Finals of a Tournament, The Play offs...

[manike]

When you're at a NPPL/PSP like event...

Originally posted by raehl
And you're advancing one team from 4 different brackets, your seeding is essentially arbitrary. Winning abracket with a score of 290 is statistically the same as winning a bracket with a score of 288; even then, which team performed better, the one with a 288 in the top seeded semifnals bracket, or the one with the 290 in the bottom seeded one?

Seeding into finals has very little to do with how well the teams are playing, and that's not an opinion, that's a mathematical fact. It's *LUCK* of the draw.

- Chris

Chris you are talking about semi finals not finals.

You take all the teams from the preliminary brackets, and play semi finals to determin the finalists. The finals you play off this way. It's no luck that way. and you get a winner on the field.

manike

 

[goose]

Chris is right...

... and it is something that I have personally tried to get Niall & the promoters to change - to no avail - for next season.

As it is now - teams can make it to the semi's based on the luck of the draw - especially when you throw in the Am & novice teams they have to play. You regularly have at least 1 or 2 teams making the semis who don't deserve to be there.

First a little background...
In every other sport, teams at the same level play each other. You don't see NFL teams playing college, or Man U playing "joes pub". Everyone knows that this - Pro vs. Pro - was one of the things up for discussion at the early Millennium meetings this year, and in preparation for this I worked on a pool/game schedule for anywhere from 11 to 25 teams in any given division.

The system...
Just like Manike states - other sports play 4 vs 1 and 2 vs 3 - and then the winners play to find the champions.

What they also do is when it comes to preliminary games, the higher seeds get the benefit (due to their higher ranking) of playing lesser ranked teams. Taking this into consideration, a system was devised that the number 1 ranked team would play the bottom 10 teams and so on, until all the games where "mapped out" giving benefits to the higher ranked teams.

Again this is how all sports do it - and it was radical for paintball (especially taking into consideration the idea of pro vs. pro, am vs. am etc). It also looked radical because, in taking the pro draw for the Campaign cup 2002 - the teams that Backlash (just to take a team in the bottom half of the rankings) would have had to play would have been:
Dynasty
SC Ironmen
BL Ironmen
AA/Strange
GZ
Tonton
Avalanche
Russian Legion
Ducklings
Enemy

Sure this would have been a kick in the teeth for them, but the argument can be made that if they can't beat those teams they don't deserve to be in the semi's anyway.

With any luck - this new system would have weeded out the "dead wood" and ensured that the teams playing well enough where the one who got to the semis.

The outcome...
As we all know the current tournament situation - Xball, Millennium, NPPL, NPPL/PSP - is a little bit of a mess, so decisions on this system have been "put on hold".

If anyone is interested in seeing the draw permutations drop me line.

goose

 

[manike]

Goose the idea of how teams make the semi's is a different discussion. Maybe you want to start another thread to discuss that issue before this one goes off the rails.

For the record I agree with ou and how teams make the semi's needs development. But this thread is just for how the teams that have made the finals play off

manike

 

[goose]

Si...

... you are right - don't want to completely 'jack this thread - but they are 2 things that can be discussed at the same time.

One thing tho'...

With your system - it is one and done thing - lose one game and you have no chance at getting at the championship game. This does not always produce the "best winner". What would be better is either... best 2 out of 3 - but this requires time

OR

we could play it like the draw was done for X-Ball (at the IAO). The top 8 teams afetr the prelims, are seeded based on their final standings, and then you have the opportunity to reach the finals even if you drop one game.

For those who aren't familiar with how it was done - it was a typical double elimination tournament draw that most people are familiar with - where the winner of the "consolation" side then gets to play the winner of the "champion" side. The only thing I would change would be, the "consolation" side winner must beat the "champion" side winner twice - after all it does take to 2 losses to knock you out.

So here we have a solution that get rid of the semis - gives the top 8 teams a minimum of 2 more games - and hopefully the best team winning the tournament.

goose

 

[manike]

Goose, you are talking about running a 'losers' bracket also. A very common situation in lots of sports. Still works the same way but you get a second chance.

