Nintendude
Smash Hero
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:
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:
There are also some disadvantages though:
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.
- 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.