Amateur Brackets

[Violence]

So if you don't know, recently, Norcal ran a local up here with a pro bracket, which contained the ranked players who attended the event, and an amateur bracket, which contained the non ranked players. The non rankers who won the amateur bracket went on to play in the pro bracket.

What do you guys think? Like it? Hate it? Should it be a regular thing?

Personally, I like it, and I think that if you're a region with a power ranking, an ample number of ranked players, and a decent community of randoms, I think it'd be a good system to employ.

I've played with randoms before and told them how much fun tournaments are and that they should go, but a lot of them are put off by the idea.

I think it mainly comes from the fact that they spend time and money to travel a decent distance to attend an event that they will get 2 and outed at, and spend the rest of the time watching or playing friendlies, something they do normally by watching Youtube vids, or playing with friends. Their actual tournament experience is very short.

Amateur bracket's help to solve this problem, as do a host of other formats.

Pools gives people chance to play a variety of skill levels, and seeded pools(where the top players don't have to play pools and are already seeded into bracket) let people of closer skill levels fight it out for actual bracket spots. Swiss, which I have a huge hard on for, is a great system because everyone gets to play all the rounds, great for a tournament with lots of TVs. You can use Swiss to place everyone(4-5 rounds), and then take the top 8 or so and make that into a bracket and play it out with people watching.

A lot of times I hear the better players ask what the point of this all is, when they can just stick with the good ol' bracket style and do things they way they've always done.

I think that making efforts to bring more people and get them interested in the community is worth changing up the tournament format a bit.

I mean, if we don't attract more people, the community will slowly die, won't it?

Anyways, those are my two cents. What do you guys think?

 

[Teczer0]

How do you intend this to work exactly?

If you mean play amateur bracket then place into pro bracket that might just be too time consuming.

Pools is probably a nice idea if you want to be able to have newer players to play a lot.

 

[Violence]

They ran into time trouble at the tournament, but the solution is easy.

Just start the amateur bracket during winner's semis of doubles. Most people who are in the amateur bracket won't be in the top 9 or so of doubles, and even if they are, you can do the matches that aren't theirs, and wait until they're done with doubles.

For example, here in Norcal we have a player named Alan, who's great at teams, but somehow still unranked in singles. He ended up on the team that won doubles. Between Winner's semis and then, we could've done most of the unranked bracket, let Alan play through all his matches, and be done within a relatively shorter period of time.

 

[Jim Morrison]

this isnt not a bad idea

 

[Grim Tuesday]

this isnt not a bad idea

Why not? I like the idea.

 

[metalreflectslime]

I like this. Eric stepping it up for the unranked players.

 

[LLDL]

It's a kind gesture, but I don't like the idea. Don't cripple the new players! All the high level players got good by getting scraped at their first tournaments, how do you expect the new players to get good if they aren't exposed to to the hardest matches possible. You say that they quit because they get double knocked out? Lol then this game isn't for them if they're going to quit after their first tourney!

 

[Grim Tuesday]

It's a kind gesture, but I don't like the idea. Don't cripple the new players! All the high level players got good by getting scraped at their first tournaments, how do you expect the new players to get good if they aren't exposed to to the hardest matches possible. You say that they quit because they get double knocked out? Lol then this game isn't for them if they're going to quit after their first tourney!

Note how the winner of the amateur bracket goes into the pro bracket.

 

[LLDL]

The winner is going to be mislead. Let's say he wins the ametuer bracket and then get's double KO'd pretty easily. For him, it's like a waste of time! I guess he would've won some money, but I don't see the real long term benefit. You get better by playing people better than you, not worse. I mean if its for the sake of people not getting discouraged at the tournament, I see that. But its basically prolonging skill development.

Lol, I'd feel like I was getting put in a remedial course that is required for me to take before I could take the general course because I didn't get a certain score on a basic skills test in school.

 

[Teczer0]

Not everywhere is as bad as EC Chain LOL

I dunno I prefer pools personally I don't think I'd run an entire bracket just for one person to advance into the regular singles bracket.

 

[Eggm]

I don't like that way of going about it. I like the way plank is running the amateur brackets at pound 5. Its the way it should be done. Basically whoever got knocked out of pools and didn't make it into the bracket play in the amateur bracket and thats it. They pay another 5$ for their own amateur tournament. That way it solves chain-ace's concern since you were originally in the same tournament as all the best players and also the best players don't get shafted pot wise. And all at the same time giving the new/bad players a chance to win money and gain experience vses people more of at their level which will inspire new players to keep playing. And if your particular tournament doesn't do pools, then use the bottom half of the bracket as for who is eligible to enter it. It might sound time consuming but its really not if you run it right away once the bottom half of the bracket is established. Or once pools is over. As long as you have a decent amount of setups and a good TO it shouldn't be an issue.

 

[metalreflectslime]

Bracket

It's a kind gesture, but I don't like the idea. Don't cripple the new players! All the high level players got good by getting scraped at their first tournaments, how do you expect the new players to get good if they aren't exposed to to the hardest matches possible. You say that they quit because they get double knocked out? Lol then this game isn't for them if they're going to quit after their first tourney!

The winner is going to be mislead. Let's say he wins the ametuer bracket and then get's double KO'd pretty easily. For him, it's like a waste of time! I guess he would've won some money, but I don't see the real long term benefit. You get better by playing people better than you, not worse. I mean if its for the sake of people not getting discouraged at the tournament, I see that. But its basically prolonging skill development.

Lol, I'd feel like I was getting put in a remedial course that is required for me to take before I could take the general course because I didn't get a certain score on a basic skills test in school.

If I couldn't beat the ranked players, I would set my sights lower. If I didn't master the basics in school, I would want to take the time to catch up on what I missed. The top winners of the unranked bracket will still get to play in the ranked bracket.

 

[Aves]

I host monthly tournaments where i have people of different skill levels attend. And i run into the same problem, the amateurs go to one tournament, get wrecked, and never want to attend another tournament. So i started doing pools where the top 2 advance to brackets, and the bottom 2 or 3 from each pool play in a free amateur tournament amongst themselves. It works great, and lets everybody get lots of matches.

 

[Violence]

Oh, sorry, I forgot to clarify, the top six went on to the pro bracket.

Yeah, I do like the idea of the revival bracket too, I forgot to mention that.

Either way, I don't think getting 2 and outed helps people that much. I think giving them a more tournament experience and making their experience more enjoyable is what we want.

You say that they quit because they get double knocked out? Lol then this game isn't for them if they're going to quit after their first tourney!

Getting double knocked out can be really discouraging, especially if you're still on the fence on whether or not you really wanna commit time and effort to melee. The ones who stay are the ones who had their minds made up BEFORE they went to a tournament that they wanted to improve, no matter what.

If they can get in more matches, and get a feel for the range of skill levels present at a tournament, instead of two people who could be way above their level, I'm sure it'd be a lot more fun then just getting demolished a very short amount of time and having to resort to friendlies and watching matches.

 

[PHIL07]

Yea everyone really enjoyed this when we ran it. Are only problem was the gap between the am bracket to the actually bracket. Which was can fix easily like violence said by running it earlier in the teams bracket. Overall very good experience. Lets players on a lower skill level get more matches. And for the players that are good but not ranked well they still get to go into the regular bracket anyway and **** **** up =)

 

[G.L.]

the plank amateur tournament idea seems like a great one!

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I liked this idea when MLG used it. Pools -> Amateur bracket -> Pro Bracket. The top 8 ranked pros were seeded into the bracket and the top 8 from the amateur bracket got seeded against the pros.

I just dont think its a good idea at anything smaller than 50 people. Plus its kinda boring for pro players as they dont do anything until the last ~5 rounds of bracket


edit- i really like plank's amateur bracket idea :D