Problem can be solved simply by having a two player clock, like PTCGO. Give 25 minutes to both players. That's what you get for 3 games, run out of time, you lose. The main complaint is some players run the clock. If there is a timer, you will see them play much faster. You'll finish 3 games no problems.
Dear TPCi: Scrap the disaster that is 50+3!
- Thread starter Ness
- Start date
- Status
This has been brought up many times, and there are a number of key problems with it:
Cost: While individually not expensive, having enough for an entire event is non-trivial, not to mention the space needed to transport/store them.
Ambiguity: There are portions of the time that don't clearly belong to either player-set up between games, between turns, etc.. While it is generally possible to stop the clock during these times, it makes things substantially more complicated, and you might even have to reduce the time to 22 or 20 minutes per player per round.
There are a few others, but I don't see clocks being a huge help in this scenario.
ShadowCard
Active Member
Just in case it sounds like I like ties, I don't. I'm just stating the reasons. I would rather see ties only used when the game is in fact a tie. If I take 5 prizes and you take 2, that is not a tie.
If neither player in the game can take 6 prizes, resulting in the game being a tie, they don't have to play out the +3. Next prize wins encourages players to take up all 3 or more turns. If you have 3 prizes left and I have 4 prizes left when time is called, if neither of us has the ability to take all of our remaining prizes, we both realize it and sign the match slip right there. No time is spent doing the +3 turns trying to get ahead.
When a game is tied in prizes, players can take many minutes trying to be the one to take the next prize. These extra 10 minutes each round add up. It adds an uncertainty into the tournament timing because you don't really know when a round will end. With a tie, you can reasonably play the length of rounds.
In the upper tables when players are confident they will get into top cut, it means those players don't play. That means fewer games that have the possibility to go to time.
If neither player in the game can take 6 prizes, resulting in the game being a tie, they don't have to play out the +3. Next prize wins encourages players to take up all 3 or more turns. If you have 3 prizes left and I have 4 prizes left when time is called, if neither of us has the ability to take all of our remaining prizes, we both realize it and sign the match slip right there. No time is spent doing the +3 turns trying to get ahead.
When a game is tied in prizes, players can take many minutes trying to be the one to take the next prize. These extra 10 minutes each round add up. It adds an uncertainty into the tournament timing because you don't really know when a round will end. With a tie, you can reasonably play the length of rounds.
A reason to make ties less abundant.
losjackal
Technical Administrator
You are THE man when it comes to entering results into TOM. So why is it any different than reporting a win/loss at the end of the round? IDGI.
bullados
<a href="http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?
Mostly, it's bulk. Results trickle in slowly throughout the round, then, once time is called, BAM, there's about 70+ match slips that all hit at the same time. The effect is worse in the VGC, where pretty much all games go to time. It's impossible to doublecheck the match results before hitting the Pair Next Round button, cuz there simply isn't enough time. I was lucky to turn the Missouri VGC Masters in half an hour for 15 minute matches.
StormFront
New Member
Sorry, but I think the majority of posters in the thread haven't adapted well to the new format changes. I've had 12 games of 50+3 and never once had a tie. It comes down to few changes. Firstly, learning to play quicker. Being able to search your deck quicker and shuffle faster obviously helps, as well as pre-planning planning what to do during your opponents turn. More importantly, knowing when to scoop. Avoid chasing lost or distant causes. Many people still fall into the trap of thinking scooping is somehow weakness or a shameful act, but sometime you've just gotta concede to preserve time. It's not just about being down on prizes, it's also about understanding board position as well, which is harder to judge when your playing under tourney conditions. After all, if you play too slow and rarely concede during game 1/2, then other players are going to exploit you by stalling you out when they're ahead. Which inevitably is going to lead to a lot of ties.
King Piplup
Active Member
I play ridiculously quickly as it is, playing fairly well paced decks at all of my Bo3 events this year. I admittedly have only tied 12% of those matches unintentionally, but only one wasn't the result of my opponent just being a natural slow player. Blastoise mirror just doesn't tie unless you've got at least one ridiculously poorly-paced player.
Additionally, "just concede properly" isn't a helpful solution either. I played against 5 Darkrai/Garbodor variants at St. Louis regionals, going 2-0-3 collectively against them. In 3 of those matches, I conceded game 1 or 2 prior to my 3rd turn of those matches—eventually tying all 3. The dilemma I faced scooping game 1 was that I was effectively cutting myself off from a chance at a win, as in such a matchup with players playing at the pace all 3 of these players were, completing 3 games is impossible. Do I scoop and resign to the tie? Or play to the eventual tie at the end of game 2? The fact is unless I won game 1 with a good start, I was at best going to tie.
I believe that's the intent of the current structure-play that one good game. I primarily take issue with "oh you clearly are playing it wrong, you can scoop/play faster," because that's a flawed mindset.
Additionally, "just concede properly" isn't a helpful solution either. I played against 5 Darkrai/Garbodor variants at St. Louis regionals, going 2-0-3 collectively against them. In 3 of those matches, I conceded game 1 or 2 prior to my 3rd turn of those matches—eventually tying all 3. The dilemma I faced scooping game 1 was that I was effectively cutting myself off from a chance at a win, as in such a matchup with players playing at the pace all 3 of these players were, completing 3 games is impossible. Do I scoop and resign to the tie? Or play to the eventual tie at the end of game 2? The fact is unless I won game 1 with a good start, I was at best going to tie.
I believe that's the intent of the current structure-play that one good game. I primarily take issue with "oh you clearly are playing it wrong, you can scoop/play faster," because that's a flawed mindset.
Last edited:
King Piplup
Active Member
What does the purpose of the round structure have to do with the size of top cut?
Essentially, cuts were larger in the past because you played one game per swiss round; having a decent sized cut allowed you to still make it without having an almost perfect tournament. So now, if the purpose of 50+3 "best of three" is to play ONE good game, but the cut is extremely small, then you have to have a nearly perfect tournament--avoiding bad matchups, not running cold, etc. Let me explain--It is true that you can try to negate a cold game 1 by taking the round to a draw after game 2, but the point allocation for draws is not enough to truly negate that bad game 1 (Essentially, drawing is almost as bad as losing, especially with a small top cut). 1 point for draws is still the most practical point allocation (2 points for a draw would obviously be ridiculous), which points to a problem with draws being present. They do not negate the luck factor, because drawing=losing. The best way to negate luck is with a large top cut, which is what we had in the past. Obviously, there was frustration with donks, poor starts, etc. in the old tournament structure, because you only had the oppurtunity to play one game per round, but those were problems with the cards themselves, not tournament structure. Donks have already been done away with as per first turn rules, and poor starts are a result of our lack of pokemon based draw and still exist irrespective of changes to tournament structure. Again, the impact of starting poorly is nearly the same as it was before, and perhaps even magnified by the fact that large events cut to a mere top 8.
First, there is an argument for top cut being only people that have had an almost perfect tournament.
Second, most of these posts have presumed that all the players want to minimize luck in the event and that is not necessarily true. I understand that the top players want that as they often land in top cut, but there are a lot of players that prefer best of one as they have more of a chance of having a hot run and winning an event. If you want to play in a chess tournament, go do so, but Pokemon is not chess and upsets are part of the game. Trying to minimize this by match play is pointless. Why don't we put the decks into a computer program and minimize auto-loss pairings as well? Doesn't dodging your bad matchups involve even more luck than your occasional deck fail?
That setting forces players to be lucky to cut. What you just outlined is the exact problem with the current state of the game--luck has a greater impact than skill. The fact of the matter is that in a competitive event, you offer the most competitive and legitimate setting when you minimize luck. Of course, Pokemon is about more than just competition, namely FUN--but on that note, "Yeah, I had one prize left to his four but ended up drawing because of time", isn't very fun, nor is not getting to finish games--and neither is only cutting to a top 8. Part of the fun of nationals is that top 128 cut. It's a shame to see it go.
Your argument about deck matchups is fallacious and takes my point to the extreme. I'm saying that the impact of hitting one bad mad matchup is greater in 50+3 Bo3 than under the old structure, especially with a small cut. It's illogical and unfair to draw a comparison to using the pairing system to minimize auto losses. Hitting a bad matchup should have negative results, but hitting it once shouldn't make you be a tie away from being on the bubble at best.
Naki Feralkin
New Member
I haven't weighed in in a post in a very long time, haven't been as active as a player and there are a couple of factors to it which have varied between time, lack of time to playtest, last seasons dreadful format, and this season's rules haven't been very pleasant either.
Personally, from both judging and playing in this format, I have found that it is very hard to both keep players happy and wanting to come to events. Personally, I'm okay with the whole entry fee to a tournament thing. There has been a ton of amazing prizes this season simply because of the whole entry fee thing and I am personally okay with this continuing. What I am not okay with is what 50+3 has done to this community. I have probably witnessed so many errors in SotG in the past year at the various events I have both played and judged at. Judging at Indiana Regionals in the Fall, for one. I thought we did a great job as a team and we all tried our best to get as much done there as possible, but so many things we had to start keeping track of that shouldn't have been a factor in the first place. For one, Stalling has been getting worse. Stalling has always been something I personally have hated because it is not a strategy that merits any amount of SotG whatsoever. How does it feel being the person with 0 wins in a Bo3 series and your opponent is literally stalling you out to prevent the dreaded tie from happening? This not only hits the person doing it with SotG, but then the person who is calling a judge for slow playing then looks unsportsmanlike for trying to rush the opponent or catching them in the act. Suddenly words talk around the play area from your opponents friends and suddenly the community slowly is becoming toxic due to disdain and other such things. Its a terrible catch-22 and honestly this hasn't been helping SotG. It's been making it worse. I know in the Masters side (I was judging Seniors which was substantially less stressful), our judges were WATCHING players who were intentionally slow playing to draw games out. This should never be a thing. Ever. I get watching slow players prevents the stalling from occurring, but the number of people we were potentially having to watch was huge. (I believe I saw someone mention that there isn't enough staff for this. Sorry, lets just not try to have a billion judges.)
Then there were also people who purposely made decks to tie and screw other players out of potentially cutting. This is blatantly anti-SotG. Everything that this new rule set has not been healthy from a judges point of view.
From a players point of view, it is taxing psychologically and honestly, while I've been playing at many tournaments, my motivation to play diminishes to an extremely low amount right after I tie for the first time because I know a tie does nothing for me and there was nothing I could have personally done in the game that isn't against SotG to have improved those odds. Some decks just play extremely slow, and in order to finish games on time, it also further diminishes the deck choices you can make. I've been wanting to try out Aromatisse/Klingklang, but the fact that it rolls heavy into late game is what prevents me from playing it. I would tie literally every game. When I was at States, the first tie I got taken into just made me feel completely like it was useless to continue. I personally threw my game to my opponent because he had a better shot than I did as far as points went. Do we really want to have players intentionally draw or throw their game to their opponent so their opponent has a better chance of winning? I won't lie. Every time a game has gone to a "tie" for me, I have wanted to concede my match and give it to my opponent because I just don't feel right with a tie on my record, especially if my opponent made a valiant effort at a comeback and ultimately should have won. I dropped in 3 rounds at Ohio States simply because I did not want to play anymore. That's how far this game has sunk for me. It literally is no fun to play anymore. This is not how a game should be. Especially not one whose playerbase has been growing for years.
Regarding the argument I've been seeing above. Has noone ever heard of a Cinderella story? The Top 128 has always been such a thrill at Nationals because you can always see crazy things happening in it. Players who started off 1-2 end up finishing at 7-2 or 6-3 and manage to sneak in and go so far in the top cut due to having a phenomenal fight in Best of 3. Someone from Ohio during the SP era was playing Machamp and cut in at the 64 seed on one side, and managed to upset his opponent. Yeah, I get that the Top 8 is supposed to dictate the best of the best, but some of these "bests" can also play very well in Swiss and not even remotely well in Top Cut. I've made some crazy runs at nationals, opening up the week at 6-0 and letting go of 3 and still cutting, making it through 2 rounds of cut before dropping. I get there shouldn't be that safety net, but if you understand player psychology, you have absolutely no idea how relieving it is ending the day at 6-0, knowing even off of 3 losses you still can get in. You take off that strain, that weight that can heavily effect your play in Top Cut, and be able to breathe a little bit to regain the focus and play off the headache (Which I've had after a lot of heavy focusing). That doesn't exist in 50+3. Its just constantly worrying about one loss or tie completely ruining your chance into the big show. There are no ties in Basketball. In Football. In the big tournaments, a win must be decisive. I understand judges/profs have lives outside of pokemon and can't run 20 hour long tournaments. But to be quite honest, having judged and played Regionals, I haven't noticed any difference in how long the day is. If anything, they just got longer.
