Violence
Smash Lord
Ok guys, I know that at least some people in NorCal would like to try Swiss into bracket, but not everyone know how to run it.
Having some experience, I'll try to fill you guys in.
What is Swiss?
Swiss is a method of pairing people in a Round Robin tournament. Instead of being eliminated, everyone plays the total amount of rounds of the Swiss.
What happens is that the amount of wins you have is kept track of. A win gives you 1 point, a loss gives you 0 points.
People with the same amount of points will play each other, so as you keep winning, you play better people, and as you keep losing you play worse people.
Why Swiss?
Swiss lets everyone play for the entire Round Robin section, so that players who are less experienced still get a lot of competitive matches in, in comparison to an elimination bracket where they would be done fairly quickly.
For experienced players, you get to fight for the opportunity to make it into the main bracket, and, for regions with power rankings, a Swiss bracket gives you more matches among ranked players to determine where they should be placed in the rankings.
When should I use Swiss?
Swiss, although I think it's pretty much the ideal format, often can't be used because of the following reasons:
Too many people/not enough TVs.
Not enough time.
Here's the way you should estimate the time it will take to run Swiss:
First, we want to see how many rounds your swiss will be.
The rule of thumb is 2 ^ (# of Rounds) > Number of players.
2 rounds is good for 1-4 people, 3 rounds for 5-8 people, 4 rounds for 8-16 people, 5 rounds for 16-32 people, etc.
Estimate how much time it will take to run your ending bracket. Usually, we use an 8 man bracket. For that, 90 minutes to 2 hours seems like a decent guess.
Take all the time you have for singles and subtract those last 2 hours, and your cleanup time. Since that's usually around 4-5 hours left in Norcal, we'll just take 4 hours and roll with it.
You can estimate the average melee match time of 4 minutes, and assume worst case scenario that every 2 out of 3 set goes to 3 matches, so each set takes 12 minutes. Taking into account stage striking, and other small delays, we'll further cushion it to 20 minutes. 20 minutes per set.
Now, only two people can be on a TV at once, so take how many singles entrants you have, divide that number by 2, and then divide that by your number of TVs, then round up to the nearest whole number. This is how many rotations have to be on a TV per round.
Now take the number of rotations, multiply it by 20 minutes. This gives you how much time each round will take. Multiply that by your number of rounds, and that's how long your Swiss will take. If you don't have that much time, it'll be tight, and you might want to use some other tournament format.
The time I ran it, we had over 30-40 people, 5 TVs, so that's 4 rotations, and we ran it for 4 rounds because of lack of time for the 5th. If this happens, it's not the end of the world, you can do what we did and just take the top 8. If two people have similar scores and tiebreaks for the last spot, just have them play a quick set.
How do I set up the pairings on my computer?
All you need for Swiss is an Excel document.
I'm going to demonstrate a typical 20 person Swiss into bracket with images now.
First, create the columns as shown, listing the players.
NOTE: IGNORE THE COLUMNS MARKED LOSE SCORE AND STANDING. I WANTED TO INCORPORATE TIEBREAKS, BUT IT JUST MADE IT OVERLY COMPLICATED SO I DECIDED TO REMOVE IT.
We're going to pair Round 1 now. Generate a random number for each person entered. Now, sort by those numbers. Highlight both columns, click sort, then custom sort. Don't mind the fact that after you sort, the numbers have changed again, Excel just does that.
Delete the random numbers you have just made. To pair, simply take the row, copy paste it into Round 1, and flip it.
Flipping can easily be done by using a numbered row, and then reverse sorting.
Erase the numbered list you made, and there you have Round 1 pairings. Each player finds their name to the left, and follows it to the right to find their opponent. If you want, you can move the columns around to make it easier for you to read.
Now I will demonstrate what happens when someone reports a win/loss. Let's use an example match: Phil vs Dajuan. Let's say Phil beats Dajuan. First, highlight Phil's opponent green for a win, and highlight Dajuan's opponent red for a loss.
We'll put a 1 for Phil on his Win Score, and a 0 for Dajuan on his Win Score.
NOTE: Several methods of Tiebreak can be done, I'll mention them later.
NOTE: If you have an odd number of people, one person takes a bye. A bye is an autowin, so they get 1 point. In Swiss, it's best to give someone with the worst record a bye, because it has a lower risk of ****ing up the pairings.
Now that that's done, let's fill in everyone's results. Note, I did this randomly, this has nothing to do with how good I think you are.
Now, to pair the next round, select all the columns, and sort by the Win Score, highest first. This will sort your list for the next round.
Now, take the list of people with 1 win, copy it, paste it into round 2, and then flip that list. Then do the same with the people with 0 wins. Basically, people with 1 win play each other, people with 0 wins play each other.
Fill out the rounds like before.
Now sort for Round 3.
Now you notice we have 5 2s, 10 1s, and 5 0s. Simply have the bottom of the 2 band play the top of the 1 band, and the bottom of the 1 band play the top of the 0 band.
Note: If people are paired together and they've already played, use your best judgment and change the pairings. This happened in my pairings, as you can see, Jeff and German are going to be paired again. I instead pair German with Lunin, the next highest up. Same with Joe and Dan, I instead paired Dan with Tang.
Fill out the results again.
Sort for the next round.
Pair next round.
I think you guys get the idea.
After all the rounds are over, take the top 8(or however many you wanted for your bracket) and make a double elim bracket out of them.
In case of ties, the easiest way to break them is to go through each person's opponents, and add up the sum of opponent's scores for each person.
For example, here, we can check the sum of opponent's scores for some of the people with a score of 2:
Lucien played Brandon, Pocky, and SFAT, 1+1+3=5.
Phil played Dajuan, Mitcho, and Justin, 0+2+3=5.
Joe played Jeff, Dan, and Pink Shinobi, 2+3+1=6
Mitchell played Pink Shinobi, Phil, and Dan, 1+2+3=6
So here Joe and Mitchell would be the higher ones. You can have them play each other, to decide who gets into the bracket.
I just realized I paired Kevin and Kevin together twice. That's my bad, in a real tournament, people would catch that, and you can re pair, I did this too quickly.
Anyways, I hope this helps, feel free to ask any questions.
Having some experience, I'll try to fill you guys in.
What is Swiss?
Swiss is a method of pairing people in a Round Robin tournament. Instead of being eliminated, everyone plays the total amount of rounds of the Swiss.
What happens is that the amount of wins you have is kept track of. A win gives you 1 point, a loss gives you 0 points.
People with the same amount of points will play each other, so as you keep winning, you play better people, and as you keep losing you play worse people.
Why Swiss?
Swiss lets everyone play for the entire Round Robin section, so that players who are less experienced still get a lot of competitive matches in, in comparison to an elimination bracket where they would be done fairly quickly.
For experienced players, you get to fight for the opportunity to make it into the main bracket, and, for regions with power rankings, a Swiss bracket gives you more matches among ranked players to determine where they should be placed in the rankings.
When should I use Swiss?
Swiss, although I think it's pretty much the ideal format, often can't be used because of the following reasons:
Too many people/not enough TVs.
Not enough time.
Here's the way you should estimate the time it will take to run Swiss:
First, we want to see how many rounds your swiss will be.
The rule of thumb is 2 ^ (# of Rounds) > Number of players.
2 rounds is good for 1-4 people, 3 rounds for 5-8 people, 4 rounds for 8-16 people, 5 rounds for 16-32 people, etc.
Estimate how much time it will take to run your ending bracket. Usually, we use an 8 man bracket. For that, 90 minutes to 2 hours seems like a decent guess.
Take all the time you have for singles and subtract those last 2 hours, and your cleanup time. Since that's usually around 4-5 hours left in Norcal, we'll just take 4 hours and roll with it.
You can estimate the average melee match time of 4 minutes, and assume worst case scenario that every 2 out of 3 set goes to 3 matches, so each set takes 12 minutes. Taking into account stage striking, and other small delays, we'll further cushion it to 20 minutes. 20 minutes per set.
Now, only two people can be on a TV at once, so take how many singles entrants you have, divide that number by 2, and then divide that by your number of TVs, then round up to the nearest whole number. This is how many rotations have to be on a TV per round.
Now take the number of rotations, multiply it by 20 minutes. This gives you how much time each round will take. Multiply that by your number of rounds, and that's how long your Swiss will take. If you don't have that much time, it'll be tight, and you might want to use some other tournament format.
The time I ran it, we had over 30-40 people, 5 TVs, so that's 4 rotations, and we ran it for 4 rounds because of lack of time for the 5th. If this happens, it's not the end of the world, you can do what we did and just take the top 8. If two people have similar scores and tiebreaks for the last spot, just have them play a quick set.
How do I set up the pairings on my computer?
All you need for Swiss is an Excel document.
I'm going to demonstrate a typical 20 person Swiss into bracket with images now.
First, create the columns as shown, listing the players.
NOTE: IGNORE THE COLUMNS MARKED LOSE SCORE AND STANDING. I WANTED TO INCORPORATE TIEBREAKS, BUT IT JUST MADE IT OVERLY COMPLICATED SO I DECIDED TO REMOVE IT.
We're going to pair Round 1 now. Generate a random number for each person entered. Now, sort by those numbers. Highlight both columns, click sort, then custom sort. Don't mind the fact that after you sort, the numbers have changed again, Excel just does that.
Delete the random numbers you have just made. To pair, simply take the row, copy paste it into Round 1, and flip it.
Flipping can easily be done by using a numbered row, and then reverse sorting.
Erase the numbered list you made, and there you have Round 1 pairings. Each player finds their name to the left, and follows it to the right to find their opponent. If you want, you can move the columns around to make it easier for you to read.
Now I will demonstrate what happens when someone reports a win/loss. Let's use an example match: Phil vs Dajuan. Let's say Phil beats Dajuan. First, highlight Phil's opponent green for a win, and highlight Dajuan's opponent red for a loss.
We'll put a 1 for Phil on his Win Score, and a 0 for Dajuan on his Win Score.
NOTE: Several methods of Tiebreak can be done, I'll mention them later.
NOTE: If you have an odd number of people, one person takes a bye. A bye is an autowin, so they get 1 point. In Swiss, it's best to give someone with the worst record a bye, because it has a lower risk of ****ing up the pairings.
Now that that's done, let's fill in everyone's results. Note, I did this randomly, this has nothing to do with how good I think you are.
Now, to pair the next round, select all the columns, and sort by the Win Score, highest first. This will sort your list for the next round.
Now, take the list of people with 1 win, copy it, paste it into round 2, and then flip that list. Then do the same with the people with 0 wins. Basically, people with 1 win play each other, people with 0 wins play each other.
Fill out the rounds like before.
Now sort for Round 3.
Now you notice we have 5 2s, 10 1s, and 5 0s. Simply have the bottom of the 2 band play the top of the 1 band, and the bottom of the 1 band play the top of the 0 band.
Note: If people are paired together and they've already played, use your best judgment and change the pairings. This happened in my pairings, as you can see, Jeff and German are going to be paired again. I instead pair German with Lunin, the next highest up. Same with Joe and Dan, I instead paired Dan with Tang.
Fill out the results again.
Sort for the next round.
Pair next round.
I think you guys get the idea.
After all the rounds are over, take the top 8(or however many you wanted for your bracket) and make a double elim bracket out of them.
In case of ties, the easiest way to break them is to go through each person's opponents, and add up the sum of opponent's scores for each person.
For example, here, we can check the sum of opponent's scores for some of the people with a score of 2:
Lucien played Brandon, Pocky, and SFAT, 1+1+3=5.
Phil played Dajuan, Mitcho, and Justin, 0+2+3=5.
Joe played Jeff, Dan, and Pink Shinobi, 2+3+1=6
Mitchell played Pink Shinobi, Phil, and Dan, 1+2+3=6
So here Joe and Mitchell would be the higher ones. You can have them play each other, to decide who gets into the bracket.
I just realized I paired Kevin and Kevin together twice. That's my bad, in a real tournament, people would catch that, and you can re pair, I did this too quickly.
Anyways, I hope this helps, feel free to ask any questions.
