Identify 2 highest scorers and handle the possibility of a draw

Question

I have 5 instances of the Player class, and code that simulates games between each of the players. After each game, the time each player took in the game, and their score (2 for a win, 1 for a draw) are stored in self.totaltime and self.score. After all games are played I am trying to select the two highest scorers out of the players so they can play best out of 3 to decide a winner. It's highly likely more than 1 player has the same score. If this is the case, whoever has taken less time will be selected.

My problem is that I'm having trouble sorting/comparing these results to each other, and I'm really not sure which approach is best to select the 2 highest scoring players. I have tried a for loop (shown below) but I wasn't really thinking properly and of course this doesn't work.

def findPlayers():
    scorers = []
    for player in players:
        for player2 in players:
            if player.score > player2.score:
                scorers.append([player.name, player.score, player.totaltime])

I'm sure I sound a fool but I just need nudging in the right direction with this. I have written the bulk of the code for this program, but I seem to be getting stuck on trivial things like this. Regardless, any nudge in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

Because of the high likelihood that some players will have identical scores - in which case the player with the lowest value in `self.totaltime` will be selected — user12334217, Nov 07 '19 at 18:39
Could you elaborate please? I'm new to sorting in Python in general. — user12334217, Nov 07 '19 at 18:42

CaptainDaVinci · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-07T18:45:49.720

1

You can sort the list of players using (self.score, -self.totaltime) as the key.

sorted_players = sorted(players, lambda player: (player.score, -player.totaltime), reverse=True)

edited Nov 07 '19 at 18:45

answered Nov 07 '19 at 18:42

CaptainDaVinci

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OP wants the *highest* score with the *least* totaltime. – Scott Hunter Nov 07 '19 at 18:44
Updated the answer to take negative total time as the key. – CaptainDaVinci Nov 07 '19 at 18:46
Thanks CaptainDaVinci for the help. I think I need to learn a little more about sorting for the future! – user12334217 Nov 07 '19 at 18:54

Identify 2 highest scorers and handle the possibility of a draw

1 Answers1