Top Cut Dissapointments NEW SUGGESTION!!!

[ninetales1234]

So in your opinion is OP win % the best feasable tiebreaker out there?

No, Tardiness.

I'm not a computer programmer but I am sure that you could program it to move on to another tiebreaker if there is an infinite loop.

lol
as a matter of fact, they do; the fifth tiebreaker is standing of last opponent.

We *could* go to an invite only National Championships, with fewer players, and attempt something along these lines, but we decided many years ago to leave the US Nationals as an open event, because it's FUN.

Making Nationals invite-only would be a much bigger problem that what you are having to deal with now.

Increasing this to a T64 'moves' the problem to the 6-3 players. There are 84 of them, but only 18 make the cut, leaving 66 'out in the cold'. So, while the players here stating that any 7-2 player missing the cut is 'unacceptable', do you not think that we'd hear the exact same thing in subsequent years about 6-3 players?

If you make the top cut 32, the 33rd guy will complain, if you make it top 64, the 65th guy will complain, if you make it top 1024, the 1025th guy will complain...

Really, it's just a matter of what you decide is good enough, or not.

The concept of a "good player" is subjective.

Extra swiss round:
We don't particularly like what happens after 'perfect' swiss has been run. We do understand that there may be some benefit, but in many cases, we simply feel that the benefit does not outweigh the negative.

We'll again look at this from the perfect 512 attendance, with a T32 cut.

After round 9, everything is very 'pretty' based on swiss records. It's how it 'should' be. There is one undefeated player, 9 with one loss, and 36 with two losses.

Not always true in real life. This is guaranteed to happen if (going along with your exampe) the number of players is a power of two and there are not late players or drops. Just want to point out that this just doesn't happen in real life.

there's a chance of having... zero undefeated players.

In the real world, this does happen. I have run many simulation tournaments on TOM, with the minimum rounds of swiss, where, at the end, there are no undefeated players. I have also participated in tournaments where this has happened.

You're saying that, if you exceed the minimum rounds of swiss, there's a chance of having no undeated players at the end. Well, this happens anyway.

Larger top cut:
Extra swiss round:
Non-symetrical top cuts (T48) etc.

How about my proposal of getting rid of National Championships? Or at least a compromise of having three National Championships on account of the fact that the US is soooo big?
And what about my proposal of doing extra swiss rounds without single elimination at the end? If you do that, the seeding problems you mentioned are non-existent.

We discussed Time of Loss as the first tiebreaker at great length. Using that as an early tiebreaker cripples players who lose early.

Any tiebreaker you use is going to cripple somebody.
I don't want it as a first tiebreaker, but it would make a lot more sense to keep it as a tiebeaker, instead of using something more "random", like the final standing of the last person you played.

Time of Loss means that a player who loses in the first round, wins the second, loses the third round, and then wins his last 6 to go 7-2 out has NO chance of making the cut, regardless of the fact that he played a 9-0, 7-2, 7-2, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3, with an Op Win% of 71.6%. Now THAT seems illegitimate to me.

Then how about using Cumulative?

Ah, the things that we think of here in OP when testing out new tiebreakers. :biggrin:

Wish I could get paid to do that.:biggrin:

legal loopholes

The government wants to stop you from running a tournament?:smile:

that we'd have to go through to get something like this accomplished would exceed at least a year's worth of POP budget.

Not worth the money, IMO.

How does adding lesser quality players to the top cut add legitimacy to event?

I think the people who want a bigger top cut are making the assertion, that people who just barely miss the cut, are missing it because they got unlucky that day.
I don't think that making the top cut bigger makes the event any more fair: that's just more rounds a person has to go through undefeated to guarantee himself first place.

To those who want the top cut bigger, I pose this question:

How does going 6-3 in nine rounds of swiss and then winning all your matches in single elimination (in the Top 64), make you the best player? How does it make you better than someone who goes 9-0 in swiss and loses in the T32?

Player one: 12-3
Player two: 10-1

The first player just happened to win a whole bunch of matches at the end. He won his last six matches. But the second player won a higher percentage of his matches. How is that fair? Making the top cut bigger just increases the chance that stuff like this will happen. People who win a lower percentage of their matches will be more likey to win because there will be a ton of rounds at the end that someone has to go undefeated through to get first place.

Winning a lot of matches makes you a good player. Winning the last set of matches at the end of the tournament does not.*

*Not only is this why adding more single elimination rounds is bad, but this is why single elimination is a bad idea in general.

 

[drmario]

*Not only is this why adding more single elimination rounds is bad, but this is why single elimination is a bad idea in general.

What is wrong with single elimination? If they did no Single Elimination you would have to go X-0 to win a tournament. (sometimes you might manage to win with 1 loss. Without single elimination most people would drop once they get 2 losses.

Let's have MLB get rid of the playoffs. They can just crown the team with the most wins the World Series Champions. Why doesn't it work? Because the season would be over in September. Teams wouldn't have anything to play for. Same reason it wouldn't work in pokemon.

