Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Why would they ever make it Top 4 at Cities?

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SD PokéMom said:
why do people think that they have a right to have every decision POP makes justified to them? do people really think the OP staff is going to come here and explain decisions they make regarding sensitive info like budgets for example?

the more info they give, the more 'reasons' people find to argue their decisions. not everything can be discussed in public, no matter how much you want them to be.

jmho.
'mom
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This too goes back to the relationship between us and OP. Are we content with them not justifying this relatively important issue?

By and large, the consumer "is" content with no explanation: you don't see mass boycotts of the pokemon TCG brand (lol). However, the casual player is really hurt by this. By making the cut smaller, you KILL that person's chance of ever winning a prize, let alone an entire event. This is negative for the game because, as we've established in previous discussions, the prospect of "weaker" players winning over "better" ones is what keeps them active in OP.

An example of this cut issue is in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Two years ago, they had a very exciting, competitive tournament, with certainly enough people to warrant a top eight. While the two people that made finals were "name" players, everyone else had a solid chance to win because of the slightly generous top cut.

This year, everyone was chased away from that event. Many of the players were high-quality, sure, but at the cost of the "casual."

A whole lot of explanations can account for this, but a "maximum" cut of top four might've scared a few people off, I'm sure. The bottom line is that POP and the media don't care about how good these 14 players were: all that matters was that there were only 14 people (masters) at an event worth well over $100 USD in product. POP should do everything it can to make that number "140" some day, and maximum top cuts of four are detrimental to that goal.

(Sorry Michiganers if I sound like I'm singling you out! This has happened all over the country, under the BEST of OP's/TO's, but your city's a good example of the change)
 
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So you're telling me if I go 4-1 I didn't win? Call me strange but I find an 80% win percentage to be good enough to belong in the playoffs of any event/sport/game, no matter my tie breakers.
 
HurricaneWarty, 4-1 is a good record but may not be a winning record.

Did you win? The 5-0 would say not.
Did you win? The 4-1s that beat you would say not.

4-1 is not a winning swiss record, and no amount of claiming otherwise will make it so.
 
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Opinion here is unanimous that 4-1 almost always does not win swiss. However, does a 4-1 player deserve another shot at winning the overall tournament? You bet. That's HurricaneWarty's point, and I'm sure most of us agree that it's the fair, legitimate thing to at least give that 4-1 another chance.
 
Cyrus said:
Opinion here is unanimous that 4-1 almost always does not win swiss. However, does a 4-1 player deserve another shot at winning the overall tournament? You bet. That's HurricaneWarty's point, and I'm sure most of us agree that it's the fair, legitimate thing to at least give that 4-1 another chance.
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Personally, I agree 100 % with this. 4-1 (or 5-1, as it was the case with the Norwegian player who didn't make the top 4 cut) is a record so good that the player easily could deserve the CC medal. And people do care about the medals. It would be kind of sad if people only were after points now, and didn't care for a nice prize (and great memorative item to collect and treasure) such as the medal.

ANYONE can lose 1 game. By a bad starting hand, or by a very unfortunate match-up. I've always been saying this: In events with 5-6 Swiss rounds, losing one match doesn't mean you and your deck aren't perfect. But if you lose 2 matches, there is probably something wrong with either you (and your plays) or your deck.

Losing 2 times by bad luck is of course also possible, but if your skill/plays and your deck were really at their best, they should have been able to prevent you from getting into the situation where the luck factor became the deciding factor and lost you the game. ONE loss due to bad luck, however, can happen even to the most perfect, overhumanly good player.

EDIT: it was actually two 5-1 players in Senior and one 4-1 player in Masters that didn't make the cut at Norway's Oslo City Championships.
 
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No it is not obvious that all the 4-1s deserve another chance at winning the tournament. If you give them another chance then why not another-another chance? At what point do you stop? Do we care when it is the undeserving player who misses on 4-1 as against the known good player. I suspect that at least some of this issue is down to feelings of entitlement.

Personally I don't like running a swiss tournament where X-1s are out of the tournament. It doesn't seem 'right'. (If I want to reject the X-1s then I'd rather run straight knockout. ) But I have to add that there is no universal solution to the X-1 problem. I've suggested changing the swiss round boundaries to minimise the X-2 issue at the biggest tournaments. This means 1 extra swiss round for the awkward attendance numbers. However adding even a single extra swiss round is not without problems. I don't know why the cut was dropped from T8 to T4 but I seriously doubt that it was motivated by a desire to upset players. if I had to guess it would be that all aspects of the championship series progress together. The K value, prize structure and cut increase together with each level.

