THE LEAGUE OF POP: How It Works And What The Rules Are

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is one of those situations where what I've written seems ridiculously complex but I think once it gets going will be quite simple and intuitive. We'll see shall we?

Who’s playing

Each league has 12 players. Every week one of them is the home player and the eleven others are the away players. I will be the "Referee" for all games.

The object of play is to uncover a track that the home player i) doesn’t know already and ii) likes a lot.

Actual lists of players, and a schedule, will be posted in a few minutes.

How it works:

Every Monday, a ‘match’ is announced on Poptimists, and the home player introduced. The away players then have until Friday to nominate a track (and gmail it to the Referee if possible.)

The referee compiles the resulting CD over the weekend.

The following Monday, the CD is either physically or electronically mailed to the home player. No indication of track ID, or of which away player nominated it, will be given.

The home player then has until Friday to listen to the CD, and post a review on Poptimists. This review determines the scoring. Once the review is posted, the Referee will edit it revealing the track IDs and nominees.

That’s the basics. Further details follow.

Introducing the home player

Because we don’t all know one another, we’ll need to introduce the home player each week. So if it’s your week as home player coming up, you’ll need to write (and email leagueofpop@googlemail.com) a quick description of yourself, including a list of five of your favourite musical things. This will go up in the post on Monday.

Choosing and sending the tracks

If you’re an away player, you will need to nominate a track for the home player to listen to. There will be a text box for you to do this in the post where the home player is introduced.

If you think I might have trouble finding the track, you will need to email it (or a link to it) to leagueofpop@googlemail.com. Only audio links are allowed – sorry YouTubers.

If two away players submit the same track I will ask the person who submitted it second to choose something else.

Writing The Review (THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT!)

The review you post as home player should discuss the tracks in the order they appear on the CD (for MP3 mailings the first one will have “01” at the start of its filename, and so on) – Track 1, Track 2, etc. You can say as much or as little as you like but you must:

1. Indicate which tracks you already knew.
2. Indicate which of the tracks you know best. (not applicable if you didn’t know any of them!)
3. Rank the tracks you didn't know in order of preference – don’t write your review in preference order, though, put the ranking separately!

These will be what the scores are based on!

Scoring

The home player cannot score in their week.

Away players score as follows:

No track submitted – LOSE.
“Most familiar” track submitted – LOSE (this is to stop people ‘playing for a draw’ and sending, say, a Destiny’s Child single to the Lex)
“Track already known” – DRAW

Remaining tracks will be divided in two according to the home player's ranking.

Track in the top half of the ranking – WIN.
Track in the bottom half of the ranking – LOSE.

It’s 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, 0 for a loss.

This does mean you can submit a track that the home player likes, but still lose. That’s sport though! You can also submit a track that the home player hates slightly less than all the other ones and win.

Does that all make sense?

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hurray! I am quite excited about this!

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

Awesome!

[sbp.livejournal.com]

How do we play along at home? Will someone post the week's tracks somewhere? Then we can all listen to new things.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My current thinking is that after the results each week there's a frenzy of YSI-ing and posting and whatnot. It has to happen after the results though, or the home player may know too much!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It doesn't make 100% sense but I'm sure it will once I read the rules properly, ie not at work. I am looking forward v much to this :D

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The bare essential is that next week you will need to nominate a song that Julio will like.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

this all sounds great now it's all explained properly. look forward to hearing some new stuff this way myself (as a spectator).

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

hmm the familarity handicap thing sounds like TMFD to me, but I can see the reasons for it given the way you've set things up elsewhere.

(My working assumption had been that you would not know from week to week who you were helping to compile a CD for, which would have dealt with attempts to "cheat" just as effectively)

Whatever. Very much looking forward to this! :)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I thought about that, but I think it's more of a challenge this way - otherwise it's just "who has the most interesting record collection", as opposed to "who can target their record collection most effectively"?

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

haha this assumes all poptimists are receptive to 'interesting'.

OK, nitpicking now:
Track already known” – DRAW
I assume this should read: DRAW provided it's liked enough to be ranked in the top half, i.e. if home player knows it AND hates it you lose?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

No - you only rank the ones you don't know. Your version is probably more sensible mind you, so there's time to change the rules before the first game actually starts.

How about a "shoot the moon" option?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

What if the home player knows EVERYTHING they get sent? I don't think you necessarily want to penalize the other players, but perhaps the home player should get 1 or 3 points (or at least such occurences could be counted as "tie-breaker" points at the end of the season) in this case.

I may be over-estimating my fellow poptimists' knowledge, but I would be very surprised if this doesn't occur at least once.

Re: How about a "shoot the moon" option?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

But the goal isn't "make a great mix CD", but "make a surprising mix CD". It would seem obvious that if you think the home player has mastery inside certain genres, you play outside them. Obviously if you can find an r'b track that the Lex hasn't heard, then you deserve the points - but it's a risky strategy!

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

My aim is simple:

Champions League or bust.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

It'll be interesting to see how tactics emerge in this. I guess I will just pick songs I like, and not really pay too much attention to the tastes of the other person.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not sure whether it's a better strategy to pick obscure pop that you feel people are unlikely to know, or mainstream music from a different genre that they are unlikely to know, but more likely to appreciate. Depends on the home team I guess. Actually everything seems to rest on:
a) How "well-listened" (the musical equivalent of well-read") the home team are
b) How receptive to trying new things the home team are

Whatever, it sounds like good fun, and although I'm sure it will get very competitive, it should provide plenty of talking points!

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

The scoring system isn't complicated enough! More fannydangle!

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Does "I have heard this a few times but couldn't tell you the artist or title" count as knowing it?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes. We'll be trusting players' honesty a bit :)

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose the targetted marketing aspect goes both ways - you can only vote tactically if you actually know who's likely to have submitted which tracks.

Tie Break

[koganbot]

You should encourage the home player to guess who submitted which track; these would not count in the points total, but in case of a tie between two or more players, the player with more correct guesses wins the tie-break.

Re: Tie Break

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a possibility, but it's a little unfair on those players who are somewhat unfamiliar with the other people in their league. Tie breaks will probably be based on rankings.