Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Worlds 2011 LCQ info up!

Like pokepop said, the grinder isn't supposed to be fun. It's like "these X people couldn't make it, top X of you can fill in for them. Make it quick."
 
I don't know what to think about this...On one hand, best two out of three is GREAT; on the other hand, single elimination is very bad in many ways.

...Would it have killed P!P to just make it best two out of three with double elimination? That's only one more round, yet assures a far more legitimate, worthwhile event.
 
To add onto what Pop said, there are PLENTY of fun side events for players knocked out of the grinder to play in. What would you rather do,

1. Play out a tournament that you know you can't win anything in because you lost 2 games already.
or
2. Drop from said event to play in side tournaments or league where you can win stuff and learn how to get better at the game in the process.
 
PokePop said:
Unlike all other Pokemon tournaments, playing it out for fun is not the point.
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Why is the grinder different? Many players come to worlds looking forward to the grinder. They know the chances of making it in are slim, but at least they get a full tournament day of battle win or lose. Now you can travel all that way to see 2 games and be done. This is a terrible decision.

Double elimination would be better. Most players would at least see 3 rounds 6+ games. Not sure how much longer it would take, though.

I realize the grinder is tough on the judges, but this just lessens the entire event by too much.
 
the last 2 years i grinded in with 7-1 San Diego and 6-1 Hawaii...
even with those results i don't think i could grind in this year...
i'll need to win a regional to get my invite, which isn't clever cuz i live in México :(
 
I'm noticing something here; in general, it's judges that like this change, and not so much players.

I can understand this; Worlds is likely tough on judges. Still, the game is ultimately about the players, and a judge is there to help the players. Isn't there some compromise, here? I think double elimination would be MUCH better than single, even if I'd rather have Swiss rounds, and that would be at least a bit easier on judges.

Of course, we aren't really in bartering position, but still, maybe someone at TPCi can consider different options for future years, particularly when Worlds is in Hawaii. I'd have a really tough time justifying going to Worlds in Hawaii without an invite if the grinder played out like this.
 
wow, i looked at it and thought it was for worlds, i dont like this for grinders tho, its 2 out of 3 but now its like "who can not run into there bad matchups for X rounds" the other way your allowed 1 bad matchup or bad start.
But double elimination would be good, the amout of players will drop after the first 2 rounds making it easyer to handle/judge and it supports who has the best deck, not the luckyest.
 
As already posted, the grinder isn't supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be brutal and harsh and straight to the point.

Keep in mind that the grinder in Hawaii had significantly fewer players than a grinder in ANY mainland location will have. How many people were in the grinder in San Diego last time around? Enough that the Masters were chopped in half and STILL played 7 or 8 rounds. That's a LOT of people who are going to wind up "wasting" their time in a swiss tournament. In single elim, you know right away if you get to move on or not. And if not, you know right away when the dream is dead and then you can go do sides/party on the beach/etc.

The biggest problem from an operating standpoint with the grinder being swiss is that you get VERY few drops. What you get are gobs of no shows. Which screws around with lots of people's opponent win percentage. How would you like it if you were told that the Top 8 are getting in, and you finished 9th on Opp. Win %, solely due to somebody no showing a round earlier in the day, causing an extra loss that shouldn't be there? Single elimination 100% does away with all forms of tiebreakers - there won't be any "I would have gotten in if the computer hadn't given me such a crappy set of opponents." Now everything is in the hands of the players. Win, you advance. None of this win, you might maybe advance if you played a stronger field than somebody else who you never played did perhaps just maybe. (Yes, I realize there's still the computer determining who you play, but now you aren't fated to be doomed before you even start.)

Also, double elimination would be sorta problematic. Double elim is a FANTASTIC format for determining a single winner where the rest of the field's placing is irrelevant. But as soon as you need to start determining a Top X set of participants, it becomes a little more dicey, since you have multiple people being eliminated at the same time with no good way to determine who ought to place higher than the other.


I like it. At the very least, it'll be a good gauge to see if this is something that should be repeated in future years. No way to tell until you give it a shot. I'm just curious as to round lengths, since that wasn't mentioned.
 
I actually think this is fair. The Grinder always has such a large pool of players with such a small amount of players actually being able to grind in. I only played in the grinder once and was devastated when I lost my final match that would have decided if I made it into Worlds or not. If the tournament was single elimination format I feel like my chances would have been much better.
 
For what it's worth, single elimination works much like the VGC rules, except you don't even get 2/3 in the VGC, you lose and you're out, at least in terms of regional eliminations for the top.

