Donkey Kong Forum
General Donkey Kong Discussion => The Kong Off => Topic started by: LMDAVE on September 23, 2013, 06:33:29 am
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With the news of Jeff Wolfe's latest score (congrats again Jeff), I thought it was a good time now for everyone shooting for a top 12 spot to take a close look of where we are at, what to shoot for, and the biggest....when is the official dead line.
According to KO3 rules:
"The Kong Off 3 will feature 22 machines for gameplay. The Top 12 Twin Galaxies ranked players, as of 10/25/13 will have their own dedicated machine for gameplay beginning on Saturday. Machine selection for the top ranked players will take place at 5pm, Friday November 15th."
10/25/13, Does this mean verified by 10/25 or played before 10/25? Maybe if there's something in the queue it'll be considered. Trying to nail down what a good drop dead date is for submission will be kind of tricky.
We're about at the 1 month countdown, but we may have less than that if it's to be in the system by 10/25.
Either way, with Jeff's score to be submitted, I'll try to use this thread to keep up to date what "theoretical" #12 is. So, whenever a top 12 score that is known to be submitted by not verified yet, this "score to beat" will be updated based on that submitted score being verified.
SCORE TO BEAT: 1,025,700 Robbie Lakeman
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I cannot say officially but I would assume that the Oct 25th is a submitted before deadline since the verification can take a variable number days and is out of your control.
Keep in mind that several players in the top 12 may not go to KO3, so if you end up at 13th/14th/etc, you may still get a dedicated machine. Obviously if you want to be 100% guaranteed a machine you should aim to be in the top 12. Also remember that Kyle also has a 1.018M (he is not sandbagging-- I actually advised him to hold onto that score in case he beats it before Oct 25).
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I knew about Kyle's score and it was confusing about what he was doing (some said he's not submitting it, and some say he is), but now with Jeff's score, that eliminates the confusion since that puts Robbie at #12.
I know not everyone visits this board, but just to be fair to those who are aiming for top 12, if you're within the top 12 or have recent scores that land within the top 12, let us know (if possible) your intentions.
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"The Kong Off 3 will feature 22 machines for gameplay. The Top 12 Twin Galaxies ranked players, as of 10/25/13 will have their own dedicated machine for gameplay beginning on Saturday. Machine selection for the top ranked players will take place at 5pm, Friday November 15th."
I always assumed this statement meant that you had to have a score submitted and verified as of 10/25/13...due to the fact that it says "top 12 Twin Galaxies ranked players"...and you can't be an officially ranked player until your score is verified by a ref and put up on the website.
But, I am sure TG could make an exception if someone does 1.05M on October 23 or something like that. That's not to say it would probably cause some controversy though, lol.
Regarding "sandbagging"...it would be kinda crappy if someone did that, but there would be no way to prove it unless the TG ref that verified the game disclosed the date spoken by said player during the recording, to the DK community. Otherwise, someone could be saving a 1.06M game until a couple weeks before, and submit it. I doubt anyone would do that though.
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Good luck to everyone trying to qualify for a dedicated machine! I'm sure DK will get even more interesting in these last weeks!
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I knew about Kyle's score and it was confusing about what he was doing (some said he's not submitting it, and some say he is), but now with Jeff's score, that eliminates the confusion since that puts Robbie at #12.
It may still matter. Say the scores stay the way they are now and one person in the top 12 doesn't go. Then if Kyle submits he's #13 -> #12 if he doesn't then you become #13 -> #12.
I know not everyone visits this board, but just to be fair to those who are aiming for top 12, if you're within the top 12 or have recent scores that land within the top 12, let us know (if possible) your intentions.
Yeah I think we should all agree as a community, no sandbagging for the purposes of Kong Off qualifying.
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SCORE TO BEAT: 1,021,100 Robbie Lakeman
Fuck... Sheeit
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Since I'm right on the bubble now I was also wondering the same thing if say someone streamed a qualifying score days before the deadline since verifying takes time sending it in and getting it up on the board. I have heard that some of the top 12 might not attend sending others in. I was just curious to see where some people were at or if they were going to get some others out of the top 12 a general idea of their chances.
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For the record, here is the TG Top 12 as of today:
1 1,138,600 Hank Chien
2 1,135,900 Vincent Lemay
3 1,105,400 Jeff Willms
4 1,079,400 Dean Saglio
5 1,064,500 Steve J Wiebe
6 1,062,800 Billy L Mitchell
7 1,058,200 Steve Wiltshire
8 1,054,900 Jeff Wolfe --- PENDING
9 1,052,900 Mark L Kiehl
10 1,037,500 Shaun Boyd
11 1,023,600 Mike Groesbeck
12 1,021,100 Robbie Lakeman
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13 1,015,000 Dave McCrary
14 1,012,800 Kyle Goewert --- 1,018,xxx PENDING
15 999,800 Estel J Goffinet
Hank mentioned that some in the top 12 might not be going.
