--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "bucktowntiger <jdh22_at_c...>" <jdh22_at_c...> wrote: > Though my exhibits may have been biased, in short, the existence of > playoffs does have logical psychological ramifications on the > perceived validity of the outcome of a tournament. Unbiased > hypothetical exhibit: if Random Psi beats Random Xi in Round 1 of > ACF Nationals and both teams sweep the rest of the field, would > Random Xi feel that their second-place finish was justified simply > because they lost Round 1? In an ideal round robin, Random Psi would > play Random Xi in the final round, and both teams would know > that "this game is for the championship", but this rarely happens. What makes this fair? If Random Psi beat Random Xi, they should not go into a championship game knowing that despite beating their opponent earlier, one loss means they don't take home the championship. The ideal situation in every tournament, it seems to me, would be a full round robin followed by that dreaded "the possibility of playoffs." That is, the top two teams will play if the top team does not have a two-game advantage or better on the rest of the field. If the top two teams are tied, they will play best-2-of-3; if the top team is one game ahead, they need only win one of three; however, if the second-place team wins the first two games, they win the title. If teams are tied for second, "opening rounds" can be held to determine who faces the top team. I'd suggest 2-of-3 there, but that eats a lot of time, so instead I'd probably take the team who won the head-to-head meeting. Yeah, it means the championship is possibly decided on an early-tournament match, but since the goal of any top team would be to win all their matches, why should this be such an issue? The main disagreement in this thread doesn't actually seem like a disagreement to me. Some people are saying that round robin results should be the ultimate determinant, and some are saying playoffs should be, but I don't think the playoff defenders would argue that a team finishing on top of the round robin should not have a better chance to win the tournament based on their RR performance. For example, let's just look at CBI's Region 8. #1 Chicago (10-0) #2 Illinois-Chicago (9-1) #3 Northwestern (8-2) #4 Wisconsin (7-3) Now, the round robin defenders would say that double-elimination isn't fair here, because Chicago earned the victory by beating everyone. The playoff defenders would say that if Chicago could run the table, they could win three more games. Chicago does get an advantage, though, by getting to start against the #4 team (a team they had defeated 390-90 in the RR, incidentally). The initial proposal listed on the schedule sheet featured the 1 and 2 teams playing and the 3 and 4 teams playing, because it was double elimination and the order didn't matter. Well, that's stupid; if #1 has to start against #2 and loses, that's a big disadvantage that they didn't deserve. Back in senior year of high school, I played in a tournament where my team was the #1 seed going into the playoffs, yet inexplicably we had to play the #3 seed in the first round while the #2 team (our arch- rivals) got to play the #7 team as expected. In the second round, we played the #4 seed (normal), while they played the #8 seed (messed up). We still managed to win the tournament, but clearly this is wrong. Basically, I'm all for playoffs - but they should offer at least some benefit to being the best team in the round robin, whether that be a rather small consolation (getting to play the lowest seed first) or a bigger one (having a one-game advantage). If you can run the round robin, you should be able to run the playoffs, if you ask me, and if you can't then maybe running the round robin was a fluke, but there should still be *some* advantage, however minor.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST