That dog won’t hunt.
“after” – in the time following (an event or another period of time)
The event is the round. It does not state after “adding round 5 to round 6.”
Seeding in opening rounds of a large open event are virtually meaningless in drawing hardline assessments… including pinburgh. They do their best with the data they have, but pinburgh doesn’t even pair you with ‘people doing about as well as you’ early… that only happens in later rounds. I mean… the first round in pinburgh includes the top and bottom players in a tier. You aren’t playing similar skilled people… its only at the end where people are basically playing similar record players.
‘first strike’ rules suffer similar biases. It rewards performance in rounds that based on the least amount of concrete data about performance in the specific event.
I do agree the OP that such comparisons are painful… but I don’t agree it should always be a playoff. The show must go on…
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It actually does hunt pretty well. My attorney coworker said it needs to have something along the lines of “aggregate score through round 5”. “After” can be easily interpreted as nothing counts till after something occures.
#becauselunchatworkisboring
#nothingbetterforustodiscuss
#coworkerssidewithcoworkersmoreoftenthannot
I spoke with several dozen people at the event, who gave me their opinions and feedback about the tiebreakers in a friendly and constructive manner. I will now post here what I told them – I wasn’t happy with the tiebreaker situation either and will be exploring updates for next year.
Had you spoken with me in person, I would have told you the same thing. It is not as though I’m some faceless corporation. You can PM me, email me, text me, whatever. In a few days, I’ll be sending out a feedback form so I can gather additional feedback. I will use this feedback to improve the event for next year. These public pitchfork posts are not even remotely productive.
Like I said, condescension for speaking your mind. I’ll say it again.
The intention of this thread was not to talk bad about the event or you as the TD. It was 100% to bring the rule to light to bring a conversation up so OTHER TD’s can understand the implications of the rule and how it worked out in real life. Talking to you only about it would not have accomplished this. I knew you weren’t real thrilled about having to go to that rule as you redid the math something like 5 times.
I’m sorry you felt it was an attack on you but if you would have looked at what I’ve said multiple times, this was not directed at you but the rule itself.
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Good grief. No one cares if you speak your mind. The problem is the manner in which you choose to do it.
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Sorry that bringing up a rule that I feel is bad on a public forum that is dedicated to rules of the game is now not allowed or the proper manner to speak my mind.
As Colin said, Telling you it was a stupid rule at the event, was the wrong manner to bring it up. I’ll take that one on the chin as he was right. But to sit here and say that posting this thread on this forum is not the right place for a holistic conversation of a rule is beyond comprehension to me.
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Taking this to PM.
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Debate over these rules is a good idea, but can you avoid the description of the rule as “unfair”? The rule is clearly fair on its surface, it treats all players equally and gives no advantage.
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I guess I would suggest people do the exact opposite. Don’t get cute with your tie breakers - Have people play for the opportunity to be “in” or not. Have them play to the regular standard of your event. Don’t turn a tiebreaker into a sideshow.
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I still think the Beat It style knife fight is the best tiebreaker. No one wants to be defeated!
In any tournaments I run, I always have a primary tiebreaker metric that makes sense like number of firsts, number of seconds, etc. but I always have the secondary tiebreaker be a full game of pinball. If the tournament runs 10 minutes more, I think that’s totally worth it than denying someone their full opportunity to defend themselves in a tie.
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This could be solved by recording scores though. Then you could compare scores on the same machine. Scorbit for the win.
I would disagree. In every competitive event (pinball or otherwise) I’ve played or officiated, placing in the match, set, etc. is what mattered. Some players step up their games (or relax) depending on their opponents.
Likewise, comparing scores across matches means players with walk-offs will want to play out their games, further extending the event.
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One ball on Interflip Dragon. Most dragons wins.
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Play on a gottlieb manual loader EM. Must play all 5 balls at once.
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You’re absolutely right. Poor use of words but I just can’t think of another way of describing how I felt the rule was. Maybe, “not competitively adequate” would have been better.
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Haven’t seen you around in a long time. Miss seeing you at events. Hope you start coming around to league events again even though you kick my butt every time we play.
A number of comments about the whole thread and the points raised.
Clearly the tie-break rule isn’t unfair, as Bowen points out, it treats all competitors equally.
It was published beforehand, so everyone knew what would happen in the case of a tie.
However if a tie break rule has to stretch to a paragraph to explain it, it is clearly not ideal.
Using strength of opponents defeated/lost to is a poor metric to choose for 2 reasons.
Firstly unless each competitor plays the same opponents it is down to luck as to who you face and thus who your fate is decided by. IFPA ranking is only a good approximation with players in the top 250ish - players ranked lower can change their rank hugely by a single competition. I also believe that any tie/seeding/etc, should be judged on what has happened that tournament, not over a 3 year period previous.
This is surely the place to discuss issues/concerns like this. So that everyone can have an input and possibly come up with a better solution, rather than in a private conversation. As long as it’s kept civil and people don’t start to take personal offence there is no downside.
FWIW In comps I’ve ran (which haven’t followed a format like this) if the tie is only to break seeding/position it’s a coin toss. If the tie is for qualification or byes, head to head results are the primary factor, if still not resolved it goes to a 3 ball game.
Yes time is a major factor, but I’d rather it overran a little than compromise the integrity of the whole comp. Even better would be to have a format that you were sure fitted into your timescale comfortably - rather than chasing 100%TGP for max WPPR points.
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It’s simple, all tournaments should be required to have a Stars machine available for tie breakers, and any ties are decided on one game of Stars.
This way all tiebreaker games take about 3 minutes.
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I agree, but if you have a hard deadline approaching, you can’t start a tiebreak game that might not have time to finish. In that case, a timed ball allows players to still compete for the tiebreaker without resorting to math or coinflips.
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