I promised it and you shall receive: Some statistics and tidbits from the 30 Global Challenges so far.

THE RULES

In the entire 11 years and 30 incarnations of the challenge, the rules were changed only a handful of times:

GC 1 was very unlike all later ones with only seven divisions. Thanks to the low-scoring Hadcore mode, we still know the names of all of these divisions except the lowest - they were quite a bit different from today's:
(2) The Casual Players
(3) The Frequent Players
(4) The Smartypants
(5) The Brainiacs
(6) The Einstein Club
(7) The Immortals
At the time the challenge was stopped, the top player had 4879 games. In the earliest challenges, the games reset every 6 hours - certainly almost impossible for some time zones. The game was ended, after more than 200 days, with only four Immortals crowned - the 30th was just 57.3% through Division 6 at that time.

GC2 saw the change to the current ten divisions and also had the score thresholds to advance from one division to the next reduced by quite a bit. For this round as well as GC3, the overall winner of Normal mode was not crowned by overall points, but by the ELO rating comparison within the Immortals Division.

GC4 took back the winner determination to raw score and also reduced the daily rounds to 3 sets of 8 hours each (with an appropriate adjustment to score thresholds).

Those were further reduced to two sets of 12 hours (and another reduction in the points targets) for GC9 onwards.

The last significant change came with GC13 which was the first one that had the special double-asterisk topics. Since then, it remained unchanged except that GC30 instituted an additional rule that the game will not only end if we see 30 new Immortals, but also if 100 players reach Immortal overall in Normal Mode (new and returning combined). This rule is backwards compatible with all older games; the 100 limit was not reached at any time before that, but it was broken in GC 31, seeing 102 normal mode immortals overall (of which 33 were new).

GAME LENGTH

GC26 was the quickest one to get the 30 new Immortals, at only 240 6-quiz sets (1440 games played by those who didn't miss any). The longest GC since the 2-per-day rule was instituted was GC 12, with 264 sets (1584 games). The vast majority of GCs stayed between 245 (1470 games) and 254 (1524 games) sets. The highest number of Immortals (new and returning) was 134 in GC 31, 102 Normal and 32 Hardcore.

BADGES

The Immortal and Hardcore Winner awards were around from the very first day and were among the very first badges available on this site. The only change to these was the introduction of the "who haven't won it yet" clause with GC 6.

Unfortunately I can't track back when exactly the next ones were added. Terry might be able to fill in the dates:

The Achievement (for reaching Division 9) was around from at least GC 8.

A lot later, the "A Global Challenger" (reach division 3) and "Do the Twist" (get 80% on a Brain Twist) minis were introduced as two of the intro challenges.

Semi-related to the GC was the introduction of the "Brain Twisted" badge for scring perfectly on 60 daily Brain Twists.

The two badgelets for having the highest score in one 12-hour set, Normal and Hardcore were even more recent, probably around GC 20 or 21.

The latest addition to the lineup was the elusive Hardcore Immortal, added at the end of GC 21. Since we had complete statistics for it in the Top 100 pages, it was given retroactively. (It's been the main reason for the sharp increase in the number of Hardcore Immortals since then. From GC 25 to GC 28, we have handed out more Hardcore Immortal ranks than new Hardcore Champs and in GC27 and GC28 some unlucky Hardcore Immortals missed out on the Hardcore Champ award due to the ever increasing competitiveness at the top.)

As of GC 31 (changes since GC30 in parentheses) , we have

167 (+19) Hardcore Immortals
262 (+19) Hardcore All-Rounders (top of a 12-hour set in HC)
281 (+10) Hardcore Winners
514 (+30) GC All-Rounders (Normal mode)
929 (+34) Immortals
1,459 (+29) Impossible!
1,527 (+65) Brain Twisted
2,170 (+49) A Challenge About Nothing
2,702 (+62) Achievement: Global Challenge
13,394 (+111) A Global Challenger
33,794 (+392) Do the Twist

That's a total 57,199 (+820) awards handed out from the Global Challenge with 7,065 (+220) of them full badges.

