quote:
Originally posted by tragicmagic:
a.) How can I articulate the Swiss format better?
b.) How do I explain why it's more efficient?
c.) How important is it that I push Swiss format?
Some questions I have for you:
1) Are you only holding FNM, or are there other tournaments?
2) Do you cut to top 4 or top 8, or simply award prizes at the end of the tournament, based on rankings at the end of the swiss tournament?
3) What kind of prizes do you hand out?
As for your questions:
A) A swiss tournament pairs people with similar records against each other. The rankings at the end of each round are first determined by the number of match wins and losses you have, while the second tiebreakers are determined by the match win % of your opponents. This is meant to gauge the strength of your wins and losses. Winning against a player with a low win match % is not as good as winning against a better player. Losing against a player with a high win match % is better than losing to someone with a low win match %.
B) Explain that brackets are generally only done for playoff tournaments, when you are trying to determine the best player.
C) It's the standard, the accepted tournament style that everyone else uses and what Wizards expects if you officially host a tournament, but you should explain that in any tournament, there are going to be problems and weaknesses. However...
At my LGS, they have both draft and Standard for FNM. For both events, prizes are given out for how many match losses and wins you get, regardless of ranking. So, if someone goes 3-1 and is in 4th place, he gets the same prize as someone else who is 3-1, but in 9th place. The same rules are in place for pre-releases. All of these events are where the majority of players play.
This sidesteps ranking, when you are simply given prizes based upon how many matches you win, not whether you're in 3rd or 4th place. The problem might lie with your prize payout, not the swiss tournament, if people see a big difference between coming in 5th or 9th with virtually the same record.
For the more serious events like a PTQ, prizes are based on ranking, so that the top 4 get something, 5-8 get a smaller prize, 9-16 get a smaller prize. These tournaments are generally only attended by serious players who don't complain as much about the fact that the system shorted them.
quote:
How can someone with a better record get beat out by worse. X-0 > X-1 even if the X-0 player played worse people.
I assume he means that someone will go 3-1 in matches, 6-3 in games and have a higher ranking than someone who goes 3-1 in matches, 6-2 in games. If the first guy only lost to the guy who went 4-0 and the second guy only lost to a guy who went 1-3, all other things being equal, the first guy will have better tiebreakers.
quote:
I'm not entirely sure but at Game Day yesterday, we had a small sanctioned tournament, and I went 3-2 in sets, and another one of my friends went 3-1. I ended up getting 7th and he got 9th. He was not pleased missing top 8. And he had a better record than 7th and 8th.
There are no "sets" in Magic. Do you mean games or matches? Games are each time you shuffle up and play magic. A match is each opponent you faced. It's not possible for one person to be 3-2 in matches and another person is 3-1 in matches. 3-2 in games versus 3-1 in games is different. The individual game score doesn't mattter as much as the matches and your opponents' win percentage.
EDIT:
Since it looks like there may be some confusion about games, matches, and records when it comes to swiss tournaments, let me put a little story here to illustrate the point.
David, Edgar, and Francine all enter a tournament that has four rounds. They will all play four different opponents.
They all end the day by beating three opponents and losing to one opponent. However, the number of games they each won is very different. David wins 6 games and loses 3. Edgar wins 7 games, and loses 2. Francine wins 6 games and loses 2. However, David gets third place, Francine gets fourth place and Edgar gets ninth place. It appears that something is very wrong. The 6-3 player is higher than the 6-2 player who is higher than the 7-2 player. But, a quick examination of their opponents quickly shows the reasons why:
David won his first match (2-0) against Gary, who ended the day in sixth place, also going 3-1. He won his second match (2-1) against Harry who ended up going 2-2, then David won his third match (2-0) against Irene who ended up 3-1, in 7th place, and he lost his fourth match (0-2) to Jacob, who ended up 4-0, in first place. On average, his opponents win 75% of the time. The fact that he went 6-3 in games doesn't factor in here.
Francine's opponents ended up going 1-3, 2-2, 2-2, 3-1. Her opponents win 50% of the time. She won 2-0, 2-0, 2-0, then lost 0-2, but that matters less than how her opponent did.
Edgar, on the other hand, lost 1-2, won 2-0, won 2-0, and won 2-0. He has a 7-2 game record at the end of the day, but gets the lowest of all the 3-1's. His first round opponent manages to go 0-4 in matches, his second round opponent goes 1-3, his third round opponent goes 2-2, and his last opponent ended up 2-2. His opponents have a win percentage of 31.25% That puts him at the bottom.
To put it another way, ask your friends to consider other sports where the individual game scores matter more than the opponent's records. In these cases, you might try to "run up the points" against a team, clobbering them 40-0. Now, does that really seem more impressive than the team who wins 7-3 against one of the top teams?
Also, there are sports where the matchups are NOT done with a swiss style pairing system. People cry foul in these sports when one team plays really good teams, while another team plays really bad teams. You would expect the second team to do very well, while the first team has to work much harder. If you beat Smallville City College, Podunk State University of Wyoming, What Technical College for Nursing, and the Smart School of Computer Science and Mathematics, winning 20-0, 14-0, 10-0, and 42-0, it's less impressive than the guys who beat Cal 20-0, beat Stanford 14-0, lost to UCLA 10-0, and beat USC 42-0. If you put these two teams head to head in a game, Las Vegas will probably put better odds on the 3-1 team than the 4-0 team, despite the difference in records. On team has proven that it can beat formidable opponents. The other team has proven that it can beat Division 4 schools who put the waterboy as backup quarterback.
[Edited 2 times, lastly by yakusoku on February 26, 2012]