Hi, guys, if you like playing Catchup Size 7, you might want considering registering in the just for fun tournament. Have fun ;)

Tournament is about to start on November, 15th (2020)

Wow. Guess I don't need to do any promoting for this, nice work Mojmir!

What happens with a user tournament any bigger than this (14 players right now)? We had them this big when Catchup was first implemented here, but no larger.

In other news I should probably clear out my participation in anything else…that's going to be a lot of games.

metzgerism ,  system will split players to small groups (4-5 players) and sorry for saying this - because of small groups tournamment will be dull, this is my opinion.

I thought about asking Richard to make RR groups no smaller than 7 and now I'm seriously considering it.

Hi

This tournament will be starting very soon - last chance to join if you are interested. We are currently at 19 participants.

Link here: https://littlegolem.net/ng/a/Ctrn.action?view=&dto.id=1192

Started, with 20 players.

Three groups, of 7, 7 and 6 players.

Just to clarify, what happens next? Top 2-3 in each group go to a final pool?

Top 2 I think and all tied (if there's a tie in 2nd place)

I believe top 2 promote (more if tied) as ypercube mentioned. Several months ago Catchup 5 User Tournament was played and top 2 players from every group promoted to final round.

Designer here. Looking at some of the games as they've gotten underway. Trippy. I've played thousands of games of Catchup on small boards, but never once on a board this big. Would love to hear about your experiences as tournament goes on. Would love pointers to interesting games/moments, to help me better understand how it works at this size.

Looks like we're close to going to the final round. I CANNOT wait to see those games. How are y'all feeling about this size now that the tournament has gone on for a while?

This game looks fun : https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2200552. They actually broke the display  at the top :)

@Nick : I cannot point out to specific features appearing because of the larger board,  but I did really enjoy the experience and I think the game works really well at that scale. I noticed some players experimented with a more go-like strategy of playing stones ina more dispersed way but I have no clue whether or not this is actually a  beneficial strategy.

Best,

P.S: Btw Nick, I'm Thibault, or desperis on BGA if you ddidn't know

I got rocked pretty hard - people I usually compete decently against in hex5 championship mopped the floor with me in hex7.

- Higher-ranked players have even better W-L percentages on hex7 than hex5. This isn't really a surprise of course - bigger sample size typically mitigates variance of results - but it highlights how the smaller board gives less experienced players a better chance. I've said that Catchup is a “Combinatorial Crapshoot,” but definitely moreso on hex5.

- There are tactical “baiting” formations present in hex7 that never have enough room to develop in hex5 because they require an opponent's primary formation to be at least 3 cells from the wall, which almost can't happen in hex5. Here's one I just found to try to claw out some territory: https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2217295&nmove=28 - I'm calling it “twigs,” it's not really a ladder or bamboo shoots.

- It's far less likely to make a textbook formation of anything (except a knife), and those that can will often win handily. If you can get a 60%+ wrap, it's probably a victory - in hex5, it really needs to be 75%+.  Knives usually devolve into knife sandwiches, where the winning scores are stupidly close to hex5, like this game: https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2192336.

Some of the ad hoc terminology I'm using is described here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2590028/article/37024590#37024590

It's hard for me not to think of what the game would look like on a 300-350 cell board, where the inner-outer territory line is between the 3rd and 4th lines (like 19x19 Go), or a 400-450 cell board (territory fight line is the 4th line), but I also fear that the early game would just be an insane series of singletons, and I really do not like that.

There were too many games/not enough time for me to enter this particular tournament, but the ladder is providing me a nice trickle of games.

As one of your biggest Catchup fans I like hex7 enough to probably stop playing on the smaller board. Hex7 takes all the good things about hex5 and amplifies them, while throwing in extra strategy and layers. I'll gather more detailed thoughts at some point, but my thanks to metzgerism for pushing this through!

Thanks so much for these comments Tybalt, Metzger, and Rex. Interesting stuff to chew on.

Ahhh, the final game is taking FOREVER. It started 4 months ago: https://littlegolem.net/jsp/game/game.jsp?gid=2200552

I'm soooooo eager to see the final round.

Nothing wrong with a game lasting a few months. Anyone want to play a game of Catchup lasting a few years?

Here's something interesting: Oblomoloka played a singleton on Move 33 to force gamesorry to either do the same or give him a 3-stone turn. It looks like Oblo is going to lose (gamesorry's score/potential is 33/49, Oblo's is 29/43), but I haven't looked at the process in the moves 35-40.

Alright the finals have begun. I hope whoever wins is willing to be interviewed by me.

Sorry Nick, I am a slow man.4 months and finally lose. I will try to play better or to lose faster :)

@metzgerism, gamesorry made the trick first, he or she played a singleton on move 32. Anyway…

haha no problem @oblomobka! I'm honored you've played my game! I apologize to you for my impatience :)