Any idea how Cesari and Daniele finished 2nd/3rd?
With Konrad in the winners bracket final against Jorian, how did Konrad not make top 3?
Since there is no listed winner between Cesari and Daniele in the bracket, it looks like those 4 players became the finalists and played as a final group, with Konrad finishing 4th.
Yep.
52 best players (four with the highest score from each group) qualify to the Round 2 KO .
2 KO System ( âladderâ of WINNERS and âladderâ of LOST).12 players
with a lot of victories in preliminaries are starting the game with the
II round (in case of the same quantity of victories an IFPA ranking is
deciding)
All games are played with 3 balls without extra ball .
The player who loses twice (once in the WINNERS and once in the LOST) is eliminated from the tournament.
All games taken in the WINNERS are duels âhead to headâ up to two victories (the third game is taken in case of a tie).
Two players with no defeat in the WINNERS are qualified for final round.
Player who loses his match in WINNERS is moved to do the LOST and plays one game âhead to headâ.
Two top players from the LOST are qualified to final round.
To everyone who attended the tournament:
How was the place, the tournament format, what youâd like to see, what was bad and what was good about the EPC2016?
Location was nice, tournament was generally great and well run. Thanks to everyone who helped make it happen!
Ways it could improve in no particular order:
The tournament should make adjustments to games between games or rounds during qualifying. The format supports game changes with no consequence, so if there is a game that has a setup issue *(too tight tilt on BSD for example) fix it between games. It will make the tournament better. Also, generally, tilts were all over the place in a way that seemed inconsistent. long playing stern games had loose tilts, where fast playing 90âs dmds had crazy tight tilts. I would suggest trying to get the tilts more consistent across games if possible.
Put rubber feet under the games. Sliding games on smooth concrete is not ideal.
i would adjust your tiebreak procedure. If i remember correctly, tiebreaks in qualifying were based upon the head to head record of the tied players against each other. This feels very arbitrary and I would suggest having tied players play off to either make the cut or not. There was plenty of time to support this, and games available.
I would not wait till all players in a round are done before moving on with the head to head finals. I would strongly suggest calling any ready match to begin as soon as it is ready to go on any machines that are ready. You could considerably speed up the finals this way. Additionally, this would give plenty of time for the losers bracket to be 2 out of 3 like the winners bracket instead of single game. Take a look at the app brackelope - its saved a serious amount of time with the way it can help manage the matches. iirc, the portland pinbrawl tourney which is 128 players, head to head double elim best 2 of 3 for both sides of the bracket went from taking ~15 hours to 9-10 hours with using brackelope versus a traditional bracket.
Top seed going first for game one in the head to head finals felt less desirable. I would suggest giving better seed choice of position for game 1, then having players reverse for game 2, and coin toss if there is a game 3.
The byes for top qualifiers also felt not ideal. Byes were given to players with the most points overall in the qualifying, but there was no interaction between groups in qualifying so in my opinion a qualifying of â9â in one group is not the same as a qualifier of â9â in another group. I would suggest giving a bye to the top qualifier of each group regardless of score, and have tiebreaks for that based on whatever method you choose.
prohibit people from vaping inside the tournament area.
Come up with a better approach to dealing with mid-game machine malfunctions. About an hour of time was wasted looking into the malfunction of TOTAN trying to diagnose and fix the problem live without turning the game off. Set a procedure or time limit and then move on to a new game and it might makes these situations easier to resolve.
Before the semi-final began the âAâ bank of finals game was removed from the tournament and put on open âfreeâ play. This removed those games as potential random picks for the remaining matches in the tournament. It was unfortunate for some players to have games they liked removed from the potential picks seemingly arbitrarily and at random.
In the head to head matches, when it went to a 3rd game, the scorekeeper of the bank picked the 3rd game for the players themselves, and it was not clear to the players why a specific 3rd game was chosen. From my perspective, the scorekeeper would kind of look around, see what was open, look at the two players and then just pick whatever they felt like. I donât think any of the scorekeepers were picking games in a biased fashion, but I would strongly suggest you come up with a clear system for picking that 3rd game that eliminates any appearance of the scorekeeper influencing the pick. Toss a coin, pick a random number for the open games - anything.
I would suggest looking at the expenses of the tournament and see where costs can be reduced so that either the entry fees can go down, or the prize pool can go up.
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I want this rule at every tournament. So sick of playing in a cotton candy cloud. 
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Really though! If you canât smoke cigarettes there, vape shouldnât be allowed either. I get the whole lack of second-hand, but itâs more the fragrance and how long the cloud lingers that bothers folks.
