Removing Bye Rewards @ U.S. Nationals

[vegitalian]

Why are we overlooking the fact they are two entirely separate tournaments? Everything else is just the icing on the cake. If someone wins one tournament, why do we give them an advantage in the next tournament? They received their reward for winning Regionals. They got packs, recognition, a trophy and points. That is enough!

Worlds in two different years are entirely different tournaments - why give Top 4 byes to next year's Worlds? Points are earned through Battle Roads - why give a bye to Worlds based on tournament performance at something as insignificant as a few Battle Roads and States/Provincials?

Point is, tournament performance affects other tournaments. It's an additional prize for those that perform well, and extra incentive to do well. Who's to say what's enough?

---------- Post added 08/31/2011 at 06:56 PM ----------

Getting a free trip to Nationals doesn't give them an advantage over everyone else in the room at nationals. A free trip doesn't give you a better chance of cutting than the other players in the room unless one of your opponents is stressing about money so much that they can't concentrate, lol. Apples and oranges.

You also happen to have benefitted extensively from this system, so it's not really a surprise to see your advocation of it.



I wish you were right, but we didn't get a trophy!

Benefitting from this system is a moot point. At this point, everyone's on equal ground - it's a fresh season, and anyone can benefit from the Regionals byes.

Yes it did. You could have easily skipped Nats, you had a freakish amount of points, and you got to go for free, have a good time, go 5-4, and still make worlds. Yes you have benefitted extensively.

Edit: Just realized... You got 2 byes and went 5-4... You effectively went 3-4. Oh. And you STILL made worlds. dang.

It's really easy to sit on the sidelines and say 'haha, you went 3-4', but note that he went 3-4 after 2-0. This isn't the same as playing a Starter Deck, and winning 3 games against new players - he was actually at the top tables playing good opponents.

 

[Lawman]

Why are we overlooking the fact they are two entirely separate tournaments? Everything else is just the icing on the cake. If someone wins one tournament, why do we give them an advantage in the next tournament? They received their reward for winning Regionals. They got packs, recognition, a trophy and points. That is enough!

Ok, then in your world, we shouldn't award trips to worlds for winning Nats bc they are 2 seperate tourneys. We shouldnt give invites to worlds on a season's rankings bc they are different events (and formats this year) Shoot, we shouldnt even keep points then bc some people "earned" invites w/o battling any higher than a states or maybe a regional. Those folks then SAT OUT Nats to sit on their points. How is this better than a 2 rd bye for a Regional winner willing to PLAY at Nats?

I feel like the # of byes can be reduced somewhat. Gotta be a winner to get them. Reg's are tough events....doesnt matter where you are. States can be iffy, some are much smaller than others.

Trust in TPCi, they are always looking to improve things where they can. They look at these things, review data from past series and events and plot a direction (or plan changes) when needed.

Keith

 

[SMP88]

You can't compare a bye and an invite, they're 2 completely different things. A bye literally counts as a single round win at a different tournament. Using another football analogy, that would be like giving the division winner a 7 point lead to start the first playoff game. Is it insurmountable? No, but it's still much harder for the opponent to come back and win than if things were even at the start.

An invite does not affect the next tournament in any way, all it does is allow a person to participate in that tournament. Using the football analogy once again, an invite would be like a team making the playoffs. Only a certain number of people can get the invite/make the playoffs, but once they're there everyone starts on an equal footing.

 

[Prof Clay]

You can't compare a bye and an invite, they're 2 completely different things. A bye literally counts as a single round win at a different tournament. Using another football analogy, that would be like giving the division winner a 7 point lead to start the first playoff game. Is it insurmountable? No, but it's still much harder for the opponent to come back and win than if things were even at the start.

.

A bye is nothing like that in football...it IS just like a team with a winning record not having to play the 1st round of the playoffs...they earned that right by having a great season compared to the other teams...

They still have to win to move on...much like swiss at nats...

