ninetales1234 said:
that's what happens in swiss, anyway. Usually the player(s) in the lead are paired first in order to make it as hard as possible for them to win. We don't want it to be easy to win, do we? If you have a tournament with 8 people and go 3 rounds, the "true winner" could end up just being someone who got lucky pairings 3 times in a row.
Having more than just the bare minimum rounds makes the results of the tournament look less “luck-based” and more “skill-based” because the winner played more players than he/she would have in a single elimination tournament. If a swiss tournament has only the minimum number of rounds, then it is effectively a single elimination event (in terms of determining the winner, because the winner would always have to be undefeated).
Think about flipping a coin. Theoretically, it should land on heads 50% of the time. But you may perform an experiment in which you flip a coin 8 times and get heads twice (now that’s not 50%, is it?). And then you perform the experiment multiple times, only each time, you have a greater number of coin flips. And each time you do it, your final results come closer and closer to getting heads 50% of the time. The results are less distorted by luck.
The greater the number of rounds in swiss, the higher your chances of facing an accurate sampling of the player pool. Just like flipping a coin, you should increase the sample size in order to achieve more accurate results.
The flaw in your logic here is that the sample size is NOT one tournament, but rather, many tournaments over time. The accurate results are reached when the same players TEND to be in the winner's side of the pairings over and over, which we already find to be true. So, the only truly 'random' moment we have is in the first round's pairings. Of course, we don't often hear people complain that they won a tournament, the more common complaint is "I should've won, but I got hosed on pairings". My most common, and often percieved as harsh, response to this is: Win more games.
You do not get hosed on pairings if you win. You do not get hosed on tiebreaks, if you win. If you are paired with an inexperienced player in round one, and you lose, and proceed to win every other match from there on, and your opponent loses every match, you're at risk for losing on tiebreaks.
Is that a flaw of Swiss? Or, a flaw of the player? Or is it just luck?
I'm not going to get into that discussion, because it will never end. However, the proponderance of evidence we find is, that over time, the best players win more than they lose.
Swiss draw is the format we have chosen to use for a number of reasons. We are well aware of both it's strengths and weaknesses. That's it. There really isn't much more to say or discuss on the matter.
You want to run an 8 person tournament with 7 rounds? Fine, there's new techology that can help you. It's called paper and pencil. There is no compelling reason for POP to use it's time and resources to make our software meet any needs other than those that further the goals of the program.
Someone in this thread needs to explain to me, why POP should take the time, and effort to provide a FREE piece of software that allows people to run an event in a manner that is not approved by POP as an 'official' format, and then further, why we should allow you to do anything with that tournament once you're done.
We want players to play in sanctioned events. Sanctioned events must be consistent. It is made even more painfully obvious by the statements in this thread, that people were either disregarding, or ignoring the tournament guidelines, meaning our events were absolutely not consistent.
TOM is one step towards creating a more balanced sanctioned play environment, in that regard.
Complaining here that we aren't supporting your desire to run 8 man round robin, or other styles of tournaments for small groups, is really not productive in my opinion. Back in 'the day', as it were, I ran a 128 person TCG Championship event by hand, using match cards. It ran just fine, and the only 'hard' part was when I had to sit down and calcluate tiebreaks, which took me all of about 10 minutes, by hand, while the tournament was running.
So, you might be able to see why I have a hard time prioritizing this as a TOM 'need'.
Also, as an aside, using your coin flip analogy really does not work here. The coin flip here doesn't apply, as the 'timeline' is not one tournament, it's the entire season, or your entire time in the OP Program. Your 'higher sampling' of the player pool is almost completely meaningless if your player pool is 8 players. Playing them 8 rounds will generally do nothing more than muddy the waters of the results, but the best players will TEND to rise to the top, regardless.
Our sampling is of as many players, playing as many matches, in as many events as they can attend. This is what causes the results to be less distorted by luck.
Dave