 

[JandPDS]

What is wrong with single elimination? If they did no Single Elimination you would have to go X-0 to win a tournament. (sometimes you might manage to win with 1 loss. Without single elimination most people would drop once they get 2 losses.

Let's have MLB get rid of the playoffs. They can just crown the team with the most wins the World Series Champions. Why doesn't it work? Because the season would be over in September. Teams wouldn't have anything to play for. Same reason it wouldn't work in pokemon.

Because getting rid of the top cut and awarding the Championship to the Swiss winner would be more fair to the particpants then the present luck based top cut system is, that is why.

 

[ninetales1234]

What is wrong with single elimination? If they did no Single Elimination you would have to go X-0 to win a tournament.

Thinking inside the box? http://pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1055290&postcount=11

 

[Scizor]

No, it wouldn't.

 

[NoPoke]

At a big Pokémon swiss tournament.

Pairings for the first few rounds are essentially random. This makes Time-Of-First-Loss problematic because there is little justification in saying that a player who goes WWWWWWWWL is actually worse than one that goes LWWWWWWWW. Note that the op win% tie breaker already has a component of time of loss built in just as a consequence of the swiss pairs rule of winners play winners and losers play losers. But at least you have a chance with our present op_win tiebreaker when you receive a first round loss.

A swiss plus top cut is a very different tournament to just straight swiss pairs. You have to view the top cut as the main tournament and the swiss as a qualifier. The swiss being there to eliminate candidates based upon a poor performance on the day. The swiss makes a selection of players from all attending to take part in the finals. Some good and some average who got lucky.

Straight swiss with the minimum number of rounds will never be a particularly good way of organising a Pokémon tournament. Why? Simply because Pokémon is not a game of pure skill. Nine rounds followed by a T32 remains a good tournament. It is a good tournament even if I'd personally prefer +1 swiss round when attendance exceeds 350 ish.

Straight swiss with log_base2(entrants)+3 or more rounds could be used to replace the swiss+cut that is presently used. But there is much less drama in such an event. Drama is important.

============

Arguements about who has the best or worst players and toughest competition usually get nowhere. Whilst it is going to be true in general that the biggest tournaments are going to be the toughest to win it is not universally true. All it takes is for an area to have four world class players and most everyone else is going to be excluded from the top spots even if the tournament only had 8 entrants.

Arguments about deserving more prizes because of attendance just completely fail to miss the point about how the game would fail to grow if such were ever implemented. You don't grow the game by penalising new areas.

 

[Prime]

I think the main problem with top cutting and ranking is that people think that because they made the top cut, they should end up with more points overall than someone who didn't. Now, this won't always be true, for instance someone with a really low score could win 3/5 of their matches against really good players and gain a lot of points, but for the most part, I agree with them. That is why I feel there would be some extra points added to each player's rating when they make the top cut, and when they win the tournament. Points just for making that place, and not for playing. And maybe those extra points should be determined by how many players are in the age group. So, players that top cutted and/or won a LARGE states would earn more extra TC (top-cut) points than players that top cutted and/or won a smaller states, and so on.

I don't see why this couldn't be implemented, and I think it might appease many people, and honestly, I feel it is logical thing to do. People shouldn't lose points for winning events (or top cutting). People only lose points because they have SO many points that the points they earn from a game isn't much but the points they lose from a game can be a lot. So give them some extra points just for doing well at the tournament, and maybe it can make up (a little) for the losses they incurred.

JMHO

 

[Lawman]

Because getting rid of the top cut and awarding the Championship to the Swiss winner would be more fair to the particpants then the present luck based top cut system is, that is why.

Luck based? I think going 7-2 at Nats is NOT luck based. You gotta be a pretty darned good player w/ favorable match ups that day.

Keith

 

[Sunscorch]

How about this?

The tiebreaker is simply OP Win %, but with heavier weighting towards earlier OP's stats, because it is easier to get paired with an opponent of a drastically different skill level earlier in the tournament, than it is later in the swiss pairings.

 

[SlimeyGrimey]

I think the main problem with top cutting and ranking is that people think that because they made the top cut, they should end up with more points overall than someone who didn't. Now, this won't always be true, for instance someone with a really low score could win 3/5 of their matches against really good players and gain a lot of points, but for the most part, I agree with them. That is why I feel there would be some extra points added to each player's rating when they make the top cut, and when they win the tournament. Points just for making that place, and not for playing. And maybe those extra points should be determined by how many players are in the age group. So, players that top cutted and/or won a LARGE states would earn more extra TC (top-cut) points than players that top cutted and/or won a smaller states, and so on.

I don't see why this couldn't be implemented, and I think it might appease many people, and honestly, I feel it is logical thing to do. People shouldn't lose points for winning events (or top cutting). People only lose points because they have SO many points that the points they earn from a game isn't much but the points they lose from a game can be a lot. So give them some extra points just for doing well at the tournament, and maybe it can make up (a little) for the losses they incurred.

JMHO

I still don't like this idea. A player that plays in a large state and wins ALREADY gets more points than a player who plays in a smaller state. In a larger state you get more rounds, and there will be other high ranked players to get points from. In a smaller area you get few rounds, and the best players tend to just trade points back and forth.

