Bo5 Instead of Bo3

[SwiftBass]

In a Best of 5, you're basically making sure that a player didn't ride only those 8 or 9 sets of tricks, and testing the ability and depth of knowledge (or in this case, ability to counter).

are you suggesting that tricks/gimmicks or whatever are not a good enough demonstration of knowledge depth? And what does it mean when this person using this set of tricks wins a best of 5? Kind of concerned about what you define as a trick. I mean is it something out of the ordinary or what?

 

[LunInSpectra]

I disagree with this statement.

You cannot play the same vs anyone you face since yes they will adapt to you but then you can adapt to them back... and then they will have to adapt to you again to counter you. It's a whole spiral of change so to speak. I think it's definitely possible to change your playstyle while playing a regular or bo5 tournament set. It's to remove habits that makes you unpredictable, it's hard but as long as you don't go into a auto-pilot mode then you can win vs anybody.

I would respond in greater detail, but I don't understand what you're really saying.

On the flip side, more matches probably means better adaptation -- whoever adapts better wins.

 

[unknown522]

money spots should've been Bo5.

 

[HyugaRicdeau]

Sort of tangent to this is one reason why I think MK is so good in Brawl (I think I have brought this up before). In Brawl, the state of the match is "reset to neutral" much more often, per match, than it is in Melee. This means that the natural (dis)advantages of the character are tested more often per match than in Melee, and so it exacerbates matchup disparity and dominance. If Brawl used 2 stock matches instead, MK would be measurably less dominant, or that's my hypothesis anyway, so it would be a case where a change in the ruleset affects the metagame, even though the game itself is the same.

Now, apply the same principle to a bo5 set. More matches means that the state of the metagame will play a bigger role in the outcome, which makes it more likely that the -character- who is "supposed" to win actually does win. This effect is of course still competing with the relative skills of the players as far as determining match outcome. I believe that that effect is enhanced the greater the skill disparity, as the better player will more easily be able to find or avoid the metagame equilibrium.

The question is how, if at all, this should guide the ruleset that we use.

 

[everlasting yayuhzz]

Best of 5 for money spots at least. Player in gigantic national/international tournaments playing Loser's semis for 4th place only playing 2-3 games is ********. They're playing for hundreds of dollars, treat it as such.

 

[AXE 09]

For those who say that Bo3 is a better option than Bo5...

Why is it that winners, losers, and grand finals are always Bo5? Why not have them Bo3?

 

[KevinM]

I have always thought that money spots should be played in a Bo5.

 

[SwiftBass]

For those who say that Bo3 is a better option than Bo5...

Why is it that winners, losers, and grand finals are always Bo5? Why not have them Bo3?

thats a good question. I guess it was established and there is some general consensus that there is some importance in comparison with bo3. An importance that trumps time constraints THAT deep in the bracket. Perhaps the question should be whether or not we try to establish that threshold in the bracket at an earlier time. That time being the instant that a bracket match is played with money on the line.

Given that GF , winners, losers are bo5 is it safe to assume that bo5 suggests more importance in regard to the "better player" receiving a cash prize? I would think so since it has been done since smash started. Would i be opposed to bo5 for money spots? no. My prominent interest is still with time, however a compromise with adding a relatively small amount of games to the games total played during the course of a tourney I find ok. I am swayed by the long lived correlation between losers/winners/GF and bo5.(given that a basic local pays 1,2,3).


TL DR;
bo5 for money spots seems like a good compromise. I am still againt every set being bo5 or even the idea of making anything else bo5. heck im still against bo5 because i do not feel that it is significant but I will concede to the trend stated above .

 

[KishPrime]

Some people are still committing the logical fallacy of trying to design a ruleset so that the "better player" wins. That is an ignorant exercise. I don't know how else I can say this.

The better player is the one that wins under whatever ruleset is constructed. It does not matter how many games are played - this remains true regardless. The ruleset is designed depending on what skills the TO deems valuable. And you don't, you DON'T, try to eliminate upsets, because by trying to claim that's what you're doing, you are also saying that there's no point in playing matches. If the better player wins every time, why play at all? We already know the results. Look, if I played Mango in 15,000 friendlies with items on and beat him every time (assume that he's trying his hardest), then lost to him three times in tournaments with no-items play, who's the better player?

The right answer: There's no such thing as a "better player" independent of ruleset. If you doubled the length of every golf hole in the world this second, the leaderboards would look a lot different. Same if you halved it. Lowering a bball hoop to 5 feet would drastically change the dynamics of that game, and would change what it would take to be a "better player."

(Don't go crazy on me - some players are obviously better than others, but that's judged on tournament results, which again goes back to rulesets. In the earliest days, everyone used to think that BTT and HRC guys would be the best players because they looked so crazy good, but then they lost all the time in tournaments and we realized that wasn't a good way to estimate skill. We didn't change our rules to play only BTT at tournaments because we thought the "better players" weren't winning. That's crazy talk.)

Bo3 and Bo5 are neither inherently good nor inherently bad rules. Both test your skill at Melee. Bo3 saves time, especially during matches that would simply change from 2-0s to 3-0s, which are 80% of matches in early rounds. Thus, players don't waste energy on lower-level matches when they could be saving it for high-level play later in the tournament, and the quality of match play remains higher at the end. However, it does allow for 5-10% more "upsets," usually between the players who are so close in skill that you shouldn't call it an upset anyway. Bo5 allows players who are close in skill level to display more of the depth of their game knowledge, which is also great. However, Bo5 doesn't show any depth of game knowledge when one player is so clearly superior that he barely has to try, which is true even for some 5th vs. 9th place matches, and if that's the case then it's just a waste of time. That's it. That's the entire argument. You can do either one.

