Windy City Weasels

For those of you who like to plan ahead, the tournament rules for the 2010 CODCon Open are now available in the Files Section. The rules include the schedule for the tournament, which will be held April 10-11 at the College of Dupage in Glen Ellyn, as well as an explanation with examples of a new scoring system that we'll be using.

The new system is called Squares or Sum of Squares, and it's what's known as a divide-and-conquer system. That means that in order to maximize your score, you want not only to be big but to divide the centers you don't own fairly equally among the other players.

There's more math involved with this system compared with the Whipping system that we've used in the past and that we're using to score this season's games, but as long as you keep the above principle in mind when you're playing, you should be fine.

Here's how it works: At the end of the game, you square each player's center count, and then add the squares together to get a sum for the game. Then you calculate each player's square as a percentage of the sum, and multiply the result by 100. Thus, each game will be worth 100 points. Soloists will get all 100.

Check out these two tables, which score last night's games under both systems:

Note that in the Whipping system, Russia's board-topping position in Game 86 scored slightly better than Germany's board-topper in Game 87, 140.57 to 132. In Squares, Russia's scores is much better, 53.54 to 35.46. The system rewards him for being significantly larger than everyone else.

I think it will be fun and a nice change of pace to play under a different scoring system. If you have questions, fire away.