Giving credit where credit is due. To Chris Fulop and Pokemon USA

[desert eagle]

In lieu of all the negativity surrounding the state of the game such as diminished prize support, I feel like I need to point out one HUGE thing that Pokemon USA has done right and is going in the right direction for this season and hopefully will continue to build on.

In the past , I've ripped on many of Pokemon USA's ratings invite structures and other issues regarding the state of the game, stemming from issues where players in certain areas have a nearly impossible road to worlds due to low amount of events and players within a reasonable distance.

It's been 3 years since I last played, and as a highly competitive player, I have to say that I am enjoying playing more than ever now because the new Championship Point system is a HUGE step in the right direction towards an optimal way to reward good players and send the best players to worlds. It is amazing that P USA finally took the help of one of its best and most respected players (Fulop) and implemented a very good system.

Why the new system is sick:

Consistency is finally rewarded over luck
The weighings of the championship series' is at a very good mix right now that compensates and rewards consistency while still opening the door to a bit of variation to keep things interesting. I love the 30% weighings we have on cities because:
- Most competitive players WILL take cities seriously, making them very competitive events by nature. It is not easy to top cut a cities right now, as even if the attendance is low, the players who do attend are quality over quantity.
- It is harder to top cut or win multiple cities on a consistent basis than to win a single big event such as Nationals or Worlds, especially in a competitive area. Winning Worlds takes a lucky run as much as preperation and skill while winning multiple cities requires consistency and established performance. While winning a cities obviously shouldnt be as important as winning a big event, I finally feel like a dominant cities run is rewarding, when in the past it was pretty useless.
- the Best Finish Limit is a great idea, as capping finishes ensures that you need quality finishes to get more points, rather than attending 20 cities and stockpiling

Personally, for me, in 2008 I finished cities #1 in the world in terms of rating by top cutting (mostly winning) every single City I played in. At states, I bubbled (finishing 9th in a top 8 cut) and promptly fell off the map in terms of rating and greatly jeopardized my shot at worlds, and this made me feel like my run at cities served barely any purpose at all.
Contrast to this year where I top cut 9 out of a possible 10 cities I attended (1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, t4, t4, t8, t8, t8, 10th) and sit at 33 CP, confident I can make worlds if I play solid for SPT and Regionals.

Two similar cities runs paints a totally differnet picture, and this year's system is great for the game, rewarding players who perform at a consistent level and doesn't penalize players who can't make more than a certain amount of cities.

The 40% weighing on SPT is great as well, giving people 4-5 shots at a best 4 finish cap. Again, the multiple shots at states lowers the luck factor and increases the skill factor.

SPT and Cities makes up 70% of your CP, which is perfect. Instead of being forced to top X Nationals to get an invite for competitive players in some areas, they now have a great shot as long as they play consistent.


So far, my experience with this new system is great and I think it is a huge step in the right direction for this game. The only issue I see is the issue of players bubbling events at X-1 records and not getting any points. Of course, variation solves this (I whiffed at X-1 4 times at BRs but I made 3 cuts at 4-2 which I don't think I really deserve to make at cities) but it still sucks for anyone to go X-1 and not get anything out of it.

So let's all give credit where credit is due and hope that P USA keeps this system for future years and works to improve it as well!

 

[swanton1717]

It is not easy to top cut a cities right now...I top cut 9 out of a possible 10 cities I attended (1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, t4, t4, t8, t8, t8, 10th) and sit at 33 CP.

I would just like to point out the inconsistency here. Is it really that hard to top cut a cities?

I do agree that this system DOES reward consistency..which I like! However, I strongly believe players were over rewarded for Cities this year. Are we really saying that winning 5 Cities is the equivalent (in terms of difficulty and prestige associated with the performance) of winning 3 States/Regionals? Really??

~Colin

 

[desert eagle]

I would just like to point out the inconsistency here. Is it really that hard to top cut a cities?

I do agree that this system DOES reward consistency..which I like! However, I strongly believe players were over rewarded for Cities this year. Are we really saying that winning 5 Cities is the equivalent (in terms of difficulty and prestige associated with the performance) of winning 3 States/Regionals? Really??

~Colin

I think its a feasable reward for cities because most competitive players will get their 25-30 points in cities, which levels the playing field. I don't believe its overcompensation.

