"I would prefer going back to a 2/3 with NO disadvantage for the ICT finals (in all divisions). " I have never, in the many tournaments I've attended that unfortunately used this system, agreed with it. As far as I've been concerned, a round robin tournament does a fairly good job in putting teams in relative order...it's not perfect, and it's not expected to be. Packets vary, players moods vary, effects of moderators and rooms vary, etc. It is rarely the case that team one is _twice_ as good as team two, especially in the finals of a large tournament. Yet, by nature of the finals advantage, you make it twice as hard for the team in second place to beat the team in first. Admittedly, this is a statistically stupid explanation, but I've had a hard time explaining why this weighted two of three gnaws at me so much. One thing has to do with my belief that the matches are inherently different, and that it should do you no more harm or benefit to lose to Dogpatch U in the round robin than to lose to Midwestern Powerhouse A. Obviously, NAQT disagrees, and I can accept that. Even within their assumption that a game isn't just a game, I'd really like to see some evidence that a weighted two-of-three is so much better as to warrant it's potential impact on the finals. In a larger sense, I'm asking this question: What gain in "accuracy" is worth what gain in "annoyingness?" If Illinois is truly the best team, (which I have little doubt) how much more likely were they to win given this format over a simple split round robin with single-elim playoffs, or whatever a less ambitious tournament director would have done, and was that difference REALLY worth it?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:42 AM EST EST