US Nationals 2010, June 25 - 27, Indianapolis IN

[SD PokeMom]

info on the front page (http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?t=120125), discuss...

'mom

[PkB_]

A littlle farther for me. IDK if ill be able to go but I would much rather go to indy than ST. louis,

[thepliskin5005]

Yay i live in columbus ohio i had to driver further for 2009 natntionls.

[farbsman]

woo hoo Indianapolis Indians are in town that weekend, baseball and Pokemon, in my own state, it doesn't get any better then that.

[IronPika]

I might be there, I sure hope so. Long drive, but manageable.

[Nekizalb]

Yep, definitely a long drive from LA.

I've been thinking about how the Swiss Rounds are split into two days. Does this mean we will have a lot more Swiss Rounds than usual? I think it would be pretty cool to have 16 Swiss Rounds- 8 one day and 8 the next.

[Surskit]

I am sure it will be epic gameplay all around with the release of two-prize legends, if they see play.

See ya there.

[i like burdn of a day]

Yep, definitely a long drive from LA.

I've been thinking about how the Swiss Rounds are split into two days. Does this mean we will have a lot more Swiss Rounds than usual? I think it would be pretty cool to have 16 Swiss Rounds- 8 one day and 8 the next.

if i go this year it'll be my first, but no the swiss rounds arent like that. its however many are neccassary(7-9) and if they cant be finished on the first day they are finished the next.

[DIZZtheWHIZZ]

Yep, definitely a long drive from LA.

I've been thinking about how the Swiss Rounds are split into two days. Does this mean we will have a lot more Swiss Rounds than usual? I think it would be pretty cool to have 16 Swiss Rounds- 8 one day and 8 the next.

Do you realize how ridiculous that would be? That would be way too strenuous and stressful for all of the age divisions.

[bullados]

Yep, definitely a long drive from LA.

I've been thinking about how the Swiss Rounds are split into two days. Does this mean we will have a lot more Swiss Rounds than usual? I think it would be pretty cool to have 16 Swiss Rounds- 8 one day and 8 the next.

I think that the majority of the regular Swiss rounds will be done on day 1, probably time it so that everybody's done by no later than 9pm (12 hours of rest), leaving either 0 rounds or at least 2 rounds for the next day. Then, on day 2, they'll run the last couple of rounds as well as all of the Single Elimination until they get to a Top 16. Notice that the announcement specifically states that the Top 16 will be played on Sunday for each age group.

At least, that's how I'd break it up if I were running it. I have no idea how PCI will break it up.

[Scizor]

6, even 7 rounds doesn't even take much time. I mean honestly, even if you figure one hour per round (set up, announcements, after time is called, etc.) plus a half hour between rounds and then one lunch break, you're looking at an absolute maximum of 12 hours for 7 rounds. That is still 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. If they ran 7 rounds on Friday and 1 round, T128, T64 and T32 on Saturday, that would only add up to an absolute maximum of 7 hours of game play. I just can't see the structure being the exact same as last year.

I have to wonder if there is some kind of plan for more swiss rounds here. Something like 12 rounds of swiss cut to a Top 32 (maybe even T16) seems very feasible to me given this time spread. Also, something like matchplay (2/3) is another possibility.

[Chairman Kaga]

The problem with your theory is that nothing ever goes according to plan at Nationals. It should only take 12 hours to get through 7 rounds, but it always takes more.

Last year I had to issue a 33-minute extension to a match in Seniors involving a diabetic kid having an insulin shortage. Were you planning to account for that? This is the sort of bizarre stuff that happens at least five times in a 1200+ person tournament. And I'm honestly expecting this year to be larger. 10 rounds of Swiss in Masters, anyone? (Of course, they'll probably flight it again, but still, the numbers will be there.)

The tournament structure is not going to be different from any other. It is just much simpler to stretch Swiss out over two days. First, it takes all the pressure off the time schedule, and second, it allows everyone (players, families, and staff) to actually enjoy the host city for a while, instead of being locked in a tournament until midnight and beyond.

[Lawman]

IMO, Kaga has it right. Why kill the staff, players and families on day 1? If we can stretch it out over 3 days instead of 2, it makes the time constraints easier to deal with, along with the other things that occur at Nats.

Keith

[Ruiner]

This is another bit of great news. While yes, knowing this info faster would have been great, I am EXTREMELY pleased to see that not only is the event in Indianapolis ( a proven host for Gen Con: it is much more accomadating that St Louis was last year) but a 3 day event is not only ideal, but almost necessary.

Besides being a nice bit of relief for staff and families, I'd like to see it used as a means of extending the total number of swiss games. Instead of 8 rounds of swiss in one day, running 6 rounds of swiss for 2 days? The more swiss rounds, the more accurate the top cut should be. It helps eliminate variance, and also makes it far more forgiving for those who take an early loss: with more rounds, the odds of missing due to bad tie breakers is decreased.

While I'm not sure if the main purpose of a 3 day event is to accomadate the size of the expected players or to make the event larger, more prestigeous and, hopefully, longer. More rounds would be nice, but even if that isn't the case, a 3 day event is definitely a huge improvement.

So far I am very happy with the new information. 3/3 with me. Indianapolis? CHECK. 3 day event? CHECK. The invite structure? CHECK. Its a nice relief to finally have information.

