Prague CUP 2011 LIVE Coverage INFO

[ShadowGuard]

How some decks cant win under this condition when in swiss rounds is the limit 30 minutes? If you pick such deck you wont get thru Swiss rounds....you need to win 1 round in at least 30 minutes...so if it is 45 limit you would win 1:0 at least.

Seriously... you organize a big tournament and don't understand one of the most obvious basics of time limits and matchplay? I'm just... shocked.

In swiss rounds, you have 30 min for one match. In a 45 min matchplay, there are 15 min on average for one game.

Besides the issue already explained by Yoshi- - top cut is not "best-of-three" just for fun. Yes, you can win game one in that time. But if you don't, you can't come back if you have a deck that doesn't abuse sudden death. So 45 min means, you'll almost never have more than two real games, and Zekrom needs to go 1-1 to win while Gothitelle needs to go 2-0. Is this fair? It's basicially single game play (lose one single game and you're out), but more difficult, for everyone who has the slower deck.

With Lanturn/Yanmega which actually isn't a slow deck, I lost game one due to a bad start (which can happen, this is why we play b-o-3 in top cut), won a complete game two and lost sudden death because Zekrom took a prize T1 - while I had everything ready for the revenge KO (my standard Bouffalant strategy against Zekrom with worked in swiss rounds and in the first two games, but not in SD, obviouly) - with 15 more minutes we'd have a legit third game to determine the winner.

As pointed out by Jason, 45 min is ok for swiss rounds, since they're normally played in b-o-1 and a single match doesn't decide about advancing or going home with nothing for an 8-0 or 7-1 performance (like for Sascha and me) against international top players. But for top cut matches, you can't do that, exspecially not at big tournaments. And again, there never was any important tournament I know about of where top cut time limit was below 60 (or 55 + 3) minutes. Not Worlds, not any Nationals, not SPTCs. A top cut can't be taken seriously if it's mainly decided by time, not by players. Prague Cup would have been a good tournament to reprensent Europe, its players and its metagame - now there's no more chance for this. We only have ECC left as a significant European tournament.

 

[Snox]

I am not discussing about whether it was convenient to players to have 45 minutes - this surely wasn't and if it would be possible in the morning, I would go for 60 minutes b-o-3 (to have realy each round b-o-3 matches). 45 minutes is a legal option in the tournament rules. We went for it after discussion with judges and it was our decission. Next time I would probably schedule Sunday differently and wake up TOP players earlier - like 8:00 to manage everything in time (including 60 min. TOP rounds) and according to the agreement with the hotel.

I am discussing about that there are too many "if" scenarios in your "can never ever win" theory - if you win the first game and than if your oponent takes at least 4 prizes and if you take less than that in that time and additional 3 rounds. Then you loose and go for SD. The 50% of taken prizes rule was applied due to some reason and 45-55 minutes b-o-3 is the reason. Otherwise why would TPCI offer such option in tournament rules? But I understand that then it is more b-o-1 like in swiss...

That is it. Next time I would go for 60 minutes (as more standard in Europe) with different waking up time to try to complete 3 matches during b-o-3 rounds.

Cheers!

 

[Yoshi-]

This is so ridiculus, at least admit that you messed up oO

With a slow deck:

If you win the first game you will still loose if your opponent is ahead in the second game when time is called, pulling 4 prizes isnt that hard for fast decks, especially if they know they only have to draw 4 prizes without having to have a backup since time will win for them.

If you loose the first game youre basically out.


Awesome b03, what a joke...

Seriously, playing b01 wouldve been a way better decision then this, at least its the same for everyone.

 

[MvdV]

@Snox

Just my advice: read the remarks carefully and use them to your advantage for next year.

So here are my remarks for the Prague Cup, beginning with a compliment.

The location is absolutely great. A hotel with a convention center (or any other big rooms) is the best you can get, giving the the tournament a Worlds like setting. A lot of people in the hotel playing Pokemon everywhere... Not to mention the hotel rooms for a reduced price. Whereelse can you get a double room with breakfast for only 36 Euro ($50)?

