Concessions and Timed Wins

You’ve suggested this a couple of times, and I guess I’m curious how much “less random” it actually is.

Fair warning: What follows in not intended as an attack on SoS, but is rather speculation about how deterministic it actually is. Frankly, I’m not entirely opposed to SoS, and I think going too far out of our way to create tiebreaker scenarios that limit variance is a bit silly in a card game where RNG inevitably plays a factor at the match level (even one like A:NR where skill plays a larger role than might be typical for card games).

If Contestant A and Contestant B have the same record but B had a tougher SoS, all we really know is that they earned the same prestige but through two different levels of difficulty. This doesn’t mean that A wasn’t capable of earning the same prestige as B if they had played the same lineup – it’s even possible that A could (in some alternate setup) earn that prestige through a harder lineup than B faced. We do know that B has demonstrated a higher minimum skill than A has demonstrated, so in the absence of any other information it is probable that they have a higher actual skill. However, I’m not certain how much “less random” it actually is in practice. If I want to compare the height of two adults and I know A is “at least 4’ (1.219m),” it is probable, strictly speaking, that B is shorter. Given a working knowledge of distribution of human heights, however, the impact of this information is effectively irrelevant to any probabilistic determination.

Consider, for example, an oversimplified Swiss setup where A and B are strong players (70% and 75% to sweep any non-A/B opponent in the field) and a field of players evenly matched against each other (50% to beat any non-A/B player). In any lineup where A doesn’t play B (because SoS wouldn’t be a factor there), we can see that any determination by SoS is essentially equivalent to a coin-flip. B will win on prestige more often than A (with the odds of that increasing the more rounds of Swiss there are), but SoS is almost exactly as random as a coin-flip here. The only deviation from coin-flipping are the odds that they a) play the same opponent C, and b) one defeats C and the other doesn’t. While this does slightly favor B (who has better odds of beating C), it is also unlikely to occur in most scenarios where SoS matters (because if one has lost to C and they are still tied for prestige, A and B are unlikely to still be at the top table).

Of course, in a real-world setting, the other opponents aren’t just flipping coins, so there are diminishing odds each round that someone at the top tables is an underskilled opponent. Likewise, the more information that moves the final SoS away from the initial random seed of the first round – e.g. through more rounds of Swiss, or even input from past tournaments (such as byes, or a hypothetical continuous ELO ranking system that carried over across tournaments to determine initial pairings) – the more likely SoS is to accurately reflect a minimum player skill.

How much “less random” than a coinflip the bubble-cut is at a typical tournament, though, is something of an open question. We could probably model this by simulating a tourney of ranked players (say, 32 players, each with a 3%-per-rank-difference advantage in a given match) and seeing how frequently the SoS of any two players relative to one another on the bubble reflects their assigned ranks.

If the only factor was choosing a system that chose the best winner as accurately as possible, it’d be super easy to code up a simulation that proves out what’s best (guarantee you its pure swiss or something close to it).

Unfortunately there’s lots of other factors too. And there’s issues in which perceived randomness is way more important than how much actual randomness happens.

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[quote=“rojazu, post:96, topic:7151, full:true”]
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.[/quote]

@CrushU touched on this, but if you lose once in that swiss you’ll never get to face the 4-0 person, because he’ll always be paired against the other undefeateds. And it’s four rounds for 16 people because that will have 8, then 4, then 2, then 1 undefeated person.

Draws mess this up, of course.

Well, yeah. But a tournament isn’t looking for the best player, but who did best on that day. And that will be the last player standing after single elimination.

Yeah, it’s perfect for working out top spot. As a trade-off, it’s a load of old rubbish for working out every other position! Would you want a system that only really ever correctly places 1 player out of N?

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And that’s why you use swiss instead.

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By virtue of avoiding ties?

And also by having a clear “beat path” - if you win, every other player in the tournament will have lost to someone (who lost to someone etc) that you beat.

It’s not perfect, but it leaves an indisputable winner.

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My only problem with Swiss and only Swiss is that it’s almost single elim, with everyone who loses a game just squabbling for placing. If you lose a round, or split 2, you basically can’t win. I like the excitement of knockout - even if a couple of rubbish draws can send you packing.

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If you have such problem this means your Swiss has too few rounds.

And that’s why I want an extra round - if you lose once, you still have the opportunity to face the last undefeated in the last round - 16 players, 5 rounds means that after 4 rounds there is one undefeated player who has to play one more game - lose a game and you still got a shot at being in that game. and with head to head as the primary tiebreaker, that game will give you a shot at winning it all.

With less than the optimal number of contestants and the numerous draws/splits we see in Netrunner, it’s even more open.

This friday I played in a 20 person, 5 round swiss tournament (no cut). I split my first two rounds, but was still in it to win it until I split in the fourth round as well. Ended up in third, 1 point behind the winner.

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In both scenario 1 and the ‘‘one-game-to-sweep’’ scenario, however, consideration is given by both players. Both players stand to gain something, and there is no agreement to give any one player something out of nothing, based on friendship or out-of-game factors.

You could argue that the end result of ‘‘one-game-to-sweep’’ looks a lot like scenario 2, but that is the deterministic way of looking at it (after game 1, where the ‘sweeper’ has been decided). The key here is that there is no collusion to alter the results of game 1, which is absolutely fair.

I’m of the opinion that the ‘‘one-game-to-sweep’’ brand of ‘collusion’ should be allowed, if only because it’s prohibitively difficult to police, the same way intentional drawing was before.

Another idea popped into my head: If we don’t want a tournament decided on tiebreakers (which will happen eventually with a pure swiss) we could have top 3 play single elimination: First #2 vs #3, then the winner faces #1 in the final.

(This still leaves IDs possible, but it would require that one of the top 3 face each other in the last round AND have a tie be as good as win for both - hard to do when you’re either #1, #2/#3 or eliminated!)

That is what will be done at the next Euregio Tournament early June. It actually sounds pretty good. These kind of finals won’t take too much time, so you can do one more round of swiss and it gives an incentive to go for 1st during swiss because you have to play one less game in the finals.

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I’m not sure I understand the obsession with Swiss as final arbiter. You all realize pairings have a huge luck element, right? Elims are absolutely necessary to give great players who had bad beats a chance to come back.

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I don’t think the extra weighting given to the 7th round and 8th round of play after a 6 rounds of Swiss cuts will specifically help good players who had bad beats catch up any more than the doubling of points of available each round in Family Feud or Nickolodeon game shows does.

Not with enough swiss rounds, they don’t. Round 1-2 may be random, but if you want to win you need to win at least half the points in the first rounds. After that you’re getting paired against the best players anyway.

And if you lose the first two rounds you don’t really deserve to win, even if you faced the best players at the tournament - you still lost to them.

In this senario you could be the 3rd best player isn’t the tournament, or even worse, you could’ve gotten really unlucky. The cut elegantly solves most all the issues with Swiss, it’s here to stay

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Bullshit. If you got paired against #1 and #2 and lost both, you will now get three easy matches and still have a good SoS. You may not get your “deserved” third, but even with a cut you may even miss the cut.

The only issue with swiss is that if you lose once in an “ideal” swiss you can’t win and may drop. This is the thing the cut is here to solve. But an extra round of swiss also solves this.

The real point of the cut is to make things exciting, at the cost of taking tons of extra time. It is not more fair.

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It’s not just pairings, but matchups that are random. This isn’t chess… people have different decks and are some matchups are better than others. It makes things a lot more interesting to have more of the field in range of the cut… where they have a chance to win the whole thing… rather than a handful, with the rest just playing for pride.

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