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Effective XBall Squad Rotation

Robbo

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The first thing your team needs to do is evaluate and decide what Xball requires of you, not what each of you bring to the table. It may very well be your team's current style isn't suited to being successful in the format. In which case you need to change cus the format ain't gonna.

(As an aside you may also decide it's a valuable tool to be a LOT more critical in evaluating each player's actual abilities. [I'm projecting here based solely on the language you've used.] I have worked with a lot of real Pro players and I wouldn't rate more than a handful as you have your "stronger" players. Of course I'm also heartless and cruel and never satisfied. Even so, I think it is counter-productive especially at the lower divisions to not set a ridiculously high standard if you're actually trying to both win and improve.)

The rotation issue is easy. 2 lines play. If you have 12 players you have two lines of 6 players. The hard part is putting those lines together because ideally those lines should function like mini-teams over the course of a season.

This is where taking a hard look at what Xball requires helps you out because you aren't making line decisions based on some pre-existing hierarchy in the team or on some perhaps irrelevant qualities or characteristics but on what each line must have as compenent elements in order to compete effectively given the format. There's more to it but that's a start. It may also realistically take you awhile to figure out what really does work and what really is required in your situation and it wouldn't be unreasonable, if sometimes frustrating, for the process to take a whole season.
Hi Paul, I been away for a bit as you know but before I bugger off again on holiday, I am gonna leave you with a conundrum .... and I think you are probably one of a handful of people on this site who could actually answer it.

But the point of this is to let the readers into how competent thinkers address a quite complex paintball problem. I could ask Sergey to answer but I'm pretty sure you'll come up with much the same response as he and so here goes:-

You mention in your last post above, that you try certain arrangements and see what happens which presumably means if it's successful or not.

And so, how do you differentiate between an 'arrangement' (player mix or tactic or whatever) as against a better team just playing better?

I mean, just suppose, you come up with a mix of players or decide upon a working strategy and the team you use it against beats you.
Now what indicators are you looking toward that would help you differentiate the efficacy of your mix / tactic independent of the other team's performance?
The nature of this problem is extremely subtle as I am sure you are aware and it intrigues me to ponder exactly what you could be looking for so as to interpret a game correctly.
Do you see what I am getting at here coz I am not sure I have explained myself well enough?
 

Magic_8ball

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Are you basically asking what allows a coach to judge whether the result of a point is down to your team or the other team?

I have a few ideas myself but couldnt profess to answer this anywhere near fully enough, I just wanted to get the idea clear in my head before Baca replies really :)

Hi Paul, I been away for a bit as you know but before I bugger off again on holiday, I am gonna leave you with a conundrum .... and I think you are probably one of a handful of people on this site who could actually answer it.

But the point of this is to let the readers into how competent thinkers address a quite complex paintball problem. I could ask Sergey to answer but I'm pretty sure you'll come up with much the same response as he and so here goes:-

You mention in your last post above, that you try certain arrangements and see what happens which presumably means if it's successful or not.

And so, how do you differentiate between an 'arrangement' (player mix or tactic or whatever) as against a better team just playing better?

I mean, just suppose, you come up with a mix of players or decide upon a working strategy and the team you use it against beats you.
Now what indicators are you looking toward that would help you differentiate the efficacy of your mix / tactic indepenadant of the other team's performance?
The nature of this probelm is extremely subtle as I am sure you are aware and it intrigues me to ponder exactly what you could be looking for so as to interpret a game correctly.
Do you see what I am getting at here coz I am not sure I have explained myself well enough?
 

Robbo

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Are you basically asking what allows a coach to judge whether the result of a point is down to your team or the other team?

I have a few ideas myself but couldnt profess to answer this anywhere near fully enough, I just wanted to get the idea clear in my head before Baca replies really :)
In a nutshell, sorta, but it's a little more specific than that because my question requires the ability to differentiate not so much your team form your opponent's but the validity of a particular tactic or mix of players.

You have to remember here, within every squad you have an average talent base, this is then imposed upon philosophies of play, tactical approaches and arrangements of players. They are not independent of each other but they are distinct and therefore open to separate analysis.

And even though I asked Baca, anybody can answer Magic, it matters not, well, what does matter is that you think before you type.
Fulfill that criteria and I got no problem with anybody responding :)
 

Magic_8ball

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Okay cool, I think I understand what you're asking now.

If (to start with) we look specifically at tactical arrangements.

Imagine that both teams have an equivalent average talent level, and ignore other differentiating factors such as philosophies of play etc, so that effectively, the only deciding factor as to who wins a point is the game plan chosen by the two teams.

