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Timmah wrote:I understand that. And that's why I was asking for an explanation of how it does.

You missed the point of my post.

Sports, composition, painting, etc. do not make anyone better at "the game." That's why 'Ard Boys doesn't have any of those elements in their scoring; that's just about winning the games in the tournament.

Other tournaments like to look at the other aspects of "the hobby" in addition to winning "the game."

Good sportsmanship does not necessarily make you better or worse at the game, but it DOES make you better at the hobby. If a tournament wants to give points to the "soft scores," then the organizers obviously think that those elements of the hobby are important to them, and they have chosen to reward those who explore that aspect of the hobby. By default, if a tournament gives any points to "soft" elements, then that tournament is about more than just "the game."

The problem is that Warhammer 40K is about MUCH more than "the game." If it were all about "the game," then GW would spend a heck of a lot more time making a cohesive ruleset with less room for argument. Consequently, it is perfectly valid for a tournament to include the other aspects of "the hobby" in their scoring.

You cited Magic earlier; that is a system with a very tight ruleset. You don't have as many rules arguments because there is so much less room for argument. That company has decided that "the game" is the most important part of "the hobby" (well, maybe second have the collectible aspect of it), so it's not a fair comparison with Warhammer.

I thought they were there just to make sure players didn't act a fool.

I agree with you Saldiven 100%. (minus the last part about 40k being about more than the game, although its valid opinion in my book, I just disagree with it)

What people keep telling me is that being a good sportsman makes you better at playing the game. And I am asking how.

@GBF my questions are not hostile, I wish to become more empathetic and see things from the other side, since I don't. So sometimes I need it spelled out for me.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Seems to me that some gits are only restrained from bending the rules and browbeating their opponents into submission, or outright cheating, by the fact that their unsportsman-like behaviour will cost them. I've seen enough bad behaviour in "friendly" games, and tournaments have prizes and glory to play for.

Some people expect horrible behavior if you remove the sports score, but there is no proof to it.

I have been to tournaments with a sportsmanship score, and those that don't and I can't tell the difference.

If you have cheating gits, they will just manipulate the sportsmanship system. For example: they make a deal with their opponents to give them the maximum sportsmanship score if they return the favor.

The way sportsmanship scores work at my LGS is they don't count for placement. First and second place come purely from winning games. There is a small prize that goes to the best sport with the worst record to keep morale up for people who aren't good enough at the game to win tournaments.

The onus of policing behavior is on the tournament organizers period, end of discussion.

Player based scoring is ridiculous in a competitive environment. Honestly, allowing two people to judge each others sportsmanship when one guy may be a complete tool and ruin the game for the other guy... you think thats going to work out.

Our group has begun running tournaments, and we abhor soft scores. We have a painting competition that is separate from the games. I and at least one other judge, roam the tables. I don't sit and hang out, i don't talk to players or friends. I'm out there, as available as I can possibly be to answer rules disputes. What I am also doing is watching the players for certain signs.

Tension is really easy to spot if you are a socially skilled person. Slumped shoulders, sighing, flushed faces, I'm constantly scanning the room for that stuff. If I see that, or if I just know I have a turd player in the room, I'll just float over that table. Any non appropriate behavior will get called out and warned against. I'll gladly 86 someone who is acting toolish after a warning.

Tourney organizers need to do that kind of thing. Don't be intimidated by players in your own tourney, don't just sit down in the back and talk to your buddy.

And here is why having the player grade sports doesn't help. Recently, a friend of mine had an insanely frustrating very difficult game at a GT. He played a guy I had played against 3 years ago and I still remember his name. From my friends recollections of this tourney, it was next to impossible to find a judge, ad even harder to get that judge to hang out by your table if you were having a game against someone socially slowed. So my friend was on his own. This tool he was playing against was purposefully misinterpreting the rules in order to, well, cheat. My friend exhausted himself arguing every single case. He knew every time that he brought up how the player was wrong, and every time they went to the books, he was losing valuable sportsmanship points. In basically doing the job of the judge, he was hurting himself in these over-valued and mis-understood scores. Knowing that, he essentially gave up, and allowed the player to cheat. In order to retain at least some of his vitally important sportsmanship score.

If there is more presence of authoritative, socially confident judges at a tourney, then there is no need to put your paying customers to work to police themselves. And sportsmanship, is just a tool for annoying players to seek vengeance on their opponents who don't let them play the game "their way".

Its the Salem Witch trials...

"This guy said you were a witch."
"Well, of course he would say that... because HE is a witch!"

