. I have a chip count of each player to date (I still have 3 events left to play before December's) but my real question is: How do you set these chip counts per person to where it gives a total on the tournament screen under "Total Chip Count"? Do I manually enter the counts on the Players Tab and it tallies it up that way? or do i need to edit the "Chip count properties" on the tournament screen?
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Corey Cooper

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #13 on: August 25, 2008, 01:17:33 PM »
Since every player will be starting with different chip counts, set the proper chip count each time you buy a player into the tournament.

FourAcesPoker

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Re: Seating and manual set chips
« Reply #14 on: August 25, 2008, 01:43:07 PM »
thanks, corey...somehow, i missed that!
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