At this point, now that Shaun has confirmed that he will go, the only "maybe" is Jeff Willms. (I am really hoping, for the sake of the event, that Jeff goes, as a Kong Off 3 without a defending champion would be a little embarrassing.)
Other than that though, everybody else is going to be there. So I'm feeling that the 12 spot really is pretty firm now.
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As of yesterday, Dean was a maybe as well. I think the wife needs some convincing.
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"The Kong Off 3 will feature 22 machines for gameplay."
12 main lineup + 8 wildcard machines = 20
To whom do the other 2 go?
I am hoping to 13th and 14th, and not wildcards.
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Well, all of these different scenarios, other than qualifying, makes me feel like I didn't earn my way in. I really would hate to be in the top 12 by default because others pulled out, and I would not want the dedicated machines increased either. (LOL, y'all would hate me as a Kong Off organizer, I still think the contest should be top 10 only, and that's it, but understand 12 since BIlly and Steve will always be in.)
I know when I eliminate my stupid mistakes and my recent pace game reaches the end, it'll probably be inbetween Wiebe and Dean on the list at #5. Had two different level 21 loss games that would have landed right in that area.
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It looks like there will be 10 wildcard machines as the following line is: "The Top 12 Twin Galaxies ranked players..." That's a bit too many in my opinion. How many wildcard contestants were there last year? 20 or so? If you exclude the top 8 (or 10?) from the online qualifiers, that means roughly 12 (or 10?) people for 10 machines on Friday. Basically you get a dedicated machine on Friday night if you walk in off the street and 8 (or 10?) of those 12 (or 10?) move on to Saturday (only 4 (or 0?) are eliminated). So the online qualifiers are rendered meaningless. In fact, it's arguably better to walk in off the street so you get playtime on Friday.
If there were say 30 wildcard contestants, then having 10 machines would make sense (Basically I'm going with n/3 as the optimal # of wildcard machines so that 1/3 of the field gets eliminated each day and the top 1/3 gets a dedicated machine Sunday).
Does everyone think there will be more or fewer wildcard contestants this year?
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i asked about the extra two cabs when Richie asked for KO3 questions for the arcade culture show, i dont think Richie said anything about it, but the question of extra machines was put to John Salter and he said it was just the 8...
so i guess its top 14, or 2 cabs for random punters to have fun on, or 22 was a typo...
8)
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I would think there would be more wildcards this year compared to last year, but maybe not. At least 3 of last year's wildcards are now in the current top 12.
There might always be a few local wildcards that participate this year now that, maybe, the word has spread within the Denver area that there is a "Kong Off" at the 1UP now. People that love Donkey Kong, have seen KoK, but aren't tapped into these forums or the DK scene yet...may have found out about the event via news reports, internet, etc...and might want to come out and compete for the fun of it.
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It looks like there will be 10 wildcard machines as the following line is: "The Top 12 Twin Galaxies ranked players..." That's a bit too many in my opinion.
I agree. It should be 8 wildcard machines.
(Actually, if I were to reorganize this from the ground up, I'd be even stricter than Dave! I think that there should be only *six* dedicated machines, for the current/former world champions and the absolute best players (>1.1M), with EVERYBODY else sharing the remaining machines and no "wildcard division" at all, because that solves a bunch of problems, makes the dedicated machines more exclusive/special/yadda yadda, but that's another post. ;D )
Under the current structure though, yes, the scarcity of the wildcard machines should be enforced.
Does everyone think there will be more or fewer wildcard contestants this year?
I guarantee that there will be more this year.
Here are the people who (I think) are 90-100% sure to be there playing as a wildcard:
- Eric Tessler
- John Salter
- Ross
- Corey
- Svavar
- Ethan
- Daniel Desjardins
- Shawn Robinson
- Chris P
- Daniel Dock
- JC
- Shane
- Jeremy
- George Riley
- Todd Lalonde
- Allen
- Mitch
- Ken
- Jon McCourt
- Kayla
That's 20 already, and that's just my quick back-of-the-envelope rundown. This isn't counting off the street drop-ins, surprises, "demoted" Top 12 players, the Denver Players Guild, or anybody else I'm forgetting at the moment. I would not be surprised if there were 30 or more.