And like the salem witch trials, the authorities never sought proof, they just burned them both...

Timmah wrote:

@GBF my questions are not hostile, I wish to become more empathetic and see things from the other side, since I don't. So sometimes I need it spelled out for me.

Okay fair enough. Try using the search function first though. Heh!

G


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Shep wrote:
And here is why having the player grade sports doesn't help. Recently, a friend of mine had an insanely frustrating very difficult game at a GT. He played a guy I had played against 3 years ago and I still remember his name. From my friends recollections of this tourney, it was next to impossible to find a judge, ad even harder to get that judge to hang out by your table if you were having a game against someone socially slowed. So my friend was on his own. This tool he was playing against was purposefully misinterpreting the rules in order to, well, cheat. My friend exhausted himself arguing every single case. He knew every time that he brought up how the player was wrong, and every time they went to the books, he was losing valuable sportsmanship points. In basically doing the job of the judge, he was hurting himself in these over-valued and mis-understood scores. Knowing that, he essentially gave up, and allowed the player to cheat. In order to retain at least some of his vitally important sportsmanship score.

We all have those kind of games and it does not mean sportsmanship does not work. If I am playing a big cheat then to hell with my sports score for that game, I am going to call him on everything and kick his ass. That is the best way to handle those situations.

G

Shep wrote:He knew every time that he brought up how the player was wrong, and every time they went to the books, he was losing valuable sportsmanship points. In basically doing the job of the judge, he was hurting himself in these over-valued and mis-understood scores. Knowing that, he essentially gave up, and allowed the player to cheat. In order to retain at least some of his vitally important sportsmanship score.

I was in a similar situation at a GWGT. In my case, the other player was 100% wrong but 100% convinced he was right. So do you get the judge and argue the case, knowing the other guy's going to dock you? In my case, I let it slide because I didn't think he was going to take it well being told he was wrong. I'm sure lots of us have been there.

With a yellow/red card system or something similar, you just call the judge over and straighten it out without any fear. You get the correct call, the other guy learns that he's wrong, and no one gets docked any points.

Can someone make a good argument of why we need a sportsmanship score in tournaments?

I think if you want to look at and compare to competitive sports, you'd have a ref or judge for every game. It ensures fair play and limits fouls or cheats. That isn't practical for a tourney yet there must be a way to ensure people do not flout the system in which they are competing.

If people are then going on to exploit that system, the one designed to ensure good sportsmanship and fair play, well then they are an arsehole and you just have to hope God or karma gakkers them in the face with a fast moving truck, because being that exploitative at a game of toy soldiers is indicative of a creature so utterly bereft of real enjoyment in their lives that death is, frankly, the best option for them.

Blackmoor wrote:Can someone make an argument of why we need sportsmanship at a tournament?

Players that openly state "I know I'm going to have to make Battle Points up for my comp/paint/whatever soft scores". If all the player is focused on is WINNING then their inner donkey-cave comes out.

ArbitorIan wrote:

Timmah wrote:Nope, there isn't one.

I do not get why you would ever put a score in a tournament just to insure people played by the RULES.

How to play BY THE RULES - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/278461.page

Good sportsmen BEND these rules to play the game properly.

@OP

You don't NEED a sportsmanship score. You also don't NEED a painting score. Or a 'Best Themed Army' score. The reason you have them is that many people take different things from the game, and so you include multiple prizes to recognise that. I would much rather have a fun game against a great sportsman, but lose, than have a dull game against a rules lawyer and win.

Because of this, I think the guy that's the most fun to play, or themed his army most imaginatively, deserves a prize just as much as the guy who won all the games. Why? Because THAT's what I like most about the hobby, and what I consider most important. YMMV, but that's the point...

Where I differ from most tournaments is the belief that there should be no overall score. Give prizes for all the different areas of the hobby, and acknowledge people's different prefernces, but don't let the battle points affect the painting scores, or the army theme affect the battle points. That annoys all the people who only care about their aspect of the game...!

That is one outstanding reply - Totally Agree!


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Green Blow Fly wrote:Why are people so upset with sports??

G

My guess would be that they got a low sportsmanship score at a tournament and it affected their overall placement in the tourney. Either A) they got chipmunked (it's all those other dicks fault) or b) they either weren't fun to play against, aren't a real sociable person, pulled some crap in a game, played a WAAC game that someone didn't enjoy, etc (it's really my fault - but I don't like it).

Sportsmanship is for the most part something that you can control yourself - I can be cordial to my opponent, not a jerk, not try something that's thin, if it's iffy - don't do it or give it to my opponent, etc.

