New FFG GNK guidelines

tomdidiot · May 24, 2015, 12:56pm

Apparently - according to the new guidelines that are in the GNK, you now need to cut with 16+ players?

mendax · May 24, 2015, 1:17pm

FFG may have just broken their own record for “rule that is most likely to be ignored”.

spags · May 24, 2015, 1:38pm

I really don’t get it. They seem to want to keep things casual, and the GNK is the epitome of that, which is cool. Why introduce something like a ‘cut’ into it?

Humanoids · May 24, 2015, 1:40pm

I’m sorry, does this mean that no more than 16 players can participate? (English isn’t my first language, after all.)

Korrigan · May 24, 2015, 1:43pm

No, it means after swiss you play double elimination with 8 (?) players

Xenasis · May 24, 2015, 1:53pm

Apparently, in London there’s currently a 20 player GNK going on with a cut to top 8 because that’s what it said in the GNK…

It’s a bit silly, not having a cut makes GNKs a bit more variance-y, which I think is more than acceptable for a GNK. They’re meant to be lighthearted…

tomdidiot · May 24, 2015, 2:01pm

I’lll be on my way there soonish. I’ll grab a screenshot of the paper.

x3r0h0ur · May 24, 2015, 2:29pm

And I’m just sitting here running 5 person round robin gnks

Humanoids · May 24, 2015, 2:32pm

Yeah, that was what I thought at first but then it’s so illogical! GNKs usually contain 17 cards for participants (+everything else the top places get). So that means that they’re meant for approximately 16 players (+1 for the TO). Plus, they’re usually attended by less.

tomdidiot · May 24, 2015, 2:42pm

We routinely get 30 or 40 person GNKs in London becasue there’s 3 stores in a city of 8 million.

mendax · May 24, 2015, 2:57pm

Even in Bristol we often have attendance in the 20s.

maznaz · May 24, 2015, 3:52pm

How is a double elimination lower variance than standings after several rounds of Swiss? That doesn’t make sense to me.

mediohxcore · May 24, 2015, 3:55pm

Everything else being equal, the more games played, the more likely the tournament winner is going to be the best player.

maznaz · May 24, 2015, 3:58pm

But it’s entirely possible that the winner comes from bottom of the brackets and the person that won the most games doesn’t win the tournament overall. Isn’t that variance? There’s a reason most competitive sports’ primary leagues don’t involve playoffs at the end (I know a few US ones do).

hypomodern · May 24, 2015, 4:01pm

I think this is funny, since last week’s 12-player attendance was the best I’d seen in Michigan since late 2013 (for a GNK).

Is having more than 15 for a GNK a netrunner #firstworldproblem :)?

Kesterer · May 24, 2015, 4:17pm

Wow, glad I didn’t go now; a GNK should not involve players spending their entire Sunday on it.

Intentional or not, FFG seem to be doing their best to make organised play as unfriendly as possible to anyone who has commitments in their life besides Netrunner.

Apo · May 24, 2015, 4:17pm

Huh? I thought the cut was the main variance factor in netrunner tournaments. I get it that it is necessary for thrills and stuff, but the cut simply provides a way to mess up well established swiss results.

Xenasis · May 24, 2015, 4:27pm

In Dark Sphere’s defence, they had a vote, and people voted for the cut.

This to me sounds like saying more Swiss can mess up established Swiss results. More games are better, and a top cut is the best way to ensure that the games quickly filter to the best players playing against the best players, something Swiss can sometimes not accomplish.

Apo · May 24, 2015, 4:30pm

Sounds catchy and I almost buy it . The thing is we have single games in the cut, things get really fragile there.

SamRS · May 24, 2015, 4:58pm

in a specific matchup yes, but the bracket is a test of who can go the longest without losing twice, which tests consistency pretty well.