LCL suggestions, discussions, statistics.

LCL (Littlegolem Champions League, a Street Soccer RATED Tournament) started TODAY: september, 12th. There are 160 players registered (you can see their names here). I divided them in 16 Leagues of 10 players each. In every League, you will find the FLAGS of the 10 players and the average of their ratings in street soccer.

1- italy (8 italy, 1 france, 1 ukraine) av.1787

2- france (8 france, 1 Czech rep., 1 Belgium) av. 1678

3- poland (10 poland) av.1746

4- Spain (10 spain) av. 1749

5- United Kingdom (10 UK) av. 1723

6- Scandinavia (3 sweden, 3 finland, 2 norway, 1 netherl., 1 russia) av. 1766

7- Mediterranean (2 greece, 2 slovenia, 1 croatia, 1 egypt, 1 saudi arabia, 1 albania, 1 spain, 1 andorra) av.1779

8- South Hemisphere (4 brazil, 2 chile, 2 south africa, 1 italy, 1 colombia) av. 1703

9- Netherlands (10 Netherlands) av. 1719

10 - Rhine League (7 germany, 2 belgium, 1 switzerland) av.1786

11- Central Europe (6 germany, 1 Hungary, 3 switzerland) av. 1916!!

12- DanubeLeague (4 Romania, 3 Slovakia, 3 Hungary) av. 1776

13- Eastern League (10 USA) av. 1725

14- Western League (10 USA) av. 1752

15- Great Lakes (6 USA, 4 Canada) av. 1609

16- Cosmos (lithuania, malaysia, USA, portugal, saudi arabia, ukraine, belgium, romania, germany, turkey). av. 1672

You can see that League 11 (Central Europe) is by far the strongest one. Also strong seem League 1,10,7 and 12. The "weakest" seems to be League 15. The average of the rating of ALL 160 players registered is today about 1,743. Not bad, in my opinion.

Most common flags are:

USA 27

Germany 13

Netherlands, Spain 11

Poland, United Kingdom 10

France, Italy 9

Romania, Brazil, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Hungary 4

Sweden, Finland, Slovakia 3

...others with 2 and 1.

what will you do if there are ties for the second place in any leagues?

you might end up with more than 32 total. I propose to just make the next round tournaments accordingly larger.

Proposal/Idea: Plan for 40 participants, not 32. After using potential ties, fill the remaining spaces with the highest point result of all remainders. That would mean that if a player had a really good result, but there were two strong players in his league, he would have another chance. And you would get 10-player-leagues again, which is nice.

Same for the final: Plan for ten instead of eight, for potential ties, and fill up with highest points

I personally love that idea, but you are the decision maker.

For the distribution: I propose to mix them in a way that the first and the second (and potential ties for the second) of any league do not get together into one league in the next round.

"what will you do if there are ties for the second place in any leagues?"

Of course, I considered that it can happen, Aganju. (It seems that here there are only ME and YOU. We could talk via Private Messages, actually). In my opinion, IF two (or more) players have the SAME points and the SAME "SON" in the Second place, we shall consider other numbers.

-First of all, the player who made more points in the direct challenges will be promoted.

-If they have the same points, we consider the goal difference in these "direct challenges" (please suggest me the way to SAY that!), and eventually only the goals SCORED

-if still TIE, the goal difference (or the goals scored) in the ENTIRE League.

Hope it is clear. I am waiting for your opinion, Aganju ;)

@Duke: I think what you're calling "direct challenges" is what's known by sportscasters as the results of "head-to-head play". It's important in NFL tie-breaking for division championship.

Thank you Marley. I think that the Final Phase should have EXACTLY 32 players, not more. And, of course, the players from the same League (and, if possible, with the same flag) should not play in the same Semifinal League. But now, I have another idea that I want to share with you.

In Europe, the best club 2 or 3 soccer teams of each country are promoted to "Champion League". But there is another famous Cup. It is called "UEFA Cup" (now, "Europe League", actually; in the Sixties, Inter-Cities Fair Cup. Somebody of you can remember?).

UEFA cup (I still call it like this) is opened to teams that were 3rd, 4th or 5th in the National Leagues. But (at least in Italy) it can be used in slang for other meanings. For example: "Is your son the best student of his classroom?" "No, I don't think so, but he is in Uefa cup". Other example: "I know that you are going out with Sheila. Did you win the Championship?" "Not yet. But I'm in Uefa Cup" and so on.

