The World Cup Discussion Thread (OOC, Version IV)

[Valanora]

There were plenty of events when you didn't even have a designated cutoff time other than "evening" because that's what suited your schedule. Which is fine. RL is a thing and it would be unreasonable to expect you to plan your whole life around NS. Why not give the hosts the same benefit of the doubt?

There is a significant difference between having a vague cutoff time due to work schedule and then switching the cutoff time when someone else goes to RP and cutting off multiple times when people were RPing and asking for an extension. Unfortunately that happened and if nothing else, it adds to the list of very concerning behaviors that happened during this tournament.

I understand skepticism for this, as it is hard to swallow that two people that a lot of the community are friends with would possibly do this. which is why is why I want to bring up the up the fact that it was former hosts that saw these inconsistencies, independent of one another, as former hosts know the sort of trends to look for. There are some inconsistencies that can indeed be possibly thrown aside as extreme Rand(), however there are too many of them to merely not cast a suspicious eye on the tournament as a whole and those who scorinated the results.

[Farfadillis]

I'd like to preface this by saying that I have a lot of respect for both hosts as people, and that I feel I get along with them very well. However, this is a matter where we should leave our own personal biases aside.

There were 150 teams participating in qualifying, not counting the hosts. The probability that some team, whether THE or someone else, would have results that could not be replicated in 1500 tries are about 1 in 150/1500= 1 in 10. Even if we assume there was a 1 in 3000 chance of THE having such an extreme result, that puts the chances if someone having such an extreme result at 1 in 20. Which is about the same as the chances of a kicker in the NFL missing an extra point. Not likely, but not ridiculously unlikely either. And that's the real question you should be asking, not the odds that it would happen to THE specifically, but the odds that it would happen to someone. If it had happened to a team with a 0 style modifier instead of one who had a +5 modifier and was an active and quality RPer, they would have scored fewer goals and nobody would have noticed. This isn't all that unusual.

1) Only a handful of teams can even hope to score 91 goals in 18 games. The chance a UR team does it is for all intents and purposes 0. Therefore, that division you did (not even the correct way to calculate the probability) is ridiculous.
2) I honestly don't know where you got the 1 in 3,000 chance of THE scoring so many goals. It took tripling the scorination sample, apparently, to get us from over 70 to 80. The likelihood to get more goals decreases increasingly quickly as you get further and further away from the mean, which appears to be about fifty. I don't even need to estimate the likelihood of THE scoring 91 goals, because it is self-evidently negligible.

Something that Audio didn't mention is that the extraordinarily high-scoring games he scorinated with the tests were with THE having max rank and all other teams having 0 rank. And +5 as style modifier. If the conditions changed and I was not informed, I'd like to be informed now, Audio.

But anyway, let's be generous here and assume THE had max rank and all his opponents were UR teams with +5 style mod. THE's chances of doing that were just 1 in 30,000. Just two triplings of the chance. Now let's be generous and assume anyone ranked 1-30 could pull it off, with all teams being equally likely to do it for the sake of simplicity, though in reality nobody outside the top ten has a remotely realistic chance. That comes out almost exactly to a 1 in 1,000 chance. 1 in 1,000 chance that the scorinator would produce 91 goals for THE. Extremely unlikely.

Now consider the fact that THE faced non-UR teams, among them USI, and not all of them had a +5 style mod. Also consider that THE did not have the maximum rank. Far from it, he was ranked twenty-first when the WC started. Twenty-first.

Take away all my generosity from my calculations. What do you get? 1 in 10,000? Probably something even more ridiculous. 1 in 1,000,000? I wouldn't be suprised if it was that. I'll be blunt: I'd accuse Commerce Heights, Valanora, PIS, Astograth, Apox and anyone else of fixing results under these circumstances.

Other damning points for the hosts are (do bear in mind they're not damning individually, but they are when put together):

1) The CEdC may not seem relevant, but it's a competition in which both hosts have had very suspicious results in the past. Since SJG took over, he's had incredible success. Also, two editions ago, Quebec scorinated a 7-6 score in the final.
2) Anyone who's paid enough attention knows Queb loves a high-scoring game.
3) Both hosts did really well until Audio informed them some of us were suspicious. They had managed 28 points out of 30 (the only 2 dropped points was a penalties win against the best team in the Multiverse). After Audio's TG, their performance went downhill.
4) SJG beat Nephara 5-1. Not 3-2. Not 1-0. Not 7-0. It was 5-1. The exact same score as the CE final. I've been told SJG has developed considerable animosity towards Nephara.
5) After being tipped off, they said on IRC that they thought Vilita would win. Not very damning, but still worth mentioning.