AND if you get against a person who has a bye, does that give them the advantage against YOU that round? I cannot see how.

Beat the people with byes when they play.

If they are "undeserving" of the bye, then I guess they should be easier to beat.

 

[SMP88]

I'm going to run with football here.

The regular season can be compared to all of Battle Roads, States, Regionals and Nationals combined. Each tournament can be considered an individual game. Your combined record over the course of the season allows you to be invited to the playoffs (Worlds). What you do in one game has no bearing on what happens in the next. While not a perfect analogy, if we're to call Worlds the entire playoffs then the first week where teams have byes can be considered Grinders. It's not perfect since not everyone has a chance that first playoff weekend in football, but it's close enough. The teams (players) with byes in the first round are just the ones who have done best over the course of the season and have been "invited" to the second round of the playoffs.

If we consider each game a tournament, what one team (player) does in one game has no bearing in another. Once again, it would be like giving a team a lead to start the game if they had won the previous one.

 

[Skaterkid]

I agree completely. Also concerning this years nats, the players that had the bye won the bye in a different rotation. Most players who had won their buys won them playing SP's. I had a friend at nats who went 6-3 and played all his games but he didn't make top cut due to all the players who had the byes for the first 2 rounds. It is very unfair to him, he won his right into top cut and didn't get it because players had byes. Very unfair system and should be removed asap.

 

[vegitalian]

You can't compare a bye and an invite, they're 2 completely different things. A bye literally counts as a single round win at a different tournament. Using another football analogy, that would be like giving the division winner a 7 point lead to start the first playoff game. Is it insurmountable? No, but it's still much harder for the opponent to come back and win than if things were even at the start.

An invite does not affect the next tournament in any way, all it does is allow a person to participate in that tournament. Using the football analogy once again, an invite would be like a team making the playoffs. Only a certain number of people can get the invite/make the playoffs, but once they're there everyone starts on an equal footing.

Absolutely I can. An invite is essentially a 6 or 7-round bye. The wording they use in this game is 'invite', but many other games with similar systems call this a 'bye into day 2'. Worlds is a 3-day tournament - having an invite allows you to surpass the first day. That affects the tournament.

 

[SMP88]

Worlds is a 2 day tournament. The LCQ is a separate tournament used to give a couple extra people invites into Worlds. Does the LCQ affect Worlds? Technically yes since if you didn't have the players who grinded in the results would be different. That still doesn't change the fact that you still have to play the rounds to determine the winner. This is different than the byes given at Nationals because the people getting byes don't have to play 1 or 2 rounds and they still get wins for those round. Having a magical win appear on your record directly, 100% affects the tournament.

Skaterkid brings up another good point about this year's rotation. I know they couldn't have anticipated it when they started giving out byes, but people ended up with byes in a format completely different from the one they earned the byes in.

 

[NoPoke]

part of the prize for winning the LCQ is entry into a closed tournament : worlds.
part of the prize for winning a regional is a bye (maybe its two byes I don't know) at nationals.

I don't get the format argument at all. The format is supposed to change during the season. So what am I missing?

 

[froggy25]

ELO, while not perfect for Pokémon, seems to be a lot better than any alternatives we can think of. There is, however, one suggestion I wanted to implement into the ELO System, and that was: Players do not lose points in Top Cut matches. This would give good players more incentive to play through tournaments. I think it's silly whenever you make the Top Cut and then lose the first round that you would have been better off simply dropping after swiss. In fact, most times you will have been better off dropping if you win your first Top Cut round and then lose the next round! That makes no sense to me. The counterargument to this is that ELO always has players gaining & losing the same amount of points so that the total points in play remain the same. This system would change that. My response to that? So what.

I remember a thread talking about this issue.

An idea was to reduce the number of point lost by the loser to take the luck into account, so huge tournaments with huge K-value would not repel players with a high rating from playing in these events.
If a 1900 player lose to a 1600 player at a K-32 event because he lost the Coin Flip and got his Yanma donked by a Tyrogue + 2 PlusPower, he should not lose that many points.
I know under Elo you're supposed to "win x % of the time, and lose y % of the time", but this is only true in Chess, where the luck is nearly non-existent.

This would also reduce the amount of drops before the top : if a player with a high rating actually wins points after winning his first Top Cut round and then losing the next, instead of winning 5 points and then losing 20 because he had a way better ranking than his opponent, the drops would be scarcer than now.

 

[NoPoke]

I remember several thread like that one too http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1901640&postcount=358 for an answer.

Isn't a discussion of elo /ratings off topic?

---

What is the issue with the bye? That it has too big an impact on standings? That some can't earn them? That tournaments should exist in isolation? That rewarding players in the next event is unfair? Of those I'd say that it is only the issue of how much they effect standings that needs addressing. I'm content with the free wins as a reward but not content with the extra bonus of having an enhanced op-win%

 

[SMP88]

part of the prize for winning the LCQ is entry into a closed tournament : worlds.
part of the prize for winning a regional is a bye (maybe its two byes I don't know) at nationals.

I don't get the format argument at all. The format is supposed to change during the season. So what am I missing?

An invite to another tournament =/= a bye in another tournament. An invite just gives you the opportunity to participate in an event. You still have to play all the rounds. You can still lose the first round.

A bye is a literal win in either 1 or 2 rounds. You do not get the opportunity to lose any of the rounds you get a bye in. You aren't invited to round 3 of the tournament, you're given 2 wins in a completely different tournament than the one you earned the prize from.

What if the prize for winning Nationals included a bye for the first 2 rounds of Worlds? How would you feel if you played 2 rounds against tough competition and then played someone who literally hasn't had to play a game that day and still has the same record as you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there were 8 rounds in Masters at Worlds this year, and a few 6-2s made it. If you had a 2 round bye, you could go 4-2 and probably make it due to how byes count towards resistance. It's the exact same thing at Nationals.

 

[Prof Clay]

An invite to another tournament =/= a bye in another tournament. An invite just gives you the opportunity to participate in an event. You still have to play all the rounds. You can still lose the first round.

A bye is a literal win in either 1 or 2 rounds. You do not get the opportunity to lose any of the rounds you get a bye in. You aren't invited to round 3 of the tournament, you're given 2 wins in a completely different tournament than the one you earned the prize from.

What if the prize for winning Nationals included a bye for the first 2 rounds of Worlds? How would you feel if you played 2 rounds against tough competition and then played someone who literally hasn't had to play a game that day and still has the same record as you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there were 8 rounds in Masters at Worlds this year, and a few 6-2s made it. If you had a 2 round bye, you could go 4-2 and probably make it due to how byes count towards resistance. It's the exact same thing at Nationals.

But how is this unfair...they earned the byes from doing well in an event of the same series.

The byes may be overdone..but 1 bye is not unfair to the field...it just puts players who do not have them in the position to LOSE FEWER GAMES...

In a field of 900 players, 20 people with 1 bye (2 even I think is excessive) do not put undue pressure on the field.

But players who had 2 byes had to come into round 3 and PLAY AGAINST OTHER 2-0 players. Yes they dodge some of the random decks out there by missing the 1st 2 rounds. But they come in and know they will have to play someone who they know for the most part can hold their own.

No one went into Nats and were blindsided by the idea of folks having byes...You knew that it was not a completely even playing field.

If you understood the tournament you knew that given the players that had byes had great early resistance, you knew you HAD to win more games or risk being bumped by them.

So yes the did cause people to not make the cut...but so did the players inability to WIN enough games.

We can't help that everyone could not attend a Regional...but I bet over 90% of the players at Nats DID go to one and had an OPPORTUNITY to WIN the byes for themselves.

Plus with the rankings system as it was, using the byes would actually impair your ability to raise your ranking points from playing fewer games.