[With between 23 and 32 players and a T4 cut one or two 4-1s wont make the cut]
[With between 37 and 64 players and a T4 cut one or more 5-1s wont make the cut]


By making the cut smaller, you KILL (the casual players) chance of ever winning a prize, let alone an entire event.
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How? Once in the cut the game switches to 2/3 which is believed to produce results that more closely follow skill. Increasing the size of the cut ought to make it less likely for casual players to win and not more likely. Now had you said that casual players often set their playing target at getting into the cut then I would have agreed. Smaller cuts does reduce the number of players who attain the status of "I made the cut at ....."
 
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No it is not obvious that all the 4-1s deserve another chance at winning the tournament. If you give them another chance then why not another-another chance?
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Because that would conflict with the standard set-up for Swiss rounds + Top Cut tournaments as I've used to them being for the 7 years I've played/judged in them. Nobody gets an another-another-chance (what would that even mean? Increasing Swiss rounds above the standard? I don't really understand what you mean), but people with only one loss out of 5 Swiss rounds or more should get another chance! This is the way I've been used to seeing tournaments being run.

I of course agree with you that Pokémon USA definitely don't do this just to upset players on purpose. But when something I'm very accustomed to being the right way of holding tournaments suddenly gets changed, I feel the need to discuss this issue with other TOs and players, and try to find out if this really is hurting the game or helping the game.

I've heard that this has been done before in the US, though - for States last season and more. This is just new to Norway - we have always just set the size of the top cut to whatever standard DCI tournament rules / POP tournaments rules tell us, or whatever DCI Reporter / TOM says is the right thing to do. Going away from the standard in a special pre-set top cut size that doesn't take high attendance into account is something new for me.
 
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NoPoke said:
How? Once in the cut the game switches to 2/3 which is believed to produce results that more closely follow skill. Increasing the size of the cut ought to make it less likely for casual players to win and not more likely. Now had you said that casual players often set their playing target at getting into the cut then I would have agreed. Smaller cuts does reduce the number of players who attain the status of "I made the cut at ....."
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The casual player likes the thought that they have a chance of winning. When you run a Top 4 cut when a top 8 or 16 is warranted (I know of at least one place that will warrant a top 16 cut this year), you undermine the casual player's fun factor in the event. Everybody wants to win. Casual players are generally content saying that they made the top cut, that they were competitive in an event where they were completely outclassed. With a top 4, you seriously undermine this.
 
bullados , that was my point: increasing the top cut makes it less likely for the casual player to win. Unfortuantely reducing the size of the top cut also means that fewer casual players will get to brag that they made the cut. Its a no-win situation.

Tego: for as long as I can remember the tournament rules have specified the maximum cut for a particular attendance. For as long as I can remember smaller top cuts have been allowed and even detailed in the floor rules. The fact that the majority of organisers have not used those reduced cut sizes I don't dispute, but they have been used in the past and they are not new.

FWIW I believe that last year some of the messages about allowed tournament structures for the rated events didn't get communicated to all the European LDs. This year this is no longer the case.

The thread's opening question is why the reduction to top4 for cities. We all know what the implications of that reduction are (an X-1 or two might miss at some tournaments) but that is not the question of the thread. I don't know the answer but would not be at all surprised if it was as simple as POP wanting the maximum size of the cut to increase with tournament status.
 
...I don't know the answer but would not be at all surprised if it was as simple as POP wanting the maximum size of the cut to increase with tournament status.

I think it's fair to say that for the US anyway, that Nationals will be the most attended, then any regionals next, then on average states, then cities then BR's. If that is true then for your above statement to be true as well, there would be no problem as each level would have a higher turnout & therefore be a bigger percentage of the cut. Especially if they used the old standard of around 25%.
 
So why have a top cut at all?

NoPoke said:
HurricaneWarty, 4-1 is a good record but may not be a winning record.

Did you win? The 5-0 would say not.
Did you win? The 4-1s that beat you would say not.

4-1 is not a winning swiss record, and no amount of claiming otherwise will make it so.
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IF the idea is to be perfect in order to win City Championship, then why bother to have any top cut at all.
IF the sample size of the top cuts going to be too small a representation of the players in the event to make it fair to all of the top performing players that day, then maybe it would be best to get rid of the playoffs and just declare the x-0 winner of swiss the Champion of the event.
That way everyone would know going into the event that if you wanted to win you had to be prefect.
This is the way Prerelease Tournaments winners are determined and it works fine for them.