Now, when I imagined LCL, I thought to find 70/80 players. So 32 promotions were fair. But now, with 160... A "UEFA Cup" is necessary. If the 3rd and the 4th of each League are promoted to Uefa Cup, well, there would be 32+32 players that could play more, and fight against other Leagues! That is the 40% of the total.

Of course, Uefa Cup would have 4 Semifinals and a Final, composed by 8 players each, just like his senior brother LCL. And it would not slow down the organization, since it would be played DURING the LCL final phase.

I really love this idea; what do you think about it? Of course, we'll have to find a finer name. I propose "Silver League", but I'm waiting for yours!

@Duke: I like your explanation, it is more in the spirit of the Champions league. Let the details of the results count.

I also like your second idea, about the UEFA cup. In the real one (as far as I remember) - different countries get different number of slots, based on past successes. Of course we would start equal, but that's something to keep in mind for the far future.

Now I have one other complaint: Most of my games, I'm rolling awfully bad. Something is wrong with the dice, you really need to fix that :-/

I think that with the UEFA cup is a great idea! I also agree that we should have exactly 32 players, you can't promote more players of a league than this league has promotion places (2 each atm).

What are your intentions for the UEFA cup? Is it played just for fun or does it influence how many players get promoted in a league for the next cycle? A possibility would be that only the first players get promoted, that makes 16. Places 2-3 go the the 'barrage' and play in 8 groups of 4, where the 1st and 2nd in the barrage goes to the champions league and the 3rd and 4th go to the Uefa cup. The 4th players of a league goes straight to the uefa cup. The disadvantage of this is that it slows down things.

I thought about the influence of the UEFA cup... If we would apply the barrage system, every league has 1 champions league ticket and 2 barrage tickets, so a potential of 3 champions league places. I would think of something like this then for future cycles: every league gets a direct champions league ticket for each player in the champions league that survives the first round, each league gets a barrage ticket for those who survived the 2nd champions league round and a barrage ticket for those who survive the 2nd UEFA cup round. The 16 UEFA cup tickets and 16 barrage tickets left could be divided equally amongst the leagues. So each league has a minimum of 1 barrage ticket and 1 UEFA cup ticket, what makes it possible to get 1 direct champions league ticket, 3 barrage tickets and 1 uefa cup ticket next round. Just some thoughts, of course DukeOfPrunes has the last word ;-)

I like it UEFA cup should be created too :D And I think maraca system is really good :D Normal Champions league with 8groups each 4players and next 2 go to 1/8 of play offs. But this kind of championship will takes long...

If it wont be that way then I think Aganju sugestion is really good and fair Draws on 2nd 3th etc. places in points and son promote to semifinals of champions league. And even if 5players go to champions league next 2 players go to Uefa cup (not sounds fair :P but I think it would be ok for me and most of players ;)).

@Aganju: don't you know that Members of the site have the "5-faces-die"? I have the same problem. ;-)

You all understood what I have in mind. (More or less.) The Uefa cup is played for fun, of course, but IT INFLUENCES the number of slots for next LCLs! (if there will be.)

I try to explain what I have in mind with numbers. (try to follow). 32 players are promoted to LCL, and 32 to UEFA. Let's say that the winner of LCL gets 100 points. The second 95, 90 and so on... 32 players get some point. IN THE MEANTIME, 32 users play UEFA. The winner will get 60 points. (or 75. or 40. We will see). The second 55, 52 and so on...

Then we ADD all the points that Italy League's players collected. France too. Spain... and so on. THE LEAGUE THAT WILL HAVE the better TOTAL will be the "Winner League". In the second edition of LCL, this League will have THREE players admitted to final phase of LCL, and maybe 3 in UEFA too. So, playing in a strong league would be "Honorific" and gives more chances to go forward!

It will be hard I think :/ Some leagues are mixed and what if German player from Cosmos league will win and in next LCL play in German league? Next: player will change each LCL and it is even possible that next time we will have only one USA league or no Polish league it's only 2 examples.

And about number of layers we need to clearly decide what if more then 1 player will be on 2nd place in his league. I think that Aganju sugestion is the best :)

@piszczyk: personally, I prefer Duke's solution.