The reason why it's typically Bo3 early and Bo5 late is because most matches in seeded tournament play are not very close until the late rounds, rendering a Bo5 a waste of time and energy. However, later it makes more sense to test this to a larger degree between players who are assumedly closer.

EDIT: I'll add that in some tournaments, there's no point in even having Bo5 at the end. If Mango and the 17th best player in the country are the best players at a tournament and playing a finals set, he's likely going to get rocked no matter how long it is and Bo5 shows nothing more than a B03 would. Conversely, at FC3, I'm pretty sure we ran the whole bracket as a best of 5 because the depth was so ridiculous.

 

[Slhoka]

And you don't, you DON'T, try to eliminate upsets, because by trying to claim that's what you're doing, you are also saying that there's no point in playing matches. If the better player wins every time, why play at all? We already know the results.

EDIT: I'll add that in some tournaments, there's no point in even having Bo5 at the end. If Mango and the 17th best player in the country are the best players at a tournament and playing a finals set, he's likely going to get rocked no matter how long it is and Bo5 shows nothing more than a B03 would. Conversely, at FC3, I'm pretty sure we ran the whole bracket as a best of 5 because the depth was so ridiculous.

I may have misunderstood you, yet I think there's a contradiction here. And I'd agree with the first part : a TO is supposed to make the sets happen and wait the results, and not prepare his tournament/bracket according to the predictions he can make of the matches (including the obvious results).
If we push this idea a bit further, the best of 5 sets would be supposed to start when two players who were seeded identically in the bracket meet each other. While it isn't how it is in reality, they are theoretically as good as each other.

I've been doing as many bo5 sets as possible at the tournaments I hosted in the past, and I'm under the impression that most players appreciated it, even when the whole 64-man bracket was in best of 5 (except for semis and finals, which were bo7).
The only complaints I got came from top players who didn't like to play the first sets in bo5 because it was too tiring and they needed to save their energy for the decisive sets.

Overall, I'd tend to prefer bo5 for a significant part for the brackets (quarter finals and higher, at least), because I really value the ability to analyse a game to pick up on what the opponent does to counter it. Of course, adaptation can be infinite, but I'd say bo5 is a good compromise between efficiency and this (my ?) wish of pointing up this adaptation skill.

Basically, my idea regarding best of 5 (and 7) is : if it doesn't make the results unfair, pleases the players and is doable, let's do it.

 

[KishPrime]

I'm not sure what the contradiction is that you were pointing out.

I like your suggestion of starting Best of 5 when identically seeded players (i.e. 1 seeds) would start playing each other if all goes according to seed. That is the most logical "rule of thumb" I've seen so far.

I also like that you backed up my point about some players finding Bo5 early to be a waste of energy. Besides time, this is the clear downside.

Also, I was wrong, I didn't run FC3 best-of-five all the way through, though I suspect that was because of time. I checked the posterboard brackets last night (which are still in my basement). Must've been FC6, if I ever did it

 

[The_Doug]

Very late post but would just like to add in some old man wisdom: As a competitve player, minor tourney host, and spectator (more recently) over the past nine years in smash I'd like to add that the best of three sets between two top players early on in a bracket, or even in a pool of death, can really be unfortunate. Not only unfortunate to the players who have trained hard and traveled far, but to the spectators of the match, and to any fan of smash who really wants to see two guys go head to head. Think back for example when Ken, Captain Jack, <insert best old player name here>, first entered the scene, or more recently Armada, and remember how many people were crowded behind that TV.

An option could be thrown out to smash tournaments that states something along the lines of, "A best of five set can be played instead of best of three if both players and the tourney host agree."

In the case of this happening at a major, the tourney host or designated hype man, or entertainment guy with the microphone could then announce, "Who here wants to see these guys play a best of five!?!" *Crowd responds adamantly*

Give the players and fans what they want. We are a friendly, tight knit community that shouldn't have iron curtain, set in stone rules.

 

[KishPrime]

Speaking as a player, I like that idea.

Speaking as a host, I hate that idea. It just gives people another reason to be pissed off at you, and there's no way to know exactly when your tournament will end. It doesn't make any sense to allow early matches to extend when there's a chance you might run out of time in the venue.

Shrug.

 

[wWw Dazwa]

Sort of tangent to this is one reason why I think MK is so good in Brawl (I think I have brought this up before). In Brawl, the state of the match is "reset to neutral" much more often, per match, than it is in Melee. This means that the natural (dis)advantages of the character are tested more often per match than in Melee, and so it exacerbates matchup disparity and dominance. If Brawl used 2 stock matches instead, MK would be measurably less dominant, or that's my hypothesis anyway, so it would be a case where a change in the ruleset affects the metagame, even though the game itself is the same.

Brawl and stock count is an entirely different can of worms. While you're absolutely correct on the "reset to neutral" point Brawl runs into very often, there are other factors that come into play that aren't implemented into Melee. There are certain in-game effects that are influenced by decreasing/increasing the stock count.

ZSS's armor, the number of mistakes an ICs player needs to win, Pokemon Trainer's ability to completely avoid Ivysaur are examples of bolstering, while effects like the number of farts Wario gets to work with, the amount of Aura Lucario gets to work with, even the smaller effect of ROB's laser timer being affected all comes into play negatively for those characters.

When you play for a money spot, best of 5 is the only way to go.

I heavily agree with this. I'm not entirely sure why, there's no actual reasoning behind doing it this way, there's just something intuitive about increasing the game count once a money spot is at stake.