Personally I am not in favor of doing away with the playoff rounds, but it does seem that this could be the direction that the smaller tournaments are headed.
 
its plain out to minimize point gaps due to size of playing area. with the problems of last season where some areas would have a bigger turn out causing some areas to have to run mulitple events just to even close that gap of points. if not then other areas would cause a dramatic increase of points to uncatchable distances for less dense areas. where there "skill" is then irrelavent due to more swiss rounds in large areas. by making a top cut only X they are at least trying to keep the gap to a minimum
 
DarkMagnus said:
its plain out to minimize point gaps due to size of playing area. with the problems of last season where some areas would have a bigger turn out causing some areas to have to run mulitple events just to even close that gap of points. if not then other areas would cause a dramatic increase of points to uncatchable distances for less dense areas. where there "skill" is then irrelavent due to more swiss rounds in large areas. by making a top cut only X they are at least trying to keep the gap to a minimum
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Ok so IF this is the reason then I wish we would just go back to ratings points only be for fun and not have any actual real world "In Pokemon" consequences, by eliminating ratings invites to worlds altogether. World invites should be given out to the top Performers at Regionals, and Worlds invites with trips to it, could be given out to the top performers at Nationals. Tournaments could then go back to having a top cut based on the size of the Participation of the event, and this effort to create a level playing field between the areas where Pokemon Organized Play is popular, with the areas where it is struggling at the moment, would become completely unnecessary.
 
i mean i feel peoples pain, i tend to judge alot and in one of the few tours i got to play in last week end the CT cities i made slot #7 and with 41 people could ahve top cutted, but allas i was not able to make the cut. but i still feel there must be some way to balance the effect of doing good all season and still performing well at big events, and still making it balanced for areas with a smalled density to be able to get invites, and plz don't use strungling NE has a GReat OP and is growing regualrly it could also be possible we have a better ratio per square mile than others but are limited on total numbers.
 
JandPDS said:
IF the idea is to be perfect in order to win City Championship, then why bother to have any top cut at all.
IF the sample size of the top cuts going to be too small a representation of the players in the event to make it fair to all of the top performing players that day, then maybe it would be best to get rid of the playoffs and just declare the x-0 winner of swiss the Champion of the event.
That way everyone would know going into the event that if you wanted to win you had to be prefect.
This is the way Prerelease Tournaments winners are determined and it works fine for them.

Personally I am not in favor of doing away with the playoff rounds, but it does seem that this could be the direction that the smaller tournaments are headed.
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This is really a tough argument to propose. In the situtation of a Top 4, it may as well just be undefeated wins the whole tournament. How often does an 8th seed beat a 1st seed in a Pokemon Tournament. It really isn't that unheard of. You reward the player going undefeated with a top seeding, but the skill levels are normally not that far apart where 1 will dominate 8. Therefore, in a field of 4, the difference between the #1 and the #4 is even smaller, therefore giving less of an advantage to the player going undefeated.

So...there is no advantage of going undefeated BUT at the same time POP is making it necessary to go undefeated to be guaranteed a spot in the top cut. If you remove the need to be undefeated, there is less demand to be perfect and you can be "successful" in Swiss with 1 loss. Once you reach the playoffs, anything can happen. This makes it hard to promote an End of Swiss winner or a Top 4 Cut. You either go undefeated and are not rewarded other than making the cut (I'm not inferring prizes, prizes mean nothing) or you lose once and risk not even making the cut. In a Top 8 (or larger cut), everyone is "rewarded" equally by being given a shot to win in the playoffs whether you are 5-0 or 3-2.
 
NoPoke said:
bullados , that was my point: increasing the top cut makes it less likely for the casual player to win. Unfortuantely reducing the size of the top cut also means that fewer casual players will get to brag that they made the cut. Its a no-win situation.
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Again, for the casual player, it's enough just to be IN the top cut. To them, the goal of playing a tournament is making the top cut. While winning is also a goal, it's more of a pipe dream for these players. These players are always happy to see that they've made the Top Cut, that they're in a similar league as the Big Dogs.

Remember that, once you're in the Top Cut, that anything can happen. Even with 2/3, there's still stuff that can happen to give the casual 5-8 or 5-16 players a chance at winning. I'm not advocating replacing the final round with a T8. I'm saying replace the T4 with a T8 or T16 when attendance warrants. Remember, "Any given Sunday..."
 
For most tournaments the majority of players at X-1 will make the cut. This is true even with this season's reduction to T4 for Cities.
 
NoPoke said:
For most tournaments the majority of players at X-1 will make the cut. This is true even with this season's reduction to T4 for Cities.
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That's assuming most cities attendance will be under 30. I did the rough numbers earlier in this thread, any division with over ~30 players will have atleast one X-1 miss the cut.
 
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