5 or 6 game, 2 day GT tournaments. Pros, and Cons?

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**Mannahnin**

You don't need to send scoring units across the table, though, Phazael. Any unit can do it. I won my last tournament game of C&C thanks to a Rhino contesting my opponent's.

**Manimal**

I am not sure how comparable the SCGWL data is.

The league games are very different than book standard games because of the strange terrain deployment and the bonus territories.

The territories and (especially) the terrain generation have big a impact on how the game plays.

**Hulksmash**

Not to mention since it's not a tournament people tend to play more conservatively. In a tournament you generally don't play for a tie (unless it's the last game and you've got a lock on the win

) so it's less of an issue. Honestly I'd take long term tournament numbers over league numbers just based on the circumstances of those numbers.

**AbsoluteBlue**

What's wrong with a draw anyway?

**Mannahnin**

You don't want too many of them in a tournament, because they reduce scoring separation between players.

**whocares**

Kevin Nash wrote:
whocares wrote:

Also if two players tie in their tournament points (same number of wins, etc) and the tie is decided by strength of schedule, then it is essentially being decided by something totally out of their control. They both won just as many games (and as you say, the thing you can control about strength of schedule is the player...trying to win) but the tie will be decided by who won more games earlier in the tournament and stayed in the winner's bracket longer, which isn't necessarily a good determinant of skill at all. You can randomly be paired against the winner of the tournament first, lose, end up in the losers bracket for the rest of the tourney, win all your other games, and then watch the guy who lost to the winner his last game take second place after you both won every game but one and lost to the same person. Which is a problem even with something like chess.

If you do correct swiss pairings those players should have met at some point in the tournament though. At least that's the case if they are at the top of the standings. So then you have a head to head tiebreaker to fall back on. If they happened to tie their game? Well then I think SOS is a reasonable tiebreaker at that point. I mean, they played each other and tied. What more can we do?

The annoying thing bout correct swiss pairings with a separate finalists round is that you can play the same guy twice in the same tournament.

I've never actually seen a 40k tourney with a finals round, but I've played in enough swiss format tournaments for CCGs to have a serious distaste for them. I remember one tournament where I played a guy in the last game of the initial round, beat him (but he had good strength of schedule since it was the last game he lost) and then had to play him again a few minutes later in the finals. And another one where I lost to someone in the finals due to a bad hand whom I had beaten in the earlier round.

With card games, those things are irritating. In 40k where a single game takes two hours I think it's just unacceptable.

**Manimal**

Nash was not suggesting a finalists round. You can only play the same person once in the format Nash suggested.

**whocares**

So what is a correct swiss pairing then?

You mean a system where each player plays everyone? Single elimination?

Every true swiss pairing I've seen involves a finalists round, so I am unfamiliar with this.

**Reecius**

The way we run Swiss is that players play other players with the same record. This eliminates half the field each round until only one remains.

So, with 8 players it would go:

8, 4, 2, 1

Therefore, in 3 rounds you can have one player that goes undefeated, showing a clear tournament winner.

I prefer this style of system because it is purely objective and removes all ambiguity in scoring.

**whocares**

Reecius wrote:The way we run Swiss is that players play other players with the same record. This eliminates half the field each round until only one remains.

So, with 8 players it would go:

8, 4, 2, 1

Therefore, in 3 rounds you can have one player that goes undefeated, showing a clear tournament winner.

I prefer this style of system because it is purely objective and removes all ambiguity in scoring.

Yes, but what about ties for second? Third?

You still run into the problem with strength of schedule I stated earlier. But Kevin said the two tied players will always have played each other at some point, so I'm wondering how his system works. Particularly with a larger tournament.

**Reecius**

You handle that in various ways. Some TOs don't allow tie games (NOVA open) others use SoS to break ties for bracketing.

We are going to use bracket points for the Bay Area Open, which are essentially bonus points that you can get during a game that only serve to break ties for bracketing purposes and for final rankings.