I actually believe its just as hard to win cities as states because cities has a more concentrated number of good players in the pool of players. All our local good players make it out to most of the CCs, making them just as hard, if not harder, than a State championship that will have those same good players and adding maybe 30-40 negligible players who just add numbers.

For the most part, cities drop quantity for quality.

Also you need to go X-1 to top cut a cities while you can go X-2 and still cut states due to the bigger cut - going X-2 is very easy while going X-1 is considerably more difficult.

 

[bullados]

I just wish that the Kicker system applied to *every* place, and not just to the lower places. Winning a 6 person City (by age group) is a LOT different from winning a 60 person City. Yet they both get the same number of CPs.

 

[desert eagle]

I just wish that the Kicker system applied to *every* place, and not just to the lower places. Winning a 6 person City (by age group) is a LOT different from winning a 60 person City. Yet they both get the same number of CPs.

This wouldn't work because it would create the same problems with players in smaller, secluded areas not having a shot at invites.

I think a better idea would be to abolish top cut altogether for small events like Cities and implement a set amount of rounds no matter how many players there are (say, 6 rounds swiss)
All X-0s get 6 pts
All X-1s get 5 points
All X-2s get 3 points
All X-3s get 1 point
best 5 finish limit

That way, tournament times will be standardized, and attendance won't have a positive or negative effect as youd still have to win X games to get X points and there wont be the issue of the X-1 whiff you get at cities.

 

[swanton1717]

I actually believe its just as hard to win cities as states because cities has a more concentrated number of good players in the pool of players. All our local good players make it out to most of the CCs, making them just as hard, if not harder, than a State championship that will have those same good players and adding maybe 30-40 negligible players who just add numbers.

For the most part, cities drop quantity for quality.

Also you need to go X-1 to top cut a cities while you can go X-2 and still cut states due to the bigger cut - going X-2 is very easy while going X-1 is considerably more difficult.

This is not true. States attendance numbers are going to be huge this year since players can now attend 3. I imagine States, on average, will be much closer to the size of an average Regionals than an average Cities. I think all players would agree that there is a strong, positive correlation between Size of an Event and Difficulty of an Event.

I would agree that the percentage of competitive players may be higher at a City than a State. However, at a minimum, the same number of good players will be at States (probably more so). So, now you have to deal with all those good players along with random decks and face it, those random decks can pose problems too.

We need to talk about these abstract X's in your last statement. They are generally NOT the same for a City versus a State. You may need to go 3-1, 4-1 or maybe even 5-1 to cut a City (if the later is the case, then in many events, some 4-2's will make it). However, at a State you need to win at least 5 games (6 to guarantee yourself a spot). This is all assuming a given State doesn't get to 8 rounds (I don't remember the numbers required for 8 rounds).

And what about after you make the cut? How many Top Cut rounds can you expect at a State versus a City?

~Colin

p.s. I want to make it clear that I'm talking about "average events" here. I am well aware that there have been Cities held this year that are probably harder than some States. However, a large number of Cities (even some I went to) had less than 20 Masters.

 

[SMP88]

This wouldn't work because it would create the same problems with players in smaller, secluded areas not having a shot at invites.

I think a better idea would be to abolish top cut altogether for small events like Cities and implement a set amount of rounds no matter how many players there are (say, 6 rounds swiss)
All X-0s get 6 pts
All X-1s get 5 points
All X-2s get 3 points
All X-3s get 1 point
best 5 finish limit

That way, tournament times will be standardized, and attendance won't have a positive or negative effect as youd still have to win X games to get X points and there wont be the issue of the X-1 whiff you get at cities.

That won't necessarily standardize anything. If anything it'll do roughly the same thing Bullados asked for. If you have say 20 people and go 6 rounds there isn't always going to be a X-0 or an X-1. While an event that would normally go 7 rounds would have more X-0s since they only went 6 rounds.

If it's harder to go X-1 at a larger Cities (say 6-7 rounds) why shouldn't they get more points than someone going X-0 at a 3-4 round Cities?

I think it was Bullados who posted something a while ago about having tournaments start with a base number of points given out and then adding kicker points determined by the number of players (in multiples of 2). I don't see why something like this couldn't work well.

 

[bullados]

I believe that this is the post to which SMP is referring...

 

[JandPDS]

I just wish that the Kicker system applied to *every* place, and not just to the lower places. Winning a 6 person City (by age group) is a LOT different from winning a 60 person City. Yet they both get the same number of CPs.

