How to Make the Best Swiss Format?

[Pandevmonium]

It's the swiss system as it is intended now which is wrong, not TOs or players who agree for a draw. You can't tell someone "You a free to win but, hey: why don't you try to lose instead?".
Intentional draws are fine until there's the chance to get a draw. I had zero experience about great tournaments like this, now that I played and watched this I could suggest:
- pairings for each round like they're now, or random, or whatever you think it's best;
- indefinite number of rounds;
- intentional draws are still allowed, do them at your own risk;
- when you win at least X games you advance to final 8;
- once you lose Y games you're out of the tournament;
- if more than 8 players qualify this way, players who reached X wins earlier are sure of their place; some sort of tiebreaker criteria is applied for the one who reached the "milestone" on last round.

[MistahBoweh]

Maybe a double elimination is a better format?

Swiss format
Round 1 - 32x 1-0, 32x 0-1
Round 2 - 16x 2-0, 32x 1-1, 16x 0-2
Round 3 - 8x 3-0, 24x 2-1, 24x 1-2, 8x 0-3
Round 4 - 4x 4-0, 16x 3-1, 24x 2-2, 16x 1-3, 4x 0-4
Round 5 - 2x 5-0, 10x 4-1, 20x 3-2, 20x 2-3, 10x 1-4, 2x 0-5
Round 6 - 1x 6-0, 6x 5-1, 15x 4-2, 20x 3-3, 15x 2-4, 6x 1-5, 1x 0-6

Cons:
1) many drop-outs
2) intentional draws
3) unfair tie-breakers

Double elimination format
Round 1 - 32x 1-0, 32x 0-1
Round 2 - 16x 2-0, 32x 1-1
Round 3 - 8x 3-0, 24x 2-1
Round 4 - 4x 4-0, 16x 3-1 (4-0 will advance to top 8)
Round 5 - 8x 4-1
Round 6 - 4x 5-1 (the other 4 of top 8)

Pros:
1) NO drop-outs, they are already eliminated
2) NO draws allowed, every round is elimination
3) NO need for tie-breakers.
4) Less games played means less headache for TOs

Any thoughts or comments?

The reason why double elim is generally frowned upon is that first of all, it's a pain in the arse for organizers. It really is that bad.

There's also the issue mentioned above, where actual ties can happen, and then they can only be resolved with the flip of a coin, hardly a fair way to do things. It can be decided by seedings, but depending on how the seed is calculated, this will probably be unfair as well. QM activity and tournament skill, for example, are two very different things.

Lastly, although less penalizing than single elim, double elim events can still hurt hard. It's still a game, and people want to play out that game. Especially for events with entry fees, if you paid to play and put your own property on the line as a player, it stinks to just get booted out after the first two rounds. This discourages many low-to-medium end players from competing, creating a barrier to entry and hurting turnout, as well as less new players becoming serious competitors.

[Zeuhl]

That would be easier to do in the time where, in SE, you could see the hand of the player in one side (to check if he's competitively playing or not...)

If you cant see his hand, you can only guess.
Pls, dont put TO's guessing about player's fates. :P

Yeh. The most obvious probably is if both players just sac all their cards except 2 and mill themselves out and when both are about to die cast supernova or bad santa hahaha. But seriously if both have a jas on board and one does not attack it would be fairly visible or allowing the opponent to control the board.

Still the only loop hole to this is both players coordinating through IRC or vent which would be very likely with guildies. But against someone you don't know it is kind of risky since you never know once you won he would release proof about your coordination.

[Tyr Anasazi]

The article i pasted refers to this, if i can get u cared enough to read the wall of text.

I do see the point of giving players a chance to continue after 2 losses. Maybe we can get non-standard and do triple-elimination?

But without some software support, that is a nightmare for TOs.

[MistahBoweh]

It's the swiss system as it is intended now which is wrong, not TOs or players who agree for a draw. You can't tell someone "You a free to win but, hey: why don't you try to lose instead?".
Intentional draws are fine until there's the chance to get a draw. I had zero experience about great tournaments like this, now that I played and watched this I could suggest:
- pairings for each round like they're now, or random, or whatever you think it's best;
- indefinite number of rounds;
- intentional draws are still allowed, do them at your own risk;
- when you win at least X games you advance to final 8;
- once you lose Y games you're out of the tournament;
- if more than 8 players qualify this way, players who reached X wins earlier are sure of their place; some sort of tiebreaker criteria is applied for the one who reached the "milestone" on last round.

The problem with this one is player inconvenience, although I admit this is the best solution I've seen so far.

The first issue is that entrants don't know how long the event will last, which makes it difficult to prepare to be available for such a long amount of time.

The second issue is that the first player who goes in has to wait, depending on the win threshhold and how other players do, a month or more before finally playing the top8 out. Not only is this just awkward, but also ruins the tension for spectators. That's a lot of time for interest to wane.

With a live event, this gets even worse, as the player has to actually stick around an extra five hours or so doing nothing. Say the threshhold is 6 matchwins, the finishing point of a 64 player event. If pairings are randomized, then players could easily get through with a series of free wins based on luck whereas someone else plays pro after pro, meaning the event as a whole has a higher base on luck. if pairings are done on skill, the first winner will have to stick around waiting for 5+ hours, meaning the swiss rounds take at least 11 hours to play out for even that small of an event.

[NaharPT]

I do see the point of giving players a chance to continue after 2 losses. Maybe we can get non-standard and do triple-elimination?

But without some software support, that is a nightmare for TOs.

Even a double elimination is not easy. I know by experience (DESTourney was like that), since it involved elapsed timeschedules, one different for each matchup, so TO had to control, amongst all other things, several different time schedules running parallel to each other, in the bottom brackets.

Its doable in a double elimination. It's nearly impossible in a triple elimination. (don't even know if any serious TCG ever used triple elimination as format in any tourney...)

[MistahBoweh]

Even a double elimination is not easy. I know by experience (DESTourney was like that), since it involved elapsed timeschedules, one different for each matchup, so TO had to control, amongst all other things, several different time schedules running parallel to each other, in the bottom brackets.

Its doable in a double elimination. It's nearly impossible in a triple elimination. (don't even know if any serious TCG ever used triple elimination as format in any tourney...)

To be honest, I've never even seen double elim events in tcgs. There's a couple digital tcgs, MtGO, YGOnline, Carte, that do single elim events as a quicker alternative. However, every physical event I've ever competed in has used swiss pairings at one point or another.

[Tyr Anasazi]

The problem with this one is player inconvenience, although I admit this is the best solution I've seen so far.

The first issue is that entrants don't know how long the event will last, which makes it difficult to prepare to be available for such a long amount of time.

The second issue is that the first player who goes in has to wait, depending on the win threshhold and how other players do, a month or more before finally playing the top8 out. Not only is this just awkward, but also ruins the tension for spectators. That's a lot of time for interest to wane.

With a live event, this gets even worse, as the player has to actually stick around an extra five hours or so doing nothing. Say the threshhold is 6 matchwins, the finishing point of a 64 player event. If pairings are randomized, then players could easily get through with a series of free wins based on luck whereas someone else plays pro after pro, meaning the event as a whole has a higher base on luck. if pairings are done on skill, the first winner will have to stick around waiting for 5+ hours, meaning the swiss rounds take at least 11 hours to play out for even that small of an event.

Double elimination is actually a special case of Pandevmonium's idea, where Y=2 and X=4 (difference here, X is not the total win, but the difference between total win and total loss). Since the only way to make X=4 is either 4-0 or 5-1, it is guaranteed to finish in 6 rounds, for 64 participants.

[NaharPT]

To be honest, I've never even seen double elim events in tcgs. There's a couple digital tcgs, MtGO, YGOnline, Carte, that do single elim events as a quicker alternative. However, every physical event I've ever competed in has used swiss pairings at one point or another.

You have this example, but i agree that this would be very hard to do in a live event, with no software support (thus that being the reason why you dont see it often, there)...

http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....ght=DESTourney

[MistahBoweh]

Double elimination is actually a special case of Pandevmonium's idea, where Y=2 and X=4 (difference here, X is not the total win, but the difference between total win and total loss). Since the only way to make X=4 is either 4-0 or 5-1, it is guaranteed to finish in 6 rounds, for 64 participants.

Only if you're assuming that x is 4 and y is 2, which makes it exactly like double elim and again shares all of the problems posted above about double elim.

If x is greater than 4, you get the issues above where the length waiting for the top 8 just gets worse and worse, even moreso for live events. Even just in double elim, two hours is painful enough.