Vaktathi wrote:Personally I like seeing Sportsmanship as a factor at events, however not in the typical soft score way.

There are some very good events I've been to in the US Pacific NW that handle sportsmanship very well. Basically each player gives a ticket or some sort of token to the player they found to be the best sportsman. Those with the most at the end of the event have their own category of prizes and trophies, often greater than that of best general or the like.

It provides a great incentive to be a good sport, and does so in a way that really can't be cheesed. It's not like you're battle results are going to change based on sportsmanship, but it is a distinct, recognized, and rewarded category of the game that can matters just as much as your battle record when it comes to recognition and prizes.

rednekgunner wrote:I like those ideas.
How about a simple check sheet?
(Y) (N)
1. Was your opponent on time? and were they efficient with deployment, and turns?
2. Did they measure and roll dice correctly?
3. Did they have all the required items to play (dice, codex, etc....)?
4. Was their army WYSIWYG?
5. Would you play this person again?

Scott-S6 wrote:I like that the system OP describes prevents chipmunking - you can't use sports to punish a player that's beaten you.

rednekgunner wrote:I am an avid tournament player, and the shop I game at has a pretty decent tournament system. There is one hangup, and that is sportsmanship. To give you the whole picture I will breakdown the scoring. In the current system there are 3 categories that you get points for battle, paint, and sportsmanship. In it's current incarnation battle points are 10 for a massacre, 7 for a Victory, 5 for a Draw, 3 for a loss, and 1 for getting massacred. The painting is a simple system of either it is painted and based or it is not, and is based on model count (vehicles, and MC's count as 3 models). If your army is 100% painted with 3 colors and based you get 10 points. If your army is 50% painted with 3 colors and based you get 5 points, and if it is less than 50% you get zero. Lastly, at the end of the tournament you rank your games in order of most fun to least fun, and for every person that ranks you as their #1 you get 5 points, #2 you get 3 points, and #3 you get 1 point. Then as for prizes, the person who has the highest total of battle points, sportsmanship, and paint earns Best Overall. The person who has the highest battle points earns Best General, the person who gets 2nd highest battle points gets 2nd General. The person with the highest sportsmanship score gets Best Sport. This system worked well for a while, but there has to be a better way to run sportsmanship, because it is kind of bad when a person is able to loose a game and win a tournament just because his buddies all voted for him.

That all being said, I am turning to y'all dakkaites, and want to know what you think about sportsmanship in tournaments. Should it be weighed heavily? Should it be removed? Is there an effective way to make it work? ect....

warboss wrote:
i'm not seeing the problem with the system you're describing. the person with the most battle points (the one who crushed his enemies the most effiiciently) still gets the best general... the person who was ranked the most fun to play gets the best sportman... and the person who scored consistently high in ALL categories gets best overall. where exactly is the disconnect for you in the scoring system? Losing a single game shouldn't put you out of the running for best overall necessarily if you completely rocked the other categories since it's best OVERALL. are you saying that someone who didn't get the top painting award in a tourney also should be completely ineligible for a best overall award too? while i agree that tournies shouldn't only have a single award that can be chipmunked, an overall award should incorporate the scores of all facets of the tourney/hobby/experience. how is this theoretical person ONLY playing his buddies in the tourney for all 3+ of his games? if you're choosing to go to an event with only 4 or 5 players and most of them are from the same small circle of friends and you're the outsider, there is NO system that won't be able to be gamed. vote with your wallet and attend larger events where one posse can't dominate the experience.

Dashofpepper wrote:
What this comes down to is simply balls.

-More players need to grow balls so that when their opponent does something shady, they SAY something, right then and there. Or if their opponent is being a jerk, they call them on it on the spot. None of this secretive scribbling of scores at the end, or lunch-break gossip-mongering about whether someone was troublesome or not.

