JROBOTS Challenges
[2003] [2002] [2001] [2000]

Final Results

Cadets' League
Single (3290 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 GulleFjun * FlameBall DeadDuck bohan Dragon Ciaky Phalanx DirtyCoward Ajax * OneEyedW Shark Touche Platoon Edge * Cruel * NumeroSette * NumeroQuattro Leech * NumeroSei * NumeroOtto * NumeroCinque * Test 512/620 39/53 435/635 362/557 346/566 290/549 220/471 228/499 168/426 26/66 165/432 161/451 161/458 104/336 17/66 1/4 4/16 49/315 2/21 0/0 0/39 0/0 82,58% 73,58% 68,50% 64,99% 61,13% 52,82% 46,71% 45,69% 39,44% 39,39% 38,19% 35,70% 35,15% 30,95% 25,76% 25,00% 25,00% 15,56% 9,52% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00%	Double (3269 maches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 GulleFjun * FlameBall bohan Touche Dragon Ciaky Shark DeadDuck DirtyCoward Phalanx * NumeroOtto Ajax Platoon Edge Leech * Cruel * NumeroQuattro * OneEyedW * NumeroSette * NumeroSei * NumeroCinque * Test 623/655 22/30 400/565 281/499 300/565 250/509 225/478 246/556 220/510 207/480 3/7 150/411 137/395 100/363 91/348 8/65 2/18 4/38 0/1 0/12 0/31 0/0 95,11% 73,33% 70,80% 56,31% 53,10% 49,12% 47,07% 44,24% 43,14% 43,13% 42,86% 36,50% 34,68% 27,55% 26,15% 12,31% 11,11% 10,53% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00%	Team (2422 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 GulleFjun bohan Shark * FlameBall Ciaky Phalanx DirtyCoward Touche * NumeroSette Platoon Leech Ajax DeadDuck Edge * Cruel Dragon * OneEyedW * NumeroOtto * NumeroQuattro * NumeroSei * NumeroCinque * Test 696/808 309/794 265/824 5/16 229/825 191/812 175/753 157/716 3/14 143/705 108/696 59/627 41/596 20/574 4/130 16/529 1/77 0/15 0/33 0/51 0/92 0/1 86,14% 38,92% 32,16% 31,25% 27,76% 23,52% 23,24% 21,93% 21,43% 20,28% 15,52% 9,41% 6,88% 3,48% 3,08% 3,02% 1,30% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00%
Yellow-colored robots were promoted to Veterans Pink-colored robots were removed from the arena * the robot didn't reach the N/4 limit

Comments

During this month, two prizes were going to be awarded to the new winners of the Double and Team categories of the Cadets' League. Freshly printed new CND dollars banknotes for a total amount of 30$ for each category were the prizes for each category (CND=Canadian Dollar). I announced some days ago that the prizes for the Cadets' League were assigned to the author of the great GulleFjun, who got a triple victory. Then I discovered that Krippe (the author of GulleFjun) and Kristian (the author of Snutteplutt, a good jrobot promoted at the end of the November tournament) are the same player! I don't know if the rules of the prizes reserved to pure novices were infringed in any way, so I leave the decision to Samuel, the owner of the prizes. Read the future messages on the javajousters mailing-list (http://www.onelist.com/group/javajousters) for more details.

However GulleFjun achieved a triple vicoty with very high percentages and it is going to show all its valor in the Veterans' League. Its brother Snutteplutt was degraded instead from veteran to cadet. Other promoted jrobots are, as usual, DeadDuck, bohan, Dragon, Ciaky, Touche and Shark. No pure novice succeeded in the enterprise to promote his jrobot.
I have some hope in FlameBall that got good percentages, but didn't reach the requested limit of matches played because it was uploaded too late. During the next tournament it is going to show its real value. Other jrobots that survived in the Cadets' League are: Phalanx, DirtyCoward, NumeroSette, Platoon, Leech, Ajax, Edge, Cruel, OneEyedW, NumeroOtto and NumeroQuattro, while Test, NumeroCinque and NumeroSei were removed.
I always ask myself why some players upload their test jrobots in the online arena, but I can't find an answer to this question.

