Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Why the Tournament rating system is flawed.

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drmario

drmario

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In my opinion the ranking system used in premier rated events is flawed, and should be changed. Why might you ask do I think this? I will give an example of what is wrong with it. Suppose that in the first round of a tournament you are paired up agaisn't someone, who doesn't have a lot of succes that day loses many of their matches. Even if you beat them you will be ranked lower than other people with the same record. That happens because POP uses your opponents, and opponents, opponents win percentage to rank the players. The problem with this is that some people will get paired agaisn't someone early on, beat them, but that person wins more later on so the opponents win percentage will be high. Other people will get paired early on agaisn't someone who loses a whole lot. That unfortunate person will not be ranked as high even if they win. As many of you have probably experienced the system doesn't work very well, and more often than not you will not make top cut even though people the same record as you do. You may say that this is fair, since if your matches were easy to win then you don't deserve to make top cut as much as someone who played a lot of good people to get the same record as you. Most of the time this is not the case, simply because all too often you don't get the opportunity to play many good players. All too often you will play people early on (I say early on because that is when you are most likely to play the bad people) beat them but then they will proceed to lose most of their matches.
I would suggest implementing a system where it doesn't matter who you play or who you win or lose agaisnt. All that should matter is your record. Does it matter in MLB if a team barely scrapes by in their wins, and in all of their losses are blow-outs? No. In the NBA, NFL? No. Neither should it in pokemon. The rating system should be ranked by record, and nothing else. If their are ties then a tiebreaker round could be played.
If you agree with me than please send off an email to POP.
 
This will not happen as a tie-breaker round will only INCREASE the time it takes to finish events, which is something PUI is steering clear of.

And btw, what do you think we should do if (for example) 10 people are all at 4-2, and only 2 of them can make the cut (to top8 probably). What do you do then? 3 or 4 tiebreaker rounds?



Sorry, but your reasoning is flawed.
 
OK, watch your terminology, drmario. You said that the "rating system" is flawed, but what you're really referring to is the standings in tournaments.
I started a thread about tiebreakers used in POP swiss tournaments, but did not get many replies.
http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?t=36244
I still think "Time of Loss" or some other drop proof tiebreaker should be implemented.
I reccommended implementing "Cumulative" as that is something you do have control over.

I guess the best advice I have for you and players in general (and this is where professor_dav and I agree on something) is to win your matches. Tiebreakers won't be too big a problem for you if you win more matches.
If you go to a tournament with 54 participants and T8 Single Elimination cut, the 6-0 player will get in as well as all of the 5-1 players. But if you get a 4-2 record, you run a risk. Some 4-2 players will make it in and some won't. The "penalty" for going 4-2 is running the risk that you may not make it into SE. You are liable for your own losses. If you want to increase your OP Win%, win more matches. You literally can't control your OP Win%, but you can help.

Should the tiebreakers be changed? Is there room for reform? Perhaps so, but the tiebreakers are applied uniformly- (just like the software's pairing algorithms) they do not discriminate. Everyone is subject to the same rules, and we all know the rules when we walk into the registration line for the tournament.

Should the SE cut only include those who have a certain score? I don't think so. It would almost always necessitate a top cut that is not a power of 2, meaning that a bunch of players would have to get byes, and byes are something that should be avoided.
 
Morpheus said:
Sorry, but your reasoning is flawed.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say it's so much flawed as it is not reasonable.


Now, that said, Morpheus is right in that it would add WAY too much time. If you look at curling championships, which does use a straight playoff tiebreak system (all teams tied play in a tiebreaker, regardless of scores/record against/etc), they often have an entire day set aside for tiebreak matches.

So often the focus is how to remove rounds to save time, and all this would do is, as Morpheus said, raise the time needed for tournaments. Like, by multiple hours.

Should there be another tiebreak system? Maybe. Perhaps have the prize scores after each match recorded and have the first tiebreak be highest ratio of prizes taken to prizes surrendered. Of course, the problem there is what would be the assigned score for games that end on the first turn? 1-0 or 6-0?

It's just like the rankings system. There's a problem with how its currently done, but good luck finding a better way to do things.
 
Actually my reasoning is perfectly sound. First tiebreakers wouldn't increase the time overly much. And all the people who know they didn't make top cut could leave. Also my suggested change isn't necessarily what POP should do, it was only an idea. My reasoning stands that the current system needs changes. Also you could eliminate some people if they played head to head matches. Then obviously the winner of that would get in over the loser. So while my solution isn't necessarily the best one a change should be made.
Also while yes the you are responsible for your wins and losses, some people make it in by player better players and beating them. Others win just as many but they didn't have the opportunity of playing the better people. So your fate is only partly in your hands. The rest is decided by a computer.
 
drmario said:
First tiebreakers wouldn't increase the time overly much.
Click to expand...

Say you have 10 people tied at 3-2, for 2 spots in the Tx. Remember, you need to make it x^2 players as soon as possible to make it work.

Of those 10 people:

Tiebreak Round 1
1 - bye
2 - bye
3 - bye
4 - bye
5 - bye
6 - bye
7 v 10
8 v 9

Tiebreak Round 2
A - 1 v W7v10
B - 2 v W8v9
C - 3 v 6
D - 4 v 5

Tiebreak Round 3
E - WA v WD
F - WB v WC

WE and WF advance to Tx
Click to expand...

Even with 8 people tied:
Tiebreak Round 1
A - 1 v 8
B - 2 v 7
C - 3 v 6
D - 4 v 5

Tiebreak Round 2
E - WA v WD
F - WB v WC

WE and WF advance to Tx
Click to expand...

Congrats, your tournament just took 3 extra hours if you have 10 people tied, 2 extra hours if you have 8 people tied. Neither of which are all that odd. And that's that many extra hours that the T(x-2) have been sitting around, twiddling their thumbs.


Running through full tiebreak rounds is not feasable. It will NEVER happen.
 
Mystery Thing- well, you could just do a tiebraker round, at say 20 min. and whoever is ahead on prizes takes it. Of course the matches would be closely watched to prevent any stalling.

Only problem is that this disscusion doesn't matter. It will never happen.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by drmario
First tiebreakers wouldn't increase the time overly much.

Say you have 10 people tied at 3-2, for 2 spots in the Tx. Remember, you need to make it x^2 players as soon as possible to make it work.

Of those 10 people:


Quote:
Tiebreak Round 1
1 - bye
2 - bye
3 - bye
4 - bye
5 - bye
6 - bye
7 v 10
8 v 9

Tiebreak Round 2
A - 1 v W7v10
B - 2 v W8v9
C - 3 v 6
D - 4 v 5

Tiebreak Round 3
E - WA v WD
F - WB v WC

WE and WF advance to Tx

Even with 8 people tied:

Quote:
Tiebreak Round 1
A - 1 v 8
B - 2 v 7
C - 3 v 6
D - 4 v 5

Tiebreak Round 2
E - WA v WD
F - WB v WC

WE and WF advance to Tx

Congrats, your tournament just took 3 extra hours if you have 10 people tied, 2 extra hours if you have 8 people tied. Neither of which are all that odd. And that's that many extra hours that the T(x-2) have been sitting around, twiddling their thumbs.


Running through full tiebreak rounds is not feasable. It will NEVER happen.
Click to expand...
You wouldn't do full tiebreaker rounds. Just pair up the top ten or whatever however many their are. Also you could eliminate players from head to head matches during swiss. The matches could also be shorter time limits.
 
drmario said:
You wouldn't do full tiebreaker rounds. Just pair up the top ten or whatever however many their are. Also you could eliminate players from head to head matches during swiss. The matches could also be shorter time limits.
Click to expand...

You can't just "pair them up," that would leave you with, in the case of the 10 tied for 2 spots, 11 people for the T8 (T6 + 10/2). Which of course, wouldn't work at all. And you can rarely eliminate people purely with head to head matchups, as you'll quite often have the rock-paper-scissors dilemna - player A beat B who beat C who beat A.

And if you shorten time limits, you drastically change how some decks have to be played. To force a player to radically change their strategy mid-tournament, only to change it right back after the tiebreak rounds, is not reasonable. I know it's not legal anymore, but a deck such as Electrode ex would instantly lose in this type of setup.

No matter what tiebreak you come up with (opp. win %, ratio of prizes taken, time of matches, anything), it will always be dependant on a player's opponents.
 
@drmario: You do understand the significance of a single eliminaion having a number of participants equal to a power of 2, don't you? e.g. T2, T4, T8, T16, T32...

Mystery Thing said:
No matter what tiebreak you come up with (opp. win %, ratio of prizes taken, time of matches, anything), it will always be dependant on a player's opponents.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily true. "Time of Loss", "Cumulative", "Most Wins", "Least Losses" do not fall into this category.
 
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Of course there may be some problems with this kind of TieBreakers. But what would happen if we didn't have them?

A player who wins his first three matches, maybe playing against the most skilled opponents of the tounament, then loses two times, would exactly get the same ranking as a player who loses the firt two rounds and beats three low skilled players after that. I don't think this is very fair.

At all - it is not possible to create a system with equal chances to all players, independent of pairings luck. The only solution would be to everyone against each other... just imaging the operation time of a small 20 people tourmanent for this. Maybe it is bad luck to get paired against a low skilled player first round - but it also can be good luck becauso you can win more easily.

I understand that it is really a problem to be unable to change anything on the own TieBreaker. At the State Championship Berlin, most of my opponents were good players, but they did very bad or got a lot of bad luck at that tournament. So I got fifth place, and other people whose opponents surely could be beaten more easily than mine, got a higher TieBreaker than me. But as I said, there isn't a method to avoid something like this. Swiss with opponent's-win-tiebreakers is one of the fairest tournament systems I know, compared withother popular things like Single Elimination, Double Elimination or Group-based systems.
 
ninetales1234 said:
Not necessarily true. "Time of Loss", "Cumulative", "Most Wins", "Least Losses" do not fall into this category.
Click to expand...

