The official HWBOT Country Cup 2013 thread.

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

Yea that's the same thing I suggested few pages ago. Would be cool to have feature like that.

 

Stages could award "tickets" which are basically the minutes of being first.

 

500+ posts in this thread, so my apologies if it was already brought up. Good to know that others have had the same thought then. A 'tickets' thing sounds pretty good. Award one every minute for a competition, divide by 1000 to get the points for that round kind of thing?

[Massman]

I think we're looking at the problem of sandbagging from the wrong angle.

 

The underlying issue is the asymmetric nature of an overclocking competition. By this, I mean that the competitive aspect of overclocking is not "real time". Some people achieve their scores after the first week, some only in the last hours. But the grading happens at real time: every team is valued at a very specific time. Specifically, the end time of the competition. Now, the problem of a "sandbag score" is not related to the specific date or time the score has been achieved. A score obtained in the last weekend is not intrinsically more valuable than one obtained in the first week. That's why I don't like the idea of valuing a score because it has been at the top the longest.

 

I think the emotional/perceptual aspect of sandbag can be solved by making the grading symmetric to the achieving. (or rather asymmetric like the achieving)

 

An example: the due time for a stage is 8PM. For two weeks, people have been able to submit scores. At 8PM, the stage is closed. At 8AM, the ranking on the competition page disappears. So there are 12 hours where people are basically submitting "in the dark". You can submit all your backup scores, but no one sees them. Then from 8PM - 10PM, the scores are being submitted to the competition by the engine, at random. It doesn't matter at what point during the two weeks you achieved the winning score, the perception will be that all the scores were achieved during the last 12 hours. Everyone can just sit and watch how the competition unfolds, and no one will have the feeling of being "ripped off" at the very last second.

 

(//edit: with smart backend logic you can even instruct the engine to hold off the best scores of the top-3 and submit those at the same time. I think that would create the same emotional experience like seeing the river card in poker)

 

In addition to this, you can add a small incentive for the competition time until the last hours to get people to submit or have the competition going.

Edited December 23, 2013 by Massman

[Wizerty]

It can't works... or you need to bench everythings the first day... no one have enough free time to do that.

Look at top 5 country, every body bench during all night to achieve score.

[FatBoyNotSoSlim]

An example: the due time for a stage is 8PM. For two weeks, people have been able to submit scores. At 8PM, the stage is closed. At 8AM, the ranking on the competition page disappears. So there are 12 hours where people are basically submitting "in the dark". You can submit all your backup scores, but no one sees them. Then from 8PM - 10PM, the scores are being submitted to the competition by the engine, at random. It doesn't matter at what point during the two weeks you achieved the winning score, the perception will be that all the scores were achieved during the last 12 hours. Everyone can just sit and watch how the competition unfolds, and no one will have the feeling of being "ripped off" at the very last second.

 

In addition to this, you can add a small incentive for the competition time until the last hours to get people to submit or have the competition going.

 

...That's actually a very good point. Without knowing what your competition is doing, you're still going to sandbag, but without the intrinsic knowledge that you just beat another's score and upset them.

 

 

Oooohhh bring on the mind games.

[Marquzz]

I"m not sure if this idea has been floated before, but it might be worth looking into and developing if the coding can be done on HWbot's side.

 

To prevent sandbagging, you want people to submit their best scores when they have them, right? Make others constantly improve, then you have to as well to fight of the other scores.

 

What I'm thinking is a system where the points are only partially based on the final score, but also weighted to who had that score the longest? ie: If Germany has the top 3DMark 11 Performance Full Out score for the whole comp, and in the last minute, USA sandbags a better score, award Germany 99% of some arbitrary points, whilst still acknowledging that USA won.

 

I envision it as teams constantly battling to hold onto the top spot (or places, since it should scale) and hold it for the longest.

 

It would present a case to overclockers to submit better scores, to hold off the competition, whilst still allowing some sandbagging to instantly take back a top place, until one is out of top scores.