Now let's consider the Veterans' League. An announced event has happened: Tango won the tournament in the Single category, while IonStorm achieved a double victory in Double and Team category. IonStorm AND Tango are now the strongest jrobots in the arena and a good third is Starkle: All the other jrobots follow them. Confirmed veterans coming from the Cadets' League are DOOM and Stately. Other confirmed jrobots are, as usual, Mouth, KillerBees and Headhunter.
Vampire, MarukoV4 and Jimbo were degraded instead and, unfortunately, even two jrobots coming from the Cadets' League were degraded: The already cited Snutteplutt and Berserk that won the Team challenge in the past tournament. They have chance to be promoted again.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the January 2004 JROBOTS Challenge (January 7^th-28^th 2003) aka Four Years of JROBOTS Challenges!

Final Results

Cadets' League
Single (3154 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Stately Jimbo Berserk MarukoV4 Vampire Snutteplutt * Cruel Ajax Edge RoboTard Leech Cuddles 393/485 525/743 383/601 405/654 395/677 341/626 56/141 219/554 193/568 108/442 96/428 40/389 81,03% 70,66% 63,73% 61,93% 58,35% 54,47% 39,72% 39,53% 33,98% 24,43% 22,43% 10,28%	Double (3153 maches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Jimbo Stately Vampire Berserk MarukoV4 Snutteplutt Ajax Edge Leech * Cruel RoboTard Cuddles 518/680 397/540 438/691 395/645 391/649 369/636 152/491 137/462 152/519 35/143 101/461 68/389 76,18% 73,52% 63,39% 61,24% 60,25% 58,02% 30,96% 29,65% 29,29% 24,48% 21,91% 17,48%	Team (2717 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Berserk Snutteplutt Jimbo Stately MarukoV4 Leech Vampire Ajax Cuddles * Cruel Edge RoboTard 601/1093 522/1174 479/1135 317/885 321/1134 167/961 170/979 49/788 45/831 10/281 26/821 10/786 54,99% 44,46% 42,20% 35,82% 28,31% 17,38% 17,36% 6,22% 5,42% 3,56% 3,17% 1,27%
Yellow-colored robots were promoted to Veterans Pink-colored robots were removed from the arena * the robot didn't reach the N/4 limit

Comments

Finally one of the prizes awarded by Samuel was assigned. My compliments to Stately who won this month's Single tournament in the Cadets' League. Its author MUST contact Samuel on the javajousters mailing-list (http://www.onelist.com/group/javajousters) to send a valid email address and decide the best way to receive the prize.

During this month, two prizes were going to be awarded to the new winners of the Single and Double categories of the Cadets' League. Freshly printed new CND dollars banknotes for a total amount of 30$ for each category were the prize (CND=Canadian Dollar). Stately won the Single category but not the Double one because of another great performance of the old Jimbo, so he's going to receive only one of the prizes. I think that Samuel wants to reassign this month's prize again to new Double winners, but I'll wait a confirm on the mailing-list.
Anyway, Samuel already announced a new challenge for new players: the new winner of the Team Category will earn freshly printed 10 and 20 CND banknotes, that's the reason why the new tournament is also know as "A Magnificent Eight!". This month a great Berserk won. It is a new jrobot simply uploaded too soon. I'm really sorry for its author but no prizes were assigned to Team category this month. Anyway, Berserk earned a promotion to the Veterans' League and I'm sure it's going to make great things there.

Even this month some old jrobots are promoted to the Veterans' League while others come back to the Cadets' one and there are very good news: The prizes awarded by Samuel favoured great enhancements in the level of new entries and finally we have new strong jrobots to play with.
The jrobots promoted to the Veterans' League are:

1. Stately, the new winner of the Single category prize "Lonely Ranger!"
2. Berserk, the new winner of the Team category
3. Snutteplutt, a new jrobot with good performances in Team category
4. Jimbo, the winner of the Double category, an old jrobot but still very valid
5. then follow the well known MarukoV4 and Vampire.