If 2 byes had been ONLY issued based upon say...top 40 players in the US...these players, according to the rankings, were the best up until Nats...would they have felt it was unfair...I would think they would say they earned the right to not risk their points for 2 games.

Hopefully some adjustments will be made but if not...EVERYONE now has the OPPORTUNITY to go out and WIN Byes twice at regionals this year.

When you have them...what will you do with them?

 

[SMP88]

If I had a bye would I use it? Of course I would, I would be silly not to take an automatic win in a tough tournament. That's not the debate though, the debate is whether byes should be given in the first place.

Your point about how everyone knew that the people who had byes had great resistance and knew it wasn't an even playing field is ridiculous. What if winners of Regionals were given a spot in the top cut of Nationals? Everyone would know about it, players would know that there would be less available spots in top cut for them to get and that they would have to do really well for them to get theirs, but that still doesn't change the fact that some people would have an advantage in one tournament based on the results of another. And technically, if I go 6-3 and someone makes it in with a 6-3 record with the help of 2 byes, I did win more games than them. They only won 4 rounds, they were given 2 wins that they didn't have to play a match for.

Also, saying that using the byes could impair a player's ability to raise their points, it also impairs a player's opponent from taking points from them. If everyone had to play an equal number of rounds, everyone would know they would have to do well for a number of rounds to keep their ranking high.

Your hypothetical situation saying the top 40 in points could make an argument to get byes so they don't lose points is also incorrect. Why wouldn't the top 40 after fall Battle Roads get a bye at States? Why wouldn't the top 40 after States get a bye at Regionals, etc. Why is Nationals the only event to get byes? If we're to keep byes at Nationals I see no reason not to give Battle Roads winners byes to the next tournament, and so on.

 

[NoPoke]

I'm still not seeing the problem with byes. The closest I can get is the dislike of byes being a Trojan Horse for a different issue: that of resistance deciding who makes the cut.

 

[Prof Clay]

Are they unfair...sure...if Nats was a single..stand alone event...having no ramifications other than determining a US Champ.

In the context of a Pokemon Season culminating with Worlds, they are not unfair. The byes tie performance at Regionals and Nationals together...What if we called regionals ... US National Preliminary Events...would this change the perception of the byes? Instead of establishing a Seeding for US Nats, we give priority to those who succeed at the US Nationals Preliminary Events. Everyone is allowed to play at Nats, but these players have established themselves in the previous event as the "Players to Beat"..with the intent of giving them an advantage.

States are too far out from Nats and should not be considered for the event...so I definitely agree there about the bye

But in answer to your hypotheticals...yes...I guess we could give 1 round byes for Wins at the next lower tiered event...but really they only reason this will never happen is the record keeping AND the fact that you can play in multiple cities and 2 states and now 2 regional events...which one do you use them in. There is only 1 Nats a year

Byes for Cities....like states...you could only win 1 bye no matter how many events you play in....the logistics of such things are difficult to keep track of based on the information systems we have to track events.

If I remember correctly, Magic the Gathering has been using byes for year at their events...where are they earned...other events. Seems to work for them

 

[Caleb]

Well I've kinda been outta the discussion for awhile, but I figured I'd chime in here given that I feel like this is a pretty good discussion.

The first thing I'd like to say, is that I agree with no byes from states. Don't get me wrong, I feel like some states probably deserve it, but given the variance we see in attendance, I think it would be better to cut that all together. As far as regionals go though, I'm going to have to respectfully disagree on getting rid of the bye.

First off, regionals are all highly competitive events, winning one actually means something. It's not an event anybody can walk into and jump away with the prize. There's usually allot of highly competitive players at regionals, and while they aren't perfectly balanced as some have said, they are at least along the same general guidelines when it comes to skill level.

Furthermore, this year regionals are being split up. I don't think that 30% number is far off at all, and if we do see a boost in attendance like that, I really don't see the argument. Regionals are already big events, and raising their size like this is going to make winning, or even making seconds a highly prestigious title, not that it wasn't already. I personally think a two round bye is fine prize support for an event of this size.