It's a great check and balance for things in the game - slow players, cheating, rule bending, etc.

To my understanding, Sportsmanship scoring was originally instituted in the US because GW noticed that they had a significant percentage of unpleasant antisocial jerks showing up to GTs.

I’ve played competitive Magic, too, and in my experience, while most players are totally fine, some are actively unpleasant, and in general the games are less sociable and collegial. I remember shenanigans at major Magic events in the 90s which included high-level players using bullying and intimidation, requesting that their opponent arm wrestle them for first turn, and employed other deliberate mind-games to attempt to rattle their opponents.

I do think that GOOD Sportsmanship is an excellent thing to reward.

I do recognize that chipmunking happens, and that it’s something tournament organizers need to look out for and have some system in place to counter. I do believe that it’s prevalence is a bit overblown.

I am not a big fan of the various full-subjective numeric scaled Sports systems, at this point. 1-10 is awful, and even 1-5 has a lot of issues with players who don’t read the sheets, or who always give max, or who chipmunk. I think a 3 point scale might work better- actively unpleasant person / normal competitive person / unusually entertaining or pleasant person. But see 5, below.

I’ve seen some good-looking variant Sports scoring systems come out in the last few years.

1. One of them is the objective/semi-objective checklist, like Adepticon uses. This one seems to work pretty well, IMO, and it's the approach I've used at tournament I've run. It communicates social norms expected of tournament players, and gives one or two subjective questions to give a little tiny bump to more fun people/slightly penalize people who aren’t fun to face.

2. Another is the Ranking system, where at the end of the event you simply rank all of your opponents in order of best to worst. This forces everyone to give out the same total numbers, but does have the issue of forcing a player to effectively penalize one or two people even if all them were good. And of course gives chipmunkers the option to just give a bad score to whoever beats them, if anyone.

3. One really solid system I've seen discussed recently is the pass/fail. AKA the “Was my opponent a jerk?” one-question score. And then make it an exponential or geometric progression. One negative mark = -2 pts off your score. Anyone can have a bad game. Two checks = - 4pts off your score. Not looking too good. Three checks = -8pts off your score; you are probably being a jerk, and need to look at your behavior. Four checks = what are you doing here? - 16pts, and DQ from winning any prizes. Five checks = Score zeroed, invited to not return to this event.

4. Favorite opponent votes. This one is really nice because it keeps the number of points capped, but still rewards people who really are a joy to play against. At the end of the event every player is required to submit one of their opponents as the most enjoyable. Make it a requirement that it be written on the score sheet for the final game. You can do this as a simple +1 or +2 or +3pts per vote (depending on your total points scale), or make it a progression, like above. Maybe a bit more limited, though. Like 1 vote = +1pt, 2 votes = +3pts, 3 votes = +5pts, 4 votes = +7pts, 5 votes = +11pts.

5. I personally think that probably the best approach would be a combination of options 3 and 4.

Mannahnin wrote:
To my understanding, Sportsmanship scoring was originally instituted in the US because GW noticed that they had a significant percentage of unpleasant antisocial jerks showing up to GTs.

Sigged!

Green Blow Fly wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:
To my understanding, Sportsmanship scoring was originally instituted in the US because GW noticed that they had a significant percentage of unpleasant antisocial jerks showing up to GTs.

Sigged!

I don't see it sigged.

Mannahnin wrote:To my understanding, Sportsmanship scoring was originally instituted in the US because GW noticed that they had a significant percentage of unpleasant antisocial jerks showing up to GTs.

I think the amount of 'Person my list stomped on gave me a 0 on sports even though I got max score against other people' stories would indicate that the system fails. Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it, since these same unpleasant antisocial jerks now have a way to impact a person's event score.

If you have any firm numbers on chipmunking, I'd love to hear them. From my perspective, at the events I attend and hear about, it seems vanishingly rare.

sourclams wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:To my understanding, Sportsmanship scoring was originally instituted in the US because GW noticed that they had a significant percentage of unpleasant antisocial jerks showing up to GTs.

I think the amount of 'Person my list stomped on gave me a 0 on sports even though I got max score against other people' stories would indicate that the system fails. Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it, since these same unpleasant antisocial jerks now have a way to impact a person's event score.

Exactly. It's completely ass-backwards logic. If the problem is that jerks are making the game unpleasant how does it make sense to empower those jerks and allow them to make games even more unpleasant? If you hand your players a way to cheat on a silver platter then it should come as no surprise when cheating occurs.

