Rediscovering Hot Wheels racing - a game/competition design challenge

[QuikSand]

So, I've recently been thinking about what I once really liked about this site... and it got me thinking a bit about this old thread:

OT - Manufactured competitions (reflections on a youth without computers) - Front Office Football Central

Anyhow, building on that sort of theme... I have an open-ended proposition to toss out for the group. If you are interested in this sort of thing, like I am, you might find this somewhat engaging. If you're not... well, you likely won't. Perhaps you'll decide to post in the thread anyway and say that this is because the current/last president is/was a doofus, or maybe that you think Texas is better than Oklahoma, or vice versa, or I don't know what else. I guess that's where the forum is, overall, these days.

But I digress.


Here's the setup:

-My soon-to-turn 4yo daughter plays with a decent sized selection of cars
-She recently got a raceway set for the holidays
-She is seemingly very interested in competition and so is her dad

So, the concept:

-I want to come up with an elegant and satisfying way to play with her, race her cars on the three-track raceway, in some way that determines a "champion" (fatherly aside: this is a word she absolutely loves, and speaks with a special sort of breathy enthusiasm)

-This is pretty easy to do with a starting number of cars like 9 or 27... in a pure and egalitarian fashion

-I, however, sort of like a more complicated system - and am very open to things like pre-selecting entries in the event as worthy of byes or similar advanced placement



So, here's the challenge:

DESIGN A COMPETITION TO DETERMINE ONE CHAMPION CAR FROM A FIELD OF EXACTLY 15 CARS, USING A THREE-LANE RACEWAY

Some details and additional information:

-3 lane track determines an official 1-2-3 order with high accuracy, so all of that information could be used for our purposes... occasionally a car will jump off the track, but this isn't a central consideration

-I tend to award points for balance, elegance, and simplicity... and I just know all of them when I see them, no clearer definition than that. But those are things I value in a competition structure like this.

-I don't want anything to be more complicated than I can accomplish by setting down the cars in the proper places before and after each race... so, I don't want to have to write down scores or results anywhere, or that sort of thing

-When we have played thus far, we did decide to run three races for the "championship" and I kept in my head the results... that was acceptable on simplicity terms, but just barely.

-I tend to favor a system that takes successful entries from prior events, and gives them a built-in advantage in the next event.

-She has probably 30 or so cars to pull from, so your design concept can envision using a certain group of 15 in one iteration, and then something like a "relegation/promotion" out of/into each successive run of the competition.

[QuikSand]

By the way, it's not my intent that anyone submit something privately and I'm going to adjudicate a "best entry" or anything. If this floats your boat, give it some thought, and post what you come up with in this thread.

[Senator]

Just an add on the general theme of this post. My son is 3. 5 years old. He also has the same setup going on, but our track has room for 4 instead of 3 and is 6 feet long with flags at the end to determine the winner.

Right now, he believes all race cars could and should beat all other wannabe cars ie ambulances, trucks, ect...

I wonder if all dads go through this phases with their kids, but I thought it was interesting as I could have written the very same post, (in a much less interesting way, of course)

[QuikSand]

Just to plant a flag somewhere, here's one fairly obvious way to do this with 15 cars:

Split into groups of 9 and 6
group of 9 --> 3 winners
3 winners --> 1 winner
group of 6 --> 2 winners
1 + 2 winners --> champion

It's simple. But I feel like it gives a pretty major advantage to the top six, and gives the exact same advantage to #6 as to #1... if that's a merit-based system of some sort (and how would you pull the top 6 from this system, exactly?) so that's a bit of a mark against it, to me.

Goal is to come up with a *better* system than that, for starters.

[Passacaglia]

Post a poll on FOFC, and have the top two vote-getters race, using lanes 1 and 3.

HOOK 'EM HORNS!

[Draft Dodger]

"My soon-to-turn 4yo daughter"

this cannot be true. Good lord, I'm getting old.

