After the other 9 players (who are all seeded higher) are placed into sections 1-3, lojza will be put into one of the sections to make it 4-3-3. Edit: I think he will be put in owen's section, as he is the lowest top seed.
If Round 3 has 6 contestants, it should be one super-section. If it has 7-8, it will be two sections with the same rules.
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Re: Open Challenge to All TB Pente Masters -- Financial Incentives
Posted:
Jul 2, 2026, 6:00 PM
Lojza is a young Czech gomoku, renju and Pente player who I encouraged to participate in the tournament Most of his Pente games are live swap2 games at vint.ee - https://www.vint.ee/en-gb/user/100858
Retired from rated TB Pente, but still playing live and TB variants
Re: Open Challenge to All TB Pente Masters -- Financial Incentives
Posted:
Jul 7, 2026, 2:34 AM
> After the other 9 players (who are all seeded higher) are placed into sections 1-3, lojza will be put into one of the sections to make it 4-3-3. Edit: I think he will be put in owen's section, as he is the lowest top seed.
Just a side note.
Well, this tournament system is new to me and it looks a bit wierd.
Of course, your chances to advance to the next round is significantly higher when you play in a group of 3 instead of group of 4.
So I'd expect that since Rd. 2 only groups of the same size are being formed. And if the size of your group depends heavily on your rating, it sounds unfair. The group forming should depend on places achieved in the group of the previous round(s), not on rating, IMO. If it's possible that Rd.2 group is "zoeyk + madmike + homebrew" consisting only prev. round group winners, well, the system looks a bit flawed to me. The idea of any tournament system is to prevent strongest players encounter until the very end; in Rd. 1, this goal is being achieved by seeding procedure, and afterwards the main distinctive thing should be the current tournament results, not rating or alphabet or phase of the Moon.
Re: Open Challenge to All TB Pente Masters -- Financial Incentives
Posted:
Jul 7, 2026, 3:05 AM
yea well, in multiple other recent or ongoing tourneys here that are double-elim, i have faced the same opponent two rounds in a row, even when multiple players are still left in the tourney. Just things we gotta live with I suppose
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Re: Open Challenge to All TB Pente Masters -- Financial Incentives
Posted:
Jul 7, 2026, 4:01 PM
> in Rd. 1, this goal is being achieved by seeding procedure, and afterwards the main distinctive thing should be the current tournament results, not rating or alphabet or phase of the Moon.
I'm not going to argue that the current round robin system is perfect--it absolutely is not. But I will give you some history: every pente tournament I've participated in since 2006 has involved at least one argument about the tournament format (you could make a generalization about the personalities of abstract game enthusiasts here, but I won't). Every format has its pros and cons. I agree that having the top 2 advance (more if ties) out of a section of 3 or 4 is a bit silly, but other rulesets give a high chance of being eliminated simply due to bad luck.
> So I'd expect that since Rd. 2 only groups of the same size are being formed.
This is impossible due to the possibility of ties--what if 11 people advance? If 10 people advance, I would prefer 2 sections of 5 to 4-3-3, but I don't think that's what we're going to get.
We did successfully lobby a while back for a "super section" final round of 6, rather than splitting into 3-3.
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
Re: Open Challenge to All TB Pente Masters -- Financial Incentives
Posted:
Jul 7, 2026, 5:25 PM
> what if 11 people advance?
Several possible scenarios. The one I like is to give one "lucky wildcard" to a person who showed the best performance (score - Sonneborn-Berger - starting number) without getting place if previous round groups were equal too. So it is 12 players which is 3x4. 13 is getting two wild cards thus running 3x5, all others have either 3 or 4 group sizes near.
IMO 2x5 is better than 3-3-4, so I agree.
Actually all these questions are already solved in a big sport ages ago. In mind games, the consensus is that Swiss system is the best system for big tournaments and RR (double RR in case of such an unequal game as pente or chess) is the best fit for small enough tournaments. All other systems have more flaws. For example, the current system can be abused in the following way: if I win my two games with mumix and resign in two games with mt2hill (or I could resign with trevoir, doesn't matter), I can choose a best fit for me for the next stage. It is completely unfair for mumix, but nothing can protect him now. Is it a system flaw? Definitely.
Another solution which is being used in single elimination/double elimination to hold non-power-of-2 number of participants is the preliminary round. Say, for single elimination aka olympic system, if there are (2^n + m) participants (where m < 2^n), the first round should consist of 2*m participants with the lowest rating. (2^n - m) participants just qualify to the next round, m winners qualify too. So m are eliminated and the system proceeds normally with 2^n contestants.
Here we have the same: if the optimal group size is 4, we can shrink the starting list with a preliminary round to any power of 2 and then use score from the previous rounds, berger in previous rounds and starting rank to resolve tie-breaks.
Btw, why is the elimination process crucial? It is a problem for sports like tennis, basketball etc, when you can't just let 32 participants play simultaneously due to the lack of resources, specifically fields. Another thing is audience and its attention. One may want to attract more viewers to the final stage of The International. But I doubt anybody cares even about Candidates Tournament that much. And I doubt anybody except participants cares about any particular tournament on this site. So both these arguments aren't appliable to pente.org.
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Re: Open Challenge to All TB Pente Masters -- Financial Incentives
Posted:
Jul 9, 2026, 7:03 PM
Homebrew was always going to make the next round. Perhaps you mean jsspivey? He'll tie for 2nd and advance if he wins his last game, but look at that cap count...
It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
