I've rather said what I had to say on this last time; I think people want to play in a league that sticks by its printed rules, and I still am keen on the general principle that active participation in a match deserves to be rewarded over non-participation, without prejudice against frequently impeccable reasons for non-participation. Nevertheless, I accept that the printed rules are far from perfect, and the issue of people taking time out from the league in general (and the case of champions being unable to defend their title is one particularly high-value specific example of that) that I left hanging pretty visibly. What does everyone else think? I don't think any of us gain from an exercise that targets one match next week in particular, which would seem democratic to the point of mob tyranny, but it is an issue to be ironed down for general practice going forwards. There must be lots of good practice in other relevant competitions that other people might know about.
I'd like to keep things simple, and as this is defined as a croco-puzzle ladder, I'd like to use croco-puzzle performance to determine results. Near enough everything else is potentially up for redefinition in specific instances, though, subject to trying to keep integrity to the original (and not completely well-specified!) vision and keeping things simple. The "bye day" system is an example of this; it does provide some flexibility and seems to work OK some of the time, though it hasn't been set up to cope with a situation like this.
Here's a suggestion for discussion. Perhaps we should enable people to declare themselves to be "on holiday" for a specific period, probably requiring them to nominate this a specific period of time in advance so people can't declare holidays just because they don't like whichever opponent they've wound up with. If you're on holiday for Monday to Friday of a week, then your match can be conducted over the preceding Saturday and Sunday instead. Not much croco-puzzle in a croco-puzzle match, but possibly better than nothing. Perhaps we could even be prepared to consider the results based on one week's performances for more than one match - so, if you know you're going to be away next week, both this week and next week's match results are determined by comparing this week's performances against your opponent in this week's match, and whoever your opponent in next week's match turns out to be. Not much of a match, not least because you can discern its result at once, but possibly better than nothing.
If another match generation algorithm (i.e. perhaps alternating 1v2, 3v4, 5v6 and 2v3, 4v5, 6v7 weeks, or perhaps implementing some ranking point system where ladder positions are based on ranking points rather than just the most recent match results, or...) were to prove rather better than the current one at dealing with holiday requests, this would be a strong argument in its favour - possibly even a sufficient one on its own if people consider this a sufficiently important factor.
What do people think, please? Both participants and non-participants' views alike would be welcome.
), which isn't very good for a supposed champion. I suspect ronald will give this a very good shot, and I will need a few best of UK scores again to win this...