If you have any firm numbers on chipmunking, I'd love to hear them. From my perspective, at the events I attend and hear about, it seems vanishingly rare.

Our club hosted two tournaments this past year with about 40 players each. In May, we used sportsmanship scoring (checklist-based, 0-5 points per game). In December, our TO decided to do away with the system altogether. Why? Because when he took a close look at the way people scored the games he noticed something: players who performed well and had a shot at taking overall tended to score their opponents lower as the rounds went on. With subjective scoring (and don't kid yourself, checklists are still 100% subjective) players can and will take advantage of the system.

Sportsmanship is absolutely important to competitive events, but it has no place in scoring. It's the responsibility of the TO's to enforce.

Checklists are not 100% subjective. Not if the player is at all honest. And the vast majority are.

Any thoughts whatsoever on the multiple systems I suggested, such as pass/fail + favorite opponent votes?

Mannahnin wrote:Checklists are not 100% subjective. Not if the player is at all honest. And the vast majority are.

Then why need Sportsmanship?

For the record, I think your 3rd and 4th bullet seem the most reasonable way of doing sportsmanship I've seen. I still say the best way to do it is to keep it seperate from the overall standings though.

Mannahnin wrote:Checklists are not 100% subjective. Not if the player is at all honest. And the vast majority are.

Show me a sportsmanship checklist that isn't. I've seen many, but never an objective one.

This discussion isn't focused on the "vast majority" of players who are good sports, but the ones that aren't. The existence of this small minority is the foundation of the pro-sportsmanship scoring camp's reasoning for why this is needed at tournaments, but the system requires players to be honest, something these particular players are not. I can't fathom why some people think putting untrustworthy people on the honor system is a wise decision.

Mannahnin wrote:If you have any firm numbers on chipmunking, I'd love to hear them. From my perspective, at the events I attend and hear about, it seems vanishingly rare.

At the last event with "soft scores" that I attended (approx 9 months ago), a Nidzilla player got max scores from his first two opponents. His third opponent, who he tabled, scored him 0. The difference between max and min scoring from that third person was enough to rank him below the third place person and cost him any chance at prizes.

Edit:

As a second corollary, I have not played in a soft score event since that one, and we seem to have the exact amount of asshattery go on when there is no scoring beyond battle points. At least one round seems to have someone pull a 'TFG' move, but no more and no less than before.

I sigged the quote from Ragnar but apparently it was automatically cropped off since I pasted it at the end of my sig.

Danny is providing what I consider to be valuable insight since the TO he mentioned analyzed the scoring round by round from a large event. Anytime we have actual numbers to look at that is very helpful to determine how a scoring category, such as sportsmanship in this particular example, worked out.

I have another real example I can offer from running a GT last year. I used the following rules for the players to score their opponents' sportsmanship - at the end of the last game each player was given a scorecard. They ranked each opponent from their games 1 to 5, 5 being awarded to the opponent they felt was the best sport and 1 being awarded to the opponent they felt was the worst sport, everyone else inbetween. I had played in a large RTT prior to my GT that used this rubric and I thought it was a great system since it curbs chipmunking & block voting for friends. I went over all these scores by hand as I tallied them and noticed that a group of players from a club outside the state where the GT was held tended to consistently receive lower scores than the rest of the gamers. I had spent a lot of time patrolling the tables during each round and I did not notice any particular problems overall with the club. I also went out to dinner with a lot of gamers from the GT on the Saturday evening and no one in particular had anything bad to say about the club. Later after the scores had been publicly posted I visited the local forum for the club and their gamers who had attended the GT openly complained about their sportsmanship scores stating they didn't remember any bad games over the course of the GT and I had to agree with their assessment. So I decided to drop this particular rubric for any future events I run. I would have never guessed something like this could occur and came to the conclusion that the other players gave the club low sportsmanship scores because they were from outside the area. As it turned out these low scores did not affect any of the awards but still I saw what I consider to be a flaw with that particular rubric.

To me sportsmanship is somewhat a necessary 'evil' needed to help curb cheating and players acting like a jerk. As a TO I always let the gamers know ahead of time what I expect from them when they come to play and that includes sportsmanship and painted armies. If you as a gamer consistently demonstrate poor sportsmanship or don't meet the minimum requirements for a painted army I will them to pack it up and leave. Unfortunately you are not going to catch everything little thing that happens but you should be able to observe certain bad situations if you pay attention... So yes in the end it is the responsibility of the TOs to enforce the rules during the event.

