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John Beresford Hmm. So am i correct in thinking Marcus will survive, even though he lost the game?
These rules are very odd.

Marcus Hares Yes, the two lowest scoring players get eliminated. Velvet was on a mission to beat me in this one with 184pts, but was as low as 97pts in another game - huge variance.

John Beresford Okay thanks for clarifying, i'm still confused though. Never mind.

Chris Butler What's confusing about it? It's simply the 2 lowest scorers are eliminated and in the case of a tie the bots score is taken into account

John Beresford What's confusing? Well, in the last round, i was told that the higher the bot scored against you, meant the easier the overall tariff of difficulty in your particular game.

With that in mind, how can someone who 'conceded' 184 pts from 200 to the Bot, be considered to be a winner above the likes of Dan Byrom, who beat the bot, albeit with a lower score, but only conceded 140 pts - therefore by what has been previously said, his game was tougher?

That's what is confusing, to me at least. Basically, i was told the higher bot score, the easier the game was overall, so for the bot to score 184, you lose, and you still go through, makes the rules a bit of a farce IMO. Nothing against Matthew or Marcus, the organiser and defeated bot-player in question, i'm just struggling to find a sensible rationale behind the whole thing.

John Beresford The very fact that, in a tie, the Bots score against you is a deciding factor, proves my argument. If the Bot gets more points, then allegedly, it was an easier game. So eliminating a winning player in favour of a losing player who conceded 184/200 is a total nonsense.
I'm not trying to bust anyone's balls or anything, but come on, the rules are a contradicition of themselves and i can't think of any other contest whereby a losing participant gets through in place of a winner. It's a load of bollocks.
And again, with the greatest respect to Matthew, this is merely my own opinion and it's nothing personal whatsoever. I just don't get it.

Charlie Reams I definitely wouldn't recommend using bot score as a proxy for difficulty. The way the bots decide whether a solution is easy enough for them to find has (unfortunately) very loose resemblance to a human conception of difficulty.

Gevin Chapwell It's just a convenient tie-break mechanism. That's basically the beginning and end of it.

Of course you could argue that a higher bot score means a more difficult game. If you're declaring 1 or 2 away and the bot keeps getting it spot on, you're having those 7 points "stolen" from you.

Dan Byrom e.g. in the really quite challenging rounds 4 and 10 in my game :(

Dave Noble That is the point of using varying bots though isn't it? In the real weakest link, it is not always the weakest player that gets eliminated. Bot choice affect it from being purely based on highest scores against prune, to only scoring maxes when Rex is selected. For others , some may get the points when away from max whilst others may have the bot solve it

John Beresford Yes Dave, but in this round, everyone plays Velvet. The purpose of my initial query was to establish the reasoning behind factoring in the bots score against you in the event of a tie. This doesn't seem to stand for anything when there isn't a tie, hence Marcus progressing with a -3 score. I think Gevin got it right when saying it's merely a convenient way of separating players on the same score, but that doesn't mean it isn't flawed.
As for it being called The Weakest Link, other the name itself, i'm pretty sure there is no resemblance whatsoever to the actual show, in terms of deciding who gets through and who is out, particularly with the tie-break scenario. It may as well be called The Price is Right and the tie-break is to guess the price of a packet of TenaLady at a random Lebanese corner shop :)

Marcus Hares Exactly right, the bot's score counts for nothing when there isn't a tie. I'm not progressing with a -3 score, I'm progressing with a score which isn't in the bottom two. If my score was jointly the 2nd worst in this round then I would definitely be eliminated - but purely on the fact that Velvet played much better against me than "normal".

Matthew Tassier With five players still impressively having maxed every round of every game so far, competition is looking hot early on this year. This round though, Herbert has proven himself the Strongest Link.

Matthew Tassier With Dan narrowly surviving via the utterly sensible tiebreak rules and Marcus going through despite a shock defeat, it's an early bath for two WL Numbers regulars. John G. and Andy, you are the Weakest Links, Goodbye!