Idea??

[emactruman]

I had an idea for 16 or more team tournament. What if the teams were broken up into randomized pools of four. After the third round the teams are then paired into new groups of four with the top 2 teams from each division placed into groups against each other, while the bottom half of each division plays each other. I think this might work because it allows for teams to be placed in somewhat equal divisions without power-seeding them.

[No Sollositing On Premise]

I sort of wish there was a third option; something in between "I don't know" and "your idea sucks". It might work, but only for tournaments of sixteen, or maybe four. Any more and it would be a train wreck.

[MahoningQuizBowler]

Are you trying to do something like the UEFA Champions League? They just got rid of the two group stage format this year... :)

On the other hand, coming from a place where Regionals and States are double-elimination and most of the county tournaments are as well, anything that lets teams play more games, on higher levels of questions, I would be in favor.

[Howard]

I'm with laszlow on this one. The random thing makes it all the more likely that the top teams will be fighting among themselves for a chance at the top bracket. I'm also not sure what you mean by dividing into a top bracket and a bottom and having the bottom half of each bracket play each other. Does this mean that top 1/4 plays top 1/4, third 1/4 plays third 1/4 and second 1/4 plays fourth 1/4?

I recently ran a 30 team tournament with preliminary rounds in swiss format. While I was generally happy with my choice, here are my assessments.

Positive points:
1. I preliminarily seeded the teams, but this was only of importance to guarantee that the best teams would not be playing each other. Admittedly, the seedings were not terribly accurate, nor did I intend them to be. They were meant to simply be good enough. Later pairings were based on game score and point score.
2. I did not have to do any major overhaul if teams did not show up.
3. It was easy to simply take out teams that withdrew. (Again, no overhauls, no byes).
4. As long as a sixteen team score group was paired 1vs9, 2vs10, ..., 8vs16, it avoided the messiness of having teams of nearly the same ability play each other.

The negative points:
1. It was a 30 team tournament, so the wait between rounds was about 15 minutes while I did pairings by hand. (A computer program may or may not help to fix this).
2. There were 6 rounds, so in round six, the top 4-1 team was punished with playing the 5-0 team. A significantly sized playoff field should reduce the impact of this. Our playoff field was designed to be 16 since that would be about half the number of teams. Other than playoffs, the way to correct this issue in a swiss tournament is to have approximately log base 2 of the number of teams as your number of rounds.
3. Approximately one pairing a round was significantly inaccurate because scores were reversed on the scoresheets. I've concluded that our scoresheet design led to the ability of the readers/scorers to make this error.

I can't stress enough my philosophy that 1 plays 9, 2 plays 10, ..., 8 plays 16. I've seen many tournaments where within a scoregroup, they pair 1vs2, 3vs4, ..., 15vs16 or 1vs16, 2vs15, ..., 8vs9. The 1vs2 example I believe is just horrible because it makes the result of just about every match almost random. The 1vs16 example is much improved, but still at least two of the games are pretty much random. In my system, modeled after the United States Chess Federation's swiss pair system, nearly every game has an intended result. The best teams should not wind up playing each other until near the end of the tournament or preliminary rounds.

The "punishment" described above that the top 4-1 team received by having to play the 5-0 team resulted in them receiving a very low point total in their last round and moved them from the second team to the seventh team of sixteen going into the playoffs. I've been meaning to see how many of the 4-2 teams at the end of the tournament played the top team and what percentage of those finished ahead of the team in question. That will help me determine whether the team in question was moved closer or farther away from the position in which they should ideally have finished. Admittedly, half of the other 4-1 teams had the opportunity to finish 5-1, while the team in question feels it did not have that opportunity.

Although there's a lot to digest here, I've come to the conclusion that if reasonable procedures are followed, swiss pairing is the way to go if wait times between rounds can be reduced to a more acceptable level. I know there is a significant number of coaches who disagree, and I'd welcome any input on either side.

[Howard]

Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that you've done a significant amount of work ranking Michigan area high school teams. This should make for excellent pretournament seeding if you are running a high school tournament.

[Leo Wolpert]

Comedy "16 teams works well with single-elimination" option.

But seriously, why make this more complicated than it needs to be? What's wrong with this solution:

1) Break the teams into two groups of 8, having each group play a 7 game round robin.
2) Take the top 4 teams in one bracket and have them play each of the top 4 teams in the other bracket.
3) If necessary, hold a final.

As long as you have enough packets (12, 13, or 14 if you want to be safe) this seems like a simpler approach. Besides, randomly grouping people into groups of 4 is pretty dangerous; imagine the outrage if TJ A, Gov. A, Dorman A, and TJ B (or 4 other powerhouse teams of your choice) were all "randomly" grouped in the same flight. Eliminating two of the best teams from contention within the first 3 games is probably a bad idea.

Considering that you rank Michigan teams down to #30 or so, you should have a pretty good idea of how to power-seed teams to make two fairly balanced groups of eight.

Even though my proposal probably has a lot of errors in it (I've never been a TD, thankfully; and if I were a TD for a 16 team tournament, I'd probably just make it a 15 game round robin with a final at the end if necessary) I just wanted to post to say that your idea isn't worth a try.

Oh, and also, your polls suck for being "loaded" in your favor.

[cvdwightw]

Even pairing into quarters (top 2 vs top 2, bottom 2 vs bottom 2, 3-4 vs 3-4, 5-6 vs 5-6) at the end can be okay, and usually gives little deviation from expected finish if the divisions are relatively similar. UCI ran a 16 team tournament this way Feb. 28. Four of the top five teams made the top bracket.

Many tournaments on the West Coast are run in a similar fashion, with a full round robin within divisions or similar idea, and then a bracketed round robin after lunch. The teams are generally happy with this format, and the results typically reflect the relative strength of the schools.

Also, I agree with Leo's comment about your polls. Your polls are like those stupid junior high notes: "Will you go out with me? [Check here for yes.] [Check there for yes.]" If you don't give people a chance to criticize your ideas with just a vote, what makes them think you'd actually listen to any criticism, especially constructive criticism, that they might offer in replies to the topic?

EDIT: Los Alamitos A somehow ended up in fifth. Their seven wins is the most they've had since the Charles/Brendan/Zac era.

[emactruman]

My third option did not get sent. It was going to be no.

[emactruman]

Thanks for the insight. I guess when I wrote up the poll, for some reason I did not submit the last option which was going to be No, back to the drawing board fool. Anyways. I did not want to power seed teams because it could be off at the begining of the season and some people complain power-seeding is unfair.

[Howard]

How unfair can a team really complain that power seeding is in a four section tournament. Take the top four teams. Put them in brackets. Take the next four. Put them in brackets. If you structure the brackets something like 1, 8, 9, 16; 2, 7, 10, 15; 3, 6, 11, 15; and 4, 5, 12, 13; then even if you are off a couple spots on any given team, the brackets aren't really changed that significantly anyway.

Mostly, I think there's too much complaining about how things are done. No tournament will meet the expectations of how every team thinks things should be done. If a team has a choice of what tournament to attend on any given day, they can attend the one with the preferred format. If not, then they can go to the one tournament on that day and make the best of the format chosen by the directors.

My experience is that most tournaments do a fine job with whatever organizational format they have chosen. I certainly think emactruman has enough knowledge of the Michigan area teams based on his top # rankings that he should be able to do a fine job seeding the teams.

[Wildcat]

Howard, I think you were at the Maryland, D.C. NAQT championship and you know that a bracket with RM, Blake, Blair and WJ was completely messed up.

[Howard]

Not as messed up as you might think. I advised the tournament organizers that we would have nothing close to our regular team there and I suspect they seeded us accordingly.

Granted, even if you discount us, we were in the most difficult bracket. I suspect this was partly due to the Georgetown player's unfamiliarity with many of the teams. Probably any of the top coaches could have done a little better job, but the groups weren't all that unreasonable either.

[samer]

But seriously, why make this more complicated than it needs to be? What's wrong with this solution:

1) Break the teams into two groups of 8, having each group play a 7 game round robin.
2) Take the top 4 teams in one bracket and have them play each of the top 4 teams in the other bracket.
3) If necessary, hold a final.

As long as you have enough packets (12, 13, or 14 if you want to be safe) this seems like a simpler approach.

The one major problem with this is that many teams--I won't say all, but certainly a significant number--don't *want* to play that many matches.

Also, as I think I've stated before, Howard's plan does have one drawback: for example, it makes a huge difference between 8 and 9.

[Matt Weiner]

The one major problem with this is that many teams--I won't say all, but certainly a significant number--don't *want* to play that many matches.

Some do and some don't, but given the choice, should not one cater to the teams that are actually interested in playing?

[STPickrell]

The one major problem with this is that many teams--I won't say all, but certainly a significant number--don't *want* to play that many matches.

Some do and some don't, but given the choice, should not one cater to the teams that are actually interested in playing?

Or better yet hold two tournaments, one with 5-6 games for the weekend warriors and the other with 11-12 games for the hardcore teams. That way everyone is happy.

[cvdwightw]

I may be misreading StPickrell's post, but it appears to me that there are quite a few Virginia teams that would rather play 5 or 6 games than 11 or 12.

Though Southern California is by no means the most hardcore region in the country, every team that shows up to tournaments is perfectly fine with the idea of 10 to 12 matches per tournament. I can understand that 14 or 15 might be stretching the will of some players (and tournament officials), which is what I believe samer was referring to, while Matt was referring to the fact that there are quite a few teams that would have no qualms about going 15 or 16 rounds.

[Matt Weiner]

I may be misreading StPickrell's post, but it appears to me that there are quite a few Virginia teams that would rather play 5 or 6 games than 11 or 12.

In recent years, 7 prelim games have become more common in Virginia tournaments than the 5 that used to be standard, and attendance has only gone up. I can take this as indicative of any area because the same thing happened in Pittsburgh...as Pitt and CMU got into the high school game in the late 90s, tournaments would be round-robin or bracketed-playoff affairs of 12 rounds or more, and almost no one complained about length. I think it's giving most high school teams too little credit to say that proper formats and more value for the entry fee will discourage participation.

[buzzermaster]

I'm all about getting more for the entry fee. I'd like to see NAQT Nationals go to full round robin. :)

[pakman044]

You'd probably need more questions than NAQT actually produces during an entire year. But gee would that be a war of attrition.

Patrick King