Ture I think anyone who finsihses with a record that is good enough to Top cut should get at least a Championship point for thier accomplisment. I bubbled 3 events and did not get anything for them.

 

[jjkkl]

I would just like to point out the inconsistency here. Is it really that hard to top cut a cities?

desert_eagle and I play in the same greater meta, so I should probably provide some context to his argument.

The interesting thing about Canada's Pokemon player base is that, from my knowledge, most of Canada's heavy hitters are based around Ontario and British Columbia, with some in Quebec and Alberta. Ontario specifically, most of them are within half an hour to hour drive of the GTA, with even outliers such as myself only 1.5-2 hours away from the Greater Toronto Area in bad traffic.

This leads to an incredibly concentrated agglomeration of highly competitive players, with a lot of strong Canadian players such as the Lesages, Koo, Shen, etc generally all attending the exact same Cities. America has that as well, of course, but a lot of its good players are more dispersed, and there's no absurdly high concentration-to-player base ratio down in the States as there is in Canada.

As a result, Canadian Cities is an incredibly competitive area because since it not only is a wellspring of CP, it's also within access range of a good number of Canada's strong Masters. The recent Ontario marathon has been a display of a very competitive metagame, so within the context of where desert_eagle is, yes, Top Cutting in a Cities during the Ontario marathon is a challenge.

The likely reason why Cities is more challenging than States is because with States, you face both extremely good and extremely bad players. In Ontario, it's extremely often to run into some fairly easy matches within the first couple rounds of States (or in our case, Provincials). Cities, however, because of the marathon setup, leads to a filtering - you'll see inexperienced players sometimes, but because it happens within driving range of a lot of good players, you'll see them more often.

So yes, it is hard to top cut in our Cities, just as how it would be difficult to top cut in the cities of some areas in the States.

 

[desert eagle]

That won't necessarily standardize anything. If anything it'll do roughly the same thing Bullados asked for. If you have say 20 people and go 6 rounds there isn't always going to be a X-0 or an X-1. While an event that would normally go 7 rounds would have more X-0s since they only went 6 rounds.

If it's harder to go X-1 at a larger Cities (say 6-7 rounds) why shouldn't they get more points than someone going X-0 at a 3-4 round Cities?

I think it was Bullados who posted something a while ago about having tournaments start with a base number of points given out and then adding kicker points determined by the number of players (in multiples of 2). I don't see why something like this couldn't work well.

no by standardized i mean every tournament has 6 rounds no matter how many players there are. If there is 20 players you would keep playing until 6 rounds are over, the computer keeps matching people up until then.
People at larger events could get a small advantage in the fact that there will be more 5-1 people standing at the end so more people can gain 5 points, but people at smaller events can still max out at 5-6 points for playing perfect.

In your way, people who live in an area that regularly draws only 25-40 people are gonan be at a severe disadvantage - raising the maximum points for a victory is NOT fair at all

---------- Post added 01/18/2012 at 05:21 PM ----------

This is not true. States attendance numbers are going to be huge this year since players can now attend 3. I imagine States, on average, will be much closer to the size of an average Regionals than an average Cities. I think all players would agree that there is a strong, positive correlation between Size of an Event and Difficulty of an Event.

I would agree that the percentage of competitive players may be higher at a City than a State. However, at a minimum, the same number of good players will be at States (probably more so). So, now you have to deal with all those good players along with random decks and face it, those random decks can pose problems too.

We need to talk about these abstract X's in your last statement. They are generally NOT the same for a City versus a State. You may need to go 3-1, 4-1 or maybe even 5-1 to cut a City (if the later is the case, then in many events, some 4-2's will make it). However, at a State you need to win at least 5 games (6 to guarantee yourself a spot). This is all assuming a given State doesn't get to 8 rounds (I don't remember the numbers required for 8 rounds).

And what about after you make the cut? How many Top Cut rounds can you expect at a State versus a City?

~Colin

p.s. I want to make it clear that I'm talking about "average events" here. I am well aware that there have been Cities held this year that are probably harder than some States. However, a large number of Cities (even some I went to) had less than 20 Masters.

I understand what you are saying but my counter is it is legitly alot harder to go 4-1 than 5-2. For good, competitive players, losing is an anamoly so having that extra loss buffer is huge to diminish the luck factor.