And now my remarks/suggestions:

For transport:
- There is one (and probably more) alternative to get from the airport tot the hotel. By far the cheapest way is to take bus 119 to the metro A station and a transfer to metro C for only 32 CZK (travel time is about 1 hour).
- Only later we learnt that you have to pay extra for (heavy) luggage using pubic transport (bus/metro). This is very unusual in Europe , so a special note about this would be good.
- In general: more information/instructions on how to use the Czech public transport would be nice.

For the main tournament:
- Try to keep on schedule. The tournament started almost one hour late and a 90 minutes lunchbreak is too long. Resulting in 8 swiss rounds finishing around 21:30.
- All tournaments in Europe play best-of-3 1 hour in top-cut, because of many reasons mentioned before in this post. How can 5 final rounds in the top-cut mess up your time schedule? It will cost you 1 hour extra at most.

For the side events (prerelease):
- Just my advice. Just run more tournaments with less players to keep the maximum number of rounds at 4. I don't think many players want to play 6 rounds in a prerelease (but prefer to play 2 prereleases of 4 rounds). And a little bit of disappointment that there weren't enough prelease promo's and deckboxes for everyone (only 30 I heard, with up to 200 subscriptions for all the prereleases that have been run).

 

[Snox]

Yoshi-: READ BEFORE YOU POST! Look at my first post:

"I would better prepare and enforce the time management and online coverage reporting"

That meant I admit mistakes and I would like to improve this! So stop flaming, repeating yourself and calm down...

to MvdV: It will probably need to be rescheduled and some processes needs to be revised and changed. We are learning and surely we would like to offer the best performance. It is the same with the tombola: We will simply post the winner and not announce them. We wanted to do a public draw, but we would rather do a private one with just paper announcement.
About promos: I got an important info shortly before the first day of Prague CUP that we will never ever get 200 extra promo cards&deckboxes, these are internal rules / therefore the only thing we could do is to make prereleases mostly with boosters and our small usual support = 30 promos and deckboxes. It took me a lot of time just to get the boosters here in time - it usually arrives 1 week before release date.
About the rounds: Ok I understand, we will cut it to 4 and those who would like to play extra could play in side program space...
60 minutes lunch break is quite short and makes a preasure for the staff if they want to eat outside (cheaper), but I will try to schedule some go-home services to deliver us some lunch.
Thanks for your remarks and as I wrote before I would need to mainly reschedule and revise the time management and hire some better online coverage reporter... it is getting too big for one guy, I would need to set up some preparatory team as well .
P.S.: And I will prepare some prizes for TOP 32 . at least 1 or 2 boosters...

 

[Jason]

May I see the Top Cut day schedule?

Cheers.

 

[Yoshi-]

What pisses me off is that you act like time wouldnt influence deck choices. I had the exact deck build for the grinder and didnt use it there for this exact reason. It makes a difference. My deck cant really win a b03 in 45 minutes. This needs to be announced before.

 

[ShadowGuard]

Yoshi-: READ BEFORE YOU POST! Look at my first post:

"I would better prepare and enforce the time management and online coverage reporting"

That meant I admit mistakes and I would like to improve this! So stop flaming, repeating yourself and calm down...

How about apologizing to all players who travelled > 500 km, paid a lot of money for that, did well in swiss rounds just to lose in sudden death / time out T32 and go home with nothing?

btw, Yoshi's post originally was before yours and mine (and I referred to him). Don't know why it's moved down.

45 minutes is a legal option in the tournament rules.

Top cut b-o-1 is a legal option in tournament rules as well, but it's not played anywhere. Guess why?
Cutting top cut to 16 also is a legal option in tournament rules - and even this would have been fairer.

 

[Snox]

Jason:
I wrote just some preparations on the paper and I havnt it in some file (and not even on the paper now). 8-9 restructuring the hall - testing video and set up of the final area. 9-9:45 Deck checks of the TOP players. 10:00 start of the TOP play. 17:00 end of TOP play at the latest.

The Time management needs to be rescheduled, more punctual and more enforced in details. And preferably some person that keeps a strict eye on this. Prague CUP would need a bigger staff next time and more strict approach. I will make calculations rescheduling and have staff team meeting about this, whether it is worth doing. I prefer more fun approach.

---------- Post added 11/08/2011 at 01:56 PM ----------

How about apologizing to all players who travelled > 500 km, paid a lot of money for that, did well in swiss rounds just to lose in sudden death / time out T32 and go home with nothing?

