We've deployed a change affecting how parings are made in arenas with bots. Previously, if a user failed to return to the tournament page and did not 'pause' themselves this could confuse the bot into not being paired. This problem is now fixed, and so if there are no games in progress and you are waiting, you should get a game with @PST-Greedy-Tom within a minute or two (if the bot is subscribed to the tournament).

4

It was noticed by some players that this change inadvertently introduced a new problem where players were able to get repeat pairings whilst others were playing, which could lead to the same players repeatedly playing each other.

This has now been fixed.

Please let us know if there is anything odd with the pairings in arena.

222

Maybe there:
playstrategy.org/tournament/Df6V9l5b
no pairings CblBOPOTKA and Nappi
Maybe CblBOPOTKA was no longer online.

Hi @woll when there are 4 players searching for pairings the pairing algorithm first tries to give the #1 ranked player the highest ranked opponent it can (whilst respecting the rules surrounding your last opponent) and then pairs the other two players. It doesn't try to balance out the pairings like in a Swiss.

In the example given, for around 30 minutes there were 3 players active in the tournament (yourself, CblBOPOTKA and Nappi) and with number of players the bot (PST-Greedy-Tom) also gets involved in the pairings - making 4. Throughout this phase of the tournament you were always the #1 ranked player in the tournament, and the bot was always the #4 ranked player in the tournament. So you always cycled between games against CblBOPOTKA and Nappi, whilst the other player always played the bot. If the tournament ranking order had changed in this period then we would have seen more variety in the pairings.

This logic of how to pair 4 players is the same methodology used by lichess.

1

Another small fix to the arena pairing system with regards to bots - we noticed the bot (PST-Greedy-Tom) was sometimes jumping in and playing a game ahead of a genuine user. We've tweaked this, to ensure that the bot should only be paired if there is precisely 1 or 3 active users in the tournament. An active user is either:
- Someone who is waiting on the tournament page to be paired (not paused)
- Someone who is currently playing a game in the tournament
- Someone who has just finished a game and is yet to navigate back to the tournament page (the 'just finished' time is somewhere between 15-60 seconds, depending on the tournament time control used)

Once again, let us know if you think there is something awry with the pairings in our arena tournaments