Quote
Originally posted by popeye:
**The Tourney is open.
(snip)
@Ryoko: Any progress in setting up new rules for tournaments with large numbers of players (like last time)?
**
I do not think I'll be able to make this one, but I'll turn up if I happen to be around.
You can see Crono's and my ideas for team pop-pop on his mac account (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/rchristie/various/pop_pop/multiple.html")site(/url) as one idea.
The one I was discussing earlier though is a conversion of how they do bumps rowing races here. Crono-san was taking part this year which is what got me interested to find out about them... I'll run the original by you and then explain how it converts to pop-pop:
The bumps are done in eight's rowing boats, so you have eight rowers and a cox. Each division consists of about 20 boats that are equally placed along the river about two boat's length's apart from each other in a head-to-tail fashion. (not side-by-side)
At about half a minute before the start of the race, the boats are slowly pushed out into the the middle of the river, and then the gun goes and bedlam breaks lose as everybody rows like crazy! ^_^;; The object is simple - ram the boat in front of you before the boat behind you rams you.
When boats 'bump' each other (hence the name) then the two colliding boats are then out of the race (they must get over to the side out of the way) and in the next race, they swap positions, so the one behind that "bumped" goes in front of the one that got bumped.
If the boat in front of you bumps out (they catch the boat in front of them) then you have to carry on to try and either
(1) catch the next boat still in in front of you or
(2) get to the end of the race
before the boat behind you bumps you.
If you manage (2) then you have "rowed over" and you start at the same position as you did last time.
If you catch the boat in front of them, this is known as an 'over bump' (very difficult since there will be a long distance past the two (or more) that bumped out in front of you originally). You then get to jump and swap places with the people you over-bumped.
Next race, everyone starts over again in their new positions. Obviously the boat that is at the head of the river (At the very front at the start) has the hard job of trying to row over with the second place chasing them ever day (unless they get bumped off the head).
So... most of that is superfluous, but I thought you might be interested since I was! ^_^ Your question is how this can work in pop-pop, ne? O_O;
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Well, the plan is that there is a league of players (boats) and each person plays the person on either side of them in the league (apart from the head and tail, who obviously only play one game). You try and beat the player behind you to stop them 'bumping' you and the player in front to try and 'bump' them.
The rules for 'bumping' are as follows:
starting from the second-to-front, if you beat the front person by more than the person behind you beat you (or you beat them too), you 'bump' up. Beating them show that you held them off while you caught the person in front. Not beating them, means they were closing... but you managed to get your bump first... phew ^_~
otherwise...
if you beat the person behind, then you stay put (you held them off and rowed over). If you lost, you may be bumped depending on how well the person behind did compared to the person behind him/her (using the same set of rules) - they might have been caught before they caught you.
by 'more than' there I mean a larger round difference - e.g. if you beat the the person above you 3:0/3:1 and were beaten 3:2 by the person below, you are better. In the event of a tie (of any number of places) then the top of the tie list who can bump moves up if they can, and everyone else stays put.
So in short, out of your two games:
- If you win against the person below you, you can at worst stay put (row over)
- If you win both, you probably move up (depending on whether the person above you beat the person above them by a greater difference), but at worst may stay put.
- if lose the one below you, you may move down (possibly multiple places, see 'overbumping' below) - but if you win again the person above you, you could go up or down depending on other people's scores
- if you lose both, you are almost certainly going down, but you might get lucky and just stay put.
Examples
initial line up (Front) A B C D (Back)
if the scores were :
1 A vs B 3
3 B vs C 2
2 C vs D 3
so - B beats both A and C, and therefore bumps A
C loses to both B and D, so D bumps C
final line up: (Front) B A D C (Back)
OR
if the scores were :
1 A vs B 3
2 B vs C 3
3 C vs D 1
so - B beats A (3:1) but loses to C (2:3)
however, the win against A is better, so B bumps A
C beats B (3:2) but not enough to bump. C beats D (3:1)
so C and D stay put
final line up: (Front) B A C D (Back)
OR
if the scores were:
3 A vs B 2
3 B vs C 2
3 C vs D 2
then we have a straight tie. A cannot bump as he/she is front of the river. B Cannot bump because he/she lost to A. C bumps B because C is the highest player than can bump. D (and if anyone else participated below D and had the same score) stay put.
final line up: (Front) A C B D (Back)
OR finally if the scores were:
3 A vs B 0
3 B vs C 1
3 C vs D 2
everyone stays put.
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Overbumping:
In order to over-bump, you must have:
(1) won your game against the person higher than you 3-0 and
(2) have beaten the person below you and
(3) there must be an stream of higher-player loses above you (e.g. 2 lost to 3, 3 lost to 4 and so on).
In this case, you can then over-bump to the highest multiple of 2 level of the person who first against the person below. (Remember from the rowing analogy, you could only overbump if the two boats in front of you bumped each other, and you bumped the one in front of them so if the boats were A B C D, and B bumped C, then D could overbump A)
e.g. (Front) A B C D E F (Back)
scores:
A 3-2 B
B 2-3 C
C 1-3 D
D 0-3 E
E 3-1 F
A beats B, so B cannot bump. B is beaten by C, but C beats B (3:2) and loses to D (3:1) - therefore does not qualify for the bump.
Likewise D beats C 3:1 but loses worse to E (3:0), so also cannot bump.
E beats D 3-0 and also beats F 3-1
The result is that E over-bumps up to B (the highest player in the lose streak) so E and B swap places. Since the overbump in rowing assumes that the boats you skipped must have bumped - then C is also assumed to be bumped by D here - which is okay since D did beat C anyway)
Final line up would be -
(Front) A E D C B F (Back)
had the scores been
A 3-2 B
B 2-3 C
C 1-3 D
D 0-3 E
E 1-3 F
then E could not overbump. The result would be that E bumps D (by normal rules) otherwise no change.
Finally if the scores had been
A 3-2 B
B 2-3 C
C 1-3 D
D 2-3 E
E 0-3 F
then it is F that can overbump
the higher player losses stop at B (being the last person to lose to someone above him/her) so theoretically F overbumps B... but that would mean that E bumped D and C was left out, (would be an odd number of people) so F can only overbump to C. B stays put (lucky 
Sound complicated? It's actually not that difficult, just a little different, and presents the following advantages over normal tournaments:
- It scales well with large numbers of people - since each round cosists of only two games
- there is no 'knockout' so everyone can keep playing all the way through to improve their positions.
- the league rolls-over to next time, so there is some concept of a self-ranking system here
- chances are you will keep playing people about your level, since you will naturally find your natural height in the 'bumping' order.
Disadvantages:
- needs a good 8 people at least to be worthwhile
- may end up playing the same people frequently
Comments/suggestions? Reply and let me know ^_^ - especially if you think you can see any cases I haven't covered. ^.^;;
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