[Passacaglia]

-I tend to award points for balance, elegance, and simplicity... and I just know all of them when I see them, no clearer definition than that. But those are things I value in a competition structure like this.

I'll think on a serious response when I get home, but just to be clear...you're talking about awarding points for the system, right? Not for certain cars within a race?

[Draft Dodger]

if this was me, and I was a kid and not some high-fallutin' intellectual, I would put the 15 cars roughly in the order I'd expect them to finish in (ie fastest to slowest). Then I'd grab the 3 slowest cars and race them until one was the slowest in 2 races. That car comes off and is #15. Then I'd grab the next-slowest car and repeat until everyone is ranked.

[Draft Dodger]

also, I would fully expect my Smokey and the Bandit Trans AM would be the winner; that was one fast hotwheel

[Karlifornia]

I HOPE THIS IS COVERED BY OBAMACARE

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Passacaglia

I'll think on a serious response when I get home, but just to be clear...you're talking about awarding points for the system, right? Not for certain cars within a race?

Oh, right. I just mean when I look at someone's proposed system, in my head I'll be thinking "that seems too complicated to keep track of" or "that seems like a good way to reward the defending champ" or that sort of thing.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

if this was me, and I was a kid and not some high-fallutin' intellectual, I would put the 15 cars roughly in the order I'd expect them to finish in (ie fastest to slowest). Then I'd grab the 3 slowest cars and race them until one was the slowest in 2 races. That car comes off and is #15. Then I'd grab the next-slowest car and repeat until everyone is ranked.

So, the car you determine in advance is probably the fastest, even if it never beats anyone in an actual race... gets ranked #3? Or are you going to do this iteratively, allowing it to drop two slots each cycle?

More seriously -- isn't this more or less how they used to (or still) do bowling championships?

[Draft Dodger]

I wasn't the brightest kid

[QuikSand]

Well, you still crack me up, for what that's worth.

[wade moore]

Well, you could use something like DD's system as a "Time Trial" to initially slot the cars.

Then I would say you consider giving the 6 fastest a bye through first round. So:

Round 1:

-3 Top Qualifiers - Bye
-4 Heats of 3
-4 Winners advance
-4 Runners-up advance compete for 2 remaining slots (a little stuck here because of the extra car - maybe a round robin of sorts? Or simply randomly do two 2v2 races?)

Round 2:

- Heat 1 -- Top 3 Qualifiers headline 3 heats.
- Heat 2 -- 3 First-round winners get 2nd billing.
- Heat 3 -- 1 First-round winner and 2 Runners-up get the 3rd lane.

Round 3:

- 3 winners of Round 2 go head-to-head


NEXT RACE:

The cars that made the finals in previous race get the 1st round bye.

If you want to do relegation, the cars that made Round 2 advance to the next race, and the other 6 cars come from the relegation pool.

There are a couple of minor details in there that may need hashing out - like the 4 down to 2 piece. Otherwise seems to add some detail without being overly complicated?

[QuikSand]

One possible tweak to yours, wade, would be to just slot the defending champion into the final round of three, and give the "bye" you suggest to the other two finalists from the previous round.

So, then you'd have:

15 includes 2x bye and 1x champ
Other 12 --> 4 winners
4 winners + 2 byes --> 2 winners
2 winners + champ --> Champion


In retrospect, this is pretty different from your model, I suppose

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by wade moore

- Heat 1 -- Top 3 Qualifiers headline 3 heats.

Am I reading this correctly that you'd suggest taking the top 3 from the previous run, and putting the three of them into one grouping when you're down to 9, thereby ensuring that only one of them would be in the succeeding finals?

Guess it depends what your goal is... to ensure a variety of finalists? Or to fairly reward those who earned a privileged spot? Most sports (like tennis?) tend to try to separate out the top seeds, rather than force them together.

[DanGarion]

I guess I would just do a random selection into 3 groups of five, and then the cars from a group would race each other an equal number of times, earning points, the top point earners in each group would advance to a 3 car winner take all 3 heat race. But that's just me.