Effectively, on this level of ceteris paribus (all other factors being equal, which is obviously unrealistic), Xball is essentially a game of Paper-Rock-Scissors, isn't it? If your plan involves making an aggressive breakout to distant bunkers (say filling corners off the break, hitting the snake in 1 etc), and the other team opts for a slow breakout, dropping all their guys in the start gate to blitz lanes then effectively you've played "scissors" and they've played "rock", right?

After that point, the chances are, the losing team will re evaluate their strategy, and I suppose the obvious decision would be to focus your breakshooters on shooting their start gate (lets call this the "paper" strategy"), but what if the opposing team chooses to adjust their breakout too, anticipating the change by Team A?

I guess what I'm wondering now, is how do you take the logic of the game above that of Rock-Paper-Scissors, variable by variable? I think by analysing it in this way, Xball can be turned almost into a science?

Does any of the above seem to make any sense to anyone? Robbo? Or am I completely barking up the wrong tree so to speak?
 

Robbo

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Magic, he problem is obviously soluble when you introduce hypotheticals such as average talent bases being equal but you cannot do that when playing against a competitive team in a tournament.

You see the problem now?

You have to do the evaluation within the confines of a competitive game which then introduces factors that seemingly undermine one's ability to draw distinctions between opponent's performance and your own approach, whether tactical or player based.
 

Magic_8ball

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I see what you're saying Pete, all I was trying to do was establish a starting point to build on. I realise that obviously you cant isolate variables satisfactorarily in a competitive tournament, but I thought that perhaps by working through the variables that you'd identified, a clearer overall picture could be drawn :)
 

Robbo

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I see what you're saying Pete, all I was trying to do was establish a starting point to build on. I realise that obviously you cant isolate variables satisfactorarily in a competitive tournament, but I thought that perhaps by working through the variables that you'd identified, a clearer overall picture could be drawn :)

.....theoretically yes but practically no....still, as you say, it's a start.
 

Baca Loco

Ex-Fun Police
Hi Paul, I been away for a bit as you know but before I bugger off again on holiday, I am gonna leave you with a conundrum .... and I think you are probably one of a handful of people on this site who could actually answer it.

But the point of this is to let the readers into how competent thinkers address a quite complex paintball problem. I could ask Sergey to answer but I'm pretty sure you'll come up with much the same response as he and so here goes:-

1--You mention in your last post above, that you try certain arrangements and see what happens which presumably means if it's successful or not.

2--And so, how do you differentiate between an 'arrangement' (player mix or tactic or whatever) as against a better team just playing better?

3--I mean, just suppose, you come up with a mix of players or decide upon a working strategy and the team you use it against beats you.

4--Now what indicators are you looking toward that would help you differentiate the efficacy of your mix / tactic independent of the other team's performance?
The nature of this problem is extremely subtle as I am sure you are aware and it intrigues me to ponder exactly what you could be looking for so as to interpret a game correctly.
Do you see what I am getting at here coz I am not sure I have explained myself well enough?
I'll give an answer and you can decide if I've answered you or not. :D If not I'll try again.
1--actually, to be pedantic I was suggesting the previous posters needed to re-orient how they approached putting their squads together. :) My principle point was that it's very important to take into account what is going to be required of the players in the new format as opposed to what has been accomplished in a different format. Your question takes the next step by asking how, when trying to assess progress and improvement, do you separate out all the potentially conflicting or confusing info. What's important and what's not.

(Briefly back to putting the lines together in the first place. As it's more art than science, as you well know, there are also a myriad of intangibles that also deserve some consideration but I tend to view them more as variables within a more or less constant equation. To give it a mathy sound.;))

2--at one level if the disparity in team ability is sufficiently broad it ought to be reasonably apparent but even so the evaluation process works the same way. The principle means I begin with is execution. How did each individual player perform in a basic paintball skills sense and further how did each line perform their required duties? (Much more detail below.:))

3--to my way of thinking you're mixing two separate and distinct elements here. A bad strategy doesn't necessarily equate to bad players or poor performance so I throw it out of the basic evaluation process except of course when I'm evaluating myself and my performance.:)

4--First, I'm going to separate the players from the tactics because by "tactics" I take you to mean the breakout(s) employed and the goal of a particular or singular point, heavy snake, center push and so on. I am further going to designate the "game plan" as the strategy in a particular match as it is, or ought to be, made up of numerous breakout options and contigencies considered in advance and prepared for a specific opponent. Neither tactics or strategy are immediately relevant. What matters is individual execution; how each individual player performs the paintball essentials.

