Every now and then somebody takes the time to do something like this. It can be done much quicker, and with all games, using a simple program and access to the database of game information. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to know this, but TheGhostmaker has access to the database and has queried it a few times in the past to come up with the numbers according to all the games. Turkey is always ahead. =)

See I knew there was a reason I had them pegged as my favorite country right from the beginning when I started playing online.

lol I think my first game was as turkey how lucky

ok, that's interesting, is it worth pursuing this chronological view of win percentages in your opinion then? do you think it's possible i will find anything new out? I had fun looking at these earlier games (you and the other mods played a lot more back then it seems...). i noticed there were lots of wins with 17 scs and even a few with only 16 scs. i never knew that used to be the case. i thought russia had a rather high percentage in the time frame examined as well

I think in order to be significant, otto, you'd need to use every game in a time period (perhaps by month), especially seeing as the sample sizes are so small. If the percentages you gave were more accurate than to the half of a percent (probably 3-4 decimal places). That might give us some idea of shift.

You could also try to identify named openings in games and compare them to wins in any given month, to see the shifts in opening preference.

that's a good idea, but I think I need a team of people to undertake a study of that level of specificity. It could be done though, anyone interested in dividing this up? I like the idea

im really bad with statistics, but good luck to you

and yeah no kidding i played a lot more back then... i was in high school lol

I love statistics. Only math class I enjoyed for a long time.

Anyway, it would probably be possible to write a program that categorizes opening moves (thus identifying them as one named opening or another). A. I don't know what form "the database" takes, and B. I have no knowledge of programming. I mean, there's a very finite number of possible openings, so the program probably wouldn't take too horribly long to take.

If we did this manually, even with 5 or 10 of us, it could take quite a while. I would probably be able to help though.

also, i found an abnormality in one of my games:

it said it ended in 2006.

I was not on this site in 2006.

go figure

I guess, then, I will appeal to the mods for help on this question in the name of mathematical accuracy.

That could certainly be a problematic issue, Thucy.

I'd put some coding time into crunching the data.
Although it is kind of sad to see Diplomacy fall victim to game theory.

It doesn't always, though, especially with the large percentage "noobs" that play here. Applying game theory requires that participating parties are actually aware of the optimal moves for any given scenario, not just going for SC's. Game theory also doesn't account for all kinds of human interaction. Sure it might be better to ally one nation over another, but the relationship between players is far more difficult (if not impossible) to quantify.

Good point. Oh, well it was worth a shot...

It's still possible to gather the statistics of opening moves. However, the newer and less experienced the player, the more likely they're not going to open with something standard or known to work well. Although, again, there are a very finite number of ways to make opening moves, so even by accident, some new players will open with named openings.

Based on those stats, I now officially appeal the rules of the Ghost Tournament, since I have been assigned to Italy twice. Some sort of handicap provision should be allowed, like I get an extra build in 1903 or whatever. haha like that will ever happen! just venting...

also PPSC games will have different results than WTA games, and games with higher pots (ie fewer CDs) will have different results than low pot games. turkey wins a lot b/c of the number of CDs - it should actually be very very difficult to get a solo win as turkey.

I would be very interested to see how results differ from PPAC to WTA

That would be step two

ugh, I'm with Richard Sharp (http://www.diplomacy-archive.com/resources/strategy/articles/turkey-injurious.htm) how does Turkey win so much? The 18th has to be one past the slatemate lines. Turkey has one of the slowest tempo ever too.