Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Playing Games Best of 3

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Sabett

Sabett

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I bring up this subject not because it is practical to implement it now, but to understand why this would be good and what exactly prevents it from being implemented. By playing a game best 2 out of 3 you are able to do two important things. The first is to cut down on the luck factor of the game, by playing best of 3, in theory the deck that wins most of the time will always win the match, because even if it lost the first game, it would've won the other 2. Skill level can also be the deciding factor in a game best of 3. The other thing is to apply sideboards, which in it's own way cuts down on the luck factor and relieves decks of having to intensively run techs and slow down their decks, but please keep the discussion of that on the other thread.

Now the bad thing about playing best of 3 is that it takes a lot time to get through a tournament, and not that l see playing more games as a problem as much as I see it practically not fitting into the tournament environment. Many small tournaments are run at fast food joints and libraries, and these places close, putting a time limit on the tournament, which more often than not won't allow for a tournament that plays best of 3.

I have heard that in Europe they have tournaments that are best of 3, I don't know much more than that. Perhaps someone who does could enlighten the topic discussion, such as how they are able to complete the games in a timely manner, or if they just have places that stay up late.
 
Time is an issue, but if you have the time I would encourage you to try this. No one likes losing because of luck. I would also like to hear the European matches.
 
We play 45 mins best of 3 in swiss. Sometimes you get to play one long game, but if you get donked, or scoop cos of a horrible start, at least you get to play some more.

I dunno if it really adds any more time to the end of rounds if you keep the time limit the same.
 
One problem is what we call the machamp win over here.

This was a major factor back when I used iPlox. You basically won round 1 but it took a long time since your deck is slow and you have to play carefully since you dont want to get flipped out (;))
The round 2 starts, your opponent takes a lead, you mount a comeback ocne you're ready, but time gets called although you would have won that game.
Timeout starts and you play against Machamp

This way Machamp wins without having won a real game
 
The Machamp deck would have to take 4 prizes and be ahead for the second game to count though.

2/3 doesn't solve all the problems of bad starts and donking, but it does help.
 
4 prices is easy if machamp plays on early prices imo :/
THe thing is that it always is ahead in the beginning, I win the first game with 15 minutes left and I know I'll loose...
 
If you play best of 3 in 45 mins...is that done without the intent of playing all three rounds? Because idk about you but I can't do 3 games in 45 min. I would hope for a reasonable amount of time for all three rounds to be implemented, but we're talking about the current Europe version.

I know best 2 out of 3 doesn't solve all the problems (that's why I've started other threads) but it definitely helps as you said. To me any luck we can replace with skill is worth it to me, although I can understand this not being implemented because it takes too long if you were to give enough time for all three rounds.
 
Other games that play best 2/3 (Magic, i'm looking at you!), have 50 min. rounds at all major events. They also have a way to score matches that end in a draw, ie. 1/1. Pokemon matches could be extended by (usually) 5 min. to add a total of a half hour to swiss rounds.([45 min. matches +5 more min.per] x avg. 6 rounds= 30 min. added total) Thats not much more time. Winning a round would net you 3 points. 0 for losing. And 1 point for a tie. This encourages playing expediently without punishing the inevitable ties that occur. Tie breakers would be based on totaling a player's opponent's points. This would reward players for winning against other good players.(The very essence of skill) Play top cuts without a time limit but have the judge(s) actually watch for slowplay. That should remove as much of the 'luckfactor' people always complain about. I'm sure someone will find a problem w/ this but I played that "other game" for years and found its tourney structure to be unrivaled.
 
It's good that you mentioned Magic's tournament structure, it's very well organized, complete with sideboards and everything. One thing that I think is a problem is that Pokemon typically takes longer to play than Magic, and 50 min for 3 games is impractical.
 
Sabett said:
It's good that you mentioned Magic's tournament structure, it's very well organized, complete with sideboards and everything. One thing that I think is a problem is that Pokemon typically takes longer to play than Magic, and 50 min for 3 games is impractical.
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Magic and Pokemon arent the same games.

Pokemon uses a lot cards for search /draw which TAKES a lot of time.

Magic doesnt. ;)
 
I'd be in favor of making swiss best of 3, 45 minutes. Not sure about the 4 prize rule for swiss, though. Certainly debatable.
 
darvor said:
Magic and Pokemon arent the same games.

Pokemon uses a lot cards for search /draw which TAKES a lot of time.

Magic doesnt. ;)
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Isn't that what I just said....that Pokemon needs more time than magic...gj @ reading.

Scizor said:
I'd be in favor of making swiss best of 3, 45 minutes. Not sure about the 4 prize rule for swiss, though. Certainly debatable.
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That ruling is already in effect for the top 4 cut in American tournaments, or at least in cities that I've seen.
 
I could point out that more draw/search in a card game should make it go faster considering a poke-player should have more access to a card they want to play at any given moment. Or that the interactions of mtg cards on any given turn is just as time consuming as drawing/searching for cards in pokemon. I will point out that both games take alot of skill to master and i'm not saying mtg's a better game or anything. What I am saying is this: they have a better tourny stucture. Nintendo could learn alot from the DCI. I don't mean a carbon copy cut/paste to pokemon-but a strong argument can be made that many elements of mtg tournaments could be successfully incorporated without a major problem. A slight tweak to the card designs could easily change the "it takes awhile to shuffle my deck 5 times a turn" argument. I've even noticed that HG/SS has less poke-powers/bodies on the cards than previous sets. Combined with 2x weakness on tons of the cards, I'm thinking maybe the designers are trying to make that shift a reality. Who knows, it might be a precursor to multi-game tourny rounds. And finally to Darver- I know they aren't the same game. Pokemon is way more FUN! It's THE reason I started playing it with my son.
 
The last time we ran a best-of-3 swiss tournament was at our Colorado States about 7 years ago. The best decks and players made the top cut, but the tournament didn't finish until about 10pm.

Best-of-3 is great for the top players (the minority), but bad for TOs/Judges and lesser players (the majority). Generally, the majority gets their way.
 
I play Magic and Pokemon, and Pokemon does take a lot more time to play than Magic, there's so much to set up before you even begin playing a game of Pokemon, but in magic it's just pretty much draw 7 start getting into it. Decks in Magic work around winning in a set number of turns, and I don't mean donks, I mean like winning regardless of what the opponent starts with, obviously the opponent can stop it, but in a bubble they could plan to win on turn 3. In Pokemon there's really no telling when a deck will win, but one things for certain, unless it's a donk, is that it will be longer than 6 turns.

Also at SteveP, so what you're saying is to let better players suffer, and to take the burden of time off of lesser players, because the better players are going to beat them anyway and they might as well do it in 1 game instead of 2? What's to say their wasn't a lot of better players and they simply got beat by even better players. I really don't think you can call the majority of the paying field that go to tournaments lesser players. They for the most part would want to win, and do it fairly. This is a new way to implement something fair in place of luck. Also as a judge myself, I would rather judge at a longer tournament than a smaller one, I like Pokemon, I like judging, so I don't really think you can say that's bad for judges. I mean becoming a judge is entirely voluntary right? If they don't like judging, then they shouldn't judge. I'm not saying to abuse them, but plenty of other judge in other card games judge that late in tournaments, and they did volunteer to become a judge, so I would imagine that a long tournament to not be the worst of things to them.
 
TBH, I found that 'lesser' players actually like 2/3 better.

Why? Cos it means they still get to play another game if a better player thrashes them in 30 seconds. Also, they get to see the better decks in action again and can learn from it.
 
I really don't like that term "lesser players", there are people who worked at studying the format, and then there are people who don't and just hope that they do well. "lesser players" Implies there are players with some kind of cripple they can't overcome, but that's not true they can, they just don't.

For example, at the tournaments I've gone to there is a person who always plays Leafeon X, no matter what, last year he played it, this year he played it, now even if you like Leafeon X, and even if you think it was right to play at one point, it can't be good all the time, and does show a clear lack of study upon the format. Obviously this person just likes Leafeon X, and plays it out of sheer joy, which is fine, but should it be argued for a tournament to be in his favor, because there are more people like him? Or should the win go to the people who worked hard at the format, who obtained new cards as they came out, who playtested countless archetypes? I don't think tournaments should be built in favor of "lesser players", even if they are the majority. It's a tournament, the object is to win, and those that deserve it, through effort and determination, should have it.
 
It's just common sense for lesser players to benefit more from 1-game matches. Their likelihood for victory against better players is greater.

In my experience, in Colorado, when I queried the players whether they wanted to play 1-game or 3-game matches, the majority of top-players wanted 3-game matches and the majority of lesser-players wanted 1-game matches.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a strong advocate for swiss best-of-3. I just think it's often impractical to and undesireable by the majority of players and TOs/Judges.

Now, in the case of a Worlds tournament, where you have the top players, best-of-3 swiss is something that is more desireable, and if planned, can be practical.
 
SteveP said:
It's just common sense for lesser players to benefit more from 1-game matches. Their likelihood for victory against better players is greater.

In my experience, in Colorado, when I queried the players whether they wanted to play 1-game or 3-game matches, the majority of top-players wanted 3-game matches and the majority of lesser-players wanted 1-game matches.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a strong advocate for swiss best-of-3. I just think it's often impractical to and undesireable by the majority of players and TOs/Judges.

Now, in the case of a Worlds tournament, where you have the top players, best-of-3 swiss is something that is more desireable, and if planned, can be practical.
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So because the majority of the people playing in the tournaments don't play on a competitive level, those that do should suffer? Tournaments are for winning, not for league play, tournaments are about the elite, not the majority, it's not a democracy, that's why there's a first, second, third, and fourth place.
 
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