*snip*

When I go a tournament, I virtually always get maximum scores for sportsmanship. Even when my opponent and I don't like each other, we both get max sportsmanship. Even after bitter arguments, max sportsmanship. There's no point to it.

pretre wrote:Warboss. I play at the same store as R. The problem really is that if you have 3 awesome games (quite a possibility), you have to score 2 of them down. In the last tourney, I played R, a SW player and a Marine player. All three games were great games that I had a lot of fun playing, but because of the nature of the sports scores, 2 of them got less than max sportsmanship. If it was objective or pass/fail, all three would have gotten max points because they were really good games.

Dakka Article wrote:Why score Sportsmanship?

Since 1999, in playing regularly in competitive leagues and tournaments for Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, I have seen and tried out several different methods of scoring Sportsmanship. Subjective ranges (1-3, 1-5, 1-10), forced ranking (rank your opponents from favorite to least favorite), checklist scoring based on questions about behavior (was my opponent on time for the game? Did he measure accurately?), etc.

In my experience most systems tried work okay; the main purposes of every system are the same: to communicate to the players that good Sportsmanship is expected of them, to reward it (there is often a Best Sportsmanship prize), and to penalize players who are nasty and unpleasant to play with, preventing them from winning tournaments while ruining their opponents’ fun.


What’s wrong with Sportsmanship scoring?

Every system has its flaws, and no system is perfect. Every system is capable of being misused; such as when a player scores a perfectly-nice opponent badly because the player scoring has a bad attitude or feels vindictive after a loss. Or “Chipmunking”, in which a player attempts to cheat/manipulate the event results by scoring dishonestly, marking good opponents low regardless of what those opponents deserve. One can eliminate those problems by eliminating Sportsmanship scoring, and some tournaments do that, but in my opinion you then run the risk of allowing people who are actively unpleasant to dominate your events. I believe the phenomenon of Chipmunking is talked about more than it actually happens, and most players are honest about their opponents, but many are lazy and don’t want to invest more time & consideration into filling out a score sheet than they absolutely need to.

The 1-5pt and 1-10pt scales are prone to a lot of problems with people interpreting and applying them differently, especially if they don’t bother reading the scale on the score sheet (which happens a lot). Some players automatically award maximum scores; some default to giving the maximum and only mark down from the top if something was really wrong; some people try to be really honest and mark most opponents in the middle of the range, but wind up inadvertently penalizing perfectly-decent opponents when half the field is defaulting to giving opponents top scores.

Forced Ranking has the advantages of creating separation in tournament rankings, and of preventing a player from giving all opponents false bad rankings, but it forces people to mark some of their opponents low even if all their opponents were good, and doesn’t stop a Chipmunker from just giving the lowest ranking to their opponent who’s doing the best overall.

Objective checklist systems are decent, although they usually include some subjective questions, so cannot be truly objective. They do wind up making most of the points available even to a jerk, and make the players take time checking boxes over relatively small matters like "did my opponent show up on time" or "did he measure accurately", which I think are fine questions, but are rarely checked “no”, and overall wind up being more ink, time, and work than is really necessary. Forced ranking Pass/fail gets to the heart of the matter, and is quicker and simpler for everyone.


What’s the actual mechanic?

It's pretty simple. On the score sheet, or as a separate piece of paper (or printed on the back of the score sheet) is just one question. Something like the following, though the phrasing is important, and you want to be careful composing it so it's as clear as possible:

"Did my opponent's attitude and/or behavior make the game an UNpleasant experience, overall?"

The thinking behind this question is that we don't want to quibble over minor details, and we're not penalizing people based on their armies. This is about whether the person was unpleasant to be around and to play a game with, and ruined the fun of the game overall.

Each downcheck a given person receives reduces their total tournament points; by a very small amount for the first check, increasing progressively the more checks they get. The idea being that anyone can have a single bad game; it may be an innocent personality clash, or it could be that the person checking the box is "chipmunking", and this minimizes the impact of a "chipmunker" or a single innocent personality clash.

The exact point deductions will depend on the number of rounds and the total possible available points.