Seriously, can we just can this rule? Its effecting everyones SotG. The collusions, the intentional draws, the intentional slowplaying. Its not healthy. At all. I haven't wanted to play this game in months just because its so stressful and droll now. I understand adrenaline and wanting to play to win. That's cool. It also shouldn't be a stressful mess to everyone playing (or even judging).
Personally, from both judging and playing in this format, I have found that it is very hard to both keep players happy and wanting to come to events. Personally, I'm okay with the whole entry fee to a tournament thing. There has been a ton of amazing prizes this season simply because of the whole entry fee thing and I am personally okay with this continuing. What I am not okay with is what 50+3 has done to this community. I have probably witnessed so many errors in SotG in the past year at the various events I have both played and judged at. Judging at Indiana Regionals in the Fall, for one. I thought we did a great job as a team and we all tried our best to get as much done there as possible, but so many things we had to start keeping track of that shouldn't have been a factor in the first place. For one, Stalling has been getting worse. Stalling has always been something I personally have hated because it is not a strategy that merits any amount of SotG whatsoever. How does it feel being the person with 0 wins in a Bo3 series and your opponent is literally stalling you out to prevent the dreaded tie from happening? This not only hits the person doing it with SotG, but then the person who is calling a judge for slow playing then looks unsportsmanlike for trying to rush the opponent or catching them in the act. Suddenly words talk around the play area from your opponents friends and suddenly the community slowly is becoming toxic due to disdain and other such things. Its a terrible catch-22 and honestly this hasn't been helping SotG. It's been making it worse. I know in the Masters side (I was judging Seniors which was substantially less stressful), our judges were WATCHING players who were intentionally slow playing to draw games out. This should never be a thing. Ever. I get watching slow players prevents the stalling from occurring, but the number of people we were potentially having to watch was huge. (I believe I saw someone mention that there isn't enough staff for this. Sorry, lets just not try to have a billion judges.)
Then there were also people who purposely made decks to tie and screw other players out of potentially cutting. This is blatantly anti-SotG. Everything that this new rule set has not been healthy from a judges point of view.
From a players point of view, it is taxing psychologically and honestly, while I've been playing at many tournaments, my motivation to play diminishes to an extremely low amount right after I tie for the first time because I know a tie does nothing for me and there was nothing I could have personally done in the game that isn't against SotG to have improved those odds. Some decks just play extremely slow, and in order to finish games on time, it also further diminishes the deck choices you can make. I've been wanting to try out Aromatisse/Klingklang, but the fact that it rolls heavy into late game is what prevents me from playing it. I would tie literally every game. When I was at States, the first tie I got taken into just made me feel completely like it was useless to continue. I personally threw my game to my opponent because he had a better shot than I did as far as points went. Do we really want to have players intentionally draw or throw their game to their opponent so their opponent has a better chance of winning? I won't lie. Every time a game has gone to a "tie" for me, I have wanted to concede my match and give it to my opponent because I just don't feel right with a tie on my record, especially if my opponent made a valiant effort at a comeback and ultimately should have won. I dropped in 3 rounds at Ohio States simply because I did not want to play anymore. That's how far this game has sunk for me. It literally is no fun to play anymore. This is not how a game should be. Especially not one whose playerbase has been growing for years.
