The Great Parity Simulation Experiment: Week 6

Faced with the abrupt and unsatisfying end to the Parity season after just five weeks, our resolute little community has embarked on an unprecedented experiment: the full simulation of every moment we were meant to play in the remaining seven weeks of Session 2. Through the magic of data and nerd sweat, we have the means to replay every game that wasn’t played!

The experiment began live on the internets last night. Missed the stream? Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q2hG1utrz4

Detailed reports from those games, including individual player stats, are available here: https://bit.ly/ParitySims

And for the latest league standings: https://bit.ly/ParitySimStandings

Your GMs are now feverishly negotiating to get their teams cap compliant before Week 7. What wacky moves do they have in store? Find out on Monday, April 13th at 7:30pm as we live stream the next set of games: https://youtu.be/KEk6wy0Qy6k

And now, it gives me great pleasure to turn things over to one of the sharpest observers of Parity ultimate, the inimitable Christopher Keates, for his assessment of last night’s festivities...

The games that weren’t

If you haven’t been paying attention to technology for the last few years, you may have missed the slow but steady push for more immersive digital experiences. 3D movies at home, even higher fidelity digital media (we’re probably at 64k TVs now), augmented reality games like Pokemon Go, and virtual reality experiences are slowly becoming more mainstream. You can even play VR disc golf!

Everything is a simulation, it seems. We have entered a Matrix of sorts, with Hadrian the cold puppet master who has built the simulation. Your consciousnesses have been plucked from you and inserted into a machine, a computer program where frisbee is played, day in and day out. Ergo, a perfect simulation of the ideal world.

This isn’t even the first simulation, either. The first program was a work of art - perfect; flawless; sublime. Every throw, a catch. Every catch, a goal. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its failure should be apparent to all of us: frisbee is an imperfect game that strives for beauty and only sometimes achieves it. Slogging through the dirt and grime to find those nearly perfect moments is the very essence of parity.

Thus it was redesigned based on our history, to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of parity frisbee. Perhaps too harsh at first, all the transient flaws of the game and of this league were distilled into a simulation that could barely complete a game. The event logs were littered with Hugh Podmore’s throwaways, Brian Perry throwing it to himself for a turnover 37 times in a single half, players calling timeouts when their team had none to call multiple times in the same game, and not a pull kept in bounds. In one freakishly improbable outcome, Jessie threw 27 assists in the same game, scoobers over the top to Martin, all of them completed.

Eventually, the program was perfected into something a frisbee player can accept as their new reality. The frisbee is believably flawed, achingly beautiful, and utterly bizarre.

This week’s games played out as follows, with some notable highlights. So, you can take this blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and you can believe whatever you want to believe. Or, you can take this rainbow pill, and find out just what the Matrix is.

GAME 1: The First Cut is the Deepest (Julia) (21) vs. Be My Frisbae (Laura) (17)

In a game with an absurd number of throw-aways for an early time slot, it’s worth noting that the three worst offenders (Boucher, Kenzie, and Allan Godding with 5 each), really only one has a reputation for it.
Travis Davidson earned himself a Berry with a standout performance and 3 drops (one less than he had all last session). A glitch in the Matrix?

Captain Julia Riddick led from the front, putting up a 5/2/1/1 (G/A/2A/D) statline over 25 touches.
Old Man Graham Brown didn’t turn it over once, which is a remarkable performance for him!
Perhaps the funniest outcome of this game is that Allan Godding, who is often in the top 5 in the league for goals, only needed a goal for a Berry. At one point Martin Cloake had Allan wide open on the open side, but was too busy pointing and hammering to the break side for one of Charlotte’s 4 goals to notice. You have to think if he knew how close Allan was to a berry, he’d have played that one different.

Ultimately, in a back and forth game, the difference was breaks. Laura’s team played fierce defense, generating more turns than Julia’s, but they just couldn’t convert. Kelsey isn’t a handler and threw a bunch away (maybe he just wanted more shots at D’s?), and maybe when you have three disc movers as good as Laura, Cassie and Ainsley it’s best not to look off those wide open dumps?

