Guide to understanding tournament formats
Hello Shadow Era players! Today I bring you a basic guide to explain the tournaments that are played in this entertaining game that we love so much.
I will lead you on a journey through the basic and complex tournaments that our community always provides for everybody. I promise to be as clear and simple as possible in the following paragraphs. Enjoy!
1st step
What is a tournament? It is a competition between two or more players in order to win prizes or a representative title. Sometimes community develops tournaments in order to practice and / or have fun.
Lets make a clarification:
Round/match: You win or lose vs an opponent in a Bo1/3/5/...
Game: You win or lose 1 duel vs an opponent but you didnt lose the round until you complete the Bo3/5/7/... unless is a Bo1
Types of tournaments:
A- Pop up: This type is characterized by its short duration, usually only lasts hours** (2 or 3) depending on the number of participants.
a- 8* players: if all goes well only lasts 1 ½ to 2 hours**
b- 16* players: between 2 ½ to 3 hs**
c- 32* players: between 3 ½ to 5 hs**
*Tournament organizers are using different numbers of participants considering the amount of people who show up and are available to play at the appointed time as the beginning of the pop up (12, 24…). Just keep in mind that the length is proportional to the number of players and competition format.
**Duration for you in this pop up depends in what round you reach. If you lose in 1st round, then it will only last no more than 30 minutes. All those examples are made for those that reach the final.
There is some clarification on the definition of pop up: the logical definition is that it is a mini tournament that is planned and is played immediately without too much space in time between the planning and execution.
In SE we have pop ups that are planned with days in advance to allow time for potential participants to register. Those are also pop ups but do not take into account the logical definition, they take into account its duration (a few hours).
B- Long Tournament: this kind of tournament is characterized in that its duration has days, weeks or months. Each round has a deadline to be completed (usually between 5 to 9 days). This class is aimed at those players who do not have the time to be playing a pop up and only have a few moments a day to play SE.
Having defined this, lets move on to the different types of tournaments. Most can be identified by their title, format or rules written in the same thread of competition:
1- Elimination simple: this is the most common system in our community (Image 1)*
Image 1
* in all images are used as sample, 8 players.
In this case it is very simple: you face a player, if you lose you are eliminated and the winner continues to progress until there is a champion. Each organizer decides the rule for determining the amount of duels that will decide a defeat, can be Bo1, Bo3, Bo5 ... always choose an odd number so that there is no possibility of ties.
2- Double Elimination: This system was quite resisted in our community because it takes too long (Picture 2).
Image 2
This quite similar to the single-elimination with the only difference that losing a round, you have a second chance. You must lose on two different rounds to be eliminated. The final of this tournament will be played between Winner of winners brackets and Winner of Losers bracket.
Example: A loses to B while C loses D. B and D go to be winners while A and C must play in the round of losers. A defeats C, C is definitely out of the tournament and the loser of A expects B and D. So is continued until all but 1 have been eliminated 2 times.
The final can be take it in 2 ways and it really depends in the TO (Tournament Organizer):
1- Since is a Double Elimination some TOs apply the rule that if the winner of Losers bracket wants to be the champion, he/she must win 2 times the final because winner of Winners bracket has never been eliminated before until final#1. Ex: A won Winners brackets and B won Losers brackets. B won final #1 2 - 0 or 2 - 1. There must be a Final #2 and B must win again to become the champion while A only needs to win final #1 to get the prize.
2- Some TO's apply the rule that the Winner of Losers brackets must win the final 2 - 0, while winner of Winners brackets can be declared champion by only winning 1 game. Ex: A won Winners brackets and B won Losers brackets. They face each other in the final and A wins 1-0. Thats enough for A to become champion while B needs to win 2 -0 to become champion.
3- Round Robin: In this kind of tournament is used the system of all players against all players (picture 3)
The system all against everybody is basically this: they all play at least one game against all other participants and the one that wins more rounds*, is the champion.
* Sometimes the winner is not the one that won more rounds, is the player that won more games. Ex: A won 5 rounds and B won 4 rounds, A won all his rounds 2 - 1 while B won all his rounds 2 - 0. In this case B will be the winner for having more points at the end even when he won less rounds than A.
It really depends in the TO to decide which will be the rule that decides the winner (rounds won, points won, games won or in case of a tie: the one who won the match between the tied players)
Point system: The favourite bracket generator in SE is Challonge. This website uses a standard system of points in RR (1 point per round won and 1 extra point for every game won), you can also use the swiss tournament system...