This is pretty straightforward. Staying alive, gun skills, movement and so on. Breakdowns at this stage typically mean work harder, get more focused. Identifying them is job one because you can't fix what you aren't aware of. They also mean a reduced level of execution at the tactical level because the basic level of individual play isn't being met and that is a pre-requisite. They may also signal a particular player is reaching his/her talent limit.
(There are also, helping to confuse things, a few intangibles here. Things like recognition and timing. Even so they tend to simply be indicators of bumping up against the talent ceiling although even these deficiencies can, to an extent, be trained for.)

Now it's time to take tactics into account because the next step in evaluating execution is assessing how a given line-up of players performed their assigned roles during the points they played.

OFF TOPIC--(Btw, roles are not, to my mind, player specific though they tend to turn out that way, but are better thought of as tactic specific. It's just that most players ultimately demonstrate patterns of strength and weakness that associate with certain roles like snake player, etc. I prefer to think of roles as tactic specific because I think it promotes greater individual player versatility.)

Again, we're not directly concerned with what the other team did. We want to know what we did or didn't do. Here it's necessary to know what was supposed to happen so that if your sweet-spotters shot the wrong lanes or your wire support was looking the wrong way it is readily apparent. This requires charting the breakouts and using some means of recording the players' actions. Videotaping is probably best but the right sort of contemporaneous notes is okay. Proper evaluation at this stage also requires the ability to identify the key components of role execution in order to identify failures of same. Things ranging from accuracy to disciplined lane control, keeping your wire leads alive and supported to containment from positions of advantage and effective close-out practices, etc. And each component more or less important given a particular role in a specific play.
Like before certain failures come to light and once identified can be corrected. Other failures are less susceptible to evaluation.

This is where we consider the other team. A pattern of getting your snake player blown up repeatedly means one of two things; he's really sucking it up or the other guys are doing something unaccounted for. The dividing line between execution breakdown and what the other team is doing may seem hard to grasp but in practice it's not really that indistinct.
At the end of the day most often the failures are of the execution sort. (This will be especially true at any level of play below Pro and not uncommon at the Pro level either.) The decision left to be made is what is the appropriate fix. Most of the time using this method identifying the problem suggests the corrective. Sometimes, however, when there are breakdowns of tactical execution that cannot be confidently identified we enter the realm of the intangibles and have to once again think about re-ordering our lines to alter the mix. Sometimes its personalities, sometimes it can be trust or comfort issues, oftentimes stuff like that goes unspoken, sometimes it's style and rythym (which is another whole discussion), etc.

Alternatively, if the assessment is the individual and team execution is at least on par with the competition but you're still losing then you know it's time to reassess your tactics and strategy.

At any rate does that begin to address your query, Pete?
 

Robbo

Owner of this website
Jul 5, 2001
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I'll give an answer and you can decide if I've answered you or not. :D If not I'll try again.
1--actually, to be pedantic I was suggesting the previous posters needed to re-orient how they approached putting their squads together. :) My principle point was that it's very important to take into account what is going to be required of the players in the new format as opposed to what has been accomplished in a different format. Your question takes the next step by asking how, when trying to assess progress and improvement, do you separate out all the potentially conflicting or confusing info. What's important and what's not.

(Briefly back to putting the lines together in the first place. As it's more art than science, as you well know, there are also a myriad of intangibles that also deserve some consideration but I tend to view them more as variables within a more or less constant equation. To give it a mathy sound.;))

2--at one level if the disparity in team ability is sufficiently broad it ought to be reasonably apparent but even so the evaluation process works the same way. The principle means I begin with is execution. How did each individual player perform in a basic paintball skills sense and further how did each line perform their required duties? (Much more detail below.:))

3--to my way of thinking you're mixing two separate and distinct elements here. A bad strategy doesn't necessarily equate to bad players or poor performance so I throw it out of the basic evaluation process except of course when I'm evaluating myself and my performance.:)

4--First, I'm going to separate the players from the tactics because by "tactics" I take you to mean the breakout(s) employed and the goal of a particular or singular point, heavy snake, center push and so on. I am further going to designate the "game plan" as the strategy in a particular match as it is, or ought to be, made up of numerous breakout options and contigencies considered in advance and prepared for a specific opponent. Neither tactics or strategy are immediately relevant. What matters is individual execution; how each individual player performs the paintball essentials.

