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Madison Update

Posted By: Chuck Bower
Date: Thursday, 6 September 2007, at 2:16 p.m.

In Response To: Madison Update (bob koca)

What were the rules for going from the pure swiss to the "playoff" rounds?

Except for the "5-3 to consolation, 6-2 or better to main bracket" there aren't really any hard and fast rules for the playoffs. That is a weakness of the Indy Swiss movement (as has been discussed often on GU). The playoff bracketing is "seat of the pants" and has led to complaints in the past by players in the playoffs after seeing the bracket.

I find it interesting that we (the US BG community) don't use computer generated random draws because players won't trust them but then use seat-o-pants human decision making in the middle of a tournament. Do I think the playoff bracketing is biased. NO. Do I think it has the potential of being? Of course. Do I think computer draws would be biased if implemented with half a brain? No. Do I think they could be screwed up? Yes. And same with human performed random draws.

There was some discussion that because of the size of the field at Madison (51 players) that a straight swiss of 8 rounds would have done a pretty good job. That turned out to be true this time I.e and e.g. 8-0 wins first, 7-1 wins second, four 6-2's divide the remainder of the prize money. That's 6/51 or about 12% payout (in line with the typical 10-12%). But one "problem" with a Swiss is that there are so many different outcomes which (among other things) depend upon the size of the field. There COULD have been two 7-1 players this year and five 6-2's, for example. Everyone has his/her guidelines for how to distribute trophies and prizes and not everyone is going to get his/her way. (The tournament promoters/staff get to decide -- it's their tournament.)

One "solution" (may not be technically true) is to use computers beforehand to find all possible outcomes as a function of number of entries and post the rules ahead of time. That might not be exhaustively possible though. Another surprise is that no one (that I know of) has ever bothered to try such a study.

Messages In This Thread

• Madison Update
  Stick -- Monday, 3 September 2007, at 3:48 a.m.
  • Madison Update
    Chuck Bower -- Monday, 3 September 2007, at 12:57 p.m.
    • Madison Update
      Stick -- Tuesday, 4 September 2007, at 9:49 a.m.
  • Madison Update
    bob koca -- Wednesday, 5 September 2007, at 1:46 a.m.
    • Madison Update
      Stick -- Wednesday, 5 September 2007, at 2:20 a.m.
      • Madison Update
        Bill Riles -- Wednesday, 5 September 2007, at 8:28 p.m.
        • Madison Update
          Keene -- Wednesday, 5 September 2007, at 8:40 p.m.
          • Madison Update
            Mislav Radica -- Wednesday, 5 September 2007, at 10:06 p.m.
    • Madison Update
      Chuck Bower -- Thursday, 6 September 2007, at 2:16 p.m.