[Mustang]

If you are wanting a pure Champion and don't care about 2nd or 3rd, I'd just borrow from my M&M wars and weed out the weaker ones first, but I'd go with 18 cars rather than 15 by doing 6 sets of 3, followed by 2 sets of 3 and then race the 2 against each other.

[path12]

When my brothers and I were kids we would sort cars by taking one long section of track, send each car down it and put it to the side where it stopped.

I would think a similar system could work in order to get the initial field down to where you want it to be.

EDIT: The Hot Wheels cars always kicked ass on the lame Matchbook ones.

[JonInMiddleGA]

There might be room for existing concepts like "fastest loser" in this somewhere, depending on the number of entrants eventually settled upon.

[Mustang]

On a separate note, this was my all time favorite hot wheel in my collection growing up.

[wade moore]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

Am I reading this correctly that you'd suggest taking the top 3 from the previous run, and putting the three of them into one grouping when you're down to 9, thereby ensuring that only one of them would be in the succeeding finals?

Guess it depends what your goal is... to ensure a variety of finalists? Or to fairly reward those who earned a privileged spot? Most sports (like tennis?) tend to try to separate out the top seeds, rather than force them together.

Poor wording on my part - I meant they would each "headline" a heat.

[tarcone]

3s are wild!

5 groups of 3 cars randomly selected for the very 1st event.
This will be a round robin event.

3 races in each of the groupings. 1st place 3 points, 2nd place 2 and 3rd place 1. Most points goes onto next round. Highest point getter that didnt win one of the groupings is the WC and gets in. Ties broken by fastest time.

Now we have 2 groups of 3 cars. Same formula. A WC comes with the 2 Champions for the final round.

3 cars, 3 races and you have an overall champion.

[Passacaglia]

1st round: 5 groups of 3 cars, 5 winners advance plus a "sentimental favorite" -- a car that came really close to winning in the first round, or got visibly stuck somehow, the defending champion, or a car your daughter thinks looks cool.

2nd round: 2 groups of 3 cars, 2 winners advance plus another sentimental favorite, with an optional (and recommended) rule that a car can't be a sentimental favorite twice in one tournament.

3rd round: 1 group of 3 cars, winner is the...champion.

[Wolfpack]

Hmm...borrowing a little bit from here and there in the thread, you could do something like this:

The very first time you try to run this, you could have your daughter pick the three cars she thinks is "most likely" to win the tournament. The three "seeded" cars are bye'd out of the preliminaries and into one of three semi-final heats. The remaining 12 cars are then put into a preliminary pool. Barring accidents, when the cars are grouped by threes, they'll usually end up finishing the same way each time, so a one-off run to advance should be enough. That will produce four winners, leaving eight cars. The four third-place finishers are out, leaving four cars for two spots. You did not state whether each race had to have three cars, so if it's not a requirement, then you could have the four second-place cars paired up and raced off for the two spots to advance.

The semis and finals are pretty straightforward from there (winners of each heat advance to the one-off final and winner of final is "champion").

In subsequent tournaments, the three finalists from the prior tournament get to be "seeded" to the semi-finals. Meanwhile, the four third-place teams from the first set of preliminaries are relegated and a new set of four are added in their place.

A possible thing to do would be that if a car wins, say, three tournaments in a row, that car is "retired" to a hall of champions to await another two (or seven or...) such cars to claim their spots and then you can have an all-time championship tournament at the end. In this way, if there is perhaps a dominant car in the set, they don't just win every time out and the tournament history gets some twists and turns added.

[Maple Leafs]

This needs two things:
- a reigning champion that can keep the title as long as it stays undefeated;
- a relegation pool

I'd go with:
- one champion
- five contenders
- nine pretenders in the loser league

The nine pretenders have a series of three-car races to find a winner. That winner moves up to contender status.

The six contenders (five original, one new) then race to crown the #1 contender. This would end with a head-to-head, of course. Maybe a best-of-three.

