Caveat; it’s impossible to say for certain whether someone should ID or not without knowing the exact size of the tournament (both number of players and rounds) and the cut, or the standings going in to a particular round.
However, le’ts assume that the example that @popsofctown has given is for a 32 player tournament with 5 rounds and a cut to top 8 (which is a fairly standard Store Championship set-up). For simplicity let’s also assume that Alice is also paired against people with her exact record each round, everyone is acting rationally and that there’s no other oddities that are warping outcomes.
If that’s the case, then not only is Alice correct to intentionally draw in round 5, she should also probably intentionally draw in round 4 as well (since 7-3 would make the cut).
Now obviously this will vary wildly in real life, especially as tournament structures and cut sizes vary. But this is a pretty realistic scenario where Alice only actually plays 60% of the games she’s meant to. It actually gets even more pronounced in smaller tournaments (the less rounds and the bigger the cut, the more effective ID’s are).
You absolutely have a duty to preserve the integrity of the tournament, but this stops at following the floor rules and being a decent human being. If the system allows you to intentionally draw, then you are doing absolutely nothing wrong by either offering or taking one, and in no way should you be seen as harming the integrity of the tournament. The reverse is obviously also true; refusing an intentional draw for whatever reason should not be seen negatively.
Any damage to the ‘integrity of a tournament’ has only been done by the introduction of intentional draws in to the floor rules, not by the people following them. You might as well say that playing Astroscript in your deck is harming the tournament because it’s too powerful an agenda.
As an aside, people who are already in the cut are perhaps less likely to intentionally draw anyway; they have little to lose by playing, and could potentially end up top of swiss if they win (which carries both prestige and often additional prize support). It’s those who need to draw or better to get in who will definitely ID.
There’s little prestige in being first in the Swiss and getting knocked out of the cut. I have never seen additional prizes for the player who was first seed in the Swiss.
In MtG, there’s apparently a lot of draws that happen when a player is paired down and can afford to lose and still make the cut, but draws with his opponent anyway to also let him into the cut, either out of “niceness”, for a gift, or for an implied gift.
In Netrunner where there are no sideboards and more polar sideboards, I could see conceding, IDing, and playing as all having different utility for players with such strong records they will certainly make the cut. If you are playing CI, you’d want to avoid a pairing against the Noise player, and if you’re paying attention to the Noise player’s standings and it looks like he might be 8th, you don’t want to be first. So depending on standings you might want to draw, or double concede. Or even play while glancing at the nearby table and concede suddenly.
[quote=“popsofctown, post:85, topic:7151”]
In MtG, there’s apparently a lot of draws that happen when a player is paired down and can afford to lose and still make the cut, but draws with his opponent anyway to also let him into the cut, either out of “niceness”, for a gift, or for an implied gift.
[/quote] This is covered by “an implied gift” but the main reason for this tradition is that it is very possible you will be in the reversed position in a future tournament and you hope that the person will remember that you helped them. And it costs you nothing to help them, so why not take a possibility of benefit.
This would be over the line I think. This probably falls under the rules against scouting, but your game decisions shouldn’t be affected by the game state of the table next to you.
The current rule against scouting is “a spectator must respect a request that he stop spectating your game”. It’s possible neither player has made any such request, and even if they notice the glances they might choose not to make a request. Maybe the Noise player doesn’t want to play you in the cut either, maybe he’d rather play against the Sync that wasn’t skilled enough to win every previous game in Swiss instead.
If you let the first seed of the Swiss have a lot more powers in terms of pairing himself and choosing whether to run or corp, we might see some of the IDing elements diminish or disappear as people play to gain those advantages instead of IDing into the 7th and 8th spots in the cut complacently.
there is an excellent chapter in Freakenomics on the subject of gifting wins in sumo - a sport mired in corruption due to the incentive of remaining ‘in the cut’
I think it might be optimal to remove the cut. But first some analysis:
First, what we want out of a tournament is to have the best player on the day win. The ideal way is a round-robin, but that’s out for duration reasons. The second best way is a cup, a single-elimination tournament. But because we want people to stay in the tournament for the duration, going single-elimination is also out. We’re here to play Netrunner, not just watching the best play Netrunner.
This is were swiss comes in - an ideal swiss setup (such as 8 players, 3 matches or 16 players, 4 matches) simulates a cup for the winner - after 3 rounds there can only be 1 person that’s undefeated, like a KO tournament. But it let’s people play on and get ranked appropriately even when they lose. Now, the reason we have swiss and then a cut is because we don’t want people dropping in the first round - those who are de facto eliminated from winning and would rather not play if they can’t win. So we add the cut.
My suggestion is that we instead play one extra round of swiss (such as 8 players, 4 rounds). That means if you drop your first round, you’re not out of it until the end (or you lose again). Even if each round was just a single match (like in Warmachine), if you drop your first and then win out you have a shot at meeting the single undefeated player in the last round, and if head to head is the first tiebreaker this essentially gives you a winner takes all final round.
Allowing ties (as Netrunner does) gives you even better odds, because the top tables can split while you sweep at the lower tables, getting you back in the game.
Currently I think this is the ideal tournament system, it eliminates IDs (it will always cost you), it keeps more people in the hunt than a straight swiss, and it will reward the player who did best throughout the day.
i would be massively in favour of adding 1-2 rounds of extra swiss. it removes the uncertainty around tournament duration as well as all players finish together. wouldn’t it be nice to all go to the pub afterwards rather than have this strange split were 75% of the people leave together and small club remain to play more NR.
swiss also pairs players with similar records so in many ways it becomes cup like as the tournament progresses.
It can.
If you lose once in a 16-player tournament, the 4-0 is the winner, so it won’t be you.
Well, in a normal swiss tournament where getting the same number of points as your opponent isn’t a common occurrence. Which is another reason the tournament structure of Netrunner bothers me.
it normally doesn’t though - because to beat the 4-0, you probably will have a chance to play him/her at some point in the later rounds if you are doing well. in which case, you will have a chance to beat them and take top spot. it also makes the H2H tiebreaker way more relevant.
Actually you want to 100% be first.
Because you’d get to A) play him first and B) choose to play your Runner instead. If you aren’t first, you’re trusting luck that he’ll have played Runner side more often than you when/if you do meet him.
It was a Given that we had lost a round. In that case, we are never winning a straight Swiss tournament. Because only the 4-0 can win, and since we are starting from ‘We’ve lost a round’ by definition we cannot be the 4-0.
This just makes me want Swiss +1 more; since you can take a loss but still win the tournament…
Although, as pointed out above, the reason we Swiss and Cut is because a single loss makes people drop if they have no chance to win. So if we Swiss +1, two losses makes people drop when they have no chance to win.
I don’t travel for a couple of hours to a venue and then back again with the intention of dropping out if I lose the first game, and im sure this is the case for the vast majority of players, who at the end of the day just want to play NR for the day.
but then again, I don’t rage quit on jnet neither. there are always going to be some muppets around
Yeah it’s still that way. The 10/6/2015 and the 4/2/2016 rules both say that the first round in Double Elim, higher Seed chooses which side to play. And after that, you play least-played side, and if both players have the same least-played, randomize.