@Duke: I would not appreciate at all if we call the 2nd league "UEFA Cup" even though it was inspired on it. About the metaphoric usage of the name I can clearly see why the same thing won't happen here with the Sulamericana Cup. I also wonder what beeing on the InterToto would mean...

I like Duke's idea with the points. A problem could be, that the leagues with more slots automatically get more points and therefore things barely change. If the points are exponential (example: 100, 75, 56, 42, 32, 24, ...) positions are more important than the number of slots a league had. One puzzle still remains: finding a good way to allocate slots according to points. An easy way would be to define a minimum, like 1 slot for each cup and spread the rest of the slots according to the points... (for example: the places 1-2 get +2 for champions league and +2 for UEFA cup, 3-4 get +2 CL +1 UEFA, 5-8 get +1 CL +2 UEFA, 9-12 +1 CL, 13-14 get + 1 UEFA)

@Duke again: personally I'm not very fond of systems were the champion of the 'silver league' gets more points than, e.g., the 5th of the 'golden league'. Actually, I have my doubts about the validity of the champion of the silver league getting more points than the last of the golden one.

@michal: I know it will be hard. We don't know what it will happen in next (?) editions of LCL. But, for now, let's assume that we will have the SAME 16 Leagues. Whether they will change, we'll discuss it. For tie-breakers, read the other topic: LCL Rules.

@Marius: I am just calling it "UEFA Cup" to make you know what I mean. Probably, "Silver League " is more appropriate, although I don't like it so much. (MarleysGhost should propose some idea: he's got a great imagination!) - I think the winner of "Silver League" should get some "Award Points". Less than the 5th of the "Golden", of course, but more than the 32th!

Let's make an example. If a player is 3rd in a very strong League (like Central Europe), and then he wins Silver League, he did much BETTER than the player 2nd in a weak League, who lost every game in Golden and was 32th. So I think that the former should get more Award points. Do you agree?

@maraca: I like the System for allocating slots you explained: a Minimum, PLUS a variable part linked to Results. Nice. The other puzzles you talked about are interesting. We shall solve them. Award points for Golden, IMO, should be like this: (100, 95,90,85,80,77,75,73...). I think that the winner of Silver should get more or less the same Award Points AS one player placed 15th-20th in Golden.

Like always, I am waiting for your opinions (Thanks all for taking part to this thread!)

@duke: I do agree if your example but will later offer a counterexample

Or maybe count points separately? Points for Champions League slots and Uefa Cup slots? If 2 players from one league win and be second in Uefa but 2 in Champions league will be last then for example in next LCL this league will have 1 champion league slot and 4 Uefa cup slots? We dont nead to put all points to one box.

Your idea is interesting Michal. But, till now, in my mind there is only ONE total of points for each player, whether he plays in "Golden" or in "Silver". If you all agree, we will have to fix a "conversion". I mean, each PLAYER and each LEAGUE will have his own "RATING", useful for Number of slots and for Seeding.

@Duke I agree with everything (almost ;-). Silver league 1st should get the same as 16th of golden league imho (or 15th-20th). I think that it is important that the 32nd gets 0 (at least for silver league) points, otherwise we really have a problem, that leagues with more slots automatically make more points. So I would propose for golden leage something like this: 100, 92, 85, 79, 73, 68, 63, 58, 54, 50, 46, 42, 39, 36, 33, 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 (1 time -8, 1x -7, 2x -6, 3x -5, 4x -4, 4x -3, 8x -2, 8x -1). Then we would have 30 for 16th. For which I would propose a system like this: 30, 27, 25, 23, 21, 19, 17, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0. This would give the following correlations: 16th gold = 1st silver, 24th gold = 9th silver and 32nd gold = 17th silver.

maraca - your system does not really fit because only places 1-8 are played out (which is good imo), then you have 4x 3rd, 4th, etc. from the semifinals. I think, they should get the same points regardless of their semifinal league.

@muggel_b: The places could be played out in parallel, so it wouldn't delay the CL. But if only 1-8 are played out I would make things easy, start with silver league: 32-9 = 0 points, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 15 and for golden league 32-9 0 points, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 30. because like I said: the last places have to get 0 points, otherwise the leagues with more slots automatically make more points.

