What is a TTT?
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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.
This is detailed in the Scoring section below.
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The DailyGammon TTTs come in various flavours. The forum-based ones come
as "regular" TTTs, "stratified" TTTs and the occasional "Mega TTT". The
Christmas TTTs are a seasonal version of the regular ones.
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A regular TTT has 12 players, and hence everyone gets 11 games to play.
The time control is once-a-day for these and all matches are expected to
be started together and played in parallel.
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A stratified TTT is one of a set of four where each has 12 players out of
a sign-up set of 48. Like the DailyGammon stratified tourneys, the set of players
is partitioned according to skill level. With DailyGammon tournaments the rating
is used. For stratified TTTs this will also be the case however it is hoped that
a better metric may be developed in due course, in particular using TTTs results
of the players.
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A Mega TTT has as many players as want to play. Typically has been 70-100
players which means a lot of matches! The time control is a more relaxed
once-per-two-days and a generous period of time is alllowed for getting matches
started.
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The TTT concept came from the able mind of one
Mike "Mad Monk" Main,
who was dedicated and highly respected British Tournament Director.
How it works
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A TTT starts with a sign up thread in the forum. For regular TTTs, as many
players as want to play post their name. Usually there are more than the 12
required for a single TTT and so a set of TTTs will be played.
If there aren't enough players to completely fill the TTTs then players will
be invited to sign up for a double or triple dose of TTT fun.
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Although these are individual TTTs, the players will be assigned to groups
so that the groups are balanced and reasonably comparable. This allows the
presentation of tables of statistics which contain all the players in the
TTT set. Players who have entered more than once will have multiple entries
in these tables.
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Once sign-ups are closed, the web site will be prepared and the tourney started.
Each player gets to make half of the invitations for their matches, the other
half being the responsibility of the opponents.
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The collection of match results is done automatically on an irregular 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 still occurs.
Getting started
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Each player will be provided with a personal page which is to be used for
inviting their opponents to a match.
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In a Mega TTT the invitations may be spread out over a period of up to 6
weeks. The invitation pages will only have a third of the invitations enabled
at the start. After 2 weeks another third will be enabled. The rest will be
enabled 4 weeks after the start. This is to help players who would like to
pace their matches to be able to do so without having their message queue
blocked by invitations that are waiting to be accepted.
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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 all others will be
deemed a friendly match.
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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.
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If you have duplicates and resign the official match by mistake then you will
forfeit that match unless it is clear that it was a mistake and that you gained
no advantage. Please be very careful about resigning when you have
duplicates. You can check which is the official match by going to the match
table page and hovering your mouse over the cell for yourself and your opponent.
The link in the status bar will show the match id. If you don't have a status
bar then clicking the cell will go to the match page and you can have a look
at it.
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Once underway, each player will also have a personal match table. The full
match table for a Mega TTT is very unwieldy and scanning it to check matches
is a challenge. It'll probably be much easier to check the match tables of
individual players.
Scoring
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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.
Imagine playing two ordinary single-point games. If you play to win and
you win both then you gain 2 points. Now consider that you play extra
aggressively for gammon and in one game it works but the other is lost.
You get 2 points for the gammon and 0 for the loss. Overall it's the
same 2 points as before.
Now consider the same situation with TTT scoring. You play aggressively
and win one gammon but lose the other game. You get 2 points for the gammon
and ½ for the loss, for a net result of 2½ points. Clearly,
even though you play more riskily in going for the gammon and lose
a game, you come out with more points than by playing conservatively!
This is the essence of TTT. The risk versus reward in going for gammon is
such that and you can afford to be - and should be - extra aggressive
in seeking gammons.
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| Outcome |
Points
scored |
Original
scoring |
| Win single | 1.0 |
1 |
| Win gammon | 2.0 |
2 |
| Win backgammon | 2.7 |
3 |
| Lose single | 0.5 |
½ |
| Lose gammon | 0.5 |
½ |
| Lose backgammon | 0.3 |
½ |
| |
| Win by timeout |
at least 1 |
3 |
| Lose by timeout | 0 |
unknown |
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This scoring system is slightly different to the original TTT scoring.
Backgammon wins are rewarded less and backgammon losses are compensated less.
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The original scoring system's 3 points for a backgammon win has been reduced to
2.7. The TTT format is about gammons. High gammon rates are due to the aggression,
skill, and luck of the players. With backgammons the luck component is much higher.
Some backgammons are the result of skill but most are fortuitous and some may even
be given away by the opponent.
This scoring system's adjustment to the points for backgammon wins reflects this
additional luck component and is intended to allow gammons to win out in tied
situations.
Consider two players, one with 1 win and 1 backgammon, the other with 2 gammons.
Using the original scoring, each will have 4 points and be tied. With this scoring
system, the backgammon win plus a single win (3.7 points) doesn't measure up to
the two gammon wins (4 points). The player who more successfuly followed the TTT
ethos of going for the gammon scores better here.
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A backgammon loss is compensated less than a single or a gammon loss in order to
discourage the recklessly giving away of backgammons. Giving away a backgammon,
whether negligently by not caring about it, or deliberately, such as "being nice"
to the opponent, is unfair to all other players in the TTT.
Perhaps a better way of looking at this is that saving a backgammon wins
0.2 points.
Tie-breakers
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In the event of two players tying for first place, the head-to-head result
will be the decider.
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If 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.
Timeouts and resigning
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It is important that under no circumstances should you time out.
If there's any chance that you may do so then please arrange in advance
for someone to ready to step in and play your TTT games for you. You can let
all your other matches time out but not the TTT ones!
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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 cubeless analysis 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. At the moment it's a time-consuming
manual process and so I don't want to have to do any of these! ;o)
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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 * 0.7 + 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 * 0.7 + (1 - 0.987) * 0.5 = 2.0426
Score = 2.5426, rounded and limited = 2.5
A likely gammon
Wins = 96.5%, Gammons = 77.7%, Backgammons = 0.2%
Equity = 0.965 + 0.777 + 0.002 * 0.7 + (1 - 0.965) * 0.5 = 1.7609
Score = 2.2609, rounded and limited = 2.3
Decent gammon potential
Wins = 82.5%, Gammons = 30.3%, Backgammons = 0.3%
Equity = 0.825 + 0.303 + 0.003 * 0.7 + (1 - 0.825) * 0.5 = 1.2176
Score = 1.7176, 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 * 0.7 + (1 - 0.515) * 0.5 = 0.95
Score = 1.45, rounded and limited = 1.5
A likely win but no gammon potential
Wins = 87.6%, Gammons = 0%, Backgammons = 0%
Equity = 0.876 + (1 - 0.876) * 0.5 = 0.938
Score = 1.438, rounded and limited = 1.4
An unstarted money game
Wins = 50.0%, Gammons = 13.7%, Backgammons = 0.6%
Equity = 0.50 + 0.137 + 0.006 * 0.7 + (1 - 0.50) * 0.5 = 0.8912
Score = 1.3912, rounded and limited = 1.4
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If a player times out in too many of their games then I reserve the right to
remove them from the tournament. As mentioned before, timeouts can very much
upset the balance of the whole TTT. So can removing a player. However, although
it's not necessarily the best, to me it's conceptually cleaner to consider
them as having never played at all. The decision of whether to remove or keep
a timeouter will be made if the situation arises.
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Resigning has the same effect as timing out. You should never resign
a TTT game.
The small print
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The Tournament Director reserves the right to amend these rules in any way
that circumstances may require.
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Signing up for a TTT does not a guarantee a place. The Tourney Director
may refuse entry to any player, with or without a stated reason.