Examples

Let's consider a five round tournament and a three round tournament, each with a similar scoring system: 5/10/20 points for a Loss/Draw/Win (or similar); 20pts possible for painting (or 12 for the three round event, to keep the same proportion), and the Sportsmanship points- deductions for downchecks, and +1pt for each Favorite Opponent vote you get. So in the 5 round event that's a total maximum of 100pts for battles, 20 for painting, and 5 for Favorite Opponent votes, making 125 total for a perfect score. For the 3 round event you'd be looking at 60 available for battles, 12 for painting, 3 for Best Opponent votes. Maximum total of 75.

In proportion with the above numbers, in a 5 round event the organizer might set the penalties at -2pts, -5pts, -10pts, Disqualification, and Disinvitation. Let’s look at those and discuss what they mean.


1 check (-2pts). There is a small deduction for one check, as we assume that MOST people checking a box are doing so honestly, but we don't want to cripple a person for one downcheck, as it might be a relatively-innocent personality clash.
2 checks (-5pts). This is a more significant handicap, being the difference between a loss and draw, or a great-looking army and a more average one, but not crippling to the player's total score. Which is appropriate as it's more likely that the player is actually being rude or unpleasant somehow.
3 checks (-10pts). This is the equivalent of one of his Wins turning into a Draw; again, he may still place well, but at this point more than half of his opponents say they actively disliked playing against him.
4 checks (DQ). Disqualification means he can't win any prizes, no matter what his points total is. 80% of his opponents giving the downcheck means it's practically guaranteed that he's being a jerk.
5 checks ( Disinvitation). In the case that every last one of the player’s five opponents thought he was being a jerk, in all likelihood he is the kind of unrepentent jerk that you don't want coming back to the tournament next year. So he's asked not to come back next time.


How about a three round, single-day tournament? In proportion with the numbers for the three round event, the organizer might set the penalties at something like -2pt, -5pts, Disqualification.

1 check (-2pts). As above; small deduction for one check.
2 checks (-5pts). This is a mix of 2 & 3 on the five-game format; we don't want it to be a horrible penalty, but at this point MOST of the player's opponents have reported a bad game, so it should be felt.
3 checks (Disqualification). Every one of the player's opponents found him unpleasant; but it's a one-day event, and perhaps he just had a really bad day, so he's free to try again next time. Hopefully he'll be in a better mood.


How About Actually Rewarding Great Sports?

Good question. Many tournaments also like to recognize players who are particularly enjoyable and fun to play with. You (hopefully) know the type- the guys who never lose their smile and good attitude no matter how bad the dice turn. The guys who take a beating with a smile, or make YOU smile and enjoy it while they're kicking your butt all over the table.

An excellent and (IMO) perfectly functional system is the one I mentioned above- Favorite Opponent votes. Each player, at the end of the event (along with their final game's results sheet) indicates which of their opponents was the most enjoyable to play against. You can make this a fixed 1 or 2 tournament points per vote as in the examples above, or if you really want Sportsmanship to be a big deal, you could also make it award a progressive number of points like the bad sport downchecks subtract. Either way, to award Best Sportsmanship prizes simply subtract downchecks from Favorite votes, and award the highest score. In the event of a tie, Battles is a popular choice, the idea being that if two guys both were fun to play against, the guy who managed to be so while winning more is probably the more fun of the two.


Summation
In closing, I offer this system to other tournament organizers as the best option I’ve seen or been able to come up with. I think it’s one of the most resistant to tampering and one of the simplest to use, both for players and organizers.

If you have any feedback on the system, suggestions for adjustments or alterations, please feel free to PM me, to comment in the forum thread, or to start a thread in Tournament Discussions. If you give it a try I’d also love to hear how it goes. Best of luck, and happy gaming!

Ragnar Arneson AKA Mannahnin

Mannahnin wrote:-------------------------------------------------------

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/The_Pass_or_Fail_Method_of_Tournament_Sportsmanship_Scoring

Dakka Article wrote:Why score Sportsmanship?

