When I am busy, I’m never able to find a good balance between the must do things and the smaller priority items. Unfortunately, one of the things that is the first to fall is blog entries.

I’ll try to work on that.

It’s done really well. All online. You enter your picks via a web page, When the games are over, login to see how many you got right and where you are in the standings. The guy running it doesn’t take any vig., all the money goes back out in prizes. He just loves doing it.

Being so close to the beginning of the season everyone is still clumped together. I’m in third place with a record of 31 correct picks and 16 incorrect picks. Picking is straight up, no spreads, no confidence points. Just pick the winner.

My picks for this week are:

Philadelphia at Chicago - Philadelphia
Buffalo at St. Louis - Buffalo
Cleveland at Cincinnati - Cincinnati
Atlanta at Carolina - Carolina
San Diego at Oakland - San Diego
Washington at Dallas - Dallas
San Francisco at New Orleans - New Orleans
Arizona at NY Jets - New York Jets
Houston at Jacksonville - Jacksonville
Denver at Kansas City - Denver
Minnesota at Tennessee - Tennessee
Green Bay at Tampa Bay - Green Bay
Baltimore at Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh

If anyone has any inside information, let me know.

A couple weeks ago, he, his wife and kids were coming home from a week-end away. They stopped off at a public conservation area for a break and something to eat.

BIL had let one of his daughters use his new iPhone. Some time had gone by, his daughter was nowhere to be found, BIL started to wonder where she was at.

He was then approached by his wife and daughter, they both had rather sullen looks.

“Something’s wrong.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Uhhhhh.”
“What’s wrong?”
[silence]
“WHAT”S WRONG?!”

“Well, when I was going to the outhouse, your iPhone fell out of my pocket.”
“Where is it?”
“It, kinda fell into the hole”
“WHAT!”
[more silence - but a much different kind of silence]

BIL, his wife and daughter, went up to the outhouse. BIL then proceeded to stick his head down the outhouse toilet to see if his iPhone was retrievable. It was to dark, he couldn’t see anything, but thought he could make out a black square object.

He lit a lighter, I don’t know how wise it is lighting a lighter and sticking it down an outhouse toilet along with your face. The things we do for our iPhones. Sure enough, there was his iPhone, lying flat on a huge clump of toilet paper, surrounded by lots of evil.

He sent his wife and daughter to see if they could find a long stick to fish it out. He stayed back to prevent other patrons from instituting a shock-and awe campaign on his poor iPhone.

Along came someone who needed the outhouse. BIL explained that his iPhone had been dropped into the outhouse, and would it be possible for them to use the other stall. Luckily it was a double. They did.

His face cringed with every glop. At least they weren’t direct hits, but shrapnel is always a concern.

His wife and daughter returned with a long branch. He was able to entangle the end of the branch onto the ear-bud and cable and retrieve it. Luckily, it was in a Griffin holder, landed flat on its back, and on the paper clump.

His daughter was tasked with cleaning it up.

After thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting it, it still works perfectly. He won’t use the ear-buds.

Traditionally, we all count our change at the beginning, count it at the end, and then compare win/loss. Though we always have a pretty good idea idea who is up and who is down. After five hours, I finished up $0.25. That’s a whopping win rate of 5 cents an hour.

Spent Saturday golfing with my brother-in-law, while Mrs. NakedPaulToast and her sister-in-law went to Canada’s Wonderland. I won two skins. That’s a whopping win rate of 40 cents an hour.

We then all met up for a barbecue and beer .

Perhaps if my parents had focused more on my Arithetic as a youth, I wouldn’t be such a degenerate gambler.

I’m going to get the biggest fattest steak in the place, with a big ol’ honk’n baked potato loaded with crap that will send my cholesterol through the roof, and a Keg Size Bloody Caesar.

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me……..

Comp03 results should be out soon. Can’t give an exact date as MarkO is away till next week and he won’t let us do anything unless he has a vote !! Problem we’re facing is there are a LOT more good games submitted than in previous competitions. Normally by now we would have a shortlist of 10. At the moment it’s still close to 30 !