Regarding the argument I've been seeing above. Has noone ever heard of a Cinderella story? The Top 128 has always been such a thrill at Nationals because you can always see crazy things happening in it. Players who started off 1-2 end up finishing at 7-2 or 6-3 and manage to sneak in and go so far in the top cut due to having a phenomenal fight in Best of 3. Someone from Ohio during the SP era was playing Machamp and cut in at the 64 seed on one side, and managed to upset his opponent. Yeah, I get that the Top 8 is supposed to dictate the best of the best, but some of these "bests" can also play very well in Swiss and not even remotely well in Top Cut. I've made some crazy runs at nationals, opening up the week at 6-0 and letting go of 3 and still cutting, making it through 2 rounds of cut before dropping. I get there shouldn't be that safety net, but if you understand player psychology, you have absolutely no idea how relieving it is ending the day at 6-0, knowing even off of 3 losses you still can get in. You take off that strain, that weight that can heavily effect your play in Top Cut, and be able to breathe a little bit to regain the focus and play off the headache (Which I've had after a lot of heavy focusing). That doesn't exist in 50+3. Its just constantly worrying about one loss or tie completely ruining your chance into the big show. There are no ties in Basketball. In Football. In the big tournaments, a win must be decisive. I understand judges/profs have lives outside of pokemon and can't run 20 hour long tournaments. But to be quite honest, having judged and played Regionals, I haven't noticed any difference in how long the day is. If anything, they just got longer.
Seriously, can we just can this rule? Its effecting everyones SotG. The collusions, the intentional draws, the intentional slowplaying. Its not healthy. At all. I haven't wanted to play this game in months just because its so stressful and droll now. I understand adrenaline and wanting to play to win. That's cool. It also shouldn't be a stressful mess to everyone playing (or even judging).
Last edited:
GinoLombardi21
New Member
50+3 best of three was needed in this game for the main reason that if u lost the first game due to bad luck u could still possibly make 1 point for a tie instead of 0 like the old usual best of one game swiss.
Granted there is a possibility of getting 3 points if lost the first game but due to the time it takes to win two straight games the chances of that happening is about 1 out of every 10 battles you could pull out 12 prizes with 20-30 minutes remaining during game 2 and 3.
The point system works extremely better then the old system where you were missing top cut on resistance.
The way I see it is you can make top cuts with a good wins and tie percent like they have in play now
OR
you could go back to the old ways and miss top cut on resistance with 1-2 losses
The new format rewards players a point for going to game 3 and tieing
the old way punishes you for losing a game one and done style
Granted there is a possibility of getting 3 points if lost the first game but due to the time it takes to win two straight games the chances of that happening is about 1 out of every 10 battles you could pull out 12 prizes with 20-30 minutes remaining during game 2 and 3.
The point system works extremely better then the old system where you were missing top cut on resistance.
The way I see it is you can make top cuts with a good wins and tie percent like they have in play now
OR
you could go back to the old ways and miss top cut on resistance with 1-2 losses
The new format rewards players a point for going to game 3 and tieing
the old way punishes you for losing a game one and done style
So you are rewarding the person that lost the first game with a chance to make both players only get 1 point (which is about as good as 0 points), but you are punishing the player that won the first game by making them only get 1 point (which is still just about as good as 0). With the new 1st turn rules, turn one donks don't happen at all anymore (unless you are going second and opponent doesn't get any Basics on the Bench, in which case the one without Basics benched was probably going to lose anyways because that means he has a terrible hand). I'm not saying best of three is bad for the game, in fact I enjoy it, it's just the fact that the small time we have cause far too many ties. Ties would still happen with a larger time, no doubt about that, but there won't be nearly as many ties as there are right now.
This just didn't happen in the old structure plain and simple. 7-2s cut nats. No whiffs. X-2s cut regionals. It was beautiful .
- - - Updated - - -
This just didn't happen in the old structure plain and simple. 7-2s cut nats. No whiffs. X-2s cut regionals. It was beautiful .
7-2 has whiffed cut at U.S. Nats before. No system is perfect, but 50+3 best-of-three, ties and Top 8 cut combined is the worst I have ever seen.
King Piplup
Active Member
In recent years? I seem to recall 6-3 being the bubble number at least the past 3 years, and mathematically, that shouldn't happen in flight'd Top 128.
This. Maybe it happened before they moved to flights, I don't know. But as far as nationals goes, the old system seemed to be working fine. 50+3 Bo3 is a solution searching for a problem.
- Status