New Double Elimination Bracket Format

[Nintendude]

This afternoon I got bored and somehow stumbled upon the competitive air hockey community. I browsed through their Smashboards-equivalent and found a cool bracket style they use, called "spinoff tournaments." This is how it works:

• Single elimination primary bracket.
• Each round of losers gets entered into a secondary single elimination bracket containing only players who lost in the same round.

In case you didn't get that, here's an example. Imagine a 16-man single elimination bracket. The 8 players who lose round 1 get their own secondary single elimination bracket. The 4 players who lose round 2 get a separate secondary single elimination bracket. The 2 players who lose round 3 get another bracket (it's hardly a bracket with only 2 people though).

There are several advantages to this over a standard double elimination bracket:

• Each secondary bracket is basically an opportunity for people to get to face others of comparable skill level in a competitive format.
• Results from secondary brackets are useful for more accurately ranking players who "tie" in the primary bracket.
• Poor seeding is somewhat alleviated, as those unfairly seeded should be able to easily advance far in the secondary bracket.
• People get to play more tournament matches.

There are also some disadvantages though:

• More matches means the tournament will take longer to finish.
• If you have, let's say, a 34-man bracket (meaning a 64-man bracket with 30 byes), then only 1 person loses in round 1. What do you do with this loner? (This is just a specific example)
• Logistically, this kind of tournament is much harder to keep track of and run efficiently.

The one thing that the air hockey website left unanswered is what to do with the winners of each secondary bracket. Should they instantly receive monetary compensation? Should the winners of each bracket move onto a tertiary single elimination bracket? I'm leaning towards the latter - it keeps the spirit of traditional double elimination alive and well.

Also, another thing to consider is how to seed players within a secondary bracket (and tertiary bracket). I'm thinking a good way to do this is similar to what they do for the ECAC hockey tournament (and I'm sure many other sports do this too). Basically, everyone keeps their initial seedings throughout the tournament. In ECAC hockey, they reseed the bracket after the first round, so the "spinoff tournament" analog to this would be reseeding the secondary brackets with initial seedings. Though, the problem with this is that you can really screw someone over with a poor initial seeding (but that can happen in a regular DE bracket). I hope this description isn't too confusing.

Overall this seems like a really interesting bracket format that I think should be tried in Smash tournaments. It should be extremely effective in local tournaments without many entrants, as it strongly promotes improvement within the community as a whole. If after some local testing we see that this is a great format, it'd be cool to see it expand to larger-scale tournaments as well.

 

[GimR]

interesting......

 

[Junpappy]

So...basically once you lose your first set your chance to win is completely gone?

 

[nevershootme]

Lets take a look at a 8 person bracket for example.

so we get the winners of those 2 separate single elim brackets (1st and 2nd round losers) face off where the 4th place spot is and then move on to losers finals?

I think there's alot of complexity into managing this type of bracket when it comes to a larger turnout. mostly confusion for players wanting to know where they at in the bracket. it is managable when you have a realiable group of people.

 

[SpongeBathBill]

This afternoon I got bored and somehow stumbled upon the competitive air hockey community.

How the hell did you manage that? O_o

There are also some disadvantages though:

• More matches means the tournament will take longer to finish.
  ...
• Logistically, this kind of tournament is much harder to keep track of and run efficiently.

I do see these things as being fairly serious barriers on the large scale., especially considering how difficult it is to keep things on time as it is.
Then again, the bigger the turnout, the bigger the resources (helpers and setups) you are likely to have at your disposal, so maybe it could work out.

Oh, there's also the minor disadvantage of some people not being able to understand where they stand in the tournament at any given time, but as long as you have somebody who can look at the bracket and spell it out for them it's cool of course.

 

[Nintendude]

So...basically once you lose your first set your chance to win is completely gone?

It depends on how you want to run the tournament. I suggested taking all the winners of the secondary brackets and putting them in another bracket, and then the winner of that bracket moves onto the finals vs. whoever won the primary bracket.

How the hell did you manage that? O_o

I was watching hockey on youtube, and one of the related videos was competitive air hockey and I was like wtf lol and clicked on it. Then that video had a link to their community website.

 

[AlphaZealot]

I don't like it.

3 weeks ago I went to C4 Galore. They used a 64 person bracket. I lost in the 2nd round. Under this format I would never be able to do better then like 17th. I ended up getting 5th.

No reason to use this when double elimination is more accurate.

 

[worldjem7]

This isn't new. They use this in Hockey tournaments all the time.

It's basically just a consolation round for the losers of the Main Single Elimination tournament.

The difference between this and the way we do it in smash is that the loser of the consolation round in Hockey doesn't face the winner of the Main and also if you won in the first round and you get knocked out later you don't get sent to the consolation round.

Hockey tournaments are really just Single Elimination with a consolation round just to be nice and give the losers something to do for their troubles for traveling all the way to the tournament.

 

[Nintendude]

The difference is that it's more like a "consolation bracket" and you can arrange it so the winners of each bracket move on and still have a shot at winning the whole thing. AZ I don't see how it would be impossible to lose in the 2nd round but then do 5th or better if you do it this way.

Regular DE definitely is a lot more established and has been the standard for a long time (and for good reason) but I still think this is worth trying at a small local tournament to see how it goes.

 

[AlphaZealot]

Nintendude:
If you lose in R2 in this system them you cannot place higher than ANYONE who made it out of R2. Which is still a quarter of the tournament field.

 

[Jigglymaster]

It wouldn't really count as double elimination anymore if you couldn't possibly win even though you never lost twice.

 

[Nintendude]

Even if you won the "losers of round 2" bracket then made it all the way to the finals in the "winners of each bracket" bracket?

Either I'm being a total idiot or you guys aren't reading my entire post.

 

[Jigglymaster]

Either I'm being a total idiot or you guys aren't reading my entire post.

The Second one.

Yeah its too complex for me to understand. I'm just looking at everyone else's posts to try to get an idea of what their saying.


Just clarify this to me, can you still get 1st if you get knocked into the losers bracket (lets say for example you lost the very first round).

Yes or no?

 

[Nintendude]

Yes, because you can then win that bracket and go into another bracket with everyone who won their respective brackets. Then the winner of that goes onto face whoever won the initial bracket.

As I said, the website doesn't specify what to do with the winners of each bracket, so I'm sort of making this part up since it seems like a logical way to handle it.

 

[Ranor469]

So what happens in lets say an 8 person tourney? (8 for simplicity)

Theres a main bracket, a 4 person consolation bracket with 1 winner, a 2 person consolation bracket with 1 winner and a 1 person consolation bracket with 1 winner (the guy who lost in the main bracket finals). There is 3 people who have only lost once and 1 person who has not lost yet, how do you decide the next games?

 

[Kawaii Poyo]

This is...........................

SRSLY! Just stick with double elim bracketz, don't get fancy

 

[nevershootme]

So what happens in lets say an 8 person tourney? (8 for simplicity)

Theres a main bracket, a 4 person consolation bracket with 1 winner, a 2 person consolation bracket with 1 winner and a 1 person consolation bracket with 1 winner (the guy who lost in the main bracket finals). There is 3 people who have only lost once and 1 person who has not lost yet, how do you decide the next games?

please look at my post above, I have already explained this situation (including a picture)

my overall thought on this is that it's not feasible to run this

 

[worldjem7]

The Second one.

Yeah its too complex for me to understand. I'm just looking at everyone else's posts to try to get an idea of what they're saying.


Just clarify this to me, can you still get 1st if you get knocked into the losers bracket (lets say for example you lost the very first round).

Yes or no?

ITT and in hockey, no. In smash, yes.

So what happens in lets say an 8 person tourney? (8 for simplicity)

Theres a main bracket, a 4 person consolation bracket with 1 winner, a 2 person consolation bracket with 1 winner and a 1 person consolation bracket with 1 winner (the guy who lost in the main bracket finals). There is 3 people who have only lost once and 1 person who has not lost yet, how do you decide the next games?

There are no next games. If you lose once you're out of the tournament. Everything else is consolation just to give you something to do for your troubles.

This idea is just Single Elimination with a bunch of side events for the losers.

I didn't include the other different trees of consolation but, this is basically it.

 

[ChRed2AKrisp]

This is kind of dumb. You DON'T necessarily get to play more matches. You can still get double eliminated. Not to metion the idea of taking all the consolation bracket winners and putting them in a bracket? Bad idea.

Here's why. Lets say with have the following seeding

32 1s
16 2s
8 3s
4 4s
4 5s

Assuming seeding is done perfectly, we will end up having a consolation round of 32 1s, 16 2s, 8 3s, 4 4s, and 2 5s, with a final bracket of 2 5s fighting off. If you had the winner of each consolation plus the final winner in another bracket you would have a 1, a 2, a 3, a 4, and 2 5s. So a 1 seed will tie for 5th place, and 15 2s, 7 3s, 3 4s, and 2 5 seeds will place 7th or lower despite having proven themselves better than the 1 seed who got eliminated first round in the main bracket.

Sorry, but I just don't think this is a viable option.

Double elimination is ALMOST perfect as it is. The only thing that bugs me is when two people fight in winners, one of them wins, and then they fight again in losers and the loser of the first wins. They both took a set, but the loser of the first fight gets a higher placing simply because he happened to win the second set and not the first. The players obviously have the same skill level, but one places higher by chance.

 

[nevershootme]

as far as payouts go. you might as well pay to the winners of each consolation bracket

 

[GuruKid]

Current tournament standards are fine the way they are; hate to use the cliche, but "if it's not broken, don't fix it" comes to mind.

A "consolation" bracket sounds like something offered out of pity and just as a means of keeping the losers satisfied and busy through the rest of the tournament.

 

[Nintendude]

The whole idea of the format is to give people more of a chance to face people of their own skill level, which can be beneficial for encouraging improvement within a small subset of the community. I think everyone is missing that point. You guys have already made the point that there's no use in using this format at a large tournament.

The one thing that the air hockey website left unanswered is what to do with the winners of each secondary bracket. Should they instantly receive monetary compensation? Should the winners of each bracket move onto a tertiary single elimination bracket? I'm leaning towards the latter - it keeps the spirit of traditional double elimination alive and well.

I wish people would learn how to read the opening post as well. (doesn't apply to everyone)

 

[worldjem7]

I think I was answering that in my post about hockey. The losers basically go nowhere. It would be overly complicated to sort out and manage the losers of the single elim into some awkward loser's bracket ending.

In double elim though, all the losers from round 1 face each other and keep facing others who lost round 1 so wouldn't that in itself provide people with others closer to their level?

Also, if it's not meant for larger tournaments then why not just have friendlies?


I understand you're trying to liven up the community with a new tournament format but, this format is simply impractical at all levels unless you want to completely change the tournament format from double to single elim.

 

[Naucitos]

Ninten, thats easily exploitable, people could just lose round one on purpose in order to clean up all the other people who lost round one, and have a significantly better chance to win than someone who lost in the quarterfinals and has to face other good people to make it to the 'winners of their bracket' bracket.

 

[Prawn]

Ninten, thats easily exploitable, people could just lose round one on purpose in order to clean up all the other people who lost round one, and have a significantly better chance to win than someone who lost in the quarterfinals and has to face other good people to make it to the 'winners of their bracket' bracket.

Myth busted.

 

[Chilex]

I like it.