I apologize to anyone who was harmed by this decision. It wasn't done purposely, sorry.

Tomas

 

[PokePop]

Suggestion for staff lunch:
You can bring in lunch for the staff to save time, or if that is not allowed by the hotel, have the staff break for lunch in shifts, keeping a reduced staff on the floor while some go to eat.
I've never run or worked at a large Pokemon event where staff lunch impacted the schedule.

 

[yeniths]

This was still great.

Thank you for hosting!

 

[bullados]

Another suggestion, based off the schedule that Snox reported in post 29...

Do the deck checks overnight. At the very least, the Junior and Senior age groups should be finished with their Swiss rounds reasonably early. Collect their decks and have the Jr and Sr Judges do those deck checks while the Masters are finishing up their rounds. Deck checks for 32 players shouldn't take a terribly long time. 5-10 minutes per deck with 5 people doing the deck checks. Half an hour? And it could be less if you have more people doing the checks. That would cut an hour out of the morning events. And then starting an hour earlier would give you all of the extra time you need for the Top Cut to be run as 60 bo3.

 

[Snox]

PokePOP: you know we are having these problems always, bwcause we cannot afford that many staff members to let any of them go for lunch (otherwise the booster wage would be ridiculously low). Therefore I will go for some delivery scheduled by some staff member or me.

Thanks for help and advices - I will include them in my recalculations and reconsideration...
Posted with Mobile style...

 

[MiggyCatchem]

Does anyone have any information on what decks where being played in the top 32 or top 16? I'm curious on how the meta looked prior to top cut play.

 

[Luby]

Here is the information we (the French players) gathered about the top 32 decks. There might be a few errors but most of it is reliable.

EDITED with new information :

1. Sascha Giger (CH) 8-0 -> PrimeTime + Zoroark
2. Tobias Thesing (DE) 7-1 -> Lanturn/Yanmega/Zekrom + Bouffalant & Jirachi
3. Filipp Lausch (AU) 7-1 -> PrimeTime
4. Martin Kaninsky (CZ) 7-1 -> The Truth
5. Daniel Middleton (GB) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion (1/1 Ninetales)
6. Stefan Weber (AU) 6-2 -> Beartic/Vileplume/Reuniclus
7. Gianmarco Morle (IT) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion
8. Luc Duchosal (CH) 6-2 -> Slowking/Weavile/Zoroark
9. Vincent Azzolin (FR) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion
10. Kay Luedecke (DE) 6-2 -> Lanturn/Yanmega/Zekrom + Bouffalant
11. Michal Bartosik (CZ) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion + Basculin & Zekrom
12. Karl Peters (DE) 6-2 -> ZPST
13. Steven Mao (DE) 6-2 -> Lanturn/Yanmega/Zekrom + Bouffalant & Jirachi
14. Lorenzo Voltolina (IT) 6-2 -> Gothitelle
15. Nikola Vakarelov (FR) 6-2 -> Mewbox + ERL
16. Martin van der Vis (NL) 6-2 -> Cinccino/Yanmega/Roserade
17. Moreno Marcucci (IT) 6-2 -> ZPST
18. Christian Gessner (DE) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion
19. Maxime Rouvreau (FR) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion
20. Lorenzo Pieri (IT) 6-2 -> ZPST
21. Marcas Marin-Baliano (DE) 6-2 -> Kingdra/Cinccino
22. Otakar Bursa (CZ) 5-3 -> ZPST
23. David Sturm (DE) 5-3 -> Reshiphlosion + Magnezone
24. Cedric Gouin (FR) 5-3 -> ZPST
25. Ole Stognief (DE) 5-3 -> Slowking/Weavile + ?
26. Finn Looft (DE) 5-3 -> PrimeTime + Bouffalant
27. Michal Luong (CZ) 5-3 -> ?
28. Stephane Ivanoff (FR) 5-3 -> ZPST
29. Joshua Galys (DE) 5-3 -> Gothitelle
30. Samuel Zettinig (AU) 5-3 -> Beartic/Vileplume/Reuniclus
31. Marcin Kurek (PL) 5-3 -> ZPST
32. Darius Scarno (IT) 5-3 -> PrimeTime (?)

