Match Play Events: The Next Generation

[bclement]

@coreyhulse

When Andreas and I were exchanging messages about the format, we worked through the possibilities.

• Even Players / Even Rounds → No Odd-Person Out Problems
• Even Players / Odd Rounds → No Odd-Person Out Problems
• Odd Players / Even Rounds → No Odd-Person Out Problems
• Odd Players / Odd Rounds → You get a single person who can’t play their final match

I ran this format for my 007 launch party tonight, 16 players, 10 rounds. Ended with 2 odd-people out! The final two had already played each other, so I couldn’t create another game. I can only imagine it had something to do with the timing of when I created games throughout the evening. I typically created more games when half the field was in the waiting room.

Catalina Brewing James Bond 007 Launch Party

[haugstrup]

When you create new matches there’s a “safety valve” checkbox for this very purpose. Check that box to relax the “can’t play the same player twice” restriction so the two players can play each other a second time to finish the tournament.

[bclement]

Not sure how I missed that, it’s right there. Thanks. Feedback from players was overall very positive.

[Snailman]

Thank you!

[haugstrup]

@Snailman @spraynard @hisokajp give this a go (available now):

[Shaub]

Ive never run a league/series before, Im just wondering what needs to be done to create a finals for it. Is it as simple as just creating a Finals as a separate tournament and using the final series standings to generate my player list? Or is there a more streamlined integration of “create playoffs” from the series itself in the same way that a qualifying tourney can be used to create playoffs as another tournament.

[diehardpinball]

One the qualification is done, you just create playoffs, in next match play you can even change the scoring format which I like doing. For DHPL I do a 20 league event format with 7,5,3,1 scoring and then run the playoffs direct from those league events with 3 machines and an 4,2,1,0 scoring and it runs really slick. We also run a novice playoff but I have to create a separate tournament for that. Would be nice if Next Match Play had the ability to categorize the players via IFPA rank to A, B, Novice or whatever you wanted based on a rank criteria, much in how the machine types work. Maybe one day, as then that would make it easier to place restrictions on players and also be able to branch out and put them in separate tourneys without having to manually do it. Would also be nice if MatchPlay added all of the points from that event, playoff and league to give you the total of the night but we just do it manually for now.

[haugstrup]

Unfortunately there’s not a more streamlined integration. You create a standalone tournament. It’s been on my list forever to make a “create playoffs” feature for series, but it’s never made it all the way to the top of the list.

[diehardpinball]

Would definitely be a nice feature to auto populate the players in the playoffs.

[COW]

For those who have run a Max Matchplay tournament: now that we get penalized for pulling long playing games mid-tournament have you found that long playing games affect tournament run time more/less or the same as in other match play formats?

[chuckwurt]

It would affect them the same. Also, you can change settings on machines mid tournament to make them harder, it just might upset the player base. At least I think that’s still allowed.

[diehardpinball]

In this format I don’t see any issue with a mid-game adjustment (just communicate at start of tournament so people don’t get miffed) would be the same as a normal match play format where you could make adjustments after a round.

[hisokajp]

not much different that if you are using “long” games in any other format. it’s all about luck as well, if a few of your top players end up on long games, that could affect the overall length of the tourney, if you they don’t then it is pretty seamless.

[Snailman]

Theoretically, long-playing games should affect Max Match Play slightly less than a standard MP format. In the latter, every round it’s used, the long game is holding up ANY OTHER game from starting. In Max MP, it only holds up those two players from making progress in their total# of games played, while the rest of the field keeps playing. Those two players in the long game stand a decent chance of offsetting their long game with some short ones while other pairings have relatively longer games.

[Shaub]

No worries, I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

[dri]

@haugstrup

@dri

I ran a Pingolf tourney yesterday where I wanted to create a top four player playoff (10% out of 40 players per IFPA requirement) but it wouldn’t let me (I selected “other” and it started to cry that at least 6 were required and 8 was the lowest in the dropdown). We ended up doing pen and paper but I realized now I could just have created a new pingolf tourney with 4 holes on it. I must be misunderstanding something.

This may be one of the fights I have to give up on. In my brain four player group bracket tournaments make no sense since no players are being eliminated. But it’s been almost 8 years and people still want create these tournaments.

Get to work!

@haugstrup

@dri

I used the new registration function for this tourney and it worked out well. There were some complaints about not being able to remove your own registration, I’m sure there’s a reason for that.

There’s not really. Why did people want to delete their registration?

There were two different reasons that came up. Folks had to cancel their pinball plans, which happens. The other was simply that one person created a registration for two different people as I understood it and somehow they wanted to remove the duplicate.

@haugstrup

@dri

I was also registering people on site who wanted to get on the waitlist and I was expecting the same dialog as you would “Add Players” as you would add registrations when in TD mode.

Creating a registration is different than adding a player because registrations can have requirements like the custom questions you can ask of every registrant. But you can register a player by finding their user account and that streamlines the process somewhat.

I did not see this in the UI. Only “dumb” fields without any dynamic lookup for either “Name”, “IFPA Number” and “E-mail”

[haugstrup]

@dri

I did not see this in the UI. Only “dumb” fields without any dynamic lookup for either “Name”, “IFPA Number” and “E-mail”

[dri]

Now I know why I put the word dumb in quotation marks. Thanks for clarifying!

[diehardpinball]

This may have been covered in a previous post but is there any documentation on the strength of opponent tiebreaker formula. I used it for the first time in our league and it is great as it eliminates all of the ties that can result in a six round match play. But it would be nice for players to kind of understand on how it works or is calculated. As well the new big screen version for Match Play is great but it sure would be nice if the games were listed in alphabetical order for ease of viewing.

[coreyhulse]

if I remember it right:

Group match play tournaments | Match Play Events Handbook

• Automatic tiebreaking: Ties are broken using the strengths of opponents faced.

It calculates the average points earned of every one of your opponents.

Here’s a tournament we ran on Saturday with Automatic Tiebreaking

It was 7/5/3/1 scoring

Vince got 60 points an on average his opponents got 4.71 points.

Cliff and Uchendu both got 50 points, but Cliff’s opponents got 4.78 points and Uchendu’s got 4.31 points, so Cliff wins the tiebreaker.

There were six people all with 48, but the Strength of Schedule sorted them based on opponent average (Justin and Nick spent most of the day with the higher-point groups, and Bob/Logan started the day near the bottom but worked their way up).

I personally love Automatic Tiebreaking. Helps with seeding. I can see an argument for not using it for Division Splits, but in a timing pinch I think it works well.