 

[Simon8rice]

well desert eagle, i may not know who you are but i have to disagree with what you're saying. basically who values a couple of cities wins more than a nationals win, for example? down the road would you rather be telling everybody how you won canadian nationals (15cp?) or brampton, grimsby, and acton cities (18cp)? Obviously it's great to be consistent but at these smaller events, who really cares? I came second at a cities but was I proud of it? Not really because we only had 3 rounds top 2. No offence, but should we be rewarding people handsomely for doing so well in these small tourneys? Consider juniors and seniors when they sometimes don't even have a top cut. These kids are getting 6cp for winning 2-3 rounds and no cut. Not everywhere is as nice and competitive as florida or cali

 

[Pooka]

Overall, I love the Championship Point system, and I'm glad it was implemented this year. However, I agree with Colin that City Championships are worth too much. If you lower the number of CP you get from a City by 1 or change the Best Finish Limit to 4 (or maybe even both), the system seems a lot more balanced. The way it is now, it's not unusual for players to attend 10-20 City Championships and get an inflated number of points just because they had so many tries to place well (myself included). Still, we have to remember that this is the first year for Championship Points, and I'm confident the system will be worked out in the future.

 

[Ness]

The fact that players can play many City Championships is not a flaw in the system. It's fun and it gives players more opportunities to prove their skills. The system is about as balanced and fair as it gets. Cities should indeed be worth a lot, relatively. Inflating States & Regionals overrewards players who simply got lucky at the right times.

 

[Pooka]

I'm not arguing about being able to play in so many City Championships; that is a good thing in itself. What I'm arguing is that you shouldn't be able to gain so many points from what is considered a small scale event. Right now the projection for earning an invite to Worlds is somewhere around 45 Championship Points; you can get to that with Battle Roads and City Championships alone, and I do think that is a flaw. At the end of the year we'll be able to look at all the numbers and come to a conclusion, but my initial feeling is that City Championships are the inflated events. On average, I think people will end up earning more points from Cities than from States/Regionals.

 

[Rambo]

You may be able to play "so many" over in America, but there isn't as much as an opportunity in other countries, meaning that the US has a higher chance of getting CP. Our second top rated player is Sammi, who attended the Florida marathon, after Tommy, who is just Tommy.

You said that you being able to go to multiple city championships is a good thing, as it is more fun, but there are a number of things to bear in mind for those who aren't you. There's the cost of travel, for me and 2 friends, just to get to Nottingham was £60, meaning we could not go, and I could only imagine it would be worse in America if you're travelling far, and have no car. The car issue itself may put off a lot of people, as they can't simply drive to wherever they see fit, either because they haven't got a car, a license or even are just too young to legally drive. Taking time off whatever you may be doing is a big issue, for example work or school. If you have a flexible or no job, then it's no problem, but I've seen many posts here complaining about this. Hotels are another issue, especially for marathons, not everyone is able to get on time to events if they're very early, meaning that they will most likely need to stay somewhere for the day before, which is easier on some people's budgets than others.

So I believe that CC give you too many CP considering the inconsistency of how many there are in each region, and how biased they are towards people's ability to attend, as well as how many can attend each event. Being able to gain the current amount from CC, it's ridiculous, the points needed to get an invite to worlds would drastically increase, meaning the only way for some to attend it this year is to be able to do very well at nats.

 

[desert eagle]

The fact that players can play many City Championships is not a flaw in the system. It's fun and it gives players more opportunities to prove their skills. The system is about as balanced and fair as it gets. Cities should indeed be worth a lot, relatively. Inflating States & Regionals overrewards players who simply got lucky at the right times.

Yeah, Jason pretty much hit the point right on.

Pooka: I understand what you are saying, on paper it does look like Cities is worth alot but in the real world, it works out because most competitive players who should be qualifying for Worlds will get their best 5 as long as there is a reasonable amount of Cities to play in so playing in 20-30 cities won't give you too much of an edge over playing 10-15 so the playing field is leveled - that's why the best 5 limit is so great.

I know in my area, our top players who went to most of the cities all hit at least 4 of their best 5 limit despite attending only 10 cities, and that's enough for us to have a shot at the invite, and that's all I can really ask for. I'm pretty sure you hit your best 5, and top players like Jason and Pram have hit their best 5 and gained at least 25-30 pts from the series.

Currently the system has adequate rewards for different skills:
16 pt BRs rewards willingness to travel and reach more events as not everyone will go to alot of BRs.
30 pt Cities rewards consistency and ability to top cut on a tourney to tourney basis.
40 pt States rewards ability and luck to perform well at a larger scale event on a bigger stage.
14 pt Nats rewards preparation and one good day at the biggest stage.

