1914 Valour - FWWC Tournament Round 4

[Almskaar]

Interestingly, accepting a resignation as the attacker is never worth it if you can take more points given the format of the tournament. As evidenced by the resigning Russians retaining the highest points of all the Allied players.

I do have a concern about the impact resignations will have on the Tournament Points awarded. In theory you could have an entrant resign but still get more points than the winner. An entrant on the winning side could be missing out on bonus points, and as we have seen in Tournament No 2 the difference between first and second place was 2 points!

The tournament rules state that the Total Points are used whether the game is completed or partially completed (I thought of the situation where the game is incomplete at the round deadline but not of someone resigning). One possible resolution is that if someone resigns, the winner gets the bonus points plus the tournament points based on the Total Points. 

This concern is part of the general issue when administering tournaments: balancing competition with making a venue for entrants to meet and have fun. 

Comments?

Perhaps in future tournaments players could be awarded points when they complete a game, and the amount need not be trivial.

[SvenDuuva]

I do apologize for contributing to this confusion. I didn't expect that conceding a game three turns before the end would be such an issue, namely because there had already been a similar resignation on this round. Also, in the Western Allies tournament, my opponent had just conceded the game midway-through, although in that case we decided to report the result as it was when the game was conceded and not as a major victory.

If we had more time until the deadline and our game as the only one with the resignation issue, I would offer to finish it for the sake of consistency. But isn't the obvious compromise just to award the winner of a resigned game the full points and bonus points, and the resigned side 0 points?

I am also perfectly willing to accept a points deduction as a penalty for resigning (for example, -10 to -20 points), although the other resigned player might not be of a similar mind. But as I said earlier, I think it would be unjust to award my opponent anything else than the full 105 points for accepting my resignation.

If this is an issue in the future, we could just have an additional rule that the game cannot be conceded and should always be finished. My only worry with this (or having a penalty for resigning as a policy) would be that it would probably just cause the game to be left unfinished when the clock runs out.

Awarding additional points for finishing games is worthwhile idea, but I think that might unjustly penalize players that are less at fault if some match is not finished before deadline.