Sequence of the Game: Allan Godding’s game really was cursed. 16 minutes into the game he threw a bit behind Ainsley, and Mel Jess got a finger tip on it then blazed to the end zone. Boucher then looked her off for the quick break double-happiness, instead waiting for a stall 8 or 9 desperation scoober to Alisha for the goal.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks. A delightfully imperfect example of Parity perfection....

GAME 2: JT Got Us Fallin' in Love (Morgan) (22) vs. How to Lose a Disc in 10 Stalls (Brian) (20)

A barn burner at first glance, but this game was never really close. While it had a much more reasonable number of throw-aways, turnovers were very lopsided in this game. Cap’n Morgan is not very tolerant of throw-aways, which I’m sure made him a bit mad at his own 5, leading his team by a fair margin. That was the worst of it, though. Largely Morgan’s team was safe with the disc.

For Brian, he had zero, but Alyssa and Angela had 6 and 5 respectively. Angela, I hate to say it, but there’s only room for one lunatic with the disc in this house. I guess I better turn over a new leaf? While I’m working on that, so should the rest of Brian’s roster…

Andre Scott and Jay Thor led both teams for goals which is something we expect from Andre but not so much Jay Thor who self identifies as a pylon. Other standouts for goals are Caitlin Hesketh for Morgan and Rachel Young for Brian.

Pepper had one of the most surprising stat lines of the night, leading her team’s stalwart defense with 8 breaks of 12 attempts, turning defense into offense at an unprecedented rate!

The difference in this game was 100% the throw-aways. Morgan’s team put up streaks of 4 points and 6 points early in the game thanks to turnovers, and took a 7 goal lead into the half. They never relinquished it, and were able to coast a bit in the final 20 minutes. Rumours of Morgan tanking the second half to keep salary effects in check have already started.

True to life, no?

GAME 3: When Cranky met Cara (Mehmet) (16) vs. All the Single Bladies (Al) (21)

If you haven’t had the pleasure of playing with Mehmet before, you may not know the strong emphasis on inclusion he puts into every game and every huddle. It’s important to him that everyone on his team touches the disc, and you can see this in the catches and completions for his team. He was able to captain his team to nearly every player having double-digit touches.

Al’s team was a lot more top heavy for touches. Well more than 50% of the completions on his team were made by 4 ball hogs. We’ve always thought Al was an inclusion-first kinda captain, but the numbers don’t lie! It did seem to work for him though. Still, when you have Mel B., Justine 2.0 and Kate Cav on your roster, you really should work harder to get them the ball. Mel B’s catching goals on 33% of her targets! Throw at her more!

Al even seemed to keep it holstered, throwing it away a pedestrian 3 times. Not gonna get on any leaderboards that anyone cares about playing like that, Al. Townsend is normally safe with the disc but he was obviously taking chances this game. Same with Mehmet (of course) and Carolynn Laszlo. I’m sure that made When Cranky Met Cara’s cranky namesake all kinds of pleased…

Perhaps the most impressive performance of the game, though, was Heather Wallace, who did a lot with a little (7 points on 19 touches!) and almost no throw-aways.

Statline of the night: Katelyn Fontaine’s numbers are positively robotic. Perhaps she can read the code of the Matrix, and converts it into only 1’s and 0’s on the scoreboard.

GAME 4: Date Night: Neena Yo Biswas (Sully) (26) vs. Reason to love Ottawa #40 (Nat) (14)

It’s time for a fire sale! Every player on Sully’s team must go, because he sure can’t afford them now! This isn’t as bad as the infamous 7 point game of Parity lore, but 12 point losses are also hard to watch.
It’s pretty easy to see what happened here. Sully doped his hands with butter and then performed an ancient greeting ritual with everyone on the other team known as a “hand shake”. I’m not entirely clear on the social purposes of a “hand shake” at this point, but the effect was clear. Nat’s team dropped anything and everything.