G

One tournament I played in had a "preparation score" rather than sportsmanship. It could only be deducted from in the event a player didn't bring his own supplies (Dice, measure, templates, books ect.) I know some tournaments roll this into sportsmanship but I feel sportsmanship is not needed. As a chaos player my friend was deducted points for telling a tyranid player that "It's after me" doesn't effect his daemon prince. (DP is a MC no where is it called a "character") Save the debate for another thread, but the TO ruled in favor of my friend but was still deducted points for some bogus other reasons the player made up for vindication.

I just give everyone a 1 for sportsmanship as a kind of protest against it, its the most slowed idea ever, it doesnt keep anyone in check, it just lets people blatantly cheat, and if you actually do call them on it they ruin your chances at first place in the tourney because they raped your soft scores ...

So everyone gets a 1 from me so that i dont have to worry about losing my soft scores,ive already accepted them as lost because i will call you on every single shenanigan you try to pull ... and with a scoring system like this, ensuring you actually get to play the game by its actual rules means you have 1s for soft scores.

Danny Internets wrote:This discussion isn't focused on the "vast majority" of players who are good sports, but the ones that aren't. The existence of this small minority is the foundation of the pro-sportsmanship scoring camp's reasoning for why this is needed at tournaments, but the system requires players to be honest, something these particular players are not. I can't fathom why some people think putting untrustworthy people on the honor system is a wise decision.

Whoa there, buddy. That's a might wide brush you're swinging, to paint everyone's argument the same color.

I provided my justification for sportsmanship above, and it's not about punishing unsporting people, any more than painting scores are intended to punish people who can't paint. People who are the most fun to play deserve recognition/reward at least as much as people who have the prettiest models, in my opinion.

I think that using the Olympic filter for sportsmanship can help curb abuse of soft scores. Basically how the Olympic filter works is you eliminate the high score and low score for each player. For example suppose a player received the following sportsmanship scores over the course of five games:

3, 2, 3, 5, 1

Drop the high score (5) and drop the low score (1). So for this particular example the unfiltered total score would have added up to 14 (3+2+3+5+1), or 2.8 points on average per game. The filtered score would have added up to 8 (3+2+3), or 2.67 points per game if you normalize the aggravate score based upon 5 games. The difference is 0.5% based on a perfect overall score of 25 (5*5) or 0.867% based on an average overall score of 15 (5*3). It might not seem like that much but it could possibly make a difference in the outcome based upon the top few players if the total score for best overall was separated by less than one point (i.e., tie breaker).

Looking over this example you can see that using a score of 5 to denote perfect sportsmanship for a single game doesn't seem to have that big of an impact on the top few players. So it would be better to use 10 to denote perfect sportsmanship for a single game. Here is a second example to reflect the difference:

7, 5, 6, 1, 9

The unfiltered aggravate score is 28 or 5.6 points per game. The filtered score is 30 if you multiply the filtered score by 1.67 or 6 points per game. The overall differnce is now 2 points total which could tend to have a more significant impact on the top few gamers.

I arbitrarily selected the individual scores for both examples. Is the filter worth the extra effort? I do think it could make a difference if there was a very tight spread between the top few players.

G

I still don't see the value. Filtering, diluting, or curving sportsmanship scores is simply going to give everybody similar results, unless someone is quite clearly a disgustingly bad sport, which should be glaringly obvious to the TO.

And if a couple points of sportsmanship spread could significantly impact the top three player rankings, why add this arbitrary ranking? If Player A gets first place by a one battlepoint margin and Player B squeaks him because he's two points more sporting on the arbitrary index, I do not feel that B should claim first place and A second.

That'd be like running a race 1 second faster than the next guy, and losing the gold medal because #2 was just the man.

But the guy who was faster might have had a false start.

Anyways I'm not saying i definitely am an advocate of filtering but i think it's valuable to consider their possible merit. If you are in the camp opposed to soft scores then obviously you won't see any potential merit.

G

Sportsmanship is fine as long as it is a separate award. If it goes towards an overall winner it is too easy for someone to just tank you so they can do better.

When sportsmanship is factored in, I metagame by being friendly and nice. Which actually makes me a poor sportsman because I'm using rules to give myself an advantage in order to place higher. I try explain why I'm so nice and ask my opponent to give me a 1, because I'm so ashamed of my rules abuse. Which actually makes me a good sportsmen in some peoples' eyes, so my opponent usually gives me a 10. Which just exacerbates my guilt so then I go to the judge to explain the situation and ask him to change my score to a 1. Most of the time the judges just give me a look.