half of AIIDE dropped out

This is too much. When I wrote about the 26 AIIDE 2019 registrants, I expected that not all of them would end up competing. It would have been surprising if a bot that looked as unfinished as Ophelia were ready in time. But this is too much.

See the list of participants. One extra holdover from last year was added, #11 LastOrder. Of the now 27 entrants, 13 dropped out, including the added LastOrder, so that 14 competitors remain. 4 are listed as withdrawn, 9 as not submitted.

The withdrawals are MetaBot, and the holdovers CSE, LastOrder, and SAIDA. MetaBot is supposedly unchanged, so in practice it is a holdover too. I suspect that LastOrder was added and marked withdrawn at the same time; the order of events suggests that it had already withdrawn before my write-up of the registrants. I especially miss LastOrder—last year, Steamhammer scored 25% against LastOrder, despite finishing higher in the rankings, and I would have enjoyed revenge.

Of the 9 unsubmitted bots, I will especially miss Dragon and Murph, which are both apparently protoss derivatives of CherryPi.

I’m sure circumstances are different in each case, but the large number of dropouts suggests a common underlying factor. What could it be?

Trackbacks

No Trackbacks

Comments

Dan on Wednesday, September 18. 2019:

LastOrder was withdrawn prior to the registration deadline. Its inclusion on the list of submitted bots was in error and since corrected.

Javier reported that Murph just wasn't ready for competition. I'd guess the same for a lot of registrants. Bot development is hard, tournaments are hard, and time for bot development can unexpectedly evaporate (as you've recently experienced). I'd love to see everyone submit any functioning bot regardless of how ready it is, but also understand not wanting to appear on the bottom half of spreadsheets.

I wish there had been more submissions (and fewer withdrawals) but the upshot is we'll get a lot more games per matchup. That's good news for Steamhammer in particular, packing probably the largest bag of builds and needing the most time for exploration.

Dan on Wednesday, September 18. 2019:

I'll highlight McRave and BananaBrain as looking very strong with their recent updates. I haven't seen as much of Locutus, but it's packing at least one wacky new build that may wreak havoc from its position outside existing training distributions.

Antiga / Iruian on Wednesday, September 18. 2019:

I'll second taking a look at McRave's reaver micro in pvp. It is really something to watch.

MarcoDBAA on Thursday, September 19. 2019:

Well, I expected SAIDA to withdraw. Think that the bot is only supposed to play in any competition, when it has a very good chance to win it.

A bit disappointing, that roughly half of the competitors dropped out again.

I did not watch enough games lately to predict a winner here, good luck @all

krasi0 on Thursday, September 19. 2019:

Yeah, it's indeed a pity that we won't see a new SAIDA version in action. But, as you mentioned, it was really something that we all had expected. The writing had been on the wall for a long time.

GL to everyone who submitted!

Add Comment

Name*

Homepage

Comment*

In reply to

E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA