Posts:
542
Registered:
May 9, 2002
From:
Northeast USA
Re: Opponents Assigned Based on Tournament Seeding
Posted:
Sep 1, 2007, 4:48 AM
My first thought was to dismiss this as a bad idea that was not well thought out. After thinking about it more, I can see the problems that richardiii is trying to solve. One consequence of a traditional seeding and bracketing of all players is that many players just assume that they would lose their first round match and thus they lose interest before even signing up! So, less people sign up and the tournaments are less fun for all.
Unfortunately, the solution proposed by richardiii is just too flawed. I think karlw did an ok job of explaining why -- I would elaborate, but I don't think it's necessary. It's a bad solution -- I think richard was just shooting for simplicity, rather than a bulky hard-to-understand solution, but it falls short.
The solution someone else mentioned later on of just creating an entirely random draw is even more rediculous and really should not be considered at all.
Then this thread took a couple of tangents and one person brought up the idea of playing for an entry fee (not a great idea since there is barely enough interest in Pente tournaments as it is) or at least prize money (actually not a bad idea). I actually designed a whole complex prize money idea that I brought up years ago that I think would spark a lot of interest in tournaments, but that's for another discussion. (Ok, Basically, all final placements are determined exactly -- no ties for nth place -- then, half the prize money is given away based on a lottery. The better your result, the more lottery tickets you are given -- but even the last place finisher -- who must finish with an honest effort and no forfeits -- has at least one lottery ticket and could possibly end up with half the cash...)
Somewhere in this thread, someone mentioned that all major sporting events such as tennis, etc. use the traditional seed placement method. AH HA! Well, has anyone here actually taken a close look at bracket seedings of major tennis tournaments? Well, take a good look, because there is the answer you are looking for.
Ok, in tennis, a similar problem could happen. Suppose a player new to the tennis world ran into traditional seedings at top level tournaments. If that person played in 12 tournaments in a year, he just might lose every first round match to the number one player in the world and go 0-12 for the year. Has this person had any opportunity to prove that they belong on the tour? It's a pretty terrible record, but how bad is that player really? It's hard to say.
To fix this problem, and occasionally give lower ranked players the opportunity to play against each other in tournaments to see who really does deserve to stay on the tour, tennis tournaments work like this:
For a balanced, elimination tournament (say, 32 players), only 25% of the players are seeded at all! So, the top 8 players are seeded 1 - 8, everyone else is unseeded.
Now, of these 8 seeded players, they are NOT placed into the brackets perfectly with potential quarterfinal matchups of 1 vs. 8, 2 vs. 7 etc. Instead, 1 and 2 are seperated into different halves. Then, 3 and 4 have a RANDOM drawing for the remaining two quarters (3 could be in the same half as 1 or in the same half as 2). 5 through 8 are then RANDOMLY placed into the remaining eighths of the bracket. This results in seeded players being spread out, but not perfectly distributed. Next, all unseeded players are drawn from a hat, and filled into remaining slots from top to bottom. Thus, you COULD have a first round matchup of 1 vs. 9 in this example. OR, 1 vs. 27 or 1 vs. 15, but NOT 1 vs. 2.
The document referenced goes into great detail about exactly how this is done, but that's the gyst. Create variety of matchups while still ensuring that the best players don't collide too early.
Obviously, this would be a bear to program (but not too bad, really) but I believe it would lead to much more interest in tournaments and increased tournament signups here at DSG.
