What is a TTT?
- A TTT, or Tric Trac Tourney, is a round robin of cubeless one-point games with a scoring system designed to encourage aggressive, gammon-seeking checker play. Gammons are not just counted but are crucial to success in a TTT.
- These TTTs have 24 players in a round-robin, hence everyone gets 23 games to play. The time control is twice-a-day as time is of the essence. All matches are expected to be started together and played in parallel.
- The TTT concept came from the able mind of one Mike "Mad Monk" Main, the dedicated and highly respected British Tournament Director whose home base is Backgammon in London.
- Players have been assigned to groups at random. Each player will be provided with a personal page which is to be used for inviting their opponents to a match. Player get to make half of the invitations for their matches, the other half being the responsibility of their opponents.
- If you find that you get directed to a DailyGammon login page that'll be because you use the http://dailygammon.com url, without a "www". The invitation pages require that you're logged into http://www.dailygammon.com. You can be logged in at both "doors" of the site at the same time without any problems, so just go to the login page (link above) and sign-in, making sure to tick "Remember my login".
- If two or more matches are started between any pair of players, the one with the lowest match id will be deemed the official one and the other will be deemed a friendly match.
- These friendly matches, along with any arising from other incorrectly accepted invitations (made between groups or by a non-tourney player clicking an invitation button) will have the name of the tournament but will not belong to it. Such matches may be played out or resigned; it's entirely up to the players.
- The collection of match results will be done automatically on a regular basis by the TD and the results fed to the website. Traditionally, players have been required to report their match results in the forum thread. This is no longer necessary although it may still occur.
- The scoring system is very straightforward, using whole points and half points. The exception to this is matches that time out. These are adjudicated as explained in a later section.
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Outcome Points scored Win single 1.0 Win gammon 2.0 Win backgammon 3 Lose single ½ Lose gammon ½ Lose backgammon ½ Win by timeout at least 1 Lose by timeout 0 - One of the big differences between TTTs and ordinary tournaments is that points are awarded even when a player loses. This seeming quirk is what gives the TTT format its power. With ordinary backgammon scoring, if you play for a gammon but lose the game then you're 2 points down from the gammon that you could have got, or 1 point down from a plain win. With a ½ point available for losing, a lost gammon venture is only 1½ down from the gammon and ½ down from the plain win. In other words, the risk of going for gammon is much less and you can afford to be - and should be - extra aggressive in seeking gammons.
- In the event of two players tying for first place, the head-to-head result will be the decider.
- If there's a three or more players tie for first place and no winner emerges from the head-to-head results then a mini-TTT will be played to decide between them.
- It is important that under no circumstances should you time out. You can let all your other matches time out but not the TTT ones! ;-)
- This is because multiple timeouts for a player who already has several results can drastically affect the scoring. It not only penalises those opponents who played faster, especially the ones who lost, it will probably alter placings and may even change who wins the tournament!
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If a player times out then I will evaluate the last position's percentages
with GnuBg 2-ply and apply the TTT equity calculation to the opponent's
percentages. That equity will be increased by half a point, rounded to the
nearest tenth of a point and finally subjected to limits (a minimum of 1
and the maximum of the score for a backgammon). This value will be the score
for the match.
This is another reason not to timeout. I don't want to have to do any of these! ;o) -
Examples
In the following, the Win Rate includes wins by gammon and backgammon and the Gammon Rate includes backgammons, this being how GnuBg presents its evaluations.
Equity = Wins + Gammons + Backgammons + Losses * 0.5
Score = Equity + 0.5, rounded and limited to (1 .. 2.7)
Some backgammon potential
Wins = 98.7%, Gammons = 96.3%, Backgammons = 12.3%
Equity = 0.987 + 0.963 + 0.123 + (1 - 0.987) * 0.5 = 2.0795
Score = 2.5795, rounded and limited = 2.6
A likely gammon
Wins = 96.5%, Gammons = 77.7%, Backgammons = 0.2%
Equity = 0.965 + 0.777 + 0.002 + (1 - 0.965) * 0.5 = 1.7615
Score = 2.2615, rounded and limited = 2.3
Decent gammon potential
Wins = 82.5%, Gammons = 30.3%, Backgammons = 0.3%
Equity = 0.825 + 0.303 + 0.003 + (1 - 0.825) * 0.5 = 1.2185
Score = 1.7185, rounded and limited = 1.7
An even game with some gammon potential
Wins = 51.5%, Gammons = 18.9%, Backgammons = 0.5%
Equity = 0.515 + 0.189 + 0.005 + (1 - 0.515) * 0.5 = 0.9515
Score = 1.4515, rounded and limited = 1.5
A likely win but no gammon potential
Wins = 87.6%, Gammons = 0%, Backgammons = 0%
Equity = 0.876
Score = 1.376, rounded and limited = 1.4
The opening position
Wins = 51.6%, Gammons = 14.6%, Backgammons = 0.6%
Equity = 0.516 + 0.146 + 0.006 + (1 - 0.516) * 0.5 = 0.9100
Score = 1.4000, rounded and limited = 1.4 - If a player times out in 12 or more of their games then they will be removed from the tournament. As mentioned before, timeouts can very much upset the balance of the whole TTT so please don't timeout! ;-)
- Resigning has the same effect as timing out. You should never resign a TTT game.
- The Tournament Directors reserve the right to amend these rules in any way that circumstances may require.
