Tournament Structure: Why Not Swiss?
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 11:18 am
This is my first post on this forum, so please make sure to tell me what I screwed up.
This may be a question with an obvious answer, but not being fully indoctrinated into the cult of Scholastic Bowl, I have not yet found the answer. Given how long some tournaments can run and the frustration it causes, why have tournaments not adopted a modified Swiss style tournament structure, or is there reason to not do so? I come from a background in Pokemon TCG, where games are either 30 min. or 50 min. (best-of-1 or best-of-3) and Swiss is the default tournament structure. Usually, with tournaments in the 15-30 attending range, there would be 5 rounds, cutting to a top 8 single elimination (more info below).
How does Swiss in Pokemon work?
For a given competition, there will be X rounds and a cut to a top Y. X and Y depend on the number of participants, but given what I've found at tournaments (15-30 people attending), there would probably 4-5 rounds and a cut to a top 4-8 (I can't find the actual guidelines, but it's around that).
For the first round, pairings are random. For upcoming rounds, pairings are based on records, with equivalent records being paired (a 1-0 team would be paired against an 0-1 team), if there are odd numbers of teams with a given record, then a team would be randomly up-paired or down-paired, but only by one game. For instance, a 4-0 team would probably be down-paired to a 3-1 team. An 0-4 team might be up-paired to a 1-3 team. If there are an odd number of teams, byes are assigned randomly. After X rounds, the top Y players are chosen, tiebreakers being the average win-percentage of each teams' opponents, average win-percentage of each teams' opponents' opponents, etc. For instance, with 24 players with a cut to a top 8, all teams above 3-2 are guaranteed to cut, and, on average, 3.5 teams with a record of 3-2 will make the cut, assuming no drops, double game losses (both teams assigned a loss, usually for severely breaking some rule). After this, simple single elimination is played.
How does this help with time? It makes tournaments run faster. With the hypothetical 24-man tournament, only 8 rounds will be played, altogether. With 3 pools (4 pools of 6, 2 pools of 4, then 1 pool of 4 (well, a championship pool and a consolation pool), pools playing round robin and assuming advantaged final for the championship game), 5 rounds will be played for the first pool, then 3 rounds, then 3 rounds, then at worst, 2 rounds for the championship round, being significantly longer. With this modified Swiss system, the tournament would only take 6 hours.
One of the benefits of the pooled round-robin system at which I've played was the ability for teams to easily dropped without a re-seeding being necessary, if a team drops after being eliminated from a pool, thus a beginning team can just play 5 rounds. With this system, a team would be able to drop after any round, without bye issues resulting.
User was notified to include their name in their signature.
This may be a question with an obvious answer, but not being fully indoctrinated into the cult of Scholastic Bowl, I have not yet found the answer. Given how long some tournaments can run and the frustration it causes, why have tournaments not adopted a modified Swiss style tournament structure, or is there reason to not do so? I come from a background in Pokemon TCG, where games are either 30 min. or 50 min. (best-of-1 or best-of-3) and Swiss is the default tournament structure. Usually, with tournaments in the 15-30 attending range, there would be 5 rounds, cutting to a top 8 single elimination (more info below).
How does Swiss in Pokemon work?
For a given competition, there will be X rounds and a cut to a top Y. X and Y depend on the number of participants, but given what I've found at tournaments (15-30 people attending), there would probably 4-5 rounds and a cut to a top 4-8 (I can't find the actual guidelines, but it's around that).
For the first round, pairings are random. For upcoming rounds, pairings are based on records, with equivalent records being paired (a 1-0 team would be paired against an 0-1 team), if there are odd numbers of teams with a given record, then a team would be randomly up-paired or down-paired, but only by one game. For instance, a 4-0 team would probably be down-paired to a 3-1 team. An 0-4 team might be up-paired to a 1-3 team. If there are an odd number of teams, byes are assigned randomly. After X rounds, the top Y players are chosen, tiebreakers being the average win-percentage of each teams' opponents, average win-percentage of each teams' opponents' opponents, etc. For instance, with 24 players with a cut to a top 8, all teams above 3-2 are guaranteed to cut, and, on average, 3.5 teams with a record of 3-2 will make the cut, assuming no drops, double game losses (both teams assigned a loss, usually for severely breaking some rule). After this, simple single elimination is played.
How does this help with time? It makes tournaments run faster. With the hypothetical 24-man tournament, only 8 rounds will be played, altogether. With 3 pools (4 pools of 6, 2 pools of 4, then 1 pool of 4 (well, a championship pool and a consolation pool), pools playing round robin and assuming advantaged final for the championship game), 5 rounds will be played for the first pool, then 3 rounds, then 3 rounds, then at worst, 2 rounds for the championship round, being significantly longer. With this modified Swiss system, the tournament would only take 6 hours.
One of the benefits of the pooled round-robin system at which I've played was the ability for teams to easily dropped without a re-seeding being necessary, if a team drops after being eliminated from a pool, thus a beginning team can just play 5 rounds. With this system, a team would be able to drop after any round, without bye issues resulting.
User was notified to include their name in their signature.