I expect the following three entries to be shortlisted. At worst make honourable mention in the Competition 3 winner announcements, and probably take home some or all of the prize money.

Drop in the Bucket by KC LC.
Lost Snowmen by RedSystem.
Byteality Tower Defence by Erik Leppen.

What are my predictions based on?

Because they are all great games? No, although they are.

Because two of the game creators have monied in previous competitions? No, even though they have.

Because the game creators have a history of releasing terrific games? No, all though they all do.

My predictions, though influenced by the above, are based on recently played lists.

Looking at Mark Overmars, and YoYoJim’s profiles, we see these Competition 3 games are listed on their recently played lists. At this late stage of the competition and being only days away from the winners announcement, it makes sense that these influential YYGs team members be concentrating on the shortlisted games.

Keep an eye out on their, and other YYGs staff recently played list for a peak at other Competition 3 shortlist candidates.

[EDIT] Links to GMC topic and YoYogames page intentionally removed, see comment for explanation.

The topic started out as a rant about how the game has been on the top page and then because of a downrater dropped into oblivion. The thing is, it absolutely could not have happened like he said it happened. It’s not feasible mathematically, it’s not feasible time wise, and it’s not feasible that a game that has gotten absolutely zero attention, suddenly got huge negative attention, and then all of a sudden get so much positive attention.

It just doesn’t work.

But I just watched it get continually downrated from a 4.0 to a 3.7 (about 20+ votes) within a matter of seconds

The topic states that he just happened to be on YoYoGames and just happened to witness a downrater downrate his game in a matter of seconds. He said it happened 20+ times, later in the topic claimed 25 to 30 times.

Lets deal with the time first claim first. For a downrater to login to YYGs, go to his game page, rate it one star, sign out, then login in as a second user. That process takes at best 45 seconds per login, but closer to a minute.

To do so 20 times or even up to 30 would take at best 20 minutes and probably closer to a half hour. That’s also assuming that the evil downrater had 20 to 30 accounts with unique user names at his disposal. If he didn’t, the process would take considerably longer as he would have to have had an equal number of unique emails and verify them.

But anyway it absolutely could not have happened as the poster described. We know he’s lying.

Then he made some claims about what the value of the game fell to.
He claimed it was at 4.0 and fell to 3.7 with 107 plays.

So let’s do some math:
107 * 4 = 428 (base rating)

(428 + (20 *1)) / (107 + 20) = 3.5 (lower bound of 20 down raters)
(428 + (30 *1)) / (107 + 30) = 3.3 (upper bound of 30 down raters)

So assuming somewhere between 20 and 30 downrates, his rating would have dropped to a value between 3.3 and 3.5. He claimed it dropped to 3.7.

Once again mathematically, it is impossible for it to happen as he claimed it did. He has now lied twice.

Now lets talk about the unlikelihood of this happening. Here we have a game that has presence on the YYGs, the GMC, 64 digits, and GMG. It was released in April, but only had 107 ratings. Although it has a topic on GMG it is hosted on 64 digits, since April this game has only been downloaded by members of both sites a total of 59 times. It hasn’t been rated on either of those sites enough times to make it’s stats appear. It’s topic on the GMC is fairly empty except for the conspiracy theorist, who constantly replies to every post. Let’s face it the game has done nothing but flounder. It is unremarkable.

Yet somehow this unremarkable game was targeted by the downrater, at exactly the same moment that it’s creator happened to be on (and constantly refreshing). Who happened to witness the start and finish of the downrating event. This is also unbelievable.

Now let’s talk about the bounce-back. The game is now back to a rating of 4.0 with 161 ratings.

Lets do some more math:
161 * 4.0 = 644

Assuming 20 downraters:
127 * 3.5 = 444
644 -444 = 200 (score achieved since downrating)
161 - 127 = 34 (ratings since downrating)

200 / 34 = 5.88

This means that since the downrating occurred, the game would have have been rated an average of 5.88, since the downrating. That’s 30 six ratings and 4 five ratings. A near impossibility.