This is pretty straightforward. Staying alive, gun skills, movement and so on. Breakdowns at this stage typically mean work harder, get more focused. Identifying them is job one because you can't fix what you aren't aware of. They also mean a reduced level of execution at the tactical level because the basic level of individual play isn't being met and that is a pre-requisite. They may also signal a particular player is reaching his/her talent limit.
(There are also, helping to confuse things, a few intangibles here. Things like recognition and timing. Even so they tend to simply be indicators of bumping up against the talent ceiling although even these deficiencies can, to an extent, be trained for.)

Now it's time to take tactics into account because the next step in evaluating execution is assessing how a given line-up of players performed their assigned roles during the points they played.

OFF TOPIC--(Btw, roles are not, to my mind, player specific though they tend to turn out that way, but are better thought of as tactic specific. It's just that most players ultimately demonstrate patterns of strength and weakness that associate with certain roles like snake player, etc. I prefer to think of roles as tactic specific because I think it promotes greater individual player versatility.)

Again, we're not directly concerned with what the other team did. We want to know what we did or didn't do. Here it's necessary to know what was supposed to happen so that if your sweet-spotters shot the wrong lanes or your wire support was looking the wrong way it is readily apparent. This requires charting the breakouts and using some means of recording the players' actions. Videotaping is probably best but the right sort of contemporaneous notes is okay. Proper evaluation at this stage also requires the ability to identify the key components of role execution in order to identify failures of same. Things ranging from accuracy to disciplined lane control, keeping your wire leads alive and supported to containment from positions of advantage and effective close-out practices, etc. And each component more or less important given a particular role in a specific play.
Like before certain failures come to light and once identified can be corrected. Other failures are less susceptible to evaluation.

This is where we consider the other team. A pattern of getting your snake player blown up repeatedly means one of two things; he's really sucking it up or the other guys are doing something unaccounted for. The dividing line between execution breakdown and what the other team is doing may seem hard to grasp but in practice it's not really that indistinct.
At the end of the day most often the failures are of the execution sort. (This will be especially true at any level of play below Pro and not uncommon at the Pro level either.) The decision left to be made is what is the appropriate fix. Most of the time using this method identifying the problem suggests the corrective. Sometimes, however, when there are breakdowns of tactical execution that cannot be confidently identified we enter the realm of the intangibles and have to once again think about re-ordering our lines to alter the mix. Sometimes its personalities, sometimes it can be trust or comfort issues, oftentimes stuff like that goes unspoken, sometimes it's style and rythym (which is another whole discussion), etc.

Alternatively, if the assessment is the individual and team execution is at least on par with the competition but you're still losing then you know it's time to reassess your tactics and strategy.

At any rate does that begin to address your query, Pete?

Apart from changing 'rhythm' to 'momentum', I pretty much agree with everything you suggest.
Cool!

Hmmmm, I wonder what Sergey would say.......
I can tell you this, I spoke to him a week or so ago and he was talking about when he went 5-0 down to the Ironmen at the last PSP, he said, 'Pete, when we got 5 behind, I went away and analyzed the data, when i returned, there was no way we could lose if everybody followed my plan, it was impossible for them (Ironmen) to win once I had worked out what was going on'.

Now Sergey isn't arrogant in any way, shape or form but he is supremely confident in his own ability...and when he told me this, it impressed the sh!t outa me I can tell ya.
He then asked me to accompany him to the next PSP event (or maybe even World Cup if I go) to stay with him throughout all their games and witness what he does as the games unfold.
It could well be a unique opportunity to witness and report upon one of our sport's greatest minds, anyway, enough about me, i might report on Sergey's mind too :)

I'm tempted to take him up on his offer if only to see what the hell he does and then report back via the pages of PGi or on here.
 

Baca Loco

Ex-Fun Police
Apart from changing 'rhythm' to 'momentum', I pretty much agree with everything you suggest.
Cool!

I'm tempted to take him up on his offer if only to see what the hell he does and then report back via the pages of PGi or on here.
Maybe it's purely semantics but I tend to think of momentum as a wave of confidence bordering on certainty within the team they can do no wrong and consequently play that way and it is a self-fulfilling state of mind as is the emotional flip-side of being on the reverse end of the momentum scale.
Whereas rhythm (I can never spell that one properly, thanks ;)) means to me both a pace of play and a compatibility among the line's players. For example, one of the breakdown's Image had in Tampa--in my estimation--is that the current squad isn't fully equipped to play to Chris's style or rhythm. He acts and expects the rest of the team to be on his page or able to read along with him and act in concert with what he does. They aren't there yet and it tells in their results despite the fact the have some great players.

Would love to see the result of your time with Sergey and would be nice to have you over for Cup.