Since 1999, in playing regularly in competitive leagues and tournaments for Warhammer and Warhammer 40k, I have seen and tried out several different methods of scoring Sportsmanship. Subjective ranges (1-3, 1-5, 1-10), forced ranking (rank your opponents from favorite to least favorite), checklist scoring based on questions about behavior (was my opponent on time for the game? Did he measure accurately?), etc.

In my experience most systems tried work okay; the main purposes of every system are the same: to communicate to the players that good Sportsmanship is expected of them, to reward it (there is often a Best Sportsmanship prize), and to penalize players who are nasty and unpleasant to play with, preventing them from winning tournaments while ruining their opponents’ fun.


What’s wrong with Sportsmanship scoring?

Every system has its flaws, and no system is perfect. Every system is capable of being misused; such as when a player scores a perfectly-nice opponent badly because the player scoring has a bad attitude or feels vindictive after a loss. Or “Chipmunking”, in which a player attempts to cheat/manipulate the event results by scoring dishonestly, marking good opponents low regardless of what those opponents deserve. One can eliminate those problems by eliminating Sportsmanship scoring, and some tournaments do that, but in my opinion you then run the risk of allowing people who are actively unpleasant to dominate your events. I believe the phenomenon of Chipmunking is talked about more than it actually happens, and most players are honest about their opponents, but many are lazy and don’t want to invest more time & consideration into filling out a score sheet than they absolutely need to.

The 1-5pt and 1-10pt scales are prone to a lot of problems with people interpreting and applying them differently, especially if they don’t bother reading the scale on the score sheet (which happens a lot). Some players automatically award maximum scores; some default to giving the maximum and only mark down from the top if something was really wrong; some people try to be really honest and mark most opponents in the middle of the range, but wind up inadvertently penalizing perfectly-decent opponents when half the field is defaulting to giving opponents top scores.

Forced Ranking has the advantages of creating separation in tournament rankings, and of preventing a player from giving all opponents false bad rankings, but it forces people to mark some of their opponents low even if all their opponents were good, and doesn’t stop a Chipmunker from just giving the lowest ranking to their opponent who’s doing the best overall.

Objective checklist systems are decent, although they usually include some subjective questions, so cannot be truly objective. They do wind up making most of the points available even to a jerk, and make the players take time checking boxes over relatively small matters like "did my opponent show up on time" or "did he measure accurately", which I think are fine questions, but are rarely checked “no”, and overall wind up being more ink, time, and work than is really necessary. Forced ranking Pass/fail gets to the heart of the matter, and is quicker and simpler for everyone.


What’s the actual mechanic?

It's pretty simple. On the score sheet, or as a separate piece of paper (or printed on the back of the score sheet) is just one question. Something like the following, though the phrasing is important, and you want to be careful composing it so it's as clear as possible:

"Did my opponent's attitude and/or behavior make the game an UNpleasant experience, overall?"

The thinking behind this question is that we don't want to quibble over minor details, and we're not penalizing people based on their armies. This is about whether the person was unpleasant to be around and to play a game with, and ruined the fun of the game overall.

Each downcheck a given person receives reduces their total tournament points; by a very small amount for the first check, increasing progressively the more checks they get. The idea being that anyone can have a single bad game; it may be an innocent personality clash, or it could be that the person checking the box is "chipmunking", and this minimizes the impact of a "chipmunker" or a single innocent personality clash.

The exact point deductions will depend on the number of rounds and the total possible available points.


Examples

Let's consider a five round tournament and a three round tournament, each with a similar scoring system: 5/10/20 points for a Loss/Draw/Win (or similar); 20pts possible for painting (or 12 for the three round event, to keep the same proportion), and the Sportsmanship points- deductions for downchecks, and +1pt for each Favorite Opponent vote you get. So in the 5 round event that's a total maximum of 100pts for battles, 20 for painting, and 5 for Favorite Opponent votes, making 125 total for a perfect score. For the 3 round event you'd be looking at 60 available for battles, 12 for painting, 3 for Best Opponent votes. Maximum total of 75.

