31 December 2011

Ultimate explanation of the Head to Head battles


Due to the previous Head to Head battles explanation by tetrismaster becoming somewhat obsolete, I've felt obligated to create a new explanation.

What are the Head to Head battles?
The Head to Head battles, also known as H2H or Head to Head, are a WhatPulse-based competition organised by Kongpulse. The H2H goes for 25 week-long rounds from either January to June or July to December. Each round consists of groups of "battles" between users separated into two divisions. Each battle consists of two users typing as many keys as they can in a week in order to win this battle.

Divisions
The divisions of the Head to Head battles are the Primera Division and the Segunda Division. Each division tends to have around 20 users. The Primera Division could be described as being much more of a competitive division with a couple of users who type over 1,000,000 keys per week; whereas the Segunda Division is a more relaxed division. Even though there are only two divisions nowdadays as of 2011, if some season we get around 45 sign-ups, we might create a third division; likewise, if we have around 64 or 72 sign-ups we might create a fourth division.

Time of start and end of rounds
Each round lasts seven days and goes from the first Saturday at 7:30 am UTC (2:30 am EST; 5:30 pm AEST) to the second Saturday at 7:30 am also.

Points system and tables
The winner of each division is determined by the number of points they have won by the end of the season. For every match won, a user gets three points; for every match drawn, a user gets one point; for every match lost, a user gets zero points. A win is defined as defeating the opponent they're against that round, i.e., having typed more keys than the opponent. Draws tend to not occur often, as they involve both users typing the same amount of keys; all of the draws so far have been of two users not having pulsed that week.

To make things clearer, every round in the H2H posts at the bottom we have two tables of both divisions. Below is an example of a table, the table used in Round 21 of the July–December Segunda Division.



In the table, "Pos" means "position", "Pld" means "played" (number of matches played), "W" means "wins", "D" means "draws", "L" means "losses", "KF" means "keys for" (keys typed by the user throughout the season), "KA" means "keys against" (keys typed against the user throughout the season), "Dif" means "difference" (difference in ranked in comparison to the previous round) and "Pts" means "points".

Restrictions on teams of users
The Head to Head battles are open to not only users from the Kongregate team, but from any WhatPulse team. Whether you're from Bronypulse, Kongregate or any other team, you will be allowed to be in the H2H and that will not be a burden to your participation.

The only actual rule of the H2H
The only real rule of the Head to Head battles is that pulses will be cut short if not pulsed within the week round. If a pulse lasts over a week the pulse keys will be calculated in a different way: the keys of the first pulse within the week will be divided by the number of days the pulse lasted and this will be multiplied by the number of days or hours of this pulse that were within the duration of the round. This method is used because of the unfairness of counting the entire amount of keys—usually greater than they'd habitually be if the pulse last a week. This does not necessarily mean that we disencourage pulses that last over a week or that you are required to pulse at least once a week, but it is meant to not give unfair wins and advantages to users typing less often than once a week.

Here is an example of the aforementioned if this rule was not used:

Battle 1500:
Jaume vs Sellyme.
Jaume typed 6,666,666 keys and Sellyme typed 7,000,000 keys.

Start and end of pulses: Jaume: 15 March to 22 March; Selly: 2 March to 22 March. Amount of keys in pulses: Jaume: 3 pulses of 2,222,222 each; Selly: 1 pulse of 7,000,000 keys.

As Selly's pulse began much before Jaume's, this is not fair to Jaume as he pulsed his pulse legitimately within one week, the round's duration. In order to prevent this problem, the battle between the two would end in the following way:

Battle 1500:
Jaume vs Sellyme.
Jaume typed 6,666,666 keys and Sellyme typed 2,450,000 keys.

Selly ended up getting 2,450,000 keys the following way: 7,000,000 (keys pulsed) divided by 20 days (number of days the pulses lasted) multiplied by 7 days (the number of those keys within the round) equalling 2,450,000 keys thus making Selly lose against Jaume.

What to do if you want to join during the season
There's not too much we can do about that as it would cause the disruption of the league system. Instead, Jaume would add you to his H2H Excel spreadsheet and you will be notified during the next sign-ups of the H2H. If many users are awaiting for the arrival of the new season who're not in any league, we might create a little unofficial league between users who've not signed up. An example of the latter is the end of the January–June 2011 season in which we ended up having a league composed of aaaaaa123456789, hilaryam89, MicroGamer15, Mysterymason, RoSi_xD, SilentSand and Yotoovimestari.

