First, false. This is still Pokemon. More Swiss in not guaranteed to decrease the variance. There is a solid conceptual argument that more swiss opens you up to more potential to having those luck loses.
The absolute best way to reduce variance is to play more Bo3. So, if you want to play Bo3 Swiss, with more Swiss rounds and then cut to a smaller top. OK, I might buy that. However, it would be simpler and more effective to just add another round of Top Cut action.
Second, I know you didn't make the win percentage argument (Otaku and Glumanda did), but by increasing the number of Swiss rounds, you directly decrease the win percentage required to make the top cut.
For example, at the Mississippi River Valley Regional you had to have a win percentage of 77.78% to make the cut (7-2). However, if you had added another round, approximately 19 7-3 players would have made the cut. That is a 70% win rate. That is only 3.4 % higher than just moving the cut line to the 64. If you force 11 rounds, you will have approximately 3 7-4 players make the cut, at a 63.6% rate. At that point, you have "cheapened" the top cut when compared to just moving the line to 64 because people with a lower win percentage will make that Top 32 than would have made a nine round Top 64 cut.
Third, you still are missing the point that P!P's own preferred system (evidenced by the guidelines) called for a Top 64 cut this weekend. It was only their external, artificial limit, on their own chosen system, that kept a Top 64 from happening. It is like P!P says, "we like this system and think it is fair... but when event get too big we will cripple our own chosen system from working itself out." You tell me, how does that make sense?
---------- Post added 01/21/2013 at 10:16 AM ----------
I'm on your side here Politoed. I just want to make something clear. More games does decrease random variance. However, more games can be achieved in three (4) ways.
1) Add more Bo1 Swiss rounds to the USA system.
2) Convert the current Swiss rounds to Bo3.
3) Add more Top Cut rounds, when the system dictates it should.
4) Combination of the above methods.
No one in North America, that I have talked to, want to convert Swiss to Bo3. So, for practical purposes we have 1 and 3 to choose from.
Now, both decrease variance. However, more Bo3 rounds is better at removing variance than adding another Swiss round, or even adding three more Swiss rounds.
This is true because the Swiss rounds are still Bo1. So, in each of those one to three extra Swiss rounds, you still face the possibility of dead drawing and donks. And, you will take a round loss for one of those things.
In Bo3, you can take a donk/dead draw on game and it does not equal a round loss. You still have two more games to get it together before you add a loss to your total record.
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