THE CHAMPIONS

In order to compile a list of champions with fair criteria, I had to account for a few changes:

- For GC 2 and 3, I recognize both the rating-based winners and the score-based medalists in Normal mode. If a player was ranked in both, they received their better rank. Hardcore is done only by score since the rating leaders were not usually in the top division.
- The top 100 tables for Normal mode included Hardcore players at the beginning, but this was changed later. I'm adjusting this to current practice. This only affected GC6 and GC11.

That said, here are your Global Challenge medalists - all 83 of them (asterisked numbers reflect GC 31 changes):



If we allocate the medals by team, we're looking at the following (note that this reflects the players' current team, not necessarily the one they were in when they earned the medals. That data is unfortunately not retrievable).



(**) This team was created as a merger the Joliettes and Revenge of the Llamas in August 2016. It now reflects the teams' joint achievements.

20 medals - 11 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze - were won by players not in a team (any more)

Three teams have managed a 1-2 finish: classicalmusic/mensan (twice: GC14 Hardcore and GC24 Hardcore), Joliettes (GC4 Hardcore) and The Cat People (GC 12 Normal). CM/M (GC19 Normal), Joliettes (GC5 Hardcore) and Trivia Bubbles (GC 29) had one 1-3 each. No team ever managed to get a triple medal set in the same round.

Trivia Bubbles have so far been the only team to conquer both gold medals in the same GC, namely GC 28.

If you'd rather have things arranged by national team as in the real Olympics, it looks like this:



(One player having Scotland as their profile location was folded into UK since I can't say how those giving UK divide into England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).

Very few players defended their championships - quite often of course that was due to them playing the opposite type the next round. strnog1 (GC 2/3 Hardcore), slavros (GC 4/5 normal), WorldB (GC 4/5 Hardcore), jules44 (GC 21/22 normal) and rossian (GC 28/29 normal) were the only five. Consecutive wins crossing between the two modes have been posted by seven players: strnog1 (1N/2HC/3HC), incognito101 (6HC/7N), Louise17 (10N/11HC), WesleyCrusher (12N/13HC/14N), Slotek (24N/25HC), mcdubb (26HC/27N) and rossian (28N/29N/30HC/31N).

Since I mentioned Hardcore winners placing ahead in score of Normal winners, we should probably mention the players who would have achieved a Normal mode medal with their much harder to attain Hardcore scores: Louise17 (GC11) and halekotsi (GC20) would have made the bronze, jules44 (GC14), tiddybitnibbly (GC19), Sethdv7 (GC27) and pagea (GC31) would have ranked silver. Five times so far, the overall best score was attained by the Hardcore player: incognito101 (GC6), WesleyCrusher (GC16), daBomb619 (GC22), Reynariki (GC23) and Slotek (GC 25) have defeated the odds. The best a Hardcore 2nd place player has made in the overall rankings was 4th - just outside the podium.

If you ever played Hardcore, you know how easy it is to miss a set by getting below 10 correct or taking too long. An average Hardcore champion's daily set average is just above 10 out of 12 (83.3% valid sets) while a bit over 9/12 (75%) is usually good enough for the badge. Averaging 11/12 (91.67%) was pretty much considered the ceiling achievable - until GC22. daBomb619 had a 1496/1506 record - 11.92/12 per day or 99.33%. I'll bet that this one won't be beaten. Ever. That run was also the round with the highest winning score - daBomb619's final result was 34.44% above the number needed for Immortal.

While we're on records that won't be beaten, rossian's GC28 victory came by the closest possible margin: One single question. The only way to get closer would be a tie.

