Since I just saw that Tom is in the process (or will be shortly) or creating elimination tournaments, I would like to bring up a discussion topic for swiss system tournaments.

Currently, I see that there are two problems with them:

The first is that unless someone wins in every round, there is not a clear winner (many players have the same record at the end of the tournament and the score is used to determine the winner).

The second is that many players do not like to play them because there can be many rounds that no longer matter once a game or two is lost.

A while back there was the proposal to let the tournaments continue until an clear victor was determined.  I think that it would be nice to have swiss system tournaments that have a non predetermined number of rounds, but have a victory condition.  That condition would be that the tournament ends when one player has a better record than everyone else.

Currently, a tournament with 40 players on a board with 4 players at a time will have three rounds.  In the last round, the top game will have two (possibly 3) undefeated players in it.  As a result, two (possibly 1) of the 18 (possibly 17) players with a 1 and 1 record will get to play in the game that decides the  tournament and the rest of the games no longer matter.  Many have voiced that they do not like Swiss System tournaments for this reason.

By allowing the tournament to continue on until someone has a better record than everyone else in the tournament, in the cases where the 1 and 1 player wins the final important game, the tournament does not end, but another round is played.  With this proposed change, all of the games in that final round become meaningful (at least all of the games with players who have a 1 and 1 record).  This also means that a loss in the first round is as dreadful as it is currently.

Certainly, there are two issues with this suggestion, first is that the tournament needs to end at some point.  This is something that needs to be decided and I think 2 or 3 times the current number of rounds should be the maximum allowed.  The second is that by having a maximum number of rounds there will still be some tournaments that end in a tie and they need to be decided somehow.  By allowing more games, the score will be more meaningful and should be a good determiner, but it should probably be agreed to.

I know we discussed this before, but I would like to hear any thoughts on the issue (or if you think it is not an issue).

Agreed. The number of rounds has to be sufficient so there is a clear winner. It doesn't work properly now.

I'm not exactly sure how Swiss works, but I assume that there's some kind of algorithm that pits winners against winners, with succeeding winners playing other succeeding winners based on score (which in my mind should always be the same for every player with the same record in every round).  If this is true, then I don't see what the difference between Swiss and Elimination is other than that there are multiple consolation brackets. 

Clearly I don't understand the intricacies of the Swiss system because it always appears that every participant in the tourney has a different score by the end.

Regardless, it seems reasonable that if you were to cancel games that have no chance of affecting the outcome (the overall winner), that would make a certain amount of sense.  It follows that if two players are scheduled for a game and player A is in the running and player B is not, the game should proceed (even though B has no chance of winning the tournament).

The score is Swiss tournament is the same as the global ranking calculation except that the numbers are bigger for more fluctuation.  Losing a game then winning can give you a different score than if you win and then lose.  It all depends on the scores of the players you are playing with.  In early rounds, there is little fluctuation so you are correct, players with the same record do have the same score in most cases.  This is why it is a problem to decide who goes to the final important game.

By extending the number of rounds, there will be more fluctuation in the scores and swiss tournaments will land somewhere in between single elimination tournaments and round robin tournaments.

I agree there are problems with the swiss system as currently implemented. The main complaints seem to be:

1. If you lose your first game then you are pretty much guaranteed not to win the tournament but you still have to play the remaining x games.
2. The players going into the final deciding games can be unfairly chosen in some circumstances as described above by Alpha

The main benefits as I see them are that the tournament structure is more flexible than simple elimination - with elimination you are limited to starting tournaments with pow(players per game, number of rounds) players unless there are byes in the first round (not popular based on previous discussions).

I do like the idea of a 'win condition' - e.g. minimum 3 rounds, the tournament ends when one player has the best win record or highest tournament score. The problem is the implementation has to deal with all the niggly little caveats that come about when fitting the system to the site. e.g. 3 players tied for score on a board which supports only 2 players, how do you arrange a fair playoff?

Alpha - with the above extended play example, how do you choose who plays who in the subsequent rounds? Is it just random?

Also I am pretty sure if I am out of the running for a win that it will become even more frustrating to be asked to play more rounds in a tournament where I have no chance of winning - this will excaberate problem (1) above. So the players who are out of the running would need to be dropped out of the tournament as each round progresses.

Perhaps when elimination tournaments go live they will become overwhelmingly popular and the swiss tournaments will die out. If not they will need fixing up.

Mad Bomber wrote:

Alpha/tom= at the end of the second round two people(maybe three) are undefeated. the 17 or 18 players left fight it out for the last spot or two.  bring in a few 0-2 guys to round out the numbers. now you have 20 guys fighting for two/one position. another....how many rounds is that?  how do you chose the 0=2 guys? players eliminated?

Yes exactly - it starts getting insanely complicated trying to work out a fair system that produces a winner in all circumstances.

tom wrote:

... Perhaps when elimination tournaments go live they will become overwhelmingly popular and the swiss tournaments will die out. If not they will need fixing up.

I am firmly convinced this is what is going to happen. Round Robin and elimination tournaments are the best you can imagine.

tom wrote:

Mad Bomber wrote:

Alpha/tom= at the end of the second round two people(maybe three) are undefeated. the 17 or 18 players left fight it out for the last spot or two.  bring in a few 0-2 guys to round out the numbers. now you have 20 guys fighting for two/one position. another....how many rounds is that?  how do you chose the 0=2 guys? players eliminated?

Yes exactly - it starts getting insanely complicated trying to work out a fair system that produces a winner in all circumstances.

It is very complicated, I will try to come up with something, but for now I do not have anything better than random choice.  With a non predetermine number of game, every game does matter, it would be possible to start out 0-2 and comeback to win (unlikely to be sure, but possible).  Maybe this is undesirable as was hinted above.

Another option is to restrict the starting number of players so that there is always a perfect final game which determines the winner - e.g. for a 4 player game there is a final game with exactly 4 players in who each have a perfect win record and all the other games comprise players with at least one loss.

Only problem is this means losing the big advantage that the swiss tournament has over straight elimination tournaments in terms of allowing more flexible starting player numbers. In which case you may as well just have an elimination tournament and be done with it!

I would add that elimination tournaments and/or restricted number of players will help to have different size trophies (cf another recent thread). Small for 8, medium for 16, large for 32, XL for 64.

tom wrote:

Another option is to restrict the starting number of players so that there is always a perfect final game which determines the winner - e.g. for a 4 player game there is a final game with exactly 4 players in who each have a perfect win record and all the other games comprise players with at least one loss.

Only problem is this means losing the big advantage that the swiss tournament has over straight elimination tournaments in terms of allowing more flexible starting player numbers. In which case you may as well just have an elimination tournament and be done with it!

I have thought about this and then the latter rounds (the I have lose a game) games are really meaningless and the ones I don't really want to play.  Additionally as you said, really this is just a work around to get Swiss tournaments to be single elimination tournaments.  This is why I suggested the Swiss tournaments need to be looked at after elimination tournaments are looked at.

I'd be a major proponent of a style of tournament similar to the World Cup.  Namely, there would be sub-groups formed randomly within which is a round robin and the top 2 move on.  Then from there would be single elimination.

This would be a good alternative to either a Round Robin or Elimination-style tourney.

AttilaTheHun wrote:

I'd be a major proponent of a style of tournament similar to the World Cup.  Namely, there would be sub-groups formed randomly within which is a round robin and the top 2 move on.  Then from there would be single elimination.

 

This would be a good alternative to either a Round Robin or Elimination-style tourney.

I have thought about this as well and it will work for boards that have two players or three players since round robin is doable there.  In the case of 4 players, it could be done with 64 players, 4 groups of 16 players top two from each group advances into a single elimination bracket.  Past that the scheduling problem is very hard or the required number of players is large to make things easy.

One alternative is to have the same idea, a tournament with some number of players with say 5 rounds up front (each player is in one game each round and each game in a round is randomly seated - no guarantee of unique opponents) and then the top whatever advance to the elimination tournament.  I was thinking of something like a 40 player tournament, 4 players per game, 4 rounds are played up front and then the top 16 advance to a bracket (bracket is seated so that each #1 is in a different game, ...) where first and second advance to the next round.

I do think that either of these would be difficult to implement, but I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it.  Also, I like the idea of a world cup style tournament.

One difficulty in both purposed is the tie breaker that hasn't really been worked out for Swiss.  I do like the idea of strength of schedule, as above, calculated at the end, but I think this still will produce ties.  There would also still the problem scenario of having a game in round three of a swiss tournament requiring 5 players and there only being three players with perfect 2-0 records.  What two players without perfect records make it into this game?

AttilaTheHun wrote:

I'd be a major proponent of a style of tournament similar to the World Cup.  Namely, there would be sub-groups formed randomly within which is a round robin and the top 2 move on.  Then from there would be single elimination.

I like the sound of this too. It would have to be quite restricted in terms of numbers of players and as Alpha says the Round Robin scheduling only supports 2 or 3 player games. Given the complexity it would probably only support a fixed number of starting players (e.g. 64).

Alpha wrote:

I have thought about this as well and it will work for boards that have two players or three players since round robin is doable there.  In the case of 4 players, it could be done with 64 players, 4 groups of 16 players top two from each group advances into a single elimination bracket.  Past that the scheduling problem is very hard or the required number of players is large to make things easy.

How about using wild cards?  If you need extra players for the elimination rounds, they could be picked by score, or some other method like double elimination.

tom, you could be the first person to have a workable BCS Tournament!

tom wrote:

AttilaTheHun wrote:

I'd be a major proponent of a style of tournament similar to the World Cup.  Namely, there would be sub-groups formed randomly within which is a round robin and the top 2 move on.  Then from there would be single elimination.

I like the sound of this too. It would have to be quite restricted in terms of numbers of players and as Alpha says the Round Robin scheduling only supports 2 or 3 player games. Given the complexity it would probably only support a fixed number of starting players (e.g. 64).

That would be great. No problem about a fixed number.

I DON'T KNOW. I SUSPECT IT'S BECAUSE THE SWISS TOURNAMENT SYSTEM WAS DEVELOPED TO SOLVE A PROBLEM ON OTHER SITES WITH ELIMINATION TOURNAMENTS (I.E. CREATING IN-TOURNAMENT ALLIANCES BETWEEN MULTIPLE PLAYERS TO BETTER GUARANTEE TOURNAMENT ADVANCEMENT), BUT IT WAS TOO RADICAL OF A SOLUTION AND ULTIMATELY CAUSED FAR WORSE PROBLEMS THAN THE ONES IT WAS SUPPOSED TO FIX.

ALSO, I'M AN IMPORTANT PLAYER! I HAVE 369 WINS! I DRIVE A DODGE STRATUS!

(Not really. I actually drive a Kia.)

HELLO?  I DRIVE A MINI.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Sorry ? What did you say ?