 

Working out the split in total scores for winning and stage, and time leading a stage will have to be thought out by someone that's not me.

 

Thoughts?

 

If you did your best, I don't see sandbagging as a problem, other than feelings hurt (like yey we won, oh wait, we didn't). Do the best you can, post when you want, it's part of the whole thing. Sometimes it's not even sandbaging per se, rather a safe score so that you at least have a submission if the hardware die on you. I think most people then actually do bench to the last second.

 

I'm used to this since we had Swedish Championship every year like 10 years ago, and it was the same back then

[Luebke]

you could only show rankings without the results the whole competition and give extra points for holding first place once a day. so everybody has to try his best to reach first place every day and sandbagging becomes useless because noone knows the score of the others, just if he´s better or not

[Moose83]

I like sandbagging in Competitions

 

[Massman]

Indeed. Honestly didn't know that there was any score left. Well at least I can say for myself that I was not sandbagging

 

PJ Indonesia has a 41,4k SandBackUp from Hazzan. So that one should pop up in exactly 5800 minutes from now.

 

That would be +35 for indonesia and -5 for Australia, totaling to 40pts. Difference between them now is 52 points.

 

It's not enough.

[Moose83]

Nice Pics TeamAU

[pro]

Sandbagging is part of the fun

 

If your not sanding in comps your doing it wrong, theres no respect or anything like that posting early, it's just bad strategy

 

Purposely losing a competition by posting your best score two weeks out seems like a counter entuitive move to me

 

-pro

[t8y]

i do not like the idea of "more points for holding top score the longest".

some people really are benching through the day/night right up til the last minute.

if that effort is not rewarded, you will get a lot more butthurt people complaining than we do now about the sandbagging.

 

 

while sandbagging is seen as a bit of a cheap tactic, as pro said, its unavoidable if you want to actually compete.

theres no rules against it, if anything its encouraged.

 

i guess this comp did favour those in the world with daylight hours at the time of the rounds closing, though (Australasia/pacific, EU etc)

 

 

i do like massmans solution though, making the last ~12 hours or so dark, add a chat window to the results page and leak through a random score every 5mins to keep the chat going etc... would be like a live event of sorts, definite popcorn viewing

[der8auer]

Sandbagging is part of the fun

 

If your not sanding in comps your doing it wrong, theres no respect or anything like that posting early, it's just bad strategy

 

Purposely losing a competition by posting your best score two weeks out seems like a counter entuitive move to me

 

-pro

 

I do respect results a lot more which are posted when they are done or shortly after. And there are a lot of other guys thinking the same way like I do. The result of the competition would be exactly the same if we just uploaded the scores 5 minutes before the competition was over. We did our best and there was no way to improve our scores in the given time. You guys would still be in front of us even if you posted the scores 4 days ago just because you have the better results and not the better "strategy" if you want to call it like that.

 

 

 

Current Ranking of fixed points after 7/8 Stages:

 

197 Australia

171 Indonesia

168 Germany

147 US

146 France

132 Poland

118 Belgium

118 Bulgaria

112 Sweden

106 Romania

99 Canada

 

 

My guess would be:

 

1st Australia

2nd Indonesia

3rd Germany

Edited December 23, 2013 by der8auer

[Wizerty]

I like massman idea to "hide & lock" score during 12h. No need to get up during night to submit, or to fear connexion issue....

 

Other idea : Give point for "sprint", like in "tour de france". In this race, the 1st at the end is the winner, but during the race, you have some spot, and if you are the 1st to go through this spot you win point.

 

Exemple : round 2 : 2 week , but at the end of the first week, 1st team win 3pt, 2nd 2pt, 3rd 1pt. En at the end 1st 20pt ... like a bonus , or extra point.

Exemple2 : Same spirit, but with score instead of time, the first team which achieved 40000pt (average) have 3 extra point... the second 2....