In terms of the ELO ratings, the top ever achieved was 2240 in normal mode by nine2five (GC10) and the hardcore record is 2150, held by Prison (GC15). Special credit goes to Mooseflapper who has held on to the normal mode rating crown 14 rounds and counting, GC18 to GC31, while playing relatively few games - his highest division in those rounds was 8.

I've kept the best for last - our record Immortal. One player has managed to become Immortal during 30 of the 31 Global Challenges, with a perfect Immortal record ever since GC 2!

These are made up of three 4th, three 5th, one each 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 12th and 14th, three 15th, two 16th, a 17th, three 18th, and one each 19th, 20th, 23rd, 26th, 31st, 32nd, 36th and 48th places. This means our record holder isn't even on the medal table (but soooo close!)

Congratulations on this special achievement, JMElston!

(Terry, feel free to steal this for announcements or give it a permanent home on the GC Hall of Fame)

Wow! Read it through - fascinating. Thanks for putting all that together, Wes

Yes, even a mere mortal found the reading enjoyable.

Thanks for all that work, Wes, which is much appreciated.

This is fantastic. Thanks for putting it together.

This is fascinating and well worth reading through a few times to take it all on board. I am well impressed by the players and also Wes for getting it all together

So now we know that stats like this may be produced, players may have to rethink stopping playing as soon as they hit Immortal; the final rankings in Immortal rarely reflect the order in which people reached that level, but instead favour those who carried on playing till the tournament ended, even though there was nothing left to go on playing for.

The information was always there in the form of the top 100 pages. I just put them in one convenient place.

I've always considered that there is something left to go on playing for, which is to finish as high up the leader board as I possibly can.

You said the info is all there in the top 100 page but it can be a little daunting in that form so thank you for wrapping it up nicely! The details of the evolution of the game are fun to read through. These, I had not seen so if elsewhere, I missed them (aside from bits and pieces from the accounts of old timers)

You need to have been around to interpret the pages correctly, I certainly admit that. You also probably need to have played competitively a few times

Stats updated for GC 27

Thanks again for awarding the badges WC and keeping these interesting stats

Thanks for the great stats Wesley, but there are two badges missing, Impossible (1276 overall, 50 this GC) and A Challenge about Nothing (2003 overall, 55 this GC).

*edit* nothing to see here, wasnt meaning to pile on if you saw the original message

..andy beat me to it (see GC27 thread about vlk56pa) and my correction wasn't completely correct anyway.

Thank you Wesley for putting the new stuff together/updating!

Yes, about the only thing worse than coming in 11th in HardCore while winning the HC Immortal rank is having that feat credited to someone else. I'd appreciate an edit to the information included in the first post.

Many thanks,
vlk56pa

Whooops. That's what happens when processing way too many numbers and names at once. Fixed - and sorry!

...and that one has been wrong ever since last time Thanks for pointing it out and having the numbers right in there for a quick fix!

Loved reading through the stats. I do think they would be good to house in the GC hall of fame!!

In my humble opinion this challenge should be limited to twice a year with fixed dates that do not clash with known holidays.

When the challenge infringes holidays like Christmas then this clashes with personal freedoms.

I do know that it is difficult to cater for all needs but some effort should be made to satisfy the majority.

Many tahnks

You have the personal freedom to skip the GC for a day or two if you wish - playing is not compulsory and it's perfectly possible to take a day or two off and still get to Immortal.

You do no stand a chance!
You have to participate in every single game.

One of my team mates took several days off, she had no choice - appendicitis doesn't wait for GCs to start or finish, and she still got to Immortal.

The other problem with the idea of fixed dates are that we are a worldwide community and many different cultures are represented. If we are scheduling around Christmas, do we also schedule around the Jewish High Holidays? How about Ramadan? Chinese New Year? Diwali?

IMHO the current system is the least discriminatory as it leaves a certain amount of randomness that doesn't favor any one group over another.

And what is more, there are some of us for whom finding the time for our daily FT fix still has precedence, even on holidays. Perhaps especially for those who spend them on their own for any reason.