The last issue, is the resistance issue. I know allot of people are claiming it gives the regional winners a unfair advantage, but the thing is, I don't really think it's unfair at all. Now ultimately no matter what happens, it's impossible to please everyone when only a couple of people who are 6-3 are going to make. Now we solve this issue with the tie-breaker based on resistance. Now think about this. Who would do you think deserves the slot more? Someone who won a regionals, or somebody else who just showed up and went 6-3. I understand that anyone can have a bad day, but at the same time, I think it's not going to far to say the regional winner is probably better than the random player on average.

On a final note, I would like to mention there's a disadvantage to taking the byes. While not always the case, allot of the time your first two games are going to be easier. This being the case, they're potentially "easy points." Now if you're a player who has ever tried to maintain their ranking, you know that eventually you have to win 3-4 to every one game that you lose, otherwise your rating will drop. I know that when I was 7-1 at nationals this year I considered dropping to conserve my invite. If I had won a regionals, that would have made me 5-1, meaning that my raiting would have a likely received a SMALL boost. Don't get me wrong, it's not the biggest disadvantage in the world, but the odds of getting a invite off of rating vs. actually winning nationals, it's important to consider which one of those you wish to aim for when competing, meaning it may not always be the best option to even take the byes.

Well sorry that dragged on awhile, there's allot of good players out there who disagree with me, so hopefully they can shed some light on why I'm wrong if they disagree.

 

[SMP88]

The last issue, is the resistance issue. I know allot of people are claiming it gives the regional winners a unfair advantage, but the thing is, I don't really think it's unfair at all. Now ultimately no matter what happens, it's impossible to please everyone when only a couple of people who are 6-3 are going to make. Now we solve this issue with the tie-breaker based on resistance. Now think about this. Who would do you think deserves the slot more? Someone who won a regionals, or somebody else who just showed up and went 6-3. I understand that anyone can have a bad day, but at the same time, I think it's not going to far to say the regional winner is probably better than the random player on average.

I'm going to just discuss this point. I actually think the person who won 6 out of 9 of their rounds is more deserving than the person who only won 4 out of 7. The first person played 2 extra rounds and won both of them. There's no guarantee that the person with the byes would have won their rounds. Is it likely? Sure, but they also could have had a bad hand or misplayed or a bunch of things. I would say that the person who won regionals and the person who came in third are both great players, yet the person who came in third can miss top cut to the regionals winner even if Mr. third place won more actual games at Nationals.

I think it mainly comes down to whether you think a prize from one tournament should affect the standings in another.

 

[Ness]

1 bye is not unfair to the field...it just puts players who do not have them in the position to LOSE FEWER GAMES...

LOL, Am I missing something? How is that not blatantly unfair?

Judges and Tournament Organizers always seem to have a very hard time admitting something is ever being done unfairly or wrong in the game. I remember reading judges bashing the concept of +3 turns. Now that we have it, does anyone want to go back? It's okay to be critical sometimes, you know?

SparkNotes: Axe the byes.

 

[Prof Clay]

LOL, Am I missing something? How is that not blatantly unfair?

Judges and Tournament Organizers always seem to have a very hard time admitting something is ever being done unfairly or wrong in the game. I remember reading judges bashing the concept of +3 turns. Now that we have it, does anyone want to go back? It's okay to be critical sometimes, you know?

SparkNotes: Axe the byes.

Actually I rethought myself later and realized that ...yes it is unfair...and intended to be...I have no problem admiting when I am wrong, but I do not feel that byes are bad for the game nor are they wrong for being given out

like I said though...too many byes are given...state winner should not be awarded byes and probably 2 byes awarded to regional winners is too many...

read my post above how I view regionals and nats. To me they are linked as part of the season. Everyone has a chance to win the byes...regionals are not exclusive events, so every player who is going to attend Nats has the opportunity to attend a regional and win 1 (again 2 are too many)