I really like the weighings right now, and it is the first year too, but like I said it is a step in the right direction for sure and I hope we keep the CP system from this point forward


@simon: haha jokes you know pretty well who I am bro. I honestly do believe winning 3 cities is more skill based than winning Canadian Nats. Winning Nats has a huge luck factor, just look at what happened last year. You guys let some random yugioh kid win the event with ZPS, I thought I left the canadian community in good hands when I dipped

 

[TheDarkTwins]

I only have one serious issue with the system. I went 5-2 at a CC getting 10th. I got 2 points for that. However a lot of 5-2s made cut, and earned 3 points or more. I don't have an issue with my resistance keeping me out, but I feel that my 5-2 should have been deserving of 3 points as well. I feel the kicker should go by record rather than place. If I go 5-2, why should I be penalized by who the computer had me play. It's a small gripe, but it's just how I feel.

I think another way to solve this is to go back to how top cut used to be. I don't think you should HAVE to reach 32 players to have a T8. The old system was to have a T8 if you had I believe 24 or 25 players. The other fact that CC are limited to T8 isn't good. They should be allowed to expand to T16. I know with timelimits and everything this makes it hard, but it's not fair to have players who go 5-2 miss cuts. I mean I saw standings that had 5-2 records go to exactly 16th from the marathon events. I just think that T16 would be a fair choice for the players. I'm sure some PTO/TO/Judges would have issues with this, but overall I think the whole idea is to make it fair to the PLAYERS, but at the sametime you don't want to upset the people running your events. It's really a double-edge sword.

Drew

 

[Son_of_Apollo]

This wouldn't work because it would create the same problems with players in smaller, secluded areas not having a shot at invites.

Are you trolling? Why does someone in a secluded area DESERVE an invite? If you're playing 3 round tournaments all year why do you deserve to go to Hawaii?

This system is flawed. Really flawed. Good areas are going to get less invites because if you win a cities with 20 people it's the same as me winning a cities with 80.

ELO made sense. Having a lot of people at a tournament always makes things more challenging, but at least they'd give us more rounds, aka more opportunities to get points.

This system is just unfair to anyone with actual competition. Bring ELO back

 

[bullados]

Are you trolling? Why does someone in a secluded area DESERVE an invite? If you're playing 3 round tournaments all year why do you deserve to go to Hawaii?

This system is flawed. Really flawed. Good areas are going to get less invites because if you win a cities with 20 people it's the same as me winning a cities with 80.

ELO made sense. Having a lot of people at a tournament always makes things more challenging, but at least they'd give us more rounds, aka more opportunities to get points.

This system is just unfair to anyone with actual competition. Bring ELO back

ELO has problems with late-season bias. Basically, you've got career Organizers and Judges that are also skilled players coming into Nationals with 1600 ratings and trolling everybody out of the building. You shouldn't get knocked out of World Championship consideration because of a 7-3 record (after an entire season of Top Cut worthy performances), but that's been happening over the last few years.

CPs are an attempt to fix that. Removing the Play-At-Risk allows people to attend more events without the added pressure of losing points because of even an average showing.

The idea is sound. The implementation could use some work. I'm a big fan of having Kicker points apply to ALL of the top places, not just those that missed out on the cut. I'd also like to have Drew's suggestion used to some extent. I had a post here that's really sort of a preliminary outline of what I think should happen. If I were to modify it further, I'd include a clause stating that all players of the same Swiss match record will receive at minimum the same number of CPs. The wording would have to be very precise, and the coding on the TPCi website would be a headache, but I don't want there to be three 2-1s at a 4 person BR (think Junior attendance) and only the 1st place by resistance gets CPs. Likewise, if a player has the same match record as a Top Cut player, but bubbles the cut, that player should receive the same number of CPs as a player that makes the Top Cut but loses in the first round of Single Elimination. Obviously, Top Cut Single-Elim results will be unchanged. I'm thinking more about the bubblers with good tournament records.

Another possible idea is, instead of pure Kicker points, award points for every win over a 50% record at a given tournament. You'll also have the Top Cut CP bonus on top of that. But IMO a 4-3 record should get something. This one's probably far more complex to think about at the moment, so I'm just going to let that idea simmer for a little while and flesh it out a little later.