I don't think that it would be a big deal if Leagues with more slots make more points. And I think that players who are allowed to play in Golden or in Silver should get - at least - 1 point for their presence.

But, if you think that Leagues with more slots have too many advantages for following editions, than I propose 2 possible solutions.

A) if a League has 5 slots, let's say, in final phases (Golden or Silver), instead or 4 (that is the average), than we could consider only their BEST 4 results, discarding the 5th (the worst)

B) Or simply, we could make an AVERAGE of Award Points gained by the 5 players taking part to one of the 2 final phases.

(of course, the SAME if a League has 6 or more slots).

I like maraca's solutions; but perhaps we should create only 2 final tournaments. I mean, Golden 1st-8th place, (of course!) and 9th-16th. But, the 8 players who were in the 5th and 6th place in the 4 SEMIFINALS, in my opinion, will get the SAME points. The same for the 8 who placed in 7th and 8th.

THUS, the award points in Golden would be:

100, 92, 85, 79, 73, 68, 63, 58 The players from 1st to 8th.

-54, 50, 46, 42, 39, 36, 33, 30 from 9th to 16th.

25 points for every player who placed in 5th place in the Semifinals.

20 points for every player who placed in 6th place in the Semifinals.

15 points for every player who placed in 7th place in the Semifinals.

10 points for every player who placed in 8th place in the Semifinals.

Easier, don't you think so? Then, we will have to discuss about Silver points. If you accept my (provisional) proposal, the winer of Silver should get 30 Points (=16th of golden). It is not so much, IMO. He should get more, but we may ask to LCL players what they think about. (it would be kind of you if you'd help me in this. Sending 160 PMs is quite long!) Stay tuned and have fun!

Hi, if nobody wants to comment, I do ;-) I like your ideas. And with this more or less exponential scale it wouldn't be that bad for leagues with few slots. For the 2 propositions: A) I like it, but there's still a drawback for the leagues with few slots, because they only have 2 or 3 results. B) Here's a problem, because if a league has more silver than golden league slots the average is taken down. So as you say, if we score like this I wouldn't use any other equalization method.

How much for 1st of silver league? assumed the minimum for golden league spots is 1 and the maximum 3, those with 3 make automatically at least 20 points more, therefore I would give 20 points to the 16th place of silver league, that would give then something like this:

50 45 41 37 34 32 30 28

27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20

15

10

5

1

Fifty points for the 1st in silver is imho not too much with that scoring system for golden.

... they not make 20 points more, they get at least 20 points "for free".

Another solution for silver, if the players are not motivated to play for a maximum gain of 7 points:

50 45 41 37 34 32 31 30

20 for 9 to 16th --> those placed 3rd in semifinals.

15

10

5

1

Places 1-8 of silver league would correspond more or less to places 10-16 of golden league.

sorry, 25 for those placed 3rd and 20 for those placed 4th. So silver 9-12 = golden 21-24 and so on...

Ok maraca, I like your examples. Maybe we could assign to the Winner of Golden 100 points, then 92, 86 and so on... and the players of Silver should get EXACTLY the half. So, in this example, 50, 46, 43 and so on. If you agree, the Award points for Golden would be:

100, 92, 86, 80, 76, 72, 68, 66 from 1st to 8th.

-64, 60, 58, 56, 54, 52, 51, 50 from 9th to 16th.

40 points for players in 5th place in every "Semifinal", so 17th - 20th.

34 for 6th (21th - 24th)

28 for 7th (25th - 28th)

20 for 8th (29th - 32th).

Silver League will assign the HALF of these points. (So the winner will get 50, the second 46 and so on...)

About the second (?) edition of LCL. After the end of 1st edition, of course we will sum the results of the players of every League. I mean, the "Award Points" that they got in Golden and in Silver.

Of course we shall make a League Classification, and -as I previously explained - the Best League will have more slots in Second (?) Edition. By now, every League promotes 2 Players to Golden and 2 to Silver.

In Second Edition, I propose this scheme:

Best League will have 3 players in Golden and 3 in Silver (3+3)

Second League will have (3+2)

3rd: (3+2) too

4th and 5th: (2+3)

6th to 11th: (2+2) like now

12th and 13th: (2+1)

14th and 15th: (1+2)

16th (Last League): (1+1).

That's all. (Of course, Golden and Silver would always have 32 players, with the SAME rules).