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This has been the law in California since January and itâs been very nice. Europe is a different beast though 
I wouldnât be able to compete in a place where vaping was allowed indoors.
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Wow. Really? This seems like an unbalanced way to settle the final four (aka most important) finishing places in a major tournament. Two people who havenât yet lost are placed on the same footing as two people who have both lost once? 
If a KO tourney has already invested so much time in a large-field, 2 out of 3 KO bracket, it should continue that format to the end. If anything, if the Losers bracket doesnât have time for 2 of 3 match, then the only change Iâd consider making is that the final 1-2 matches in the Losers bracket transition to best 2 of 3 instead of single game.
And @cayle , let me guess⌠the top seed on the winnerâs top 2 had to play first in the randomly selected game #1 of the 4-player finals match? 
Every single one of @cayle 's suggestions is excellent.
Just to highlight the one regarding tiebreaks (which Cayle and others helped me fix prior to TPF):
- Tiebreaks for qualifying and making the cut for finals: playoff.
- Tiebreaks for seeding: tiebreak procedure related to pre-event documented record nuance rules, or random draw.
- Tiebreaks for a bye: up to the TD. Just document it.
Yikes. And byes, too. Given that advancing from your group does not compare you across groups, and only within your group (which makes sense), then byes should have the same basis: top X from each group get a bye.
High Hand for all! Right @pinwizj?
cAyle,
Excellent suggestions. A few thoughts:
Yes, consistency is best. If there are to be differences, they should probably be more towards making game times similar, i.e. looser tilts on the shorter-playing games.
Definitely: âmoving on to the next roundâ from the qualifying round should be played out. Head-to-head record is pointless since you both / all played the same pool of opponents, so whoever lost HTH won some other match the winner didnât, possibly against a stronger player.
They could do what Iâve seen at a few events: give each machine a code number and just random number generate on their phones. First open game whose number is hit that wasnât played as game 1 or 2 gets to be game 3. This even works for âvintagesâ for events using those - - Modern #4, SS #1, EM #3, whatever. Can even make the Modern / SS / EM a random pick. But Iâm with Snailman, if a player named Sharpe is present, game 3 is always High Hand [or Captain Card].
Yes, byes based on scores without interaction seem unfair. The âbyes for #1 in each group onlyâ satisfies an important standard: less dependence on who else is in your group. Groups with âmore good playersâ could hurt someoneâs point count relative to other groups, but this way itâs simple: win your group.
The âseedingsâ seemed somewhat pointless [pun intended], given the lack of interaction. Rather than seeding either the group winners or the other qualifiers based on points, it could be done like DPM, e.g. Winner Group 1 [bye] vs. winner of [group 2 #3 vs. group 4 #2] or something like that.
It was in Poland this year right? Is actual smoking even forbidden in all indoor places there yet? Havenât been there in a while but it wasnât last time we went skiing in PL
It is forbidden to smoke in all public places
thatâs nice, just the vaping then
Actually, not so long ago (this month i think) this has been forbidden in a lot of places too 
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Is it really that bad?
For the local audience and streaming, 4-player final is in my opinion much more interesting way to finish the tournament than to run the double elimination bracket until the end. And to form the final four I canât see any better solution that to take the last two players from both sides of the bracket.
Of course the finalists coming from the winners side should get the advantage of going 3rd and 4th on the first game, but should they really be given even more advantage?
Just asking this for a friend who might be doing the same mistake in his tournament later this yearâŚ
I think 4-player group finals are great. But if you like 4-player group finals, then why not do 4-player groups for the whole way during the finals and not just the final four?
If you like 2-player head to head, then Iâd stick with it until the end, especially in a double-elimination style where the player(s) from the losers bracket arenât exactly on equal footing with the player(s) from the winners bracket.
Because of time.
It probably wouldnât have been possible to run the 52-player EPC play-offs in 4-player groups within one day.
I think it is better to make the finals a 4 player game instead of 3 players. With 4 players you donât know who will make it to the top 3 and with a 3player match you already know it.
If you have a huge single elimination bracket to start, then you can always switch to 4-player finals fairly whenever you get down to the final 4 or 8 or 16 etc. In a double elimination bracket, though, I canât imagine how you can do it fairly because no matter what you do, the players on the winners side have not lost yet, and itâs totally unfair to pair them up in the finals on equal footing with players who have lost. Period. No advantage you can give them (going last or picking game, etc.) is worth anything close to another life, so, to answer your question âIs it really that bad ?â. I would say yes it is.
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One could make the counter argument that the survivors of the losers bracket may have won more matches than the winners. And it is the best answer to âwhich 4 people have played best so far?â, so for a 4 player finals, it seems reasonable.
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