Any other queries?
If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask us in the thread, via email, via WhatPulse message or via Kongregate message.

Head to Head battles League: Play-off for Primera





Play-off for Primera
This week we shall have the play-off between the 15th (4th last) of the July–December 2011 Primera Division and the 5th of the July–December 2011 Segunda Division! The winner of this match shall be in the January–June 2012 Primera Division! Good luck to both and happy new year! Note that VforVendetta was previously known as Live2Die; from now on we shall be referring to him as VforVendetta.
Battle 1086:
VforVendetta vs hilaryam89.


Sign-ups for next season
The sign-ups for the next season of both the Head to Head battles League and the Head to Head battles Cup are open to everyone. Right now we have 34 confirmed sign-ups and 4 unconfirmed sign-ups. If you'd like to sign up for next season you can either whisper Jaume, message me on WhatPulse, say so in the WhatPulse thread or even email Jaume at jaume@whatpulse.org! So you have until 6 January 2012 to do so. Also, if you're not sure about what the Head to Head battles exactly are, check this useful guide.

Top 60 users sorted by Keys per Second

So some people have been bugging me to make a blog update... well, here you go. (Oh, and if you're wondering, the reason I did the Top 60 instead of the Top 50 is so that I could include myself :P)

Top 60 users sorted by Keys per Second


1. sellyme: 1.92 keys per second
2. WiiPlayer113: 1.03 kps
3. ExplodingToaster: 0.94 kps
4. <<---Baal--->>: 0.9 kps
5. Yotoovimestari: 0.7 kps
6. Cryptosporidian: 0.37 kps
7. evilducks: 0.35 kps
8. Ducklette: 0.34 kps
8. Obelisco: 0.34 kps
10. Obsolete386: 0.33 kps
11. HappyAlcoholic: 0.32 kps
11. SilentSand: 0.32 kps
13. Phoenix00017: 0.31 kps
14. LuisN: 0.3 kps
15. KadieLS03: 0.29 kps
16. 7smartone7: 0.27 kps
17. Kyru: 0.25 kps
17. Nab =P: 0.25 kps
17. Uzarname: 0.25 kps
20. gatherer818: 0.24 kps
21. Nikoleta: 0.23 kps
21. VforVendetta: 0.23 kps
23. dl1000v: 0.22 kps
23. PR2_STORY: 0.22 kps
25. Illucoran: 0.21 kps
25. Jaume: 0.21 kps
25. TatharNuar: 0.21 kps
28. Makilio: 0.2 kps
28. storageheater: 0.2 kps
30. IAmTheCandyman: 0.19 kps
30. Lanthus: 0.19 kps
32. blood18: 0.18 kps
33. moses78: 0.17 kps
34. Gama11: 0.16 kps
34. Rivian: 0.16 kps
34. shawchert: 0.16 kps
37. Chippy01: 0.15 kps
37. Fortray: 0.15 kps
37. mupet0000: 0.15 kps
37. racefan12: 0.15 kps
41. FuzzyBacon: 0.14 kps
41. notverygood: 0.14 kps
41. ValorduX: 0.14 kps
44. CiF: 0.13 kps
44. Therealtahu: 0.13 kps
46. LunaEclipse: 0.11 kps
46. Trunkkis: 0.11 kps
48. D.J.: 0.1 kps
48. Inquizitor: 0.1 kps
48. TwisterBE: 0.1 kps
51. aenh: 0.09 kps
51. neotype: 0.09 kps
51. Pereking: 0.09 kps
54. ItBeNickYo: 0.08 kps
54. Juze: 0.08 kps
54. schlefty: 0.08 kps
54. Sylicas: 0.08 kps
54. x_Pyro_x: 0.08 kps
59. Sylencia: 0.07 kps
59. Travuersa: 0.07 kps

Here is the same information in chart form:



Fun fact: Assuming the Kongregate WhatPulse team was started on December 17, 2007 (the date of the WhatPulse thread's OP), the Kongregate team as a whole has averaged 17.35 keys per second!

And just to put sellyme's kps in perspective, it is the equivalent of typing 23 words per minute constantly (24 hours a day) for over 2.25 years! Impressive!