And finally:

6) Tabulating errors.

[Polar Islandstates]

Woah.

So this just happened. Mourinho giving Marcus Rojo a banana to cram down mid-match for Manchester United. It's almost the exact same scene that I half-jokingly wrote between Gethin Ramsey and Romikk Valgard during Qualifying. Even down to the details of Ramsey/Mourinho holding the peel on the touchline.

Conclusion = Mourinho reads my RPs?

Or Mourinho writes your RPs. Are you Jose in disguise?

I know I played the long con but that would be quite the twist.

[The Royal Kingdom of Quebec]

Alright. Good to be back after a near-death experience on St. Patrick's Day yesterday. Turns out to be that I missed a lot while away.

Fortunately, I am fine for now, and will be making RL adjustments to make sure that stability I have will be sustained in both long-term and short-term capacity.

A few major points of contention:

1. THE's 91 goal group stage.
2. RKQ's upset of USI in the Quarters.
3. SJG and RKQ both making it to the Semis, and then mysteriously losing from that point onwards when it became apparent that people were getting suspicious.
4. SJG's winning of the last five CEdC tournaments, with him having seven finalists in that time. While being in the same region as Nephara/Brenecia/NSI and the like. (Supposedly, RKQ scored all matches involving SJG's teams.)
5. SJG defeating Nephara 5-1 in the Round of Sixteen, when just a few tournaments back he lost 1-5 to Nephara.

1. There were few things that should be taken account into this: skills modifiers (THE with +5), RP grades (THE RP'd very well with great frequency),

2. There have been cases where the least likely of scores have happened, most notably as in The Weegies 1-0 Polar Islandstates. The same can be said towards other world cup games in past, in which the seemingly-neverending dynasties suddenly ended through an upset loss, even as early as 72 when Osarius lost in Round of 16 after winning back to back WCs in 70 and 71.

3. I originally had plans to RP more ahead of the semifinals and either final/3PPG but was unable to do so due to RL reasons, most notably as in 2 midterms, a paper and an exhibition project to work on. With those in mind, RPing was not in the slightest of what I had in plans for those days, and I would like to clarify my stance on this.

5. I would like to suggest that upsets (while it should be taken of note that Nephara and San Jose Guayabal were barely apart each other in ranks at the time) happen all the time, and it can go in both ways as in whether a close matchup or big victory. As far as I remember there were a couple of scores where one user had significant victory over the other, without big ranking differences in mind (WC73, Eura 6-1 Farfadillis; WC76, Ceni 5-2 Valladares).

It's also another thing I wanted to point out, Quebec's behavior was very turbulent, to say the slightly. Maybe things should've been stopped when things started to go downhill on that field.

This I agree with. And then there was the time he almost died from his behavior. That should have been a sign he needed help, and should be getting help rather than hosting tournaments. I'm not going to go into all the details he went into on IRC, because that's his business, but suffice it to say it was very disconcerting for his well-being and I'm concerned for him now.

I have already consulted help, to no success, and will work on my own for those matters. I am not as worried about my personal health down the road, however, and believe that things will only get better from this point.

However, in order to ensure that this will happen, I will take precaution. I'm sure many have heard this from me earlier, but I will be taking an indefinite hiatus from hosting any major tournaments. While I enjoy what I do with hosting, sometimes I do need a long break from the task.

[Gregoryisgodistan]

You're misunderanting me, Farf. I meant a result so extreme it would have a 1 in 30,000 chance of happening, not necessarily scoring 90 goals. In fact, as I said, if a team with a 0 style modifier scored 70 goals, or if I, with a -5 style mod, scores 50 goals, those would probably be ignored even though they're highly unlikely since nobody would bother to check the style mod. But because it happened to THE, people care. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Also, I know that's not the right way to do probability, but with very low probabilities like 1 in 30,000, it's a good estimate. if you divide 30,000 by 150, you get 1 in 200, so 0.5%. If you do it the correct way, and do 1-(29,999/30,000)^150, you get about 0.49876%, which is pretty close to 0.5%, and would still round to 0.5% if we were taking it to two decimals.

But I was not aware of how Audio scorinated it. I agree that adds some concern, and I would like a further investigation at this point. As I recall (and I could be wrong, and search is being wonky so I can't look up the bid) they were using SJG's new SGIS scorinator, not SQIS or NSFS. I assume that was used in Audio's scorinations as well if that is indeed what used. If not, that could explain things. But Audio probably knows what he's doing, so I'd assume he used the one specified in the bid. Just making sure to rule out the obvious before we go drastic. I'd appreciate if Audio and SJG could chime in with respect to this.

Edit: SJG and Quebec stated on IRC they used SQIS, and the bid confirms this. I was thinking of his CoH bid last time. I have struck that portion. My bad.

[Chromatika]

5. I would like to suggest that upsets (while it should be taken of note that Nephara and San Jose Guayabal were barely apart each other in ranks at the time) happen all the time, and it can go in both ways as in whether a close matchup or big victory. As far as I remember there were a couple of scores where one user had significant victory over the other, without big ranking differences in mind (WC73, Eura 6-1 Farfadillis; WC76, Ceni 5-2 Valladares).

I'd like to know the probability of the revenge score being exactly 5-1. Not 5-2, not 3-2, not 4-3 (5-4 pk), but to the dot, 5-1.

[The Royal Kingdom of Quebec]

5. I would like to suggest that upsets (while it should be taken of note that Nephara and San Jose Guayabal were barely apart each other in ranks at the time) happen all the time, and it can go in both ways as in whether a close matchup or big victory. As far as I remember there were a couple of scores where one user had significant victory over the other, without big ranking differences in mind (WC73, Eura 6-1 Farfadillis; WC76, Ceni 5-2 Valladares).

I'd like to know the probability of the revenge score being exactly 5-1. Not 5-2, not 3-2, not 4-3 (5-4 pk), but to the dot, 5-1.

I am no mathematician nor a calculator when it comes to the matter, but the point is that it is absolutely possible for an upset of any score to occur. Besides, I did not even recall even hearing about the 5-1 score few cycles back.

[Super-Llamaland]

Do you have a response to Farf's analysis on point 1?

[The Royal Kingdom of Quebec]

4. SJG's winning of the last five CEdC tournaments, with him having seven finalists in that time. While being in the same region as Nephara/Brenecia/NSI and the like. (Supposedly, RKQ scored all matches involving SJG's teams.)

Few cycles back, I volunteered to scorinate SJG's games for a CEdC when he requested a 3rd-party scorinator. Since then, I have agreed to serve as 3rd party scorinator on his request, because of familiarity I have with SJG's scheduling of matters

Do you have a response to Farf's analysis on point 1?

.
I have one question to you on the matter :

If you were a host, and you did scorinate a scoreline just as what happened, what would you do :
a) Would you post it, knowing you'd be accused of rigging, even though you didn't?

OR

b) would you rescorinate it, hoping you get a less controversial scoreline, which would prevent any accusations?

Unlikeliest of scores may happen in life, and such we have to accept and move on. Sure, they might happen more often on some occasions than not, but it is not up to me to redo or tamper with them. I would dare not do such, for I know such is life with things. Random events and unexpected chances exist for a reason, and I stick by what I've said for that reason.

[Chromatika]

4. SJG's winning of the last five CEdC tournaments, with him having seven finalists in that time. While being in the same region as Nephara/Brenecia/NSI and the like. (Supposedly, RKQ scored all matches involving SJG's teams.)

Few cycles back, I volunteered to scorinate SJG's games for a CEdC when he requested a 3rd-party scorinator. Since then, I have agreed to serve as 3rd party scorinator on his request, because of familiarity I have with SJG's scheduling of matters.

Are you asking us to believe that SJG's winning of five of the last seven overall is purely coincidental?

[Farfadillis]

If anyone finds Queb's rhetorical question convincing, I'd like to point out it could be used to justify literally any result.

The Weegies beat Polar Islandstates two hundred and two to five? Well, I just had to post the result. Clearly, I'm just a transparent host.

[Audioslavia]

Something that Audio didn't mention is that the extraordinarily high-scoring games he scorinated with the tests were with THE having max rank and all other teams having 0 rank. And +5 as style modifier. If the conditions changed and I was not informed, I'd like to be informed now, Audio

Scorinating a 10-team league in xkoranate, using additive modifiers and SQIS, giving all teams +5 modifiers and making one team max-ranked and the other zero-ranked, makes for an average Goals Scored of around 55 for the big team. I've never seen the GS go above 77, though another user managed to get an 81. I ran another 250 sims just now and didn't get above a 75.

So yes, as Legalese said (admittedly via facebook in a private conversation, so I maybe shouldn't be bringing it up here, but still), not impossible, but, as he put it, 'shitty luck'.

