Link to original post: [drupal=4393]Competitive Gaming Musings #1: Double Elimination Brackets, Deterministic Results and Extended Series[/drupal]
So my friends and I started a generic entertainment pod cast. (You can check that out here.)
I wrote a blog on there that I think is somewhat interesting.
Being in the competitive Smash Brothers community for several years and attending dozens of tournaments, I have spent some time analyzing various tournament formats. I want to discuss some of the finer points of double elimination brackets (where you have to lose twice to get eliminated). I follow the Starcraft and League of Legends competitive scenes and I feel that some of the major e-sports tournaments are misguided in some regards to how double elimination should work.
The ultimate goal of any tournament should be to get deterministic results. This means that the format of the tournament should be conducive to getting placements that best represents who the best players are. Being fair and entertaining should be a side effect of this, but the end goal Tournament Organizers should aim for is the most accurate results. Accurate results are gotten primarily through proper seeding. I have problems with how many professional sports conduct their playoffs because they are seeded by region/league first and then by record. This is why the best team from the NL plays the best team from the AL in the World Series. If the two best teams are NL teams, there is no way they can be 1st and 2nd in this format. Therefore, baseball playoffs are not fully deterministic.
The MLG Organization has grown substantially in the past few years. Half a decade ago they were a smaller organization who actually had Super Smash Brothers Melee as one of their major events. I had the privilege of attending a few of the events. Their organization and structure were actually very good. They brought in 16 professional players as their top seeded combatants based on previous performance and they held an open play in bracket to get 16 amateurs as the lower seeded players. The final bracket was double elimination and sets were best 2 out of 3.
MLG still uses this format and it is seeded well, and executed well. There is one blemish on their rules that I would like to discuss in detail. That rule is the extended series. In MLG, if one player has to play someone in winners and later faces them in losers, their record from the first series is carried over and that series is changed to a best of 7. A normal double elimination tournament would just have a new best of 3. Extended series hinders the concept of deterministic results. After a player loses in the winner’s bracket, the result is that he is sent to the loser’s bracket and is one loss away from elimination. That is his “punishment” for losing. If that player makes it far enough to get a second series against the player who beat him by working his way through the loser’s bracket, he has earned that spot in the bracket and the set should be on even ground. If a different player made it that far who didn’t lose a set to the person coming from winners, the series would be a best of 3. This inconsistency gives an advantage in a series to a player with a similar if not identical record. For results to be accurate every series has to be on even ground.
The results of a tournament are defined by where you are in the bracket and have nothing to do with who you beat. The winner of the tournament could lose round one and go through the losers’ bracket while the guy that beat the “soon to be” winner could lose his next two and get eliminated. Just because he is the only one to beat the best player, doesn’t mean he should be the champion. Thus, just because someone won a series earlier in the tournament, doesn’t mean he should get an advantage in the losers’ bracket.
So my friends and I started a generic entertainment pod cast. (You can check that out here.)
I wrote a blog on there that I think is somewhat interesting.
Being in the competitive Smash Brothers community for several years and attending dozens of tournaments, I have spent some time analyzing various tournament formats. I want to discuss some of the finer points of double elimination brackets (where you have to lose twice to get eliminated). I follow the Starcraft and League of Legends competitive scenes and I feel that some of the major e-sports tournaments are misguided in some regards to how double elimination should work.
The ultimate goal of any tournament should be to get deterministic results. This means that the format of the tournament should be conducive to getting placements that best represents who the best players are. Being fair and entertaining should be a side effect of this, but the end goal Tournament Organizers should aim for is the most accurate results. Accurate results are gotten primarily through proper seeding. I have problems with how many professional sports conduct their playoffs because they are seeded by region/league first and then by record. This is why the best team from the NL plays the best team from the AL in the World Series. If the two best teams are NL teams, there is no way they can be 1st and 2nd in this format. Therefore, baseball playoffs are not fully deterministic.
The MLG Organization has grown substantially in the past few years. Half a decade ago they were a smaller organization who actually had Super Smash Brothers Melee as one of their major events. I had the privilege of attending a few of the events. Their organization and structure were actually very good. They brought in 16 professional players as their top seeded combatants based on previous performance and they held an open play in bracket to get 16 amateurs as the lower seeded players. The final bracket was double elimination and sets were best 2 out of 3.
MLG still uses this format and it is seeded well, and executed well. There is one blemish on their rules that I would like to discuss in detail. That rule is the extended series. In MLG, if one player has to play someone in winners and later faces them in losers, their record from the first series is carried over and that series is changed to a best of 7. A normal double elimination tournament would just have a new best of 3. Extended series hinders the concept of deterministic results. After a player loses in the winner’s bracket, the result is that he is sent to the loser’s bracket and is one loss away from elimination. That is his “punishment” for losing. If that player makes it far enough to get a second series against the player who beat him by working his way through the loser’s bracket, he has earned that spot in the bracket and the set should be on even ground. If a different player made it that far who didn’t lose a set to the person coming from winners, the series would be a best of 3. This inconsistency gives an advantage in a series to a player with a similar if not identical record. For results to be accurate every series has to be on even ground.
The results of a tournament are defined by where you are in the bracket and have nothing to do with who you beat. The winner of the tournament could lose round one and go through the losers’ bracket while the guy that beat the “soon to be” winner could lose his next two and get eliminated. Just because he is the only one to beat the best player, doesn’t mean he should be the champion. Thus, just because someone won a series earlier in the tournament, doesn’t mean he should get an advantage in the losers’ bracket.