Basically, your "idea" is already built into the system.

 

[Prime]

I still don't like this idea. A player that plays in a large state and wins ALREADY gets more points than a player who plays in a smaller state. In a larger state you get more rounds, and there will be other high ranked players to get points from. In a smaller area you get few rounds, and the best players tend to just trade points back and forth.

Basically, your "idea" is already built into the system.

Your saying that everyone gains, and the ones that were getting more points because of larger tournaments are still getting more tournaments. I can understand that logic.

I was just trying to come up with an answer to people crying because they lost points after they top cutted a large tournament. I know there isn't an easy answer, and I am sure POP has thought of all of this before.

A lot of people have problems with going 7-2 or 5-2 or whatever and barely getting any points from the 7 or 5 wins and losing a lot of points from the 2 losses. Logically, that makes sense, but the "system" doesn't calculate for lucky hands, or bad matchups, bad days, etc. How can the system calculate for something that isn't constant?

I guess the only idea that seems possible, I remember reading from someone else, was the idea that the system only records your best record at a tournament. So if you went to 3 cities, and had bad matchups at one, tried a new deck at the 2nd one and bombed, but went undefeated at the third one, only the third one would register.

You know, I like this idea. It would encourage more creativity with decks and wouldn't get people all hung up on playing the absolute best deck in the format. Also, it would advocate going to multiple cities/states/regionals. POP would have to change the regionals thing to allow for there to be more than one regionals. Or they could just say, "prepare your a-game, because you won't get a second chance at regionals or nationals", which would be fair IMHO.

I am sure there are other good ideas out there.

 

[ninetales1234]

How about this?

The tiebreaker is simply OP Win %, but with heavier weighting towards earlier OP's stats, because it is easier to get paired with an opponent of a drastically different skill level earlier in the tournament, than it is later in the swiss pairings.

You mean heaver weighting toward later opponent's records? Sounds like it could work. This would have the advantage of being weighted toward the records of opponents who did not drop (you are probably not in the last two rounds if you dropped from the tournament).
I had thought of a similar idea. Another thing they could do, is create a tiebreaker that, as a compromise, merges OP Win% and Cumulative. (how you'd do that is another story... I have some ideas- I'll post them if I come up with something.)

 

[ryanvergel]

I'd much rather play in a state with 1 less swiss round and with double the chance to get into the top cut. I think most other players feel the same.

 

[Sunscorch]

You mean heaver weighting toward later opponent's records? Sounds like it could work. This would have the advantage of being weighted toward the records of opponents who did not drop (you are probably not in the last two rounds if you dropped from the tournament).
I had thought of a similar idea. Another thing they could do, is create a tiebreaker that, as a compromise, merges OP Win% and Cumulative. (how you'd do that is another story... I have some ideas- I'll post them if I come up with something.)

No, definitely heavier weighting towards the earlier opponents.

The reason is this:
Say we have, in a nine round set, four players at 7-2, where two of the players lost their first two, and two lost their last two.
The players who lost last obviously did consistently well, but if one of them had harder earlier match ups than the other, then obviously he did better than the player with the same win-loss sequence.
On the other hand, if one of the players who lost early happened to be against the 9-0 player in the first match, then his loss was probably less of a reflection on his playing ability than the other player who lost to someone who went on to lose the rest of their matches.

Thus, more importance should be placed on these earlier matches, because of the increased randomness of the match ups.

 

[SteveP]

I'd much rather play in a state with 1 less swiss round and with double the chance to get into the top cut. I think most other players feel the same.

With more games, the chances are higher that the "best" players and decks will rise to the top. For that reason, swiss-1 < swiss < swiss+1.

 

[Muk Man]

Question about top cuts. Will there be a 3rd 4th place playoff because i hope it is not like states where resistence decides. Becuase honestly THAT WAS JUST HORRIBLE!!!

 

[ryanvergel]

With more games, the chances are higher that the "best" players and decks will rise to the top. For that reason, swiss-1 < swiss < swiss+1.

Your relationship only holds true if the top cut size is adequate. This is not the case when there are restrictions placed on top cut sizes.

 

[ARMondak]

To the PUI guys:

How difficult would it be to have an RPI style resistance, with just one tiebreaker, factoring in their opponents' ratings, their opponents' resistances, and opponents' opponents' resistance? Of course, the latter two would be worth considerably more, but at a tournament like Nats where resistance is extremely crucial it would almost have to be a must to consider how one's opponents fared throughout the year.

 

[rhodesia123]

Question about top cuts. Will there be a 3rd 4th place playoff because i hope it is not like states where resistence decides. Becuase honestly THAT WAS JUST HORRIBLE!!!

4th place gets a trophy too

 

[Smeagol]

I'm confident that I am the only person in the WORLD that got NINTH at 2 States this year (Masters' division)-each broke to a top 8.

Having said that, I do not feel that just the top cut names should be posted at the end of swiss rounds. I, for one, like to see how much % I lost on via oponents' and opponents' oppenents' win %. Meh, maybe it's just me.