Time of loss - begs for stalling to occur, and also is prone to opponent's stalling that doesn't pan out for them. Also, keeping track of EXACTLY how long any given match took would be WAY too much work on the judges.
Cummulative - cummulative what?
Most Wins / Least Losses - ... Everybody would be the same. If they weren't, they wouldn't be tied. :wink:
 
Mystery Thing said:
Time of loss - begs for stalling to occur, and also is prone to opponent's stalling that doesn't pan out for them. Also, keeping track of EXACTLY how long any given match took would be WAY too much work on the judges.
Click to expand...
I'm referring to the tiebreaker used by POP in the 2004-2005 tournament year.

Cummulative - cummulative what?
Click to expand...
Every single tiebreaker I refered to in this thread is listed (with an explanation) in the link I posted in post #3.
Most Wins / Least Losses - ... Everybody would be the same. If they weren't, they wouldn't be tied. :wink:
Click to expand...
This is a tiebreaker used in systems that allow draws. Of course we don't have that right now.
 
TOL - hehehehe I totally read it as minutes/sections time, rather than what point in the tourney time. My bad. How would that works for people will multiple losses though?

Cummulative - goootcha. That's not so bad... Although it and TOL would be directly related, so you can't use both really. I totally agree that somebody that loses in round 1 and then wins out should be ranked lower than somebody that wins through until the last round.


When in doubt, read the links. :x
 
many years ago I used to run non power of two cuts at qualifier events. Its not difficult. It does add one extra round after the swiss prior to the conventional elimination rounds. The big plus is that all the negative impact of tie-breakers is eliminated in a stroke. (well at the cost of an extra round). However I must add that I don't believe that running non-power of two cuts is a panacea. If it were I would have been campaigning for non-power of two cuts on the OP forums.

Pairings luck is always present in pokemon tcg. We have big top cuts to allow most of the best players on the day through along with a number of wildcards.

mysteryThing: You only need to add one extra round in your example.

1 player on 5-0
5 players on 4-1
10 players on 3-2

6 entrants into the cut are clear leaving two spots to fill. If you don't want to decide the two out of the ten based upon tiebreaker then you let all of them in. You now have a TOP16 and you run it as just that. It only takes one extra round. If after adding in all the tied players you had fourteen candidates for the top cut then you add byes and award them to the top seeds. In all cases the procedure is to add byes to make the elimination finals up to a power of two and have all the byes expire in the first round of the cut.
 
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So now that everyone has had their fun completly ruining my idea, why don't you suggest changes that would work. Either way you look at it the current system doesn't work right. Even if you their is a big top cut not all the good players will get in. At regionals their were 65 players in masters, only 16 got in to the top cut. That is less than 1/4 of the players making top cut. To say that less than 23% of the players are any good just doesn't work. When you have that many people and only 23% going to top cut means that some of the people don't make it simply because the people they played lost a lot later on. So the current system Doesnt' work. My idea isn't the best way to fix it but something should be done. And when will you guys realize when I say pair the 10 that are tied this is what I mean.
Player 1 vs. Player 2
Player 3 vs. Player 4
Player 5 vs. Player 6
Player 7 vs. Player 8
Player 9 vs. Player 10

In one round you would eliminate half of the players. Also, say that player 1 wins and player 10 wins, but earlier during swiss player 1 beat player 10. Player 1 would be ranked higher because of it. While that might be unlikely, it could happen.
So any ideas how POP could change the system?
 
Is there any way the NFL could fix *their* system? Here's the official NFL tiebreak system, just FYI:

http://www.nfl.com/standings/tiebreakers <-- too long to quote here.

In all cases, H2H is the first tiebreaker. Unfotunately, that is very difficult to calculate on the fly at a Pokemon tourmanent because you can have cycles (A beats B, B beats C, C beats A, or larger cycles). This particular tiebreaker is unusable in Pokemon for this reason.

IN all cases, Conference or Divisional record is applied. This can't apply to Pokemon because there ARE no divisions.

What's after this? Strength of Victory, and Strength of Schedule. SoS is the first tiebreaker used in Pokemon, commonly referred to as OP Win %. As a further thought on SoS, OP OP Win % is calculated, but is rarely used.

The system, though flawed, is the best that can be come up with. Uneven top cuts are NOT an option, EVER, ANYWHERE, for the simple reason of time constraints. Midwest Regionals had about 13 people tied for 5 spots in the top 16 Masters. Should we have run a Top 32? NO, NEVER!!! Reason? Even with the Top 16 that we ran, the event still finished at midnight. The venue was only rented until midnight. See the problem here? Every event has a time constraint. Every event needs to be run within said time constraint. Adding an elimination round or extending the top cut to include those whose tiebreakers are lower is not an option in virtually all cases.
 
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