AI Olympic Ultimate

Glacial frisbee: a white disc on a white glacier in the white fog... You should try it sometime.

Have you ever thrown a dinner plate across the room in a fit of rage and seen it smash satisyingly into hundreds of little pieces? Maybe that's just me. Oh, and don't get too excited because you can't do that in this event either. However, you can use a similar technique in a game of Ultimate.

When:1:00pm on Thursday the 27th
Where:Johnson Center Indoor Infield

That's right -- we will be playing indoor ultimate (so as to avoid the scenarios depicted in the images) and just to make things interesting (and so that no one is ever not playing), we will be playing as pairs of teams like we did last year.

Rules

Glacial frisbee: a white disc on a white glacier in the white fog... You should try it sometime.

For those of you who have never played before, the game is exceedingly simple. You run around and pass the disc to each other. The person with the disc cannot move. You score a point if you catch the disc while in an endzone. An incomplete pass results in a turnover. For more information, you can read Ultimate in Ten Simple Rules or enjoy The Complete Ninth Edition Rules from the UPA. You may also want to read the rules clarifications I assembled if you like to know every last rule before playing.

For the purposes of indoor ultimate and the AI Olympics, we will make a few rule changes:

Major rule changes:
- We will play 6-on-6 (as opposed to 7-on-7)
- The stall count will be changed from 10 to 7 (i.e. from 9 seconds to 6 seconds)
- The field will be smaller: for those familiar with Johnson's Indoor Field, we will play with the black lines as side boundaries, the far back yellow line as the back endzone boundaries and the inner (i.e. nearer to the back line) yellow line as the front of the endzone boundary. These will be clearly marked with cones.
- We will play that the disc is moved up to the front of the endzone on a turnover or pull in the endzone.
- We will not play with "bricks."
Rest-time rule changes:
- There will be no time-outs
- There is no half-time (no wind or sun effects either to change side advantages indoors)
Safety rules:
- If a player runs into the curtain surrounding the field, he/she will have to sit out for the remainder of the game. We do NOT want to injure any runners.
Game Scoring:
- Games will be played to 11 points (win by 2)
- There will be a time cap at 25 minutes. This means that after 25 minutes, if neither team has both scored the required 11 points and are ahead by 2 points, a score cap of one point more than the greater of the two team scores will be invoked. The first team to reach this cap (regardless of by how many points they lead) wins. This rule is only "checked" between points (thus if the 25 minute time cap is reached in the middle of a point, the conditions and point cap are calculated after the point is concluded).
- Pairs of teams may play with as few as five players if necessary. Pairs of teams with fewer than five players ready to play at the start of the game will forfeit the game.

Tournament System:

We will play a round-robin tournament consisting of three games (each pair of teams will play each other). The schedule is as follows:

Time	Side 1	Side 2
1:00pm	practice	and warm-up
1:15pm	Loose Cannons and Bodies	Giant Sucking Sounds and Donalds
1:50pm	Giant Sucking Sounds and Bodies	Loose Cannons and Donalds
2:25pm	Donalds and Bodies	Loose Cannons and Giant Sucking Sounds

Olympic Scoring

Each team will accumulate a total team score which will go towards the AI Olympic scoring (next paragraph). For each game, the two teams on the winning side will receive 10 points. In addition, for each game, both teams on a side will receive 1 point for every player on that side who catches a pass, an additional point for every player who catches a score, and another point for each player who makes an assist (throws for a score).

For purposes of the AI Olympic Games, the teams are ranked according the total team score and Olympic Points are awarded as usual: 5, 3, 2, and 1. There is a single exception for any team that fails to play a single game. A team that fails to play a single game will receive 0 points regardless of placing. The extra unassigned points will remain unassigned.

(thanks to Christian for developing such a good page last year that I hardly had to change it.)

Mike Oltmans (moltmans@ai.mit.edu)

Last modified: Wed Jan 26 18:07:11 2000