New Strength of Schedule Calculation

A reliable source has informed me that the Strength of Schedule formula is going to be updated soon, possibly within the next week. There’s no official word from FFG yet, but there should be an official announcement very soon.

Everyone’s familiar with the way SoS works now: Currently, your SoS is equal to the sum of your opponent’s Prestige. When you get a bye, that non-opponent gives you no earned Prestige for your overall SoS. With a Super-Bye, that same non-opponent is considered to have won every other “game” for the rest of the tourney. If an opponent of yours drops, they reduce your overall SoS.

Here’s how the new system of calculation will work:

Each player will have an “average Prestige per game” score, which is the sum of all your prestige divided by the number of games played, factoring in any byes. If you were to drop from the event, your Prestige per game score would not change, as that number is only determined by the games you actually played. Your Strength of Schedule is determined by adding up all your opponent’s average Prestige per game scores, and dividing by the number of games you played - and this is the important part - NOT including byes.

The practical upshot of all this is that getting a bye won’t hurt your SoS, because that’s only determined by the games you actually played - and here’s the main difference, if an opponent drops out, it won’t hurt your SoS because their contribution to you SoS only includes the games they actually played.

I’m actually really excited for this new system, as I always felt an opponent’s decision affecting your score was total bullshit.

What do you guys think? Seems much more fair to me.

3 Likes

I like it. I mean if you sweep someone round 1 and they drop it doesn’t help you, but it does help against your early tournament opponents who drop before the final round to get a beer.

Does this mean that super-byes and regular byes are the same thing now?

I thought this was announced officially already?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/3699t7/new_sos_rules/

Apparently it was included in the US regionals kit. We calculated SoS this way for Philly, as we used the new FFG tournament software which has it built-in.

Not by nature of the rules change itself, (using this new SoS calculation, you could still award a super bye by factoring in an imaginary opponent who played for the whole tournament and won every game), but they did make a separate change to the bye, which no longer grants you any SoS. Instead, you just have one less opponent to average in. While this is no better than a random bye, it’s still, on average, better than sweeping your opponent round 1, as that player will have started out 0-2 and is likely to be not very good.

6 Likes

No - super-byes give you an opponent with max SoS, normal byes now effectively give you an opponent with the same SoS as the rest of your opponents (on average), which of course is a lot more than the 0 they gave before but also less than max.

I don’t think it’s “announced”, formally speaking, but I expect when the software leaves beta and becomes available for everyone to use, they will formally switch to the new system so that people won’t have to calculate it all by hand, nor will they have to wait for their favorite tournament app to be updated.

where can one get this new software?

With a super-bye not giving SoS anymore (nor being factored in at all in this case), you have less of a chance to make the cut in the event that you split too often, right? I’m at work, but imagining a scenario where your SoS is the sum of your six opponents divided by six, and for a non-bye, seven opponents divided by seven. Assuming you’re playing consistently yourself, which would you prefer to have for a tournament?

Thinking outloud here- I have a super bye. 4 points round one, zero SoS. I play a player who swept round one, he also has 4 points and zero SoS, and I sweep him. We carry on like this to the end of seven rounds, maybe dropping one game, and it’s fine, SoS is irrelevant since I have 26 to everyone’s 22 or something… but if I have a super bye and then bounce around a lot between sweeping and splitting to end at 20 (usually the fringe of making the cut), would there be any extra mathematical disadvantage to having my SoS calculated out of 6 instead of 7? The more opponents I beat, the worse those opponents are doing in comparison to me…

Perhaps, that is why the primary tiebreaker is now “did you sweep them?” … I might be rambling but I’m just trying to gain insight into whether it’s better for a strong player to play round one and sweep to get the extra potential for a first tiebreaker against an extra opponent or perhaps an extra bump in their SoS average, or to take the super bye and have only six rounds of calculated SoS. Are there hidden mathematical dangers taking it one way or the other now with the new SoS rules?

The difference between the super bye and the new bye is only your first opponent. If you split all your rounds or sweep them or w/e, it doesn’t change the calculation. The only thing that changes is your first round opponent. If you sweep your first round opponent (with no bye) the only way that puts you in a better position than having a bye is if your round one opponent goes on to have a better average record than the rest of your opponents (thus raising your SoS by being factored in vs not if you had a bye). It’s not impossible, just unlikely, because your first round opponent (1) got swept in round one, so their SoS starts at 0/2, (2) got swept in round one, so they’re likely to just not be the same caliber of player that you’re going to go on to face as you continue in the high brackets, and (3) wasn’t good enough to have a bye, for whatever that’s worth.

This is all working on the assumption that you sweep your round 1 opponent with no bye. If you split your first round, there is no question that the bye was worth having, because you would have taken one less loss.

3 Likes

That’s actually incorrect. Maybe I didn’t make that clear, but to quote mendax:

Your “Super-Bye” opponent is treated as an actual opponent and not excluded from SoS calculations, counting as having won all their other games for the tournament.

Maybe the national champs won’t hog all the elimination slots at worlds this year. :sweat_smile:

2 Likes

The FFG beta software being used in U.S. Regionals already has been doing this. Also, I believe the ‘Super Bye’ was gone in this software, as well. Having two layers of weighted SOS is nice.

1 Like

From what I understand, there was an additional change made such that the super bye is now just a regular bye. I will talk to the people that ran the Philly regionals tomorrow to verify.

Awesome, this sounds good.

Yeah, please do. It was presented to me as still being a “super-bye” so I’d like to know for sure. Thanks!

It’s not public software at this point, it’s only for TOs running Regionals and Nationals. It also has had a lot of issues.

The super bye is still really strong, much stronger than randomly playing someone round 1.
Getting a regular bye round 1 is actually a good thing now as far as tiebreakers are concerned. It’s functionally the same.

I missed the cut by one place on SOS in two SCs this past season because of opponents dropping out. I like it!

I’m very interested in more details as well.

As far as I’ve understood this, the new tiebreakers are as follows:

  • Head-to-Head
  • new SoS (average of the average match points of all of your opponents)
  • extended SoS (average of the SoS of all of your opponents)
  • random

Also, I was told by @ffgop that Byes and Super-Byes are now identical.

This is what the current development version of NRTM implements. If anyone wants to give it a try, or even compare to TOME, let me know.

1 Like