The deadline stay the most importante part, but you give extra point during the stage

[Splave]

Sand bag is a b1tch move IMO but it is what it is. Not really good oc spirit.

Feels more like a weasel sneaking in at the end.

 

Why not tell us the hardware and then gives us the 1 hour a few months later when we should submit. Should be good for web traffic etc

 

And that being said, nothing you can do about it. Giving points etc for being first at certain points wont work I think.

[Massman]

Why not tell us the hardware and then gives us the 1 hour a few months later when we should submit. Should be good for web traffic etc .

 

Not really. There's nothing during the entire period of the competition, just one hour of excitement.

 

That's pretty much like the very first overclocking competitions where you had to email the screenshot to someone, and then had the winner list published.

[Splave]

Only a page with 18k views and 60 pages right?

[MrBreeze]

Look I think if we're all honest with ourselves we know someone out there is going to be gunning for our score at any point, even from our own team if coordination isn't good like in Country Cup (much easier in Team Cup). Even if you haven't seen it yet, you know someone out there in the wide world is already trying to beat that score you just put up, so you just need to get faster. I just assume everyone's sandbagging and take every free minute I have (not many!) trying to make it faster even up to the last minute, just to do the best I can, and knowing I'll probably get beat since I don't have a pot! But I feel like that's the real spirit of the competition...

[Lucky_n00b]

Excuse me,

 

I received an information from one of my fellow overclockers in Indonesia (yudhiagust), that his submission has been reported. This is the report:

 

And I did look at the 3DMark Cloud Gate benchmark rules on http://www.hwbot.org/news/9044_application_51_rules/ , and it indeed says that the benchmark version of 1.0.0 is not allowed to be used.

 

So I would like to confirm, is the submission of my friends is going to be blocked because his use of version 1.0 of the benchmark? If that were the case, would our submission before these submission still counted on the average? (IIRC, we did submit some scores with v1.1 before, but a lower score though)

 

Thanks,

 

Cheers,

 

Alva

Edited December 23, 2013 by Lucky_n00b

[TaPaKaH]

Why not make a competition end at a random (for general public) time that only gets publicly announced a couple of hrs beforehand?

Say, if you're still on a session, you have enough time to finish it. But sandbaggers would have to refresh the competition page every X hrs for the entire length of the comp. Make X less than normal sleeping time and you'll make sandbagging infeasible.

[Strunkenbold]

Congrats Australia for winning CC!

Who have thought that in the beginning?

Go Germany, atleast for second place! Lets beat those Indonesians!

[Moose83]

Yeah congratz Australia, u are unbeatable this year

[Wizerty]

Excuse me,

 

I received an information from one of my fellow overclockers in Indonesia (yudhiagust), that his submission has been reported. This is the report:

 

And I did look at the 3DMark Cloud Gate benchmark rules on http://www.hwbot.org/news/9044_application_51_rules/ , and it indeed says that the benchmark version of 1.0.0 is not allowed to be used.

 

So I would like to confirm, is the submission of my friends is going to be blocked because his use of version 1.0 of the benchmark? If that were the case, would our submission before these submission still counted on the average? (IIRC, we did submit some scores with v1.1 before, but a lower score though)

 

Thanks,

 

Cheers,

 

Alva

It seems fair and legit, to take your other submission if you have submit one before the "wrong" one. Every body can make a mistake...

I hope it will go this way

[Luebke]

congrats to australia for winning the cup. it´s a pity it´s allready certain who wins before the final stage, but you guys did a great job.

[der8auer]

What the f*ck is this b*tching about here with the version 1.0? I didn't even know myself that there is a "blocked" version. Now that specialbunny is reporting all submissions for no reason to get legit scores removed of all countries?

 

Look at the clocks and the score. These scores are not out of line so there is absolutely no reason to remove them from the competition. This is by far the most pathetic move ever here.

 

We'll discuss this internally now!

Edited December 23, 2013 by der8auer

[Mikecdm]

This version 1.0 stuff is funny, I never knew it wasn't allowed either