Sure fine. it's the same thing really and winner is decided on field

But how many chances should yoy get? Why only be allowed to screw up once and get another go? Why not twice or three times?... or maybe no screw ups at all Oh did we have that idea already

You screw up you go home. Harsh but everyone is in the same boat so it's fair. As you point out if you have a losers bracket the team in the finals who never lossed isn't allowed the same chances

(I was actually hinting to start another thread cos it's slow lately and both issues have the potential for decent discussion )

The final game should be just once though in my opinion whatever reason or way the teams get to it.

manike

 

[goose]

It's not that I want to give teams the ability to lose 3-4-5 times and still win the tournament - far from it. But what needs to be taking into consideration - and minimized is the "luck factor".

The way to ensure that the best team wins is not by having a single elimination system, anyone can get lucky once. But by having a double elimination system that takes care of the semi's & finals we can come closer to having the correct teams on the podium.

The best part about combining the semis & the finals into an 8 team draw is the whole thing can be done using less games - if my math is correct. An 8 team double elimination tournament uses either 14 or 15 games (depending on whether or not the consolation winner, wins the first game of the champion game).
The current 8 team semi's & 4 team finals uses 18 games and does not always give us the best champion. Again - not saying that the double elimination would be perfect - but it would be a damn site better than the current situation.

goose

 

[raehl]

I don't have a problem with one loss you can't win....

But I do have a problem when you're giving prizes 1-4 and you do single elimination with 4 teams. The only thing which determines which of the teams who has one win and one loss gets to be in 2nd place is luck of the draw.

Similarly, advancing one team out of a bracket of 4 is also flawed - again, it's fairly likely you'll not advance one of your top 4 teams simply because of the way semis are seeded.

There's a whole science to this, but since it's 2:20 AM, I'll save that for another day. Suffice it to say it's highly unlikely anyone in paintball has ever sat down and applied actual math to the situation.

- Chris

 

[swysocki]

When you're at a NPPL/PSP like event...

Originally posted by raehl
And you're advancing one team from 4 different brackets, your seeding is essentially arbitrary. Winning abracket with a score of 290 is statistically the same as winning a bracket with a score of 288; even then, which team performed better, the one with a 288 in the top seeded semifnals bracket, or the one with the 290 in the bottom seeded one?

Seeding into finals has very little to do with how well the teams are playing, and that's not an opinion, that's a mathematical fact. It's *LUCK* of the draw.

- Chris

Chris,

Are you kidding me? Seeding into the finals in the NPPL/PSP/Millenium has everything to do with how well the teams are playing.

I believe you are confusing the Semi Finals for the Finals....

scott

 

[raehl]

No, I'm not kidding.

The top team, if they play as the top team, will make it. There's a 25% chance that the second place team doesn't make finals (They get stuck in the same bracket as the first place team out of semis), and if that doesn't happen, a 50% chance that the 3rd place team doesn't make it out of semis, and if that doesn't happen, a 75% chance the 4th place team doesn't make it. Or, in total, the chances that the top 4 teams make finals is only 9.375%.

One could argue that the odds are slightly better than that if you say that because of seeding out of prelims, the 2nd place team is less than 25% likely to end up in the same bracket as the 1st place team, etc, but seeding out of prelims is heavily influenced by things like how good the pro team you play is, if you play good rookie teams who eliminate all your players or poor ones who can't touch you, etc.

And even if you assume the top 4 teams actually make finals, the chances they are in order 1-4 are miniscule - a team which had the 8th place team in their bracket is going to have more points than a team which had the 5th place team, or even more likely, one of the teams played on a field which has a higher probability of stalemating and stalemated a team and came into finals with 2 wins and a draw instead of 3 wins, even though they may be better than the other 3 teams.


If you want empiracal evidence, look at the number of events over the past, say, 3 years, and count how many times the final placings reflect the seeding. Not very often.


There's math to this. Yes, playing good is necessary to do well. But if all teams play well, the outcome will be determined just as much by how the brackets were set up as how well the teams play.


- Chris

 

[swysocki]

Chris

again, the only time this change would have an effect would be the Finals!

The prelims and semis would be unchanged!! I am in violent agreement that your math is correct and do not dispute that.

What I dislike (and agree with Manike) is winning by default. I hate beating the team that ends up winning the tournament....
Having a "winner take all" finals would be a more fitting end IMO.

scott