We could talk about Sully’s roster’s impressive statlines for figuratively hours. Colin had 9 goals, Rachel Hurdle was 4/3/2/0 with 0 turnovers and an 8 for 10 conversion rate on defense. Kells scored a bunch and didn’t turn it over. Shubho handled his way to 10 A’s or 2A’s. But I think what stands out the most is that Justine Price, Celine and Neena didn’t get thrown to very much. This is a mistake for a few reasons, which I shall break down. Celine having 1 goal is a criminal under-utilization of her talents, and Neena have 0 is criminal given how speedy she is. More important, Sully, Justine is your wife. I bet you slept on the couch after this one.

On the other side, Nat had a few standouts. Étienne was an offensive and defensive force and one of few players on the team to stay under 2 turnovers. Mikey was pretty safe. Josee inexplicably threw assists instead of scored goals, but that’s fine because she also didn’t turn it over a lot. Nat, though, was another story. Nearly 1/3rd of her team’s turnovers are hers! Sina was good for another 25% of the team’s turnovers!

Shoutout here: Wing refused to play by the rest of the roster’s rules and had 0 turnovers. I saw him double clutch on a huck he wanted to throw before resetting the disc, perhaps a move this teammates could have learned from?

And so next week, I think it very likely that this game will be more of a scouting trip for Nat than anything else, as she is likely the only GM with the cap space to handle some of the more expensive contracts on Sully’s team.

GAME 5: Love Aggietually (Marie-Ange) (19) vs. Ratioxoxo (Kindha) (16)

This late game! Nobody likes this time slot. Fans hate to stay for it, GM’s hate to tell their team they are stuck with a late slot, and players hate to play it (for proof, see the point of sadness).

MAnge continues to have a remarkable win rate in Parity (how does she do it?) and pulls out the W, despite some efforts from her team. Oddly, half her team had no throw-aways, but the other half seemed to want to make up for it. We fully expect to see Nick Theriault chuck 5 away, but Hadrian? Or Mat Landry with 4? Be more like Kristie Ellis at 1 or Dietz at 0, maybe?

Kindha’s team spread the mistakes out a lot better than MAnge’s team, that’s for sure. Kindha’s a very inclusion focused GM. She likes to see 2 turns per player, and by golly she got it from everyone but Rachel Ng, Luca, and Abe. Leading the way was Greg Ellis who almost made up for it with his 0 D’s. Standouts for Kindha included Jim’s 3/2/4/0 night and Hugh’s 4 D’s, but it really just looked like her team was half-asleep for most of the game.

Point of Sadness: In a late game, sometimes you get late game performances. In this case, the 7 minute long 11 turnover point with almost 60 passes accounted for almost 20% of the total throws made in this game. You guys can’t even argue you were tired. It was at the 19 minute mark of the game! Everyone on the field needs to pause and think about what they’ve done. Especially that Greg Ellis guy, who had 3 of his 4 throw-aways on the same point. I know AUDL teams that have cut players for less.

Performance(s) of the Game: Kevin Hughes, who is probably going to hack the Matrix and steal all the simulated Parity dollars, quietly put up a 3/1/2/1 night and only 1 turnover while his teammate Hannah Lewis was 1/1/1/2 and no turnovers to speak of. Remarkable for a late game.

Berry Watch

The Berry has long been known as the perfect Parity stat. A player must get at least 1 of every significant stat we track. It is success and failure in equal measure, the balanced scales of justice, the opposing force of a proton and an electron. It is Parity. It may also be a sign of who is The One who will break us free from this frisbee simulation (perhaps fittingly, the only person on the list this week is a doctor).

• Travis Davidson

Notables

Simulated frisbee is way cleaner, with basically no fouls. These games are averaging much higher scoring as a result! Or maybe it’s just because they start on time and actually get a full 80 minutes in….