[pokeMATHter]

Sorry to ruin your day, Ruiner, but I highly doubt that there will be 12 rounds of Swiss. To get 12 rounds of swiss we would need 4097 or more players in the Masters division. Pete DeShaw posted here (http://www.pokegym.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1647462&postcount=27) that there are going to be flights (so two people will be entering match results, rather than just one.)

Assuming two flights, the attendance, rounds and Top Cut should break down as:

65 - 128 players = 6 rounds - T8 from each flight for a T16 top cut (4 rounds of playoffs)
129 - 256 players = 7 rounds - T16 from each flight for a T32 top cut (5 rounds of playoffs)
257 - 512 players = 8 rounds - T32 from each flight for a T64 top cut (6 rounds of playoffs)
513 - 1024 players = 9 rounds - T64 from each flight for a T128 cut (7 rounds of playoffs)
1025 - 2048 players = 10 rounds - T128 from each flight for a T256 (8 rounds of playoffs)
2049 - 4096 players = 11 rounds - T256 from each flight for a T512 (9 rounds of playoffs)
4097 - 8192 players = 12 rounds - T512 from each flight for a T1024 (10 rounds of playoffs)

Last year there were 679 Masters, with 8 rounds of Swiss and T64 from each flight. (Mr. Schwimmer chose to run one less round of Swiss, so theoretically there could be 4 undefeated players -two in each flight- going into the finals.)

My guess this year is we will still be in the 512-1024 range, so we will see 6 rounds of Swiss on Friday, 3 rounds of Swiss, T128, T64, T32 all played on Saturday, and T16, T8, T4 and T2 on Sunday.

I suspect that should we exceed 1024 Masters, Mr. Schwimmer will once again choose to run one less round of Swiss. keeping us in the 6 rounds of Swiss on Friday, 3 rounds of Swiss + 3 rounds of Top Cut on Saturday, and 4 rounds on Sunday.

[Ruiner]

We would need 4k players if you go with the same model of a very deep single elimination cut. A reduction in the depth of the cut off, with an increase in the number of swiss rounds, would be perfectly legitimate.

If enforcing a mandatory "play until there is only one undefeated left" policy in regards to pairing, then yes, you'd need that number to "require" it but there is absolutely nothing preventing extra rounds beyond that point. The Pro Tour event that Magic ran ( and yes, I do feel for large events that using Magic models as an example is perfectly fitting, especially since, even after WotC lost Pokemon, the general approach used was still very similar ) had 16 rounds, cut to a top 8. Sure, they could have done 12 rounds, and cut to a top 64 too. They had less players qualified and playing in that event than we will have at Nats by a large margin.

The switch from a thicker cut to a longer swiss helps reduce the variance in the event. It makes it so that WHEN your loss happens matters less. It prevents a player fromgoing X-0 and losing a close game and being out in t64. It rewards strong early swiss play by giving them that late tournament buffer where they can take the losses. Otherwise, the "reset" happens far earlier, which while not THAT bad, is still less than optimal.

I'm not OVERLY concerned either way, I'm glad to see it a three day event, and think it would be great if a longer swiss approach was adopted, but will be far from heartbroken otherwise.

[Martin]

As long as they dont change the top cut criteria in the middle of the tournament, that would help a lot.

[NoPoke]

random personal viewpoint follows.

T32 matchplay single elimination is about as big as it is reasonable to go. The seeding process is already a bit flakey and extending it to T64 seems more than likely to break the seedings. You really don't want the top seeds getting knocked out in R1 of the cut.

All X-2s should make the cut and the number of swiss rounds should be set to achieve that goal. (see graph in sig)

For the anticipated 600+ attendance at USA nationals that would mean one extra swiss round before the T32 cut.

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more random thoughts..

Very big swiss round tournaments need draws to avoid single matches holding up the entire tournament. If you are worried about IDs in the last swiss round then *just* remove draws for the last swiss round.


There is no reason why the swiss rounds cannot be a mix of single game for the early rounds and match play in the later rounds.


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Double elimination T32 is a much better option than a single elimination T256 (2xT128)

[meganium45]

My random thought..

Removing draws was the best thing they ever did for this game.

I would be lobbying against the return of the Draw.

Vince

[The Gorn]

My random thought..

Removing draws was the best thing they ever did for this game.

I would be lobbying against the return of the Draw.

Vince

Totally agree with Vince.

Draws caused so many problems in so many ways. They were truly abused.

[DeoxysUnknownForme]

This may be our stop-over on our way to Montreal, so may be there, may not, we don't know yet.

[SUPER CHAR]

We just finished up states, i got my travel allowance and the bye. By the sound of it, if this guy cuts it a round short, with the byes at states and regionals make it that much better to get right? Or did misunderstand about cutting the rounds? I'm just curious because I'm from Sacramento, CA and I want to be sure that it will be worth the trip.

[bullados]

Dunno. In past years, they've run "one less Swiss" round because there simply wasn't enough time to run all of the Swiss rounds in two days. This year, they're running it over 3 days, which should be long enough to have a completed tournament without cutting rounds or resorting to Flights (though they might do that anyway for data entry purposes). I have no idea what they'll do this year, though.

[FireFighter095ReBorn]

This will be my first nats i WONT be attending. I wish i could but unless i pool 300 in a month i wont get there. Everyone who goes tell me how it is and ill see ya guys next season

[Prodigiosus]

*sigh* just so happens the last day of this is the first day of CTY...