Assuming 30 downraters:

137 * 3.3 = 452
644 - 452 = 192 (score achieved since downrating)
161 - 137 = 24 (ratings since downrating)

192 / 24 = 8

So assuming an upper-bound of 30, he has achieved and average rating of 8 stars from 24 raters, not bad considering the highest ranking is 6. By the way, I am aware that there is loss of precision in the calculation, but the precision loss isn’t enough to make the impossible possible.

So not only have we proven, that the downrating could not have happened mathematically, we have also proven that his score could not have achieved it’s current rating, had the downrating occurred.

We have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that a significant downrating did not occur.

But we are not done yet. Although there was no downrating, there still was a remarkable and sudden rise.  An uprating. This is the only thing of note in this whole affair.

We have a game creator, who might honestly believe he is the victim of an evil downrating. And honestly believes he was cheated, and honestly believes he deserves to be on the front page. Drop from the front page and then remarkably and steadily skyrocket back to the front page.

As I write this, it is the 8th most popular game on all of YoYoGames. Three of those games are brand new, discounting them, this game is the 5th most popular game of the 22,290 games currently published.

The very fact that this game made it to the top page is suspect in itself. The game is ignored in it’s own topic, ignored by 64 digits, ignored by GMG. Yet it somehow managed to rise to the top page, not just once, but twice.

Something stinks, and it’s not downrating.

The game isn’t bad, but it really is not much more than average. It certainly isn’t the same caliber as any of 2DCube’s games, Seiklus, Hover Tank, Coaster Rider, Crimelife 2, Caveman Craig and hundreds more. All games that have lower ratings.

I’ll bet if YYGs looked at the ratings, they would find a lot of action from a single IP address, but there wouldn’t be downrating attached to them. There would be a bunch of 6 star ratings.

Yes, there are downraters. It’s not the epidemic people want it to be. But there are some. In order for a downrater to benefit from their downrating, they must also have a game on YYGs.

So I ask you. If someone is willing to downrate, and create multiple accounts to do so, would it also be likely to uprate from multiple accounts as well?

Instead of listening to the ramblings of ego shattered game makers, look at the evidence. I’ve demonstrated that significant downrating could not have occured. I’ve shown more evidence that uprating is likely. I’ve shown more evidence than any downrating topic present to date.

Now apply Occam’s Razor.

JFK assassination, 9/11, moon landing hoax, are probably the most notorious modern day conspiracy theories. They have a lot in common, like most conspiracy theories, they fail Occam’s Razor, they’re not falsifiable, they’re not support by industry experts, they defy logic, they demand too many people stay silent.

They just don’t make sense.

In the online poker world, the newsgroups and forums are full of conspiracy theorists. Same old story, person deposits money, person looses money, person can’t accept he is a losing player, person blames site. What’s even funnier is the conspiracy theorists keep depositing money onto the site they think is corrupt.

It doesn’t matter that various poker sites have published billions of hand histories, and poker enthusiasts have run the hand histories through every statistical analysis possible. Every test demonstrates that everything falls in place where probability suggests they should. Aces are dealt as often as they should be, pairs, connectors, suited holes cards. Everything.

It doesn’t matter that individuals have statistically analysed their own hand histories. Hundreds of thousands of hands, and once again everything falls perfectly into place. There is no conspiracy, at least not at the major poker sites.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t dishonest sites and people, there are. Check out the Absolute Poker scandal, if you’re interested.

Conspiracy theories have now made their mark on the GMC and YoYoGames. The basic premise is games are deliberately rated one star, instead of their true rating from one to six stars. They even have a name for these malicious gangs of cyber thugs; Downraters.

The theory being, deliberately rating games poorly, Downrater’s games will have benefit by higher prominence Or, in contests by downrating, your game has a better chance of winning. Like all conspiracy theories, it makes a little sense to the causal observer, but upon closer inspection, it just doesn’t make sense.

Now before anyone gets all excited. I’m not suggesting at all that there aren’t mean spirited people who deliberately give low ratings. But there just isn’t enough of them to have any meaningful significance on games that deserve attention.

Like the poker players who can’t accept that their losses are because of their own poor play. It’s easier for game creators to blame poor ratings on others then their own games.