In proportion with the above numbers, in a 5 round event the organizer might set the penalties at -2pts, -5pts, -10pts, Disqualification, and Disinvitation. Let’s look at those and discuss what they mean.


1 check (-2pts). There is a small deduction for one check, as we assume that MOST people checking a box are doing so honestly, but we don't want to cripple a person for one downcheck, as it might be a relatively-innocent personality clash.
2 checks (-5pts). This is a more significant handicap, being the difference between a loss and draw, or a great-looking army and a more average one, but not crippling to the player's total score. Which is appropriate as it's more likely that the player is actually being rude or unpleasant somehow.
3 checks (-10pts). This is the equivalent of one of his Wins turning into a Draw; again, he may still place well, but at this point more than half of his opponents say they actively disliked playing against him.
4 checks (DQ). Disqualification means he can't win any prizes, no matter what his points total is. 80% of his opponents giving the downcheck means it's practically guaranteed that he's being a jerk.
5 checks ( Disinvitation). In the case that every last one of the player’s five opponents thought he was being a jerk, in all likelihood he is the kind of unrepentent jerk that you don't want coming back to the tournament next year. So he's asked not to come back next time.


How about a three round, single-day tournament? In proportion with the numbers for the three round event, the organizer might set the penalties at something like -2pt, -5pts, Disqualification.

1 check (-2pts). As above; small deduction for one check.
2 checks (-5pts). This is a mix of 2 & 3 on the five-game format; we don't want it to be a horrible penalty, but at this point MOST of the player's opponents have reported a bad game, so it should be felt.
3 checks (Disqualification). Every one of the player's opponents found him unpleasant; but it's a one-day event, and perhaps he just had a really bad day, so he's free to try again next time. Hopefully he'll be in a better mood.


How About Actually Rewarding Great Sports?

Good question. Many tournaments also like to recognize players who are particularly enjoyable and fun to play with. You (hopefully) know the type- the guys who never lose their smile and good attitude no matter how bad the dice turn. The guys who take a beating with a smile, or make YOU smile and enjoy it while they're kicking your butt all over the table.

An excellent and (IMO) perfectly functional system is the one I mentioned above- Favorite Opponent votes. Each player, at the end of the event (along with their final game's results sheet) indicates which of their opponents was the most enjoyable to play against. You can make this a fixed 1 or 2 tournament points per vote as in the examples above, or if you really want Sportsmanship to be a big deal, you could also make it award a progressive number of points like the bad sport downchecks subtract. Either way, to award Best Sportsmanship prizes simply subtract downchecks from Favorite votes, and award the highest score. In the event of a tie, Battles is a popular choice, the idea being that if two guys both were fun to play against, the guy who managed to be so while winning more is probably the more fun of the two.


Summation
In closing, I offer this system to other tournament organizers as the best option I’ve seen or been able to come up with. I think it’s one of the most resistant to tampering and one of the simplest to use, both for players and organizers.

If you have any feedback on the system, suggestions for adjustments or alterations, please feel free to PM me, to comment in the forum thread, or to start a thread in Tournament Discussions. If you give it a try I’d also love to hear how it goes. Best of luck, and happy gaming!

Ragnar Arneson AKA Mannahnin

Corrode wrote:Sportsmanship is a fething terrible metric for tournament results and really needs to die the death it deserves. If someone is a poor enough sportsman that they deserve a low grade, they're a poor enough sportsman that they deserve to be ejected entirely or at least warned by the TO to calm down.

Dashofpepper wrote:
We're still friends. I bet if there had been sportsmanship scoring, I would have gotten a zero.

pretre wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:
We're still friends. I bet if there had been sportsmanship scoring, I would have gotten a zero.

Well you did kind of call him a f'in jerk.
If that doesn't get you a zero, I don't know what does. lol