The 8 pre-qualifier spots will be spoken for as of October 13th, but from my list alone that still leaves 12, at an absolute minimum, playing the live qualifier round on Friday, and only 8 get through that.
Just one player needing to be eliminated so that there will only be 16 on Saturday makes the qualifier rounds (both live and online) necessary. We'll hit 17 wildcards, don't doubt that!
As exciting as they are, and as fun as it is to sweat over the wildcard spots, the reality is that the online qualifier series is really more of a practical thing. It's a hedge against what happened last year, when there were too many players for the number of machines and they had to devise an elimination scheme at the last minute, which a lot of people didn't like. The pre-qualifiers just give 8 people an absolute guarantee that they're in no matter what. The live qualifier field will be much softer than the online qualifier field, but it's still needed.
In fact, it's arguably better to walk in off the street so you get playtime on Friday.
I'm not sure in what sense you mean. Friday wildcard scores don't count in the overall tournament standings. Friday is a self-contained tournament solely to determine who moves onto Saturday. So extra playtime won't do you any good in the context of the KO3 scoreboard.
In any case, considering that the wildcards actually have to pay to enter, and that Friday scores don't count for the tourney, I think they deserve whatever time they can get on Friday.
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Hank there were to many WC players last year for the 4 machines. There were 4 and 5 people per machine. That is too many when you only have like 8-10 hours to put a score up and there are NO RESTARTS so a good screwing and your done. 3 players per machine is even pushing it so if they have 10 machines to use on Friday then please do it because we could have 20-30 people playing easily.
They need to let everyone play on the next available machine on Saturday as well based on Rankings. 1st - 8th place start and then when one is out #9 starts, so on and so on. If somehow the following 15 people "die" before your done with your first game then you get to go next in the rotation. That way people get the same amount of attempts to play since some got more attempts to play at the last KO2 than others with the Top scores getting a better chance to do so.
Friday's scores only carry over for the Top 12 Dedicated players machines anyway so its not any type of bonus to be playing on Friday at all. My understanding is the goal is to cut the field to 16 players for Saturday with 8 machines and then cut that field down to 8 for Sun. The other 2 machines could be for last second monster scores or in case of hardware failure or perhaps to let patrons play while the contest goes on.
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Friday wildcard scores don't count in the overall tournament standings. Friday is a self-contained tournament solely to determine who moves onto Saturday. So extra playtime won't do you any good in the context of the KO3 scoreboard.
Friday's scores only carry over for the Top 12 Dedicated players machines anyway so its not any type of bonus to be playing on Friday at all.
Where did you guys get this information? I know a lot of players right now are under the assumption that Friday scores count for everyone that gets one based on the last set of released information from TG.
It's amazing that there is still so much confusion about something as important as the schedule and the tournament format. This is the 3rd one of these events after all. . .
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Dean that was my understanding as well. The scores for the Top 12 count on Friday, but the Friday scores from the wildcard don't. I think that decision was made when the wildcard format was announced and people were saying that's it's not fair that the online qualifiers get less playtime. I'm not sure where it was posted. Maybe in TG website's KO3 announcement.
Yeah Dan, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating 4 or 5 people share one machine! I'm just saying if there are too many machines, then basically the online qualifiers are meaningless because no one (or very few people) are going to get eliminated Friday (see #'s from my previous post). If it were me, I'd rather have the extra play time on Friday. Even if the scores don't count, it's practice time in a live setting so you can get acclimated to the environment and there's very little risk of elimination. For example at KO1, I felt I had the home advantage, because I was already comfortable at Richie's. There's definitely a psychological advantage to being comfortable.
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I just think this may be another thing that is decided last minute. They werent anticipating so many wild card players last year which is why at the last minute they decided to have a cut. This year they may be over anticipating it just incase there is a lot of participation from the wild card. There could be less than they expected which would open up machines for more play. We will just have to see when we get there.
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I guess I missed it when that change was made. IMO it's unfair for Top 12 players to be competing on Friday as if the tournament has already started while wildcard players have no option to have a really good game count for the overall tournament and online qualifiers are forced to sit on the sidelines completely until Saturday.
It's probably too late to change it now, but there are likely multiple different solutions that are better.
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I am starting to think that Friday IS a practice session for the Top 12 after all, because that's how the schedule reads. ("Open practice")
Which is good, because that's as it should be.
The player introductions/first quarter drop, etc. are Saturday morning. It makes absolutely no sense to start the tournament before the tournament starts.
And I agree. This should have been handled before it was too late. I brought up the scheduling ambiguity a couple of months ago, hoping to move in the direction of ironing it out (like we did - successfully I would add - with the wildcard tourney format when people "bitched" to John and Eric), but the attempt was ill-fated.
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Yeah, I'm with Dean on that one. At no time did I ever see that Top12 will be starting on Friday. Looks like jsut practice, check this new event schedule
http://kongoff.com/ (http://kongoff.com/) and select "event info."
The real start of the event will be when Richie gives the big introduction etc, and I would expect that to be on Saturday morning.
Will there be a dinner night also after machine selection?
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"Scores from Friday from the top 12 players will be accepted until 12am Saturday November 16th."
http://www.twingalaxies.com/article/2418/kong-off-3-updates-and-contest-news/ (http://www.twingalaxies.com/article/2418/kong-off-3-updates-and-contest-news/)
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Actually I have some ideas that make it somewhat "fair" for Top 12 and the Online Qualifiers.
1. The Online Qualifiers scores count BUT you can also play on Friday if you desire and whatever score is higher is the one you count for the overall ranking on Saturday. You can "practice" on Friday if you want but are still in Saturday regardless. Then the online scores are ranked #1-#8 and the scores on Friday come in for #9-#16 for play on Saturday. Then you start play saturday morning and then rotate machines in and out.
2. The scores for the Top 12 get to count on Friday because that is a "perk" for being on a dedicated machine. You get one more day of putting up a huge score if you so desire.
This covers the "extra day of practice issue" and gives the Top 12 a perk as well. I don't think a lot of the Top 8 Online Qualifiers will play much on Friday anyway. Maybe a game or 2.
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"Scores from Friday from the top 12 players will be accepted until 12am Saturday November 16th."
http://www.twingalaxies.com/article/2418/kong-off-3-updates-and-contest-news/ (http://www.twingalaxies.com/article/2418/kong-off-3-updates-and-contest-news/)
The Kong Off website stuff came out yesterday (as per facebook), thats why I was expecting that to take priority over this TG article from July. OF course, there are some errors like the 6:00 stuff on Saturday being copy over from Friday that should be deleted.
I'm not sure how many top 12 will want to try and put up serious games on Friday evening. I'd be using that time for practice games. Guess we need a good clarification on that.
I think the intentions and rules are all set already, I just don't think it's been laid out perfectly online yet.
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I would prefer Friday not be counting scores so we can enjoy the social aspect for a night. I look forward to hanging out with everyone. Counting scores Friday takes that away.
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Well, with four (five?) of you (Dean, Hank, Dave, Steve) (Robbie?) in agreement now, it sounds like a gentleman's agreement is already forming NOT to play for a "real" score on Friday.
If the others agree, wouldn't that pretty much make it the de facto rule?
In other words, if everybody is on the same page, it would make petitioning for change, or even clarification, a moot point. The schedule may be up to the Kong Off, but gameplay is up to us.
It might be worth thinking about the other unclear aspects of this that we can simply decide on as a group. We can come up with a system for wildcard machine trade-off, for example.
If the Kong Off doesn't lock all of this down, we can. Or at least develop our own contingencies. I don't blame them, by the way. I honestly think that players, as a group (in ANY competition), are always going to be better about these sorts of details than organizers, because players understand the game better, and have more invested in the rules, and are thinking about things that wouldn't necessarily even occur to organizers. More heads are better than fewer.
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I would prefer Friday not be counting scores so we can enjoy the social aspect for a night. I look forward to hanging out with everyone. Counting scores Friday takes that away.
Yeah, I agree, Friday will be a stress free, beer drinking, hanging evening, Sat/Sun is plenty of time.
I'm in the mood for some pinball lately.
However, I do like the idea of after machines have been selected, that we can practice game on our machines that evening when we choose.
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Holy Smoly Ross! I guess this "theoretically" puts Mike in the hot seat. Updated the score to beat.
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Wow congrats to Ross!
Yea so now Robbie is currently bumped and I am on the bubble. Better get playing.
It would be nice to know if the Oct 25 deadline is a deadline for actually playing a game and putting up a score, or a deadline for having your score sent in a officially verified by TG.
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Apparently over the night Robbie Lakeman jumped into the top 12 pool with a score of 1,025,700 (Congrats, good score!). I'm assuming this was arcade and will be submitted, while this will put Robbie in and bump Mike G out, it also puts Robbie right back on the bubble with these final days still on the clock.
Good luck everyone.
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Congrats Robbie! 4 days and counting.