I have several objections to Swiss pairs. 1) If something goes wrong, it's pretty much a train wreck to disentangle. 2) It works best for powers of two and starts getting messy if you have strange numbers of teams. If one team gets run over by a bus the night before and doesn't show up, it may foul up plans immensely. 3) After a certain point, it becomes impossible to prevent rematches. Especially with a national or otherwise geographically diverse field, a large number of schools desire seeing those teams they don't normally play. 4) Swiss pairing with small numbers of rounds may be a de facto single elimination. 5) Perhaps the most important consideration is that figuring out who plays whom ends up being a time consuming process, especially if you reseed after every round. To a certain point, you can theoretically put out a schedule for five or six or however many rounds while avoiding repeats. A concept useful here is negative utilitarianism. We normally think of utilitarianism in terms of maximizing good. Negative utilitarianism, on the other hand, involves minimizing evil. (Philosophically, I'm not a utilitarian in terms of ethics, but that is neither here nor there.) I would say that most systems used out there are not unfair. That doesn't mean that are the fairest, or even fair, but possibly neutral along the axis of fairness. Of course, fairness is but one of several axes on which to make judgments. The consensus, I think, is that a format involving a full round robin is fairest, but on the logistical axis that is right out. Of great concern to me personally is minimizing the chance that something will go wrong. Now, I'm going to say this very clear: a fluke loss or an upset is not in and of itself a bad thing. It may be the fault of a bad packet; sometimes it's not. I believe it happens sometimes and I am not going to go out of my way to either maximize nor minimize what I consider to be a naturally occurring event. To be honest, unless there are huge gaps in the talent levels of the various teams, I would be as concerned with a question set that had zero upsets as one which had more than normal. I'm also going to take issue with the idea that divisional round robin is de facto single elimination. It implies that upsets are destroying the integrity of the tournament. It also implies that any team which might score a fluke upset, knocking a top team out of contention, shouldn't really be allowed to affect the outcome of the tournament, that any such teams are just there to fill out a field, make things look nice, and put money in the pockets of the hosts. It's all about Bhan's law: Score points or die (or is that a Maxim, or just what he wants on his tombstone?). I would think that forcing teams to treat every game as important even in preliminary rounds gives the game more integrity, rather than allowing teams to have the mentality that they can relax early on and that a loss won't hurt them. Losing sucks. And losing should suck. And if you lose, you should pay a penalty so long as other teams don't lose more. There's an area between promoting "surprising teams" in the playoffs and preventing them. A certain level of fairness dictates not trying to do either. A certain level of ego may dictate doing one, depending on whether or not you think your team would be "surprising" or "surprised." Now, I don't want anyone to think I am hostile, because I am not. I have great respect for people who have posted on the subject, and enjoy debating quizbowl philosophy with some of them. It'd be no fun if we agreed on everything. I feel that once you start dealing with large numbers of teams as has been discussed, it becomes extremely difficult to sort teams. I'd prefer having twenty rounds to work with such numbers, but that usually isn't happening. I think there are multiple axes that need to be considers. Fairness is one. Logistics is another. There are more than just those two. I think it's good to be challenged on various grounds. I also think that there various combinations of meeting various concerns which are equally acceptable, and some people will just have different values for different concerns. It's very difficult sorting between valid concerns when one cannot meet all of them fully at the same time. Lastly, I'll say that, if anyone comes up with a new format radically different from anything that has ever been done before, I'd be loathe to try it at a national tournament until someone proves that it works and that people enjoy it from a player perspective. NAQT dropped ladder play from the ICT. On certain levels, ladder play made a great deal of sense to me. My main problem with it theoretically was that it included byes, and I prefer to avoid byes and rounds where only some of the teams are playing whenever possible. From a player perspective, however, it sucked. I didn't enjoy it. Even if it was the most perfect, fairest format ever, it just felt bad and I would be willing to give up some of that perfection and fairness for something more palatable. I admire NAQT for thinking of something that I would never have considered; creativity is a trait I admire. But, yeah, it wasn't fun. People who want to run new and exciting formats should try them out. If your format requires central source questions, I'll even give you a packet or two if I think your idea is worth testing, if that will help you run it. Anthony, who is not speaking on behalf of any organization in which I have former, current, future, or alternate-universe membership or any other sort of relationship, real or fiction, but who may be interested in talking about quizbowl theory and philosophy in general over the weekend, pending time and other responsibilities
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