[Kaboomlandia]

Do remember that we're basically talking about 81 goals in 17 games if you remove the 10-1 outlier, which decreases the GPG by about a quarter of a goal per game.

[Audioslavia]

Do remember that we're basically talking about 81 goals in 17 games if you remove the 10-1 outlier, which decreases the GPG by about a quarter of a goal per game.

Even so, simulating a few hundred 17-game serieses between a max-ranked team and a zero-ranked team, with both given +5 modifiers, yields nothing close to the 81-goal mark.

A 73 and a couple of 72 are the highest. I believe 37 is the lowest.

[Kaboomlandia]

As far as I remember there were a couple of scores where one user had significant victory over the other, without big ranking differences in mind (WC73, Eura 6-1 Farfadillis; WC76, Ceni 5-2 Valladares).

In the WCoH, I once lost 7-2 to a team not far above me. These things happen.

[Chromatika]

As far as I remember there were a couple of scores where one user had significant victory over the other, without big ranking differences in mind (WC73, Eura 6-1 Farfadillis; WC76, Ceni 5-2 Valladares).

In the WCoH, I once lost 7-2 to a team not far above me. These things happen.

The point I was making was not that SJG beat Nephara, but that it was the exact same score. 5-1, doesn't happen very often.

[Gregoryisgodistan]

In the WCoH, I once lost 7-2 to a team not far above me. These things happen.

The point I was making was not that SJG beat Nephara, but that it was the exact same score. 5-1, doesn't happen very often.

But it's not so out of the ordinary that it must be rigged, either. Let's not go on a witch hunt here.

[Nephara]

The issue isn't that every single one of these things must have been rigged.

The issue is that Group 15 - specifically THE's goals scored in it - was set up. It cannot be even close to recreated.

If we set that precedent, then it means that other results have a cloud over them. Other results that would not ordinarily be anything more than weird, because normally, hosts have no record of fixing results, become suspicious. They fall under question.

In no particular order;
SJG (with Quebec has third party) have scored the past load of CEDCs. These have been the results of the past seven;


SJG's league rank isn't particularly high and he doesn't RP it particularly consistently. He recently missed a cycle entirely. And yet he has won five of the last seven. Nephara, Brenecia, Port Christopher and the USI, just to name four, are each higher-ranked and the first three all have matchday-to-matchday RPs (bar like one Brenecian cycle). And yet Port Christopher/USI sides have never even reached the final in this stretch.

Normal hosts would get the benefit of the doubt here. Quebec and SJG are no longer normal hosts.

As a coda; at one stage, in I believe CEDC 22, the following result happened;
Alianza 1-1 Union; Union 0-0 Alianza. 1-1 on aggregate. Alianza progressed on away goals.
At the time this was (rightly) accepted as an error. Life went on. But the precedent has been set. And now this falls under question.

SJG was very vocally upset about the 5-1, and about my success over him in particular. There are multiple witnesses to this. I happen to face him in the second round and lose. 5-1. Statistically, it's possible. A normal host would have that result happen without question. Quebec and SJG are no longer normal hosts.

SJG and Quebec swept all before them until the first TG was sent out asking them about the Group 15 results. Then they crashed. Normal hosts? That wouldn't be questioned. Quebec and SJG are no longer normal hosts.

The two nations have done many things that were not questioned at the time because we do not question our hosts. But they should no longer receive the benefit of the doubt. They can no longer receive the benefit of the doubt. The 91 goals that nobody can recreate even under more favourable conditions than existed, padded by three meme scorelines (two 7-1s and a 10-1, and of course don't forget the 'tabulation error'), are ridiculously suspicious on their own. Combine them with these - the CEDCs in particular - and you're coming up with a paper trail of fishy scorelines.

[Frenline Delpha]

If anyone finds Queb's rhetorical question convincing, I'd like to point out it could be used to justify literally any result.

The Weegies beat Polar Islandstates two hundred and two to five? Well, I just had to post the result. Clearly, I'm just a transparent host.

Glad to know you don't give a shit about hosting integrity. That's good to hear.

[Farfadillis]

If anyone finds Queb's rhetorical question convincing, I'd like to point out it could be used to justify literally any result.

The Weegies beat Polar Islandstates two hundred and two to five? Well, I just had to post the result. Clearly, I'm just a transparent host.

Glad to know you don't give a shit about hosting integrity. That's good to hear.

Glad to know you like apple pie.

How could I infer that? From your post, of course.

[Jeckland]

Hey, remember me? I know I haven't been involved in any of this much personally, but the notion that results may have been rigged by two formerly respected hosts concerns me. However, I think we've seen enough "did they didn't they" stuff from both sides. We need to work out how we move forward from this as a community. From this I think it's worth asking the following questions:

1) Can it be proven beyond doubt that scores were/weren't rigged?
2) If it is still ambiguous, do we give them the benefit of the doubt or not?
3) If according to questions 1) and 2) the results were fixed/altered in some way, what action do we take?

[Audioslavia]

If anyone finds Queb's rhetorical question convincing, I'd like to point out it could be used to justify literally any result.

The Weegies beat Polar Islandstates two hundred and two to five? Well, I just had to post the result. Clearly, I'm just a transparent host.

Glad to know you don't give a shit about hosting integrity. That's good to hear.

Not at all relevant or helpful, FD. Let's keep this on topic.

[Frenline Delpha]

Glad to know you don't give a shit about hosting integrity. That's good to hear.

Glad to know you like apple pie.

How could I infer that? From your post, of course.

Let's go screen by screen to get where this entire conversation came from. It starts with Quebec, here.

Specifically, this portion:

If you were a host, and you did scorinate a scoreline just as what happened, what would you do :
a) Would you post it, knowing you'd be accused of rigging, even though you didn't?

OR

b) would you rescorinate it, hoping you get a less controversial scoreline, which would prevent any accusations?

Now, I personally view the first as the option showing more integrity. I mean, that's what I would do given any situation like that. (All of you know what happened to my group in NSCF 12). And that was the option RKQ was going with, given his quote later on:

Unlikeliest of scores may happen in life, and such we have to accept and move on. Sure, they might happen more often on some occasions than not, but it is not up to me to redo or tamper with them. I would dare not do such, for I know such is life with things. Random events and unexpected chances exist for a reason, and I stick by what I've said for that reason.

Now, I don't know about you, but that seems to be quite a correct thing to do given the context. Then, you come in and reply with this little gem of a post:

If anyone finds Queb's rhetorical question convincing, I'd like to point out it could be used to justify literally any result.

The Weegies beat Polar Islandstates two hundred and two to five? Well, I just had to post the result. Clearly, I'm just a transparent host.

Now, given my stance on hosting events, how else am I supposed to interpret the above post besides "Change the results until they are something the NSWC hivemind agrees with." To me, that shows far less integrity than any of the bullshit you all are accusing SJG and RKQ of. Quite frankly, your post is the very fucking reason I left the WC. This bullshit is cancerous, and you all know it.

[Chiata]

Has there been an instance in the past where hosts were "convicted" of cheating?

With a game centered on random numbers, how would it be even possible to reasonably prove cheating? All accusations will just be statistically unlikely results. Statistically unlikely events are still possible.

I also don't understand why a host could be compelled to cheat. This is a forum about fake sporting events where the fun comes from interaction and where results end up being stowed away into signatures.

Furthermore, it's obvious that hosts must be presumed innocent. Sufficient evidence must be presented that they be deemed guilty of cheating or collusion.

Adding all this together, I don't see how it would be possible to prove that a particular host was cheating. Of course, it is definitely possible, if not easy, for a host to change results in their favor, but it would be exceedingly difficult to prove that the host actually cheated.

[Nephara]

Hey, remember me? I know I haven't been involved in any of this much personally, but the notion that results may have been rigged by two formerly respected hosts concerns me. However, I think we've seen enough "did they didn't they" stuff from both sides. We need to work out how we move forward from this as a community. From this I think it's worth asking the following questions:

1) Can it be proven beyond doubt that scores were/weren't rigged?
2) If it is still ambiguous, do we give them the benefit of the doubt or not?
3) If according to questions 1) and 2) the results were fixed/altered in some way, what action do we take?

I agree that we should move onto the process of actually figuring out what to do now.

On the word 'proof' - I'd like to remind people that 'proving beyond reasonable doubt' isn't about catching someone red-handed. That is bluntly impossible. There is one result that absolutely cannot be recreated and is only theoretically possible, much as it's theoretically possible to make a functional bridge out of cheese, or throw a javelin hard enough to hit the Moon, in the middle of a lot of results that, while they can recreated and would ordinarily give the hosts the benefit of the doubt, form a distinct pattern of SJG and Quebec happening to do very well for each other over the cycles and RL years. I don't think there can be any reasonable doubt left that all of these results are perfectly innocuous. And, no, 'it's theoretically possible' is not a reasonable doubt.