Written by Sandra Jones
I announce the forecast competition for the Gomoku A-Tournament (GAT) 2019 and cordially invite you to participate in it.
The prize is a nice wooden 15×15 board with stones in addition to being declared the best expert.
The forecast competition is open to everyone in the world, including the GAT players themselves. The only eligibility criterion is that I have to be convinced beyond reasonable doubt that you are not a virtual clone of another participant of this forecast competition. A convincing FB or VK account with many friends or being a known live or online gomoku player will generally suffice.
Many thanks to the sponsor of this forecast competition, Ilya Katsev, who generously offered the prize. Ilya is a true gomoku fan.
The deadline for submitting your forecast is the actual start of the GAT, which is scheduled to start tomorrow, on Sun 4 Aug, at 9:30 Tallinn time, which is 8:30 Warsaw time and 9:30 Moscow time.
Your forecast must specify how many points each of the GAT participants you think will earn. The GAT participants are:
Zoltan Laszlo
Gergo Toth
Mark Horvath
Ilya Muratov
Alexey Lebedev
Ilya Katsev
Maxim Karasev
Martin Muzika
Stepan Tesarik
Michal Zukowski
Oleg Bulatovsky
Martin Hobemagi
For those who do not know, the GAT is a round-robin tournament in which everyone plays one game with everyone.
The predicted number of points for each GAT participant must be an integer number or an integer number with a half-point, but you are not required to ensure that your forecast mathematically can come true as a whole.
A useful hint to make a good forecast: The GAT participants will earn 66 points in total. However, as stated above, you are not required to make the sum of points in your forecast equal to 66.
In this forecast competition, the deciding parameter is the sum of the deviations. The deviation for a given GAT participant in your forecast is simply the absolute value of the difference between the predicted and actual number of his points.
For example, if you correctly guess the number of points for 10 GAT participants, overestimate the result of one of the two remaining GAT participants by one point, and underestimate the result of the other remaining GAT participant by one point, then the sum of the deviations is 2.
You can submit only one forecast, but can update it before the deadline by submitting a new forecast as many times as you wish.
The tie-breaking criterion is the date and time of the final version – the earlier the better.
To submit your forecast, do the following:
(1) Prepare a file with your forecast in any common format (e.g., TXT, DOC, PDF, or Excel). If you use the TXT format, use the Latin letters to write the players’ names, not Russian letters.
(2) Go to https://www.zeta-uploader.com/en
(3) Do the following there:
(a) Select your file by clicking on “Select files.”
(b) In “E-Mail,” write sandragomoku@gmail.com
(c) In “Message,” write your full name or the pseudonym under which you are known in the gomoku community and add any random word. If you have never communicated with me, also add your contact details in the same field.
(d) Click on “More.”
(e) Make sure that the option “7 days” is selected (which is the default option).
(f) Empty the field “Expire after # downloads.”
(g) Tick “Protect download with a password.”
(h) Write any password there (different from the random word you added on Step 3c). Please also save the password somewhere on your computer.
(i) Change “Send in one email” to “Do not send.”
(j) Tick “I agree with the terms of service.”
(k) Click on “Upload now.”
(l) Wait until you see the message “Successfully uploaded.”
(4) I will soon send you a confirmation containing the random word you chose on Step 3c. In the very unlikely event that you do not receive such a confirmation within a reasonable period of time (say a couple of hours during the daytime), contact me.
(5) After(!) the deadline, send me the password as soon as you can. This can be done via FB, VK, or email. My Facebook account is fb.com/profile.php?id=100011333320097 ; my VK account is vk.com/id372140299
This procedure is needed to ensure that I will not see your forecast before the deadline. I myself will participate in the forecast competition, and seeing forecasts by others might give me some advantage.
Additionally or alternatively to using zeta-uploader, you can directly send your forecast to Łukasz Majksner. He will not participate in the forecast competition and will not tell your forecast anyone before the deadline. After the deadline, he will forward me all received forecasts. His FB account is fb.com/usiek ; his VK account is vk.com/id226026008
I will publish all forecasts soon after the deadline.
Please join this competition to make it more interesting, and have fun making your forecast 🙂