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BGonline.org Forums
Pittsburgh Swiss - an example and some comments
Posted By: Robert Maier
Date: Saturday, 19 December 2009, at 2:25 p.m.
Hi folks. For those of you that are interested, I have prepared a flowchart to show the progression of the tournament, for a field size of 72 players. There are two urls which I hope will work as easily as they seem to for me.
http://tinyurl.com/72player2page
http://tinyurl.com/72player1page
they are the same diagram, but if you intend to print something out I recommend the two page version, some scissors and some tape.
Rather than type a longish rambling document to describe every detail of the format, I'll just make a few comments to go along with the flowchart, and those of you that are interested can interrogate me about things that aren't obvious. I'll try and keep up.
Everyone will draw a number when they register. That number will determine who they will be paired against in each round. In other words, there will be no shuffling of the cards. Given the same draw numbers, and the same results in each round, the pairings for the following round will be reproducible. There is a set of pairing rules which will govern how the cards are laid out from round 5 on. The first 4 rounds will be “published” as a set of 16 player double elimination brackets (allowances made for field sizes that are not multiples of 16). Cards will be made for the survivors from the first 4 rounds to make future pairing easier. The first round matches will be drawn in some manner other than 1v2, 3v4 etc, so that players will not have foreknowledge of who will be in their initial groups prior to the calcutta. “Pairing” the first 4 rounds in this manner will (hopefully?) save a substantial amount of time.
There are no byes. Players get credit for actual wins only. The pairing rules are set up to attempt to maximize the probability that the last two players alive will have played the same number of matches, or that the ending will be of a round robin if 3 or 5 players remain with equal records. For the example of 72 players, there is only 1/32 chance that this will not be the case, and a player at 8-1 will face a player at 7-1 to decide the event winner. While I would prefer to have not even this small possibility, I do not yet see a satisfactory way to avoid it. Players eliminated with two losses will be ranked by their number of wins, so a player eliminated in round 7 with a 5-2 record will finished tied with a player eliminated in round 8 with the same record but with a previous sitout.
In this case of 72 players, and I suspect in the case of any number of players likely to occur in this year's event, everyone with 5 or more wins will cash. Players with a record of 4-2 will playoff to one spot, the winner to finish tied with those players eliminated at 5-2. For 72 players, the number of cashers will be between 8 and 10.
I'm happy to discuss whatever, especially if you happen to spot an error. I wouldn't count on it though, I was pretty OCD about making sure the numbers were right :)
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