New FFG GNK guidelines

Pardon my noobness, but what does GNK stand for?

Game Night Kit, the ones with pop-up+gordian for example

Obviously more games can make the best player not win, but in the long run, adding more games should be good for reducing that variance. I think that you’d have to play a lot of swiss rounds per player before adding more games in the form of a cut increased variance. Obviously if you played 80 matches of swiss, adding a cut would increase variance, but I think that adding a cut after 4-5 rounds at a GNK should reduce it.

Seems like the kind of thing you could actually solve with math.

I don’t mind this change because I prefer to play more Netrunner rather than less when I go to any tournament, but I don’t know that it’s a good idea that they are making it mandatory for 16 players is the best idea. There some value to keeping everyone playing for the whole tournament as opposed to clipping them out after some reduced number of swiss rounds, and not every store is going to want to stay open later.

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Cut seems like it INCREASES fairness, doesn’t it? If we define fairness as the possibility for competition and not just letting the best player always get all the toys? Seems like with enough rounds of swiss, a “perfect” order could be found, while a cut affords some players to get “lucky”/have a good game and hustle their way to the top.

It makes the tourney longer, but I don’t otherwise see how it hurts more casual players.

I think the only time it would hurt casual players is if they removed a round of swiss by doing this, but i don’t think that is the case(would take away a round of play for people that don’t make the cut). Double Elim means people are going to hang out and be able to watch games, which they can’t do in swiss. Double Elim games also have a slightly higher level of tension/excitement, at least for me.

I think it does hurt TOs/stores a bit , especially stores. If a tournament calls to run late and its a special event like regionals or store champs, whatever. If your GNKs are running an hour past closing there is a problem. Were not MTG in terms of making $ for our store.

I think my area likes 5 rounds no double elim for GNKs, even when GNKs have called for 4 rounds and such we have done 5 rounds sometimes, its just a nice sweet spot for length of tournament for these. I have a feeling that trend will continue :).

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I’ll be sure to report back next Monday whether a cut suddenly appears in the GNK at the FFG Games Center. They haven’t done one previously.

The offending one: third paragraph down underneath “Swiss tournament”

I wouldn’t define fairness the same way you would. To me, fairness is just about everyone having an equal shot after controlling for skill, (the way to increase fairness, then, would be to reduce the impact of elements like SoS tiebreakers).

If your goal is to have a tournament where everyone has an equal chance of winning, why not just flip coins instead of playing netrunner? Totally fair.

IMO, tournaments should attempt to produce a winner who is the person who played the best that day in a reasonable amount of time. In actuality, the cut makes it harder for less skilled players to win in most cases because they are more likely to fluke a good 5-round swiss as the best player takes a bad beat.

I’ll say it again: there are some number of swiss rounds that you can play for any given number of players where adding a cut increases variance, (less chance for the best player to win) and anything below that is decreasing variance, (more chance for the best player to win).

If you’re cutting from 16 to 8 players, that’s going to increase variance almost every time. Cutting half the players out of the tournament is a huge waste of time. You might as well just play a whole double elimination tournament and save time.

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I agree. I guess my point was just that I think some variance is part of a healthy tournament, right? too many failsafes for the top players isn’t really fair if the greener players are always fighting that system. To me, long rounds of swiss and double elimination serve to help the predicted winners but not really do anything for the underdog.

Yeah, I suppose it is. There’s a reason we’re not playing chess, but I’m used to winning now :wink:

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I realize debating minutiae like this just comes natural to Netrunner players (and is a heck of a lot of fun!), but I feel like a lot of people probably glossed over the third sentence on that screencapped page:

If you have run events in the past and found them to be successful, feel free to continue running events in your own style.

They’re just giving suggestions, not passing down sacred commandments.

I would be SHOCKED if they tried to add a cut. It would not go over well. Nobody’s going to want to stick around until midnight on a Monday (well, maybe one or two of us, but still).

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Sorry, I realize this is fairly off-topic, but damn, I just realized - GNK Instructions about how to run events and they use an image of Ken Tenma. You better believe that’s intentional. Them’s some clever sons of bitches.

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Yeah, no way we’re doing a cut for GNKs. No matter the size, we’ll just do 3 rounds of swiss and divvy up prizes based on placement after that. Starting at 7pm, we don’t want to go too late.

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Swiss with sufficient rounds is very good for finding a winner, but it’s pretty terrible at dividing up the rest of the prizes.

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Yeah - i saw that after I got there. I’m the store’s Netrunner TO, but was busy, so left it in the hands of the store owner. He basically left it up to the players, and they actually voted overwhelmingly in favour of a cut, shockingly enough.

It’s just a GNK, though! Apart from the playmat and the 2-of alt art, everyone usually ends up with extras of everything anyway. I’ve been giving out extra promos to new players for months now and I still have a big stack of participation alt arts and unassembled boxes I can’t unload.

Is anyone regularly getting enough people to the GNK tournaments that the prizes don’t cover everyone? That’s pretty impressive! If this is actually a common problem in some places, maybe we can figure out some sort of donation system? I would have no issue sending someone a stack of Pawnshops or something if they need extra prizes for a tournament. I’ve about run out of new players to give the damn things away to.

Sure, I fully accept this (see my very early reply to this topic). I was merely commenting on Swiss as a pairing system in general.

Eh, another FFG rule to ignore. Add it to the list.

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I’m actually trying to get my hands on old excess GNK goodies like that. I’m living in Korea currently and trying to get a more robust competitive scene going here. I was talking with someone about it awhile back here but haven’t drummed up anything yet.

Just to confirm everyone’s expectations, there was not a cut at the FFGC GNK on Monday.

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