Also, the two last place conteders finishers have to race head-to-head. Loser goes into the pretender pool. Devastating, no doubt, but life isn't fair and your daughter needs to learn that now.

Finally, the #1 contender gets a shot at the title. I would make it a best of seven, but that's just me. Also, I'd build some sort of special place of honor where the champion could sit, on display and separate from all the others, but again that's me.

[Toddzilla]

I think the way to go would be some sort of double-elimination sort of competition, where you select the 3 competitors for each race basically at random, with the caveat that you try not to have cars race each other a second time for as long as mathematically possible.

With a 1st, 2nd, 3rd set-up, you would have to assign (negative) points according to place and base eliminations that way.

So perhaps 2nd place gets you 1 point, 3rd place gets you 3 points, and 5 points means you're eliminated.

[MIJB#19]

Working under the assumption of having 15 cars, randomly seeded.

Round 1 (15 participating cars)
heat 1: car 1 vs 2 vs 3 (winner and runner-up to Semi-finals) *
heat 2: car 4 vs 5 vs 6 (winner to Semi-finals)
heat 3: car 7 vs 8 vs 9 (winner to Semi-finals)
heat 4: car 10 vs 11 vs 12 (winner to Semi-finals)
heat 5: car 13 vs 14 vs 15 (winner to Semi-finals)
assumption: each heat three cars are picked at random from the qualifiers, with the exception of car 1 *

Round 2 (9 participating cars)
heat 6: heat 1 #3 vs heat 2 #2 vs heat 2 #3 (winner to Semi-finals)
heat 7: heat 3 #2 vs heat 3 #3 vs heat 4 #2 (winner to Semi-finals)
heat 8: heat 4 #3 vs heat 5 #2 vs heat 5 #3 (winner to Semi-finals)
alternative: at random select cars for each heat
If desired, the runners-up of these heats can race down to spots 10-12 and the last-placed cars can race down to spots 13-15.
To keep it exciting, any number of losers of these heats can be relegated and replaced with Division B cars.

Semi-finals (9 participating cars)
heat 9: car 1 vs 4 vs 7 (winner to Championship)
heat 10: car 2 vs 5 vs 8 (winner to Championship)
heat 11: car 3 vs 6 vs 9 (winner to Championship)
assumption: each heat three cars are picked at random from the qualifiers
If desired, runners-up can race down to spots 4-6 and losing cars can race down to spots 7-9.

Championship (3 participating cars)
heat 12: heat 9 #1 v heat 10 #1 v heat 11 #1


* From season 2 onwards, the Champion starts the next season in heat 1. It is therefor considered to be a tougher heat than the other at random heats. To reward competing in that heat, and to protect the Champion, there will be a 2/3rd chance to advance, opposed to the normal 1/3rd chance. Additionally, for the inaugural season, the favorite car of the Honorary League President can be seeded to race in heat 1.


Logistics
To avoid the paper-and-pencil stuff, eventually there will be five piles/rows of cars:
pile 1: non-participating cars
pile 2: initially 15 cars, Round 1 winners move to pile 4, Round 1 losers to pile 3; will eventually be used for Round 2 losers
pile 3: increases from 0 to 9 cars, Round 2 winners move to pile 4, round 2 losers go back to pile 2; will eventually be filled with Semi-Finals losers
pile 4: increases from 0 to 9 cars, Semi-Finals losers go back to pile 3, winners move to pile 5; will eventually be empty
pile 5: increases from 0 to 3 cars (the championship participants)

[Celeval]

1 Defending Champion (C)
2 Defending Runners-Up, (D1, D2)
12 Open Seeded Cars
--------------------
Round 1 - Open Seeding
4 races, 4 winners, 4 runners-up (W1,W2,W3,W4; R1, R2, R3, R4)
The losers are tossed into the pot and replaced next tournament (relegated).

