Are there trolls again?

So far no sign of obvious trolls or fake players. Leaderboards are filled to 15 within my playing two levels.

As for this statement by King:

"For the 1st Knockouts Stage, players will be randomly put into groups of 15 players. The top 3 players in each group who match the most blue candies will win in-game rewards and a place in the next tournament stage."

Like in a previous competition I do find that the other players seem matched towards my own record of levels passed in the past 7 days. In the game where I passed 165 levels/7days my opponents are: 4 players>200 levels passed, 5 players <100 levels passed. In the end of Candy Crush game where I passed just 60 levels/7 days my opponents were 0>200 levels passed and 10<100 levels passed. This again does not seem random, but it's too little data to go by. If anyone has anything to share here it would be great.

If my observation is a sign of non randomness I can only conclude that either King are lying in their terms and conditions, which I doubt very much, or that there are fake players which are there to spice up the competition, but which are better hidden than last time. I'm not sure if the Terms and Conditions would allow King to introduce recordings to these leaderboards? This is what they do in the episode race and Candy Royale, would it be possible and legally allowed to do the same in a leaderboard event? I guess the new info about when they last played would not make this possible to do though.

Of course I may just be overthinking it again, but it's the third leaderboard event in a row that I find the other players I am up against do not appear to be a truly random selection.

I think I may have cracked it folks!

By this I mean I think I am starting to understand how King manipulate the leaderboard competitions so that a minimum of new levels need to be passed by anyone wanting to move on to the next stage and also this makes it easy for their computers to spot suspicious players.

The player cards are great for us all to keep track of our competitors and though this time round King hid the decoys really well and there were no glitches with strange images of other player icons I do think there is at least one decoy in each board. This may be a recording or it may be trolls or real players employed by King. The minimum levels needed to be passed to get into the top three qualifying spots of the 1st Knockout round seems to be about 45-60 new levels, but of course if there are lots of other keen players then there is no upper limit. (This may also explain why King have increased new releases in the past weeks, so that players at the top of the map can't complain they are being left out.) By the way I think the Player Cards are now more accurate and reliable.

I had data from three games to come to the above conclusion. Of course it may be a coincidence as the sample is small (just 45 players in total)

I had three games in the 1st knockout, and recorded each player at which level they started and which level they finished, and how much they scored in the competition doing so. It's a fabulous way to gather statistics and if any of you made it into the 2nd knockouts @MannyFae (?) I wonder if you would like to join me in noting down the level of each competitor at the start and finish in the next round. It's a bigger task as there will be more competitors, but I am planning to do it for the two games in which I qualified for 2nd knockouts.

I am not convinced it matters much now if we join early or late but would really like to find this out before All Stars. I did join early in all my games in the 1st knockouts, but in the next round I will have one game to join early and try to win, the other game will join late and just be a control.

I'll be too busy for the rest of today to analyse my data fully. I might post statistics another day in a separate thread.

Guten Rutsch to you all!