Also, I thought the whole point of Worlds was primarily for the best players in the world to play, not a big "bring who you know" to it? Isn't that kinda what Nats is for? Just my thoughts anyways...from what POP has traditionally given the impression of (at least to me), Worlds is supposed to be more exclusive right? And this is a step in that direction imo.
 
PokePop said:
It's basically been Single Elimination anyway, don't you think?

This just makes it official and, from the view point of staff, much easier to manage!
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but we like to still play even if we know we cant get in

---------- Post added 03/26/2011 at 01:18 AM ----------

the only thing i dont like is i cant say "good luck in your next round"

or i get freaking donked then go spartan

---------- Post added 03/26/2011 at 01:22 AM ----------

i kind off like this for the older players but for juniors i would like seeing 20+ kids crying after first round
 
speaking as a grinder player for 5 of the last 6 years, I think this is a good move. It keeps the staff fresher for the main event, where we want no missed calls due to fatigue. The only time I came close was in 05 when i went 4-1, ended 24th, but they only took the top 8. That tournament was essentially single elimination.

As others have said, LCQ is NOT a normal tournament, never has, never will. It is literally the last chance to qualify for worlds.

For those giving the argument that losing R1 and your out so I better not go, think of it like this.

If you lose R1 in a normal swiss tournament, your chances of making a T8 diminish greatly, and your 2nd loss right out eliminates you. Yet, how many people attempt this each year? P!P has those numbers, and they rival Nationals.

BTW, im going to the grinder to try again, as I do every year!

~Duke
 
As others have said, double elimination would be an excellent compromise, especially because (at least as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong), X-2 usually doesn't make the cut in grinder anyway, so it would be essentially the same thing, with less of a stress on Judges and other staff. Hopefully, as happens often with OP, through enough people respectfully giving their thoughts on the issue, the higher ups will see the error of their ways and work to compromise the issue in a way that (nearly) everyone can be okay with. I definitely wouldn't expect any less from POP.

I'm just hoping that this isn't a sign of things to come for future tournaments. I'm all for best 2 of 3 (and sideboards! :p ), but not if it means single elimination. That would be a huge hit to the game, imo. Luckily that doesn't seem to be the case.

I was talking on a friends Facebook in length about this, so I'll copy and paste some of that from there, just to give people some more detailed thoughts on my feelings...

It just increases the luck factor of the event. Would you be fine with all tournaments being done this way? I understand that in some ways the luck gets lessened since we have best of three, which is great, but without sideboards and in a single elim format it's kind of useless. What happens if you have a sick deck that happens to lose to Machamp, and you get paired against Machamp round 1? In a normal situation you would take the loss and try and win out from there, but under this system you're done, all because you can't tech for every single deck.
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For everybody who thinks double elimination would be a good solution:

http://www.gottfriedville.net/mathprob/misc-dblelim.html

There were 457 Masters in San Diego two years ago, and we could well presume there will be more this year, let's say 512.

If top8 qualify, it's analogous to a 64 players tournament where only the first wins the invite. Following the table, there would be approximately 9 rounds, which is one more than 2009 Grinder (but this time with 45-60 minutes time limit - and 6-9 additional turns - per match).

Single elimination is good because its ups and downs for players balance out, while significantly improving staff productivity.

It doesn't make the tournament much harder for us on a great scale (it's just "differently hard"), but makes the tournament a lot easier for them. I really don't see any problem with that.
 
Raen said:
I'm noticing something here; in general, it's judges that like this change, and not so much players.

I can understand this; Worlds is likely tough on judges. Still, the game is ultimately about the players, and a judge is there to help the players. Isn't there some compromise, here?
Click to expand...

There's no point in compromising with me or any other judge.
None of us have any decision making power in this.
We just go where Pokemon tells us to go and do what they tell us to do.
We're their trained monkeys. :smile:

Double elimination would be fine with me.
 
I'd have to agree, while the format is better, I would feel a lot better if it was double elimination. It would be a lot fairer to do. I mean the problem with single is two bad starts can do you in, a bad match ups, or a host of other things. At least giving you two chances seems like it would be a better idea for players, yet it would make the event longer. The grinder shouldn't be like top cut where if you lose you are out, that's just not a cool way of doing it. In the past 1 loss got you in, and I feel that should have been considered (and maybe it was) as far as the grinder is concerned. I remember in 2005 in SD when we only have 5 rounds because they were only taking 5-0's. I was 3-0, then loss to go to 3-1, when it was decided we were running only 5 rounds and only the 5-0's would make it. Yes, it saved time, but it also upset a lot of players. While I expect the choice to not change for this year, hopefully next year they will change it to double elimination.

Drew
 
Well... looks like everyone will have to be on their tip top game.

I know ive never X-0'd a Tournament so it will be a new adventure.
 
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