Round 2 - Runners Up
D1, R2, R4 -> Winner is W5
D2, R1, R3 -> Winner is W6

Round 3 - Semifinals
W1, W3, W5 -> Winner to Championship
W2, W4, W6 -> Winner to Championship

Round 4 - Championship
Winners of Round 3 + Defending Champion

We have losing vehicles replaced in the next run, the champion getting seeded right into the finals until beaten, and teams who make the championship are "safe" from relegation next time. Plus there's the added benefit of none of the runners-up in round 1 will face the car that beat them until the championship.

[Celeval]

Addenda: The first time through, run with 27 cars to get a solid championship and pick up the initial C, D1, and D2 seeds.

[Celeval]

Addenda 2: And you absolutely have to rig up a little stand near the finish line for the defending champion to sit and watch the competing cars earn the right to face him/her.

[QuikSand]

Strong, Celeval.

[BYU 14]

Regular Season races
First round (15 Cars) - 5 qualifying heats = 5 winners move on + the 2nd place finisher to lose by the closest margin - 6 cars total. The other 9 Cars move to the second chance heats.


Second round (9 cars) - 3 second chance heats = 3 winners move to Semi-Final heats. The remaining 6 Cars nove to the relegation battle.

Third round (6 cars) - 2 relegation heats = 4 cars that finish 1st and 2nd retain eligiblity for the next race, 2 3rd place cars are relegated back to the toy box and will be replaced by two random selections from the inactive cars for the next event.

Fourth round (9 cars) - 3 semi main heats random draw (6 cars from round 1 and 3 winners from round 2) = 3 winners move to the main event.

Fifth round (3 cars) - 1 main event heat = 1 event winner.

Points awarded main event only 5 for 1st, 3 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd.

Hold a 10 event season with the 6 highest point totals qualifying for the "Champions Cup"

Champions Cup competition
First round - Cars 4-6 in the point total standings race = 1 winner moves on.

Second round - Cars 1-3 in the point total standings race = 1st and 2nd place move on.

Third round - Champions Cup - Winner of round 1 and 1st and 2nd place cars from round 2 race for the "Champions Cup"

Move on to the next season retaining the top 10 cars in terms of point totals from the previous regular season and replace the bottom 5 with random cars from the reserve pile. Rinse and repeat, keeping track of career stats and the like.

[path12]

This thread is making me want to go buy some Hot Wheels.

[MIJB#19]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

So, I've recently been thinking about what I once really liked about this site... and it got me thinking a bit about this old thread:

OT - Manufactured competitions (reflections on a youth without computers) - Front Office Football Central

By the way, thanks for the link, QS. That was great stuff to read.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Celeval

Addenda 2: And you absolutely have to rig up a little stand near the finish line for the defending champion to sit and watch the competing cars earn the right to face him/her.

Ah, the Monster Jam "Hot Seat" idea.

[Bad-example]

I waited to post here as I have nothing constructive to add other than to note: This thread makes me smile.

[QuikSand]

So, my son just turned 4, and is a complete fanatic for hot wheels and similar cars and trucks. He got a ton of them as gifts recently, and is loving it.

I introduced him to the concept of a track to run them on (long story) and he loves it. So, we started setting up "tournaments" -- where he takes a bucket of cars and tries to run them down the track which has a modest set of hills, etc. Given the vagaries of a 3/4 year old boy, maybe 2/3 of them complete the journey each try... and the rest are "out." The successful cars make the next round, and so it goes until there's a champion. He loves it.

Just felt like this belonged in this thread. Fun stuff. He and I now talk a lot about the various cars and how many times they have been champion.

[MIJB#19]

Awesome, QS.

[digamma]

This is great. We got our older son a four lane track when he turned 2 or 3 that finally broke for good this year. We've had all sorts of tournaments on that thing...cars, marbles, etc.

Just a blast.

[QuikSand]

So, the green/gold winner here is one of dad's favorites... but the red runner-up is a total badass and a multi-champion. The British taxi was just a fluke, nothing to see there, mate.

So fun.