I like that idea with half and the distribution of the slots is good for me too. But I like your 'old' scoring system better (the entry of 2010-09-19). Why don't you take just the half of that scoring system for silver league with rounding for odd numbers or with half points, or use the old system for silver and double the points for golden?

I think this proposal is worth being tried. I think it is better than the real system the EUFA uses now, where the 15th country has terrible big advantage to the 17th (suddenly the curve is very steap). Since this system avoids this it is fine for me.

The biggest problem will be how to assign new players to the empty slots left over by leaving players.

what if player resign before the game ends? I mean what if this player will be tied with someone at the end?

Good question. I haven't decided it yet. I think that probably there are 2 options:

- who resign, lose 10-0 (like in SSTT 3), or

- who resign, has a "penalty". In case of tie with some other player at the end, the player that have more "penalties" loses.

second one is better I think :)

should someone resign in move 42 with a score of 0-3 (and the fear to get more), or is playing to move 52 the preferred behavior ?

I think in chess you should resign, in soccer (real and SSTT3) you should not.

I understand number of goals (and their difference) break a tie, thus your second option implies it's better to resign than to be hit by another goal.

---

What if a player times out?

I'm voting for no penalty at all (following reason: if you resign you can't get no more goals, but you can't shoot no more goals too... this makes it more or less fair in my opinion), but I can live with everything, because I believe the cases where the son will be equal are very rare.

@Michael X: I understand the opposite, it's good to play your games out (for both propositions). Let's say you get a penalty point for every resign, then the player with more penalty points loses in case of a tie... so it would be better to play the games out.

@maraca: If a penalty point is less than a goal difference, one should rather resign than get another goal.

As an extreme example: If you resign all games immediately, you have a goal score of 0-0, which would be better than losing all games 0-1 (in regular time).

I vote for "resign = score 0-10", no need to keep track of penalty points.

But I can live with everything as well, including any Golden/Silver award points and slots calculations for LCL2.

0:10 is not fair because most players resign for example when score is 3:0 and 5 moves to end or something like that then why they should lose 10:0?

Penalty is enough I think and only should be used with draws.

I think when someone is timed out the penalty should not be the same as for intentional resignation.

As for resigning the game, score 0-5 should suffice.

I do not see the point to make a disproportionate punishment for such a small misdemeanor.

So I actually agree with maraca.

Thanks all for your precious opinions. @Malaj: I think that timing out should be the same of intentional resignation. (You can't know if somebody... timed out intentionally!)

But maraca is right: "the cases where the son will be equal are very rare". So I decided that timing out and resigning will be like losing 10-0. But I really don't think that this rule will be applied!

Actually, I think that "Award points" in Golden and Silver will be much more important. And, unfortunately, we will have to discuss about players who will wish to change league in LCL2. Or how assign slots to new players.

I propose to talk about that later; maybe when LCL will be in final phase.

Come on, why would someone EVER want to time out intentionally in an LCL tournament? It does not make sense.

I agree with maraca, again. You should now count how many people would agree with the disproportionate 0-10 punishment. Not many! The opposers are in majority.

I, for one, agree very much with a 10-0 penalty for timing out. As I do for resigning. It's this simple: Don't resign or time out, or you will be penalized!

I propose +10 goals for the opponent of the resigned or timed out player :)

But then you could force a victory by resigning if you lead by 11 goals! ;-)

With the other rule, if one loses by 11-0 (or more), he could get a better result (10-0) by resigning! :)

So, if the difference is more than 10, with either rule, one has a advantage by resigning...

so penality is the best in my opinion

Of course, if somebody is losing 12-0 and he resigns, the final score would be 12-0! and not 10-0. that's EVIDENT.

(I really didn't imagine that this MARGINAL rule would have so many answers. Please NOTE that goals scored are NOT important in LCL. They are just a tie-breaker if POINTS are equal and SON too. And this RARELY happens. SO, I am not going to discuss this secondary rule again!)

I would better discuss with you about Golden and Silver... and how many slots they assign... or about empty slots. But it seems you don't care. OK. I will decide. And I hope you will like it. Have fun!

And, again, SSTT3 has the SAME rule. If I am not wrong. So, I don't understand why this rule would be good for SSTT and "unfair" for LCL. Just play all your games until the end!