Podium & Hardcourtbikepolo.org

i seem to have multiple entries. And the site is really hard to work out.

i think ive accidentally claimed magic polo? i didnt click on anything, honest!

Nah, that was me, we just started supporting HCBP (like most of the other polo companies), and as part of that we can list teams, tournaments & players we sponsor.

we also have a page on this list:

http://hardcourtbikepolo.org/polo/main/sponsors/index.html

i seem to have multiple entries. And the site is really hard to work out.

Your main one:

http://hardcourtbikepolo.org/polo/main/player/32260.html

You just need to claim this one:

http://hardcourtbikepolo.org/polo/main/player/32101.html

Once you are logged in, go to that page, and you can claim it.

It's like the site is designed to be as unintuitive as possible currently!

The fact H Bomb is having to give live support on this thread to people that are trying to use it suggests that the UI is somewhat less than transparent.

It actually reminds me of the Hearts of Iron UI, great once it's been explained to you, but until it is, there's a good chance that you will accidentally declare war on Turkey in April 1936.

Cool, I'll feed that back to him.

how do you claim it. Fuck i'm shit at internetz at the best of times.

^^^ before my time Im afraid.

unless you're soldier talking then ive missed the war by just over an hour. bummer.

how do you claim it. Fuck i'm shit at internetz at the best of times.

Once you've logged in, go to http://hardcourtbikepolo.org/polo/main/player/32101.html

Then click on "This is me" it's on the left side, just over summary.

Statto

So is podium meant to update to HCBP automatically or does everything have to go semi-manually through Zack? Is the system prone to cheating / sloppy data entry.

What if we notice an inaccuracy, we email him and he sorts it out? Sounds a bit long winded but I guess it's better than everyone being able to edit everything.

It definitely has potential though. I really like the predicted/actual performance summary of tournaments.

As far as I understand it, it's semi-manual, but Vince and Zach have made it easy to import teams into Podium, and then results back to HCBP.

If you notice an error, either email him, or if you want just let me know.

thanks dude.

Needs euro-qualifier results, that's 14 games of results unaccounted for...

Lots of stuff is missing, anything that used Challonge like the UK Champs for example. John, would that need inputting manually?

Needs euro-qualifier results, that's 14 games of results unaccounted for...

Yeah, I'm sending him the results.

Lots of stuff is missing, anything that used Challonge like the UK Champs for example. John, would that need inputting manually?

Yep, you'd need to enter the teams into a tournament, and then send him the results (in the spreadsheet) if Challonge was used.

So, Podium has finally included the option for Median-Buchholz style ranking, which for me removes the last reason for using Challonge.

It works slightly differently to how Challonge did it.

Challonge took the your opponents points, and dropped the top and bottom results. That might be ok for some sports, but I think it misses a lot of useful information out (goals scored, etc).

So Podium has two tie breaking factors, opponents points, and opponents goal difference.

So firstly it doesn't drop the top and bottom opponents. I think that's a good thing. If you play 1 top team, and 4 bottom teams, why shouldn't the fact you played that team be counted.

Secondly, having opponents goal difference as the secondary factor means that if two teams have played very similar opponents, in terms of points, they can still be separated by the goal difference, which in polo often seems to be a good way to separate good teams from great teams.

I can't wait to use it.

Feel free to try it out http://hardcourtpodium.com/sandbox (Schedule Strength mode)

So Podium has two tie breaking factors, opponents points, and opponents goal difference.

So firstly it doesn't drop the top and bottom opponents. I think that's a good thing. If you play 1 top team, and 4 bottom teams, why shouldn't the fact you played that team be counted.

I'm a statistical dunce, but at most Swiss tournaments I've played as part of a middling team and we always seem to get one top team and one new team. Before the move to limitless goals, it'd almost always be 0-5, 5-0. Is that why Challonge ditched those games?

It still seems silly to get rid of 2/5ths (generally) of the available information so I'm sure podium's way is better.

From the outside looking in, Challonge seems much more reliable though.

I'm a statistical dunce, but at most Swiss tournaments I've played as part of a middling team and we always seem to get one top team and one new team. Before the move to limitless goals, it'd almost always be 0-5, 5-0. Is that why Challonge ditched those games?

Well, that's sort of the idea, take away the most extreme results, and in theory you should get cleaner data.

But you also then don't get any tiebreak data until the end of the 3rd round, in polo that's often half way through.

From the outside looking in, Challonge seems much more reliable though.

I used to say this, before I used Podium, but it's really not true.

I've used it for loads of tournaments now, apart from the BFF (where we were using a new single player mode he'd written a week before, and was being used for the first time), I've never had a major issue.

There have been some issues in the past, where people didn't understand how to use it, or what the consequences were of certain things.

That's why before you run a tournament on it for the first time it's worth running through it on the sandbox, just so you get used to it, and the differences between automatic mode, and manual mode.

But the advantage is that it's written for polo, so things like the exporting the stats to HCBP.org, a bench format mode, assigning games to certain courts, players listed for each team, etc...

Oh, and just an explanation of the modes.

There are 3 ways you can run it

Automatic Mode: This will attempt to predict games before the end of the last round, so that you always have teams on deck. This is the default way, and is best for people who want no involvement at all, just enter the teams, and do what it says.

Problems can occur, if games aren't played in order, as it did when Edisons/Cosmic was delayed in the Euros, and by the time they had played, their potential next opponents, of a similar level had all been picked already, and as it was being done automatically, no-one picked this up.

I don't recommend using this mode.

Manual Mode, the easy way

Manual mode allows you to tell Podium when to select the next games, so if you wait until the end of the round, and then hit "stage games", it will choose the next round, in the same way Challonge works. You won't get any strange games, as it has all the teams to work with.

The downside is, like Challonge, you have to wait until the round is over, so you can lose court time, as teams won't be ready, or on multiple courts you don't have any games on while the others finish.

I'd recommend this to people who don't want to be too involved, you just press the button once a round, and do what it says.

Manual mode, the advanced way

This is where Podium really comes into it's own, and it's how I always run tournaments now.

You can use manual mode to stage games in the next round, the same way Automatic mode would do it, except you are choosing the games.

This obviously relies on the person doing it understanding which teams should be playing each other next, and what the factors involved are.

So I'll wait until there are two teams who are certain to be chosen together in the next round, based on their points, and tiebreak scores. For example, if you have two teams who are 4 points ahead of everyone who hasn't played yet, and 1 point ahead of everyone who has, you know you can select that game for the next round, and no-one else can catch them.

Once you've predicted the first few games of the next round, and the previous round is then over, you get Podium to fill up the rest of the games, by hitting "stage round"

Running it this way gives you the balance of an efficient schedule, teams have warning of their games, and you have no court downtime, but also you can make sure there are no strange pairings.

Cool new feature in Podium, you can add videos to results, so that if a video exists, the user can click on the game, and watch it embedded in the site.

So far only for the NAHBPC 2012 http://followpodium.com/nahbpc

Click on any game with an arrow next to the result.

It appears to have broken the mobile version?

In what way? I'll point Vince here (or pass it on to him), if you can post what the issue is you are having? My phone is too shit to use it.