March Sadness 2024 (a.k.a the RPS Biggest Loser tournament)

The Sandbox Games
1

Are you bummed about your first-match-exit in the March Madness 2024 (a.k.a the annual Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament)? Me too!

Let’s see who can keep up the losing!

This tournament is for all of the first-match losers. The goal is to keep losing.

The default will be for you to participate with all of your throws made automatically by the moderator’s Excel =RAND() fn.

If you’d like, you may also submit your own throws (for the entire tournament all at once) or specify how rand() should be weighted for you or any other Excel tricks you’ve got up your sleeve. Just send them to me via pm.

Play will start as soon as every MM24 participant has had a chance to join this tournament. At this point, we’re just waiting to see if @Kid_Rock will join the fun.

I’m not just the moderator, I’m also a participant. You can rest easy knowing that the moderator won’t pull any sneaky monkey moves, tricky hijinks, or deceitful chicanery when it comes to picking the losers.

All matchups, including the finale, will be sudden death (best of one).

There are going to be two champions:

  • The RPS Biggest Loser will be the player that loses all of their matches in the first iteration of the throws.
  • The RPS Ultimate Loser will be the player that loses the most tournament brackets in 2^n iterations of throws (where n is the number of participants).
  • The seeding will be based on the number games each participant won in their first match in March Madness 2023, and random after that.

As a reminder, the goal is to keep losing.

Welcome to all of our participants, and we wish you the worst of luck.

Here are the players that I’ve identified (If you prefer, you may bow out and not participate at all. Just send me a pm or carrier pigeon with that message.)
@OutdoormanNowActuary
1695814
@Klaymen
@meep
@twig93
@NumericalNeuroticism
@BruteForce
@Mountainhawk
@Actuary321
WishBear
IPD
ALivelySedative
AbstractActuary
Kid_Rock

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Since an error occurred and I can only mention 10 users in a post, here are the rest of the entrants @mentioned:

OutdoormanNowActuary
1695814
Klaymen
meep
twig93
NumericalNeuroticism
BruteForce
Mountainhawk
Actuary321
@WishBear
@IPD
@ALivelySedative
@AbstractActuary
@Kid_Rock

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In!

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I’m ready to lose!

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5

In as well!

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6

I’m In!

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Welcome to our final player, Kid_Rock.

Expect results sometime between now and Sunday evening.

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Here is the opening bracket:

image

As you can see, @AbstractActuary & @ALivelySedative, having only won one throw in the first round of the RPS Spectacular, have the lowest seeds & earned a first round bye.

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Here are the throws from Round 1 and the Losers who are moving on:

image

Worse-luck, next time, to @IPD , @actuary321, @meep, @NumericalNeuroticism , @Mountainhawk , & @OutdoormanNowActuary .

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Round 2 will see four more losers dipping their toes into the winner’s pool:

image

Farewell, to @Kid_Rock , @BruteForce , @twig93 , & @ALivelySedative . You’re too good for this game.

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The semifinal heat will bring the heat to those who rocked when they should’ve papered and scissored when they should’ve rocked:

image

So long to 1695814 & @Klaymen . You did your worst, but it wasn’t bad enough.

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And now, the final match. Who will be the biggest loser – @WishBear, with those fashionable outfits, or @AbstractActuary, with the questionable taste in art?

clicky clicky

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image745×449 3.93 KB

Condolences to @WishBear – You can’t lose them all.

A hearty congratulations to @AbstractActuary . You’ve shown yourself to be the Biggest Loser! Congratulations!

Stay tuned for the results of the Ultimate Loser competition…:popcorn:
…which will probably be tomorrow…I’ve got 2^14 iterations to run.

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Which will hopefully be tonight. I forgot to spin the hamster wheel last night.

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:popcorn:

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I’ve got dinner plans tonight with some of my buddies…about 12 others, I’d say…we’re getting together in some garden…never been there but I hear they specialize in bread and wine.

Anyway, if this game doesn’t get finalized tonight, I have a feeling someone’s going to get crucified over this poor effort.

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Well, the gonkulator is only ~14% through. This is not looking good…and one of the dinner guests left so suddenly. I’ll reset it up to run overnight. I don’t think it will be ready before the morning rooster crows, so don’t hold your breath, but, please, holster your sword.

And since I have the opportunity, I’m going to add two more surprise contestants, since, as I learned last year, those with a bye have a huge advantage.

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Boom!

Thanks for running

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This is not good for a Friday.

We’re up to 2177 rounds completed, and, since we (now) have the full complement of 16 players, I’d like to have 65,536 rounds.

I may move it to the “downstairs” computer instead of this wimpy laptop.

20

:popcorn: (but slowing down the pace)

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The tournament is trudging along like a teenager reluctantly exploring a dusty war time history museum on a family vacation, but let’s check out the leader board:

one cubic decimeter-board, n=1394
Ultimate RPS Loser Losses
1 @UltimateAnyone 106
2 @WishBear 106
3 @OutdoormanNowActuary 104
4 @NumericalNeuroticism 104
5 @Actuary321 101
6 @IPD 97
7 @meep 92
8 @ALivelySedative 82
9 @Kid_Rock 81
10 @AbstractActuary 81
11 twig93 79
12 Klaymen 76
13 BruteForce 74
14 Mountainhawk 74
15 Jables 71
16 1695814 66

We’re only through match 1394, but now that I’ve got the Binary Brainbox correctly coded & running on a dedicated mainframe it’s only a matter of time before we complete all 2^16 rounds. Mind you, it’s a lot of time, but it’s only a matter of a lot of time.

Stay tuned.

1 Like