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Pool 5+5

Very perceptive post #10. I myself identified your second reason -- competition, as the primary reason that Arena continues to grow while pools quickly stagnated.

I also like the idea of a pool-specific league-table with player rankings that would complement your Glicko-2 rating.
To be clear, what's being suggested by kingscrusher (and I agree), is LESS transparency for the pools, not more.

Right now you see everything: who's in the pools, how many, how they've done over their previous games, etc.

Especially when there aren't that many people in the pools, I think that really hurts. It's a case of the poor getting poorer.

If people see pool with no one in it, or only a couple people in it, they're likely not going to join the pool.

I know I do this all the time when choosing whether to play in the pools, and it has the effect of discouraging people from joining the very pools that need people to join.

My hypothesis is that if you eliminate all that transparency and just have the button to play a 1 minute game, 3 minute game, etc., you will see far more pool games played.

Of course, that hypothesis might turn out to be incorrect, but I'll stick to it until it's falsified :)

Interestingly, on the subject of people preferring competitions where there are winners and the like, I'm not so sure that's true.

To make another comparison to ICC, there the pools are far more popular than tournaments, with both being less popular than regular seeks (although like here, a much higher proportion of strong players play in the pools).

Maybe here we have a population with different preferences, but I'm guessing it's more to do with the specific implementations that lead to one sort being more popular than the others.
Urggh... different definitions of transparency. I mean "you don't see very much of it" and in that sense, it's transparent. And you meant that you can see everything that's going on. T'is a silly word.
Yeah, after my post I realized one could use either definition, in which case I hadn't really cleared anything up :)
Regarding post 10 made :

With less transparency there wouldnt be that public chat room ( basically point 3 completely irrelevant - and supports the notion of less transparency ) i am guilty myself if posting comments not great as a result of adrenaline etc

Point 1 about ego damage - far less ego damage as your games and results are in private. Maybe there could be a tracking of the number of games you won in a row to keep saying 'good job' or something for ego stroking - but just privately from the system to you.
'Arena' is the tournaments system that you see most of the time (the hourly, daily, weekly, etc... tournaments just below the lobby). The distinction was made as Swiss tournaments (beta) are now available.
#15 I believe you were a big supporter of these pools, KC, and with all due respect I can see why: for very strong players such as yourself, they are great while they run. Unfortunately, for the majority, they don't hit the spot.

IMHO taking away openness is not the way forward. It just treats people as though they're stupid, and they don't like that. I predict that your ideas would simply mean the pools continue to be ignored.

There is a reason why the arena tournaments are popular and the others are not. If you compare what happens with the two types of tournament, therein will lie the answer to making the pools popular.

Scarlet, people aren't entering the pools in the first place. They see there's no one there, and they do not enter because of it. That's simple fact.

So all these complex explanations about psychology are moot and the only thing left to do is try something different. We've tried the implementation model where there's a list of everyone who's entered, who's playing who; bedizen with chat and all - it's not working.

The next thing to try is a more basic approach, and that's what we're attempting to do.
ScarletP..

I think the totally open transparent implementation of pools is damaging at so many levels to popularity - and especially for the stronger players actually.

You dont really need a PHD in pyschology to know people in real life do not like waiting in empty or emptyish rooms

Nor in real life do oeople like being flogged or mocked for losing a tonne of rating points - and this in contrast to your post was actually a damaging point to the higher rated players in the pool who had records like :

+1 +1 etc until -30 wiped that all out

A more private autopairing implementation should be tested IMHO to gather evidence either way. I might be wrong and you might be right ....

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