eighteenspikes
Smash Master
Hey so I was eating a sandwich and all of a sudden I had this idea.
As of right now we have two choices for creating a bracket -- round robin, or straight to double elimination (maybe with seeding by teams results or power ranking or what have you). There are pros and cons to each.
Round robin is fair, seeds well, gives players lots of sets. But it takes FOREVER, 3 way ties get messy, and some sets become meaningless wastes of time when a seed or elimination is guaranteed (leading to unsatisfying tournament experiences or sandbagging).
Going straight to bracket is REALLY FAST, and that's about it. Players can get screwed on poor seeds, pressure is high, and paying money to go two and out sucks.
I suggest experimenting with a Swiss Pools system, as a middle ground between lengthy round robin and hasty straight-to-bracket seeding.
Let's say for convenience there are 64 players. They would be split up into 8 pools of 8 at random. In each pool, the 8 players are randomly assigned amongst each other for the first set. There will be 4 winners and 4 losers. For set two, 2 pairs of 1-0's would play each other and two pairs of 0-1's would play each other. This would leave two 2-0's, four 1-1's, and two 0-2's. Finally, the 2-0's, 0-2's, 1-1's who won their first game, and 1-1's who lost their first game, would all play each other.
This would leave a 3-0, three 2-1's, three 1-2's, and an 0-3. Giving weight to winning early, this would result in the following seeding:
WWW (3-0) 1st Seed
WWL (2-1) 2nd Seed
WLW (2-1) 3rd Seed
LWW (2-1) 4th Seed
WLL (1-2) 5th Seed
LWL (1-2) 6th Seed
LLW (1-2) 7th Seed
LLL (0-3) 8th Seed
Then all 64 players would be seeded into a 64 man double elimination bracket.
I think this would be better for multiple reasons.
- It's MUCH FASTER. Only 3 sets are played, none of which must wait on each other, as opposed to RR where everyone plays 7 sets. That waiting part is a big deal, as in RR everyone knows there always ends up being a pool where one or two players hold up the entire pool.
- Sets mean more. With only 3 sets, player interest stays high and there is no motivation to sandbag (unless you're a runaway 1st seed). There's also no useless sets like if a 6-0 plays an 0-6 at the end of a RR pool.
- No ties. 3 way ties are the bane of RR, hold up the bracket even longer, and happen way too often to discredit. Weighting by when you lose also puts emphasis on winning sets and only sets, as opposed to breaking ties by games won. (this is personal for me as I was knocked out of pools once by a jigglypuff that I beat, but took everyone that beat me to Brinstar and 1-2'ed them to edge out a 3-way tie for 4th seed)
- No eliminations. The time saved over RR pools would allow well more than enough time for the extra 2 rounds in a 64 man bracket vs a 32, and this gives more players the real "bracket experience". RR ostensibly gives more "money's worth" but nobody likes being eliminated from pools.
I'd like to hear some feedback on such a system. The only real con I can think of is uneven numbers. 6-7 man pools aren't ideal but play out logically with byes, and 5 man pools get gross with multiple random byes. It might actually be better to do 9-15 man pools and regrettably eliminate players after 4 losses but maybe those with more experience with swiss can discuss and help refine this into a viable alternative to round robin pools.
As of right now we have two choices for creating a bracket -- round robin, or straight to double elimination (maybe with seeding by teams results or power ranking or what have you). There are pros and cons to each.
Round robin is fair, seeds well, gives players lots of sets. But it takes FOREVER, 3 way ties get messy, and some sets become meaningless wastes of time when a seed or elimination is guaranteed (leading to unsatisfying tournament experiences or sandbagging).
Going straight to bracket is REALLY FAST, and that's about it. Players can get screwed on poor seeds, pressure is high, and paying money to go two and out sucks.
I suggest experimenting with a Swiss Pools system, as a middle ground between lengthy round robin and hasty straight-to-bracket seeding.
Let's say for convenience there are 64 players. They would be split up into 8 pools of 8 at random. In each pool, the 8 players are randomly assigned amongst each other for the first set. There will be 4 winners and 4 losers. For set two, 2 pairs of 1-0's would play each other and two pairs of 0-1's would play each other. This would leave two 2-0's, four 1-1's, and two 0-2's. Finally, the 2-0's, 0-2's, 1-1's who won their first game, and 1-1's who lost their first game, would all play each other.
This would leave a 3-0, three 2-1's, three 1-2's, and an 0-3. Giving weight to winning early, this would result in the following seeding:
WWW (3-0) 1st Seed
WWL (2-1) 2nd Seed
WLW (2-1) 3rd Seed
LWW (2-1) 4th Seed
WLL (1-2) 5th Seed
LWL (1-2) 6th Seed
LLW (1-2) 7th Seed
LLL (0-3) 8th Seed
Then all 64 players would be seeded into a 64 man double elimination bracket.
I think this would be better for multiple reasons.
- It's MUCH FASTER. Only 3 sets are played, none of which must wait on each other, as opposed to RR where everyone plays 7 sets. That waiting part is a big deal, as in RR everyone knows there always ends up being a pool where one or two players hold up the entire pool.
- Sets mean more. With only 3 sets, player interest stays high and there is no motivation to sandbag (unless you're a runaway 1st seed). There's also no useless sets like if a 6-0 plays an 0-6 at the end of a RR pool.
- No ties. 3 way ties are the bane of RR, hold up the bracket even longer, and happen way too often to discredit. Weighting by when you lose also puts emphasis on winning sets and only sets, as opposed to breaking ties by games won. (this is personal for me as I was knocked out of pools once by a jigglypuff that I beat, but took everyone that beat me to Brinstar and 1-2'ed them to edge out a 3-way tie for 4th seed)
- No eliminations. The time saved over RR pools would allow well more than enough time for the extra 2 rounds in a 64 man bracket vs a 32, and this gives more players the real "bracket experience". RR ostensibly gives more "money's worth" but nobody likes being eliminated from pools.
I'd like to hear some feedback on such a system. The only real con I can think of is uneven numbers. 6-7 man pools aren't ideal but play out logically with byes, and 5 man pools get gross with multiple random byes. It might actually be better to do 9-15 man pools and regrettably eliminate players after 4 losses but maybe those with more experience with swiss can discuss and help refine this into a viable alternative to round robin pools.