Now let's move to the Veterans' side. I must confirm that a new STAR is born and its name is Starkle! It almost reached the great percentages of IonStorm and it made a serious attempt to stop the triple-victories sequence of the best jrobot of all times. Something like that already happened when Tango appeared months ago... it's a great event for the game and I'm sure that the December tournament is going to show other surprising results.
The other confirmed veterans are: DOOM, a strong new competitor, Tango, Headhunter, KillerBees and Mouth, while IonStorm got another triple-victory. The degraded jrobots are: bohan, Dragon, DeadDuck, Ciaky, DirtyCoward, Touche, Phalanx, Platoon, Shark. The novices of the next tournament will have a lot of jrobots to play with.

Now some news and an explanation. I'm going to remove the class size limit for the game. Now the limit for Java class files is 20Kb and the strongest jrobots reached that limit a long time ago. To make life easier to players, there is no limit now except the physical limit for Java class files that I think it's fixed to 64Kb. If anyone has valid motivation to remove not the limit, send them to the mailing-list. Thank you!

Finally the explanation: The players may have read on the mailing-list a discussion about a bug in the on-line arena. That bug was caused by a mistake of mine in translating the new JROBOTS arena written by Samuel (thank you again Samuel!) that includes features for a better management of the matches. He wrote the off-line version of the new arena and I rewrote it for the on-line applet but... I completely forgot an important check introduced by Samuel, so the matches forced to break gave unpredictable results. Such a bug assigned a victory at random when visitors exited the page of the on-line applet, so strongest jrobots were penalized in their percentages in favour of weaker jrobots. The problem was more evident in the Veteran's placing list because of the low percentages of IonStorm.
When Samuel found my bug, he immediately fixed it and now both the arenae (on-line and off-line) work the same way. I decided not to reset the matches played during the first week of the tournament, because their number was not so high. During the last weeks of the tournament, the matches were regular as the percentages of IonStorm testify.
I'm really sorry for what happened and the next tournament will be regular from the beginning.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the December 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (December 3^rd-31^st 2003) aka A Magnificent Eight!

Remember that the new winner of the Team Mode will receive freshly printed new CND banknotes for a total amount of 30$. Read past news for more details.

Final Results

Cadets' League
Single (1307 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 DeadDuck bohan Dragon Ciaky Phalanx Platoon DirtyCoward Touche Shark Cruel Leech RoboTard * Raven Ajax Looser * Awoe * FoxFire 172/233 185/251 169/244 139/210 104/191 102/199 88/186 84/192 79/190 67/166 44/157 48/172 3/14 20/107 3/85 0/8 0/9 73,82% 73,71% 69,26% 66,19% 54,45% 51,26% 47,31% 43,75% 41,58% 40,36% 28,03% 27,91% 21,43% 18,69% 3,53% 0,00% 0,00%	Double (1301 maches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Dragon bohan Shark Touche Ciaky Phalanx DeadDuck DirtyCoward Platoon Leech Cruel Ajax RoboTard * Raven Looser * Awoe * FoxFire 160/226 173/247 124/192 133/208 131/219 106/196 92/194 93/200 79/171 74/191 55/164 43/142 37/144 1/13 0/80 0/8 0/7 70,80% 70,04% 64,58% 63,94% 59,82% 54,08% 47,42% 46,50% 46,20% 38,74% 33,54% 30,28% 25,69% 7,69% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00%	Team (1096 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Shark bohan Ciaky Phalanx DirtyCoward Platoon Touche Leech DeadDuck Ajax Dragon Cruel RoboTard * Raven Looser * Awoe * FoxFire 182/344 152/356 144/357 130/370 117/339 99/301 86/340 67/298 52/301 31/295 17/263 14/261 5/235 0/26 0/247 0/28 0/23 52,91% 42,70% 40,34% 35,14% 34,51% 32,89% 25,29% 22,48% 17,28% 10,51% 6,46% 5,36% 2,13% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00%
Yellow-colored robots were promoted to Veterans Pink-colored robots were removed from the arena * the robot didn't reach the N/4 limit

Comments

This month a first prize was going to be awarded to the new winner of the Single Mode. Freshly printed new 5 and 10 dollars CND banknotes were the prize (CND=Canadian Dollar). Unfortunately no new players placed their jrobots at the first position of the Cadets' League: the winner was DeadDuck. I think that the owner of the prizes wants to reassign them again to new Single winners, but I'll wait for a confirm on the mailing list.
In the meantime, there is a new challenge for new players: the new winner of the Double Mode will earn a freshly printed 20 CND banknote. This month won my old Dragon, but I hope that a new player will win the next month tournament.
Remember that during the December Challenge the new winner of the Team Mode will earn freshly printed new 10 and 20 CND banknotes!

The Cadets' tournament demonstates that a bunch of jrobots are too strong for the Cadets' League, but past tournaments show that they are too weak for the Veterans' League. The jrobots promoted are: DeadDuck, bohan, Dragon, Ciaky, Phalanx, Platoon, Shark, Touche and DirtyCoward. I expect that most of them (especially mine) will be back at the end of the month.
Then the confirmed jrobots are: Ajax, RoboTard, Leech and Cruel. I hope that their authors can improve them to try a future promotion.
Finally, the removed jrobots are: FoxFire, Awoe, Looser and Raven. Their percentages were to low to make them survive.

On the Veterans' side there are two great confirms: DOOM and Starkle. Now they are real veterans and I think they are going to stay there for a long time. A great news is that the author of Starkle wants to share the source of his creature with other people. I don't think it's a good idea during tournaments with prizes for newcomers: I forsee a lot of Starkle clones in the Cadets' arena, but we can discuss the topic on the mailing list. Anyway, thank you "hats" for your jrobot!
The other confirmed jrobots are, as usual: IonStorm (triple victory again), Tango, Headhunter, KillerBees and Mouth. The degraded jrobots are: Vampire, MarukoV4 and Jimbo. The latter are again too weak for the Veterans' Leangue, but too storng for the Cadets' one. It seems that there is the need for an intermediate league ;-)

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the November 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (November 5^th-26^th 2003) aka Double Duet!

Remember that the new winner of the Double Mode will receive one freshly printed new 20 CND banknote. Read past news for more details.

Final Results

Cadets' League
Single (445 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Jimbo MarukoV4 Vampire Ciaky RoboTard Leech * semtex1 * Rabbit 161/181 97/158 81/162 63/134 27/105 13/88 3/38 0/24 88,95% 61,39% 50,00% 47,01% 25,71% 14,77% 7,89% 0,00%	Double (476 maches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Jimbo Vampire MarukoV4 Ciaky Leech RoboTard * semtex1 * Rabbit 168/186 121/207 93/187 68/162 15/84 9/83 2/28 0/15 90,32% 58,45% 49,73% 41,98% 17,86% 10,84% 7,14% 0,00%	Team (373 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Jimbo MarukoV4 Vampire Leech Ciaky RoboTard semtex1 Rabbit 160/229 80/256 64/230 40/229 28/213 1/193 0/70 0/72 69,87% 31,25% 27,83% 17,47% 13,15% 0,52% 0,00% 0,00%
Yellow-colored robots were promoted to Veterans Pink-colored robots were removed from the arena * the robot didn't reach the N/4 limit

Comments

Finally we have got two new Veterans: They are DOOM and Starkle. These two bots were promoted during the last month tournament from Cadets to Veterans and now they succeeded in surviving the strong competition of old aged Veterans. They both reached the requested percentages in all the three categories so they prove them very versatile even if not as strong as IonStorm, Tango, Headhunter and Mouth in specific categories. In particular DOOM beat KillerBees: Not a simple task! All the other promoted bots fell again to the Cadets' League. In particular bohan was degraded only for a few lacking percentage points.

IonStorm break the consecutive triple victories record of KillerBees. Its percentages can't be compared to those of the other bots: An alien coming from another planet! Tango, Headhunter, Mouth and KillerBees still hold their positions. They are waiting for new bots, but only Jimbo, MarukoV4 and Vampire were promoted this month. The next tournament awards newcomers with prizes (thanks to Samuel), so I think that within two months new cannon fodder will be available to increase the Veterans' percentages ;-)

Promotions apart, semtex1 and Rabbit were removed from the arena because they didn't reach the requested percentages. While Ciaky, RoboTard and Leech are still there to act as sparring partners of new bots.
A question: Why does people continue to upload Rabbit? I can't find an answer!

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the October 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (October 4^th-25^th 2003) aka Lonely Ranger!

Remember that the new winner of the Single Mode will receive freshly printed new 5 and 10 dollars CND banknotes. Read past news for more details.

Final Results

Cadets' League
Single (2038 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 DOOM Starkle bohan Dragon DeadDuck DirtyCoward Phalanx Touche Platoon Shark RoboTard Leech Redstorm 198/265 99/139 278/426 251/415 226/376 183/356 172/359 147/312 171/377 117/309 83/276 73/257 40/209 74,72% 71,22% 65,26% 60,48% 60,11% 51,40% 47,91% 47,12% 45,36% 37,86% 30,07% 28,40% 19,14%	Double (2051 maches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Starkle DOOM Dragon bohan Touche DirtyCoward Shark Phalanx Platoon DeadDuck Leech RoboTard Redstorm 115/136 196/265 274/432 262/426 183/353 191/371 186/370 195/394 178/392 126/297 109/308 31/217 5/145 84,56% 73,96% 63,43% 61,50% 51,84% 51,48% 50,27% 49,49% 45,41% 42,42% 35,39% 14,29% 3,45%	Team (1743 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 DOOM Starkle Shark bohan DirtyCoward Touche Platoon Phalanx Leech DeadDuck Dragon RoboTard Redstorm 242/432 129/243 281/682 221/650 193/659 167/613 161/596 165/621 125/609 33/466 17/480 6/467 3/454 56,02% 53,09% 41,20% 34,00% 29,29% 27,24% 27,01% 26,57% 20,53% 7,08% 3,54% 1,28% 0,66%
Yellow-colored robots were promoted to Veterans Pink-colored robots were removed from the arena * the robot didn't reach the N/4 limit

Comments

Finally we have the first (real) Cadets promoted to Veterans. There are in particular two jrobots, DOOM and Starkle, that gain percentages higher than the average of my jrobots. Also bohan achieved a good percentage in Single mode. Another new jrobot promoted is DeadDuck but it seems less effective. A lot of my jrobots were promoted too, but they already made an attempt to survive in the Veteran's League and they failed, so it is very likely that they are going to fail again.
Only RoboTard and Leech were not promoted, but they remain in the Cadets' League because they got at least a percentage of 25% in Single or Double mode or 12.5% in Team mode. Only Redstorm doesn't fit the requirements and it is removed from the arena.

The Veterans' League saw again the defeat of the complete set of jrobots coming from the Cadets': Jimbo, MarukoV4, Vampire and Ciaky will face the incoming novices during the next tournament.
IonStorm placed first in all the three categories with a percentage in Team mode that can't be compared with the others: The KillerBees' record is now repeated, still one tournament and it is going to be broken.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the September 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (September 6^th-27^th 2003) aka Cadets vs Veterans!

Final Results

Cadets' League
Single (39 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Jimbo MarukoV4 Ciaky Vampire Miz01 Xoreno 6/7 11/15 13/20 5/14 4/14 0/8 85,71% 73,33% 65,00% 35,71% 28,57% 0,00%	Double (40 maches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 MarukoV4 Vampire Ciaky Miz01 Jimbo Xoreno 13/17 7/11 9/17 8/17 3/7 0/11 76,47% 63,64% 52,94% 47,06% 42,86% 0,00%	Team (32 matches) 1 2 3 4 5 6 MarukoV4 Vampire Jimbo Miz01 Ciaky Xoreno 8/17 11/24 6/21 4/26 2/18 1/22 47,06% 45,83% 28,57% 15,38% 11,11% 4,55%
Yellow-colored robots were promoted to Veterans Pink-colored robots were removed from the arena * the robot didn't reach the N/4 limit

Comments

A long waited feature of JROBOTS is now available: The Cadets' League is up and running. During this tournament an experimental version with very few matches took place. I placed there six old jrobots (first appeared in 2000) and now it seems that all works fine. I hope to see some new effective jrobots fight in this new arena to win a promotion in the Veterans' one. The rules of the tournaments are not fixed yet and I hope that a whole month (August) is enough to experiment any modification.

The Veterans' League saw the defeat of the complete set of my jrobots. From Platoon (the eldest) to Touche (the yougest) all were degraded to Cadets. The most effective were Dragon in Single and Double mode and Shark in team mode. I'll try to win the next to come Cadets' tournament writing a DragonShark jrobot that adopts a mixture of the two tactics, anyway the novices will face the full set of my jrobots in August, so I think it's not going to be very difficult for newbies to be promoted in the Veterans' Arena next time.
As usually happens, IonStorm placed first in all the three categories with a percentage of more than 80% (88.6% in Single mode!) and only one tournament lacks now to broke the KillerBees' record of consecutive triple-victories. The other strong jrobots (Headhunter, Tango, KillerBees and Mouth) got more or less the usual placings with good percentages favoured by the weakness of my creatures.

The Cadets' League was not significative for the low number of matches played, but it was useful to remove some annoying bugs. Anyway four strong old aged jrobots (Jimbo, MarukoV4, Ciaky and Vampire) were promoted to Veterans: That's why the next tournament is also known as Revival 2!. Now they are going to face the state of the art in the programming of jrobots: Will the old guard retreat?

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the August 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (August 2^nd-30^th 2003) aka Revival 2!

Final Results

During this tournament we had a problem with some of the JROBOTS algorithms. It seems that a low number of jrobots raises an exception in the code and a lot of matches are lost. I don't think that the problem was solved, so the next challenge will start with more than five jrobots. I hope that no player will comply if I'll upload my old jrobots: I'm curious to see how they behave against the strongest jrobots that dominate the arena.

The IonStorm's long run to beat the KillerBees' record still needs further steps. The low number of matches almost broke that run, but with a few matches the order of the list changed. Now only two tournaments lack!
On the novice side, FirstRobots leaved the arena. Its author has an innovative jrobots almost ready, but he used a collaborative technique that is against the restrictive rules of JROBOTS. I hope he can find some workaround.
Platoon2 was uploaded only to fix the bug caused by the low number of jrobots.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the July 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (July 5^th-26^th 2003) aka Revival!

Final Results

At the end of the last tournament IonStorm got an incredible triple 80%, but this time its percentages are above a more reasonable 70%. Reading the statistics of the matches, it seems obvious to me that the "weighted selection rule" has played an important role in reducing the percentages: The number of matches was higher than before and more matches were played between stronger jrobots. However IonStorm got another triple-victory and now only three tournaments last to go to equal the KillerBees's record of consecutive triple-victories. The new jrobots don't seem very effective and I don't think that another Tango is going to appear soon. As you remember, Tango broke the first tentative of IonStorm to break the record in December.
The other placings are always the same: Tango, Headhunter, Mouth and KillerBees are still there and do their job (to reduce the percentage of IonStorm) at best.
On the novice side, Piranha and DreamBOT were removed. It's always very difficult for novices to compete with veterans and get percentages above the 20%.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the June 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (June 4^th-28^th 2003) aka Still 3 Triple-Victories to Go!

Final Results

During this tournament IonStorm broke another record: For the first time a jrobot won the 80% of the matches in all the 3 categories!
An 80% percentage was not a surprise especially in the early days of JROBOTS. I can remember victory/matches percentages of 95% or more in single and double mode, but no one won 4 matches over 5 in team mode yet. IonStorm did it!

This was a strange tournament even for another reason: During the first weeks a strange bug prevent the tournament applet to work correctly in team mode. This explains why there are so few matches played this time. I hope that the problem is now solved and I'm curious to see the IonStorm's exploit repeated on a larger number of matches. A fact is clear: IonStorm's behaviour in team play is the most effective ever seen since the beginning of the JROBOTS tournaments three years ago. I must still analyze it in detail, but it is very interesting. I must thank Zeke for his creature.

Other thanks goes to Zeke because he published his own offline-arena, full of useful data on what's going on during the matches. It's a "must" for all the players who want to analyze the behaviour of their jrobots in the testing-phase: You can find it in the "files" section of the javajousters mailing list.

Percentages apart, the placing list shows no great surprises even this time. On the novice side, JerkyRobot, Cyp and DreamBOT didn't reach the requested percentages to survive. I hope that their authors will try to improve the effectiveness of their creatures. Some of them played so few matches that their real value is not very clear.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the May 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (May 7^th-28^th 2003) aka IonStorm's Triple 80%!

Final Results

The placing list shows no great surprises except the good percentages of KillerBees favoured by a lot of VOID jrobots uploaded during the challenge. IonStorm achieved another triple victory (S = 81.47%; D = 74.16%; T = 75.75%) and no one seems able to stop its long run to break the KillerBees' record. This time it reached almost a percentage of 80% in all the categories: 4 matches won every 5 matches played in single mode! 3 matches won every 4 matches played in double and team mode!

On the novice side, there were a lot of weak Rabbit-like robots. I didn't mean that when I said: "...IonStorm needs more cannon fodder for its missiles... will any novice accept the challenge?"
Fortunately, the novices Sverzellone and Cyp (the latter uploaded at the end of the challenge) seem above the average and their author may improve them.
So the new tournament will start with a clean arena and I hope that no more players will upload the jrobots of the SDK package. I have a long aged rule: Not to remove any jrobot from the arena during a challenge and I've broken it only one or two times in three years, but the players (I mean novices) must be fair. This is the reason why the next challenge is also known as "No More Rabbits!".
Remember also that your jrobot must be compiled with the "-target 1.1" option to generate a class file compatible with older JDKs and the JVM of the Internet Explorer. This request is specified at least on the uploads page and you are required to follow it, thank you!

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the April 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (April 9^th-30^th 2003) aka No More Rabbits!

Final Results

I was going to title the next tournament "Goodbye KillerBees!" but I fortunately remembered an old clause hidden deeply in the rules of the JROBOTS contests. That clause originated in June and July 2002 when the arena almost ran out of jrobots and I realized that the Team mode needs at least four jrobots to work. The good Germ, that leaved us recently, has benefited by the rule for two consecutive challenges because it was the fourth jrobot classified in the Team mode list. This tournament shows the KillerBees' turn and, from now on, that rule becomes the "KillerBees' Clause".
We must save our goodbyes until someone will upload a jrobot good enough to make fall KillerBees to the fifth place.

IonStorm is the absolute winner of the tournament again and it gained a margin of a few percentage points over its direct opponents, Tango and Headhunter (in Single and Double) and Mouth (in Team mode).

On the novice side, Shodan won only 9 matches over 561 and didn't survived the effort. Now only five jrobots are still around in the arena and IonStorm needs more cannon fodder for its missiles... will any novice accept the challenge?

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the March 2003 JROBOTS Challenge (March 1^st-29^th 2003) aka The KillerBees' Clause!

Final Results

The contest scheduled for December showed an exceptional event: The fall of IonStorm, but now... IonStorm is back!
The titanic struggle among IonStorm, Tango and Headhunter saw again a triple victory for IonStorm. It regained the supremacy only for a strict fraction of percentage in Double mode; this means that the real value of Tango and IonStorm is very close. I must thank Caos and Zeke (their respective authors) for making the latest challenges so interesting and involving.

Now the bad news: Germ leaved the arena after an year of honourable service and KillerBees almost followed it. The good Germ's behaviour in Team mode was not enough this time to save it and KillerBees reached the requested percentage only for 1 victory in 983 matches. I must say that I can't imagine an arena without KillerBees so I'm very happy that we can see it fighting for at least another contest. I hope for a cast of jrobots more favourable to KillerBees in February.

From the novices side, PitpitsBot and TestBot (not a lucky name) didn't reach the requested percentage, so they were removed from the arena.

Now you can upload your jrobots to win the February 2003 Jrobots Challenge (February 1^st-22^nd 2003) aka IonStorm is back!