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Hi Dakka!

I was wondering what kind of tournament system is used during GT and other tournaments.

When I arrange tournaments I use the Swiss system with accelerated pairings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_system_tournament).

The reason I ask is that I am thinking of building some tournament software to use and I thought others might want to use it and there fore I need to gather some requirements.

Also - how is uneven number of participants handled in a more official setting? Do they get an automatic win or how is that solved?

/Grindah

I have only ever been to one GW official tournament (LotR GW, 2005) but that was run on the Swiss system (so that everyone got the same number of games, rather than paying cash and being knocked out in the first round).

They handled the "odd numbers" issue by having a few spare staff members available to play - if there had been an odd number a staffer would have joined in to make the numbers up. Or possibly one of the participating staff members might have dropped out if numbers had been too high to accommodate that.

Yeah, that's how we solve it to, one of the organizers join in to make numbers even. Seems this is the standard way of solving it.

Was there some kind of endgame where the top 4-8 people played finals or something?

Nope. Everyone played exactly the same number of games (8 over 2 days). As well as the scores for "Major win" (20 points), "Minor Win" (15 points), "Draw" (10 points"), "Minor loss" (5 points), "Major loss" (0 points), there was a quiz for something like a max of 20 points and some sportsmanship points, IIRC.

Yeah, the sportsmanship and painting scores needs to be included in the application, forgot about that.

is there a good system for handling the sportsmanship and painting scores?
I mean, to get around manipulation and stuff like that.

GW don't have a great system - as it can be easily manipulated by some players putting pressure on their opponent to give them a good score (saw it happen a few times in the one tournament). Subsequent tournaments have been tweaked, but I couldn't tell you exactly how.

I have heard of alternatives discussed on various podcasts, but you need an officianado from the Australian tournament, where there is a thriving independent WFB tournament scene to give you more information. Try email Jeff at Podhammer or the guys at Worlds End Radio for more information.

The best theoretical system I have heard about (and I am far, far from a tournament player, so take this with a large pinch of salt) is an anonymous yellow/red card system. i.e. there is no actual score, but all players are issued with a couple of red cards, which they can hand in to the judges with a name and example of the lack of sportsmanship they experienced. The judges would them look closely at the behaviour of anyone so grassed up in subsequent games, particularly if they received >1 red card from different people.

Sportsmanship could be tweaked thus.....

At the end of the day, you have X amount of Sportsmanship points to dole out to your opponents. At this point it's less about if they were all good opponents, but who you felt was the best. With blind scoring, and not done immediately after the game, it means less leaning is possible.

Hey MDG, I really think that's a pretty good idea. Would it just push a lot of the leaning and jockeying to the end though?

The sportsmanship award is quite difficult since it is an honour system and can easily be manipulated. Hidden or open system doesn't matter since both can be manipulated.

The open system with just making a deal with your opponent and the hidden by dishing out minimum scores to all your opponents (since they cannot see it it cannot be contested).

Why have a sportsmanship point at all?

Non-checklist opponent scored sports scores are basically a 'do you play the way I play or are you a bad person?' score.

At the last tournament I played in, there were at least 5 people tied for best sport. I think the unwritten rule was that you don't ding someone's sportsmanship unless they were particularly rude, which makes a "best sport" award kind of pointless.

Mad Dok Grotsnik's idea is a much better way to determine who was the best sport, but doesn't seem quite so useful in determining a tournament winner (over all).
A person who wasn't a particularly good or bad sport would recieve the same number of points as someone who was a terrible sport: none.

one system I liked that I saw at Adepticon was at the BFG tournament where you rated sportsmanship by ranks and not points. It was 3 points for your favorite opponent, 2 points for your 2nd favorite and 1 points for the person you liked playing against least. There is very little room for manipulation and it is done in secret and also makes it hard for chipmunking.

Personally I like tournaments better that have no scoring for sportsmanship. To me it is more honest of a game.

G

Green Blow Fly wrote:Personally I like tournaments better that have no scoring for sportsmanship. To me it is more honest of a game.

G

I prefer the dishonesty of players trying to behave themselves, than the honesty of slowhammer, rules arguements, morphing army lists, and every other annoying/dishonest thing that people do when they can get away with it.

thehod wrote:one system I liked that I saw at Adepticon was at the BFG tournament where you rated sportsmanship by ranks and not points. It was 3 points for your favorite opponent, 2 points for your 2nd favorite and 1 points for the person you liked playing against least. There is very little room for manipulation and it is done in secret and also makes it hard for chipmunking.

Nice to see my idea wasn't entirely original. Always happens to me!

What I like about this, is that score becomes less general, and the main points are awarded for the game you enjoyed *most*. This is not to say the other games weren't enjoyable, but it's rewarding a single opponent who you felt was a particularly good sport!

I wonder if incentives could be realigned too. Maybe Best sports should not be a top score award, but a raffle ticket for a prize for the top tier of sports finishers.