Countdown to Kong Off 3 (Score to beat)

[ChrisP]

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. )

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.

[danman123456]

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.

[up2ng]

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. . .

[hchien]

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.

[lakeman421]

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.

[up2ng]

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.

[ChrisP]

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.

[LMDAVE]

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/ 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?

[hchien]

"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/

[danman123456]

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.

[LMDAVE]

"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/

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.

[konghusker]

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.

[ChrisP]

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.

[LMDAVE]

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.

[LMDAVE]

Holy Smoly Ross! I guess this "theoretically" puts Mike in the hot seat. Updated the score to beat.