 

[pokemandan]

Steven Mao was playing Lanturn/Yanmega w/Zekrom

About this whole thing, yeah the time limit wasn't made clear straight away but it happened. It did kinda suck to get Top 32 and no booster support at least but its the points we're all after anyway right? I also think you're all being a bit harsh on the feature match coverage. It was a great thing to have and if it wasn't there people would probably be complaining as well.

Just want to say that it was a pleasure to be a part of and will definitely be back next year! Thanks to everyone who was a part of the tourney.

 

[LucarioLvlX]

Wow. Tomas puts a ton of time and effort in to organizing and running a huge event and then he has to listen to complaints from the usual suspects, the self-described great players. These kind of players always think that they are automatically entitled to win every event and the rest of the players should just get out of their way. Everybody knew about Zekrom long before this tournament and a whole bunch of you made the wrong deck choice, or just did not play very well. Suck it up and move on.

 

[Arcanite]

They knew how to play against zekrom in a best of 3, 1 Hour format, not 45 minute. I think it was unfortunate, but what can you do? I feel sad that zekrom won, as i generally dislike the deck, although i am glad Megazone had a strong showing, as i like it as a deck.

 

[Yoshi-]

Wow. Tomas puts a ton of time and effort in to organizing and running a huge event and then he has to listen to complaints from the usual suspects, the self-described great players. These kind of players always think that they are automatically entitled to win every event and the rest of the players should just get out of their way. Everybody knew about Zekrom long before this tournament and a whole bunch of you made the wrong deck choice, or just did not play very well. Suck it up and move on.

feels like feeding trolls but whatever...

People dont feel entitled to win every event but I atleast feel entitled to have a fair chance at winning the tournament. b03 45 minutes is extremly unusual, helps one deck a ton and destroys the purpose of the game (winning by winning 2 games by drawing 6 prizes).

I won game 1, and my opponent agreed I wouldve won game 2 as well, my opponent won without winning a single game.

Sounds fair? Yeah..


Im not even that upset about the fact that it happened, I think it shows that the to kinda lacks experience and made a really poor decision but Im sure it wont happen again. Its annoying but it probably wont happen again and yeah, im angry but I can accept that.

But the fact that people go around and act like this wasnt a big deal pisses me off. There is a video of me running off the german player meeting at worlds when we got told wed play b03 45 minutes for the grinder because I had to build a new deck instantly. My deck works, was a good metagame call (IMO) but it has huge issues in b03 45 minutes. Even 60 minutes is hard but I was kinda willing to accept that, but 45? No way...

But yeah, wrong deckchoice, not against the metagame but against timeout, guess I shouldve known that.. Oh wait I couldnt And yeah I played poor, thats why I wouldve won 2:0 in the t32 if I had 10 more minutes...

People like you make me sick, people that think that by denying obvious flaws theyre doing anyone a favor. It was an obvious flaw and a horrible decision, period. Why cant people accept that? I dont want to start a lynch mob here, I just want to discuss why this happened, explain why it shouldnt happen and maybe get an "Im sorry, guess this wasnt such a good Idea, well take care of it the next time" from the to. I dont hate him, I dont want to diss him, Ill probably go next year, but I still want this to be spoken about and fixed because its still a really horrible decision that ruined the tournament for me.

Why cant people just accept that something didnt work and discuss it to make it better instead of doing the usual "lets just attack anyone who says something negative so no issues will come up"?! Is that your idea of imrpoving something?

 

[Link_]

Some missing information:
2. Tobias Thesing (DE) 7-1 -> Lanturn/Yanmega/Zekrom w/ Bouffalant & Jirachi
4. Martin Kaninsky (CZ) 7-1 -> The Truth
10. Kay Luedecke (DE) 6-2 -> Lanturn/Yanmega/Zekrom w/ Bouffalant
11. Michal Bartosik (CZ) 6-2 -> Reshiphlosion w/ Basculin & Zekrom
13. Steven Mao (DE) 6-2 -> Lanturn/Yanmega/Zekrom w/ Bouffalant & Jirachi
21. Marcos Marin-Galiano (DE) 6-2 -> Kingdra/Cinccino
32. Darius Scarno (IT) 5-3 -> PrimeTime (?)