[[first part edited, not useful discussion]]
If you have suggestions for improvement, please make them. Patrolling Round 10 diligently is not an option when there are 200 groups and 5 tournament directors.
I had a polite and positive conversation with Damien Charlety about this issue, and he had some positive suggestions for improving the quality of opponent selection while still addressing the issue of collusion.
This was an error on our part and we were about to apologize for it while posting about the reasons for the change. The official printed rules had the correct information, and somehow the website was overwritten or not updated; this will not happen again.
While there may have been agreement within the closed circle… I don’t know why you are taking it so personally when people react negatively to significant changes made without any announcement, transparency, or even way to know about it until it happened.
Not everyone will have the solution- but they should still be able to have an opinion on the outcome without fear of the wrath of the staff.
What the hell, @bkerins ? I started this post with an explanation of why I didn’t like the new format for Round 10 and backed it up with four or five reasons why I thought this (I also started the post with a disclaimer about how much we love the tournament etc, but whatever). Where exactly is all my “toxicity” and “disrespect” ?? Because of my shoe-bomber analogy above ? I actually think that is a perfect analogy here because the shoe-bomber is like the guy trying to collude in a pinball tournament, see ? And his selfish actions, are causing you and hundreds upon hundreds of good pinball citizens to have to change their ways for no good reason. Its that guy that I am calling an asshole.
No. I refuse to believe that it’s a problem that needs (or can be) fixed. Also, I am sorry that you find it amazing that I start with the assumption that everyone is trying their best and adjust my opinion from there. That seems cynical as hell to me, but as you said, you know things that I don’t know, but you can’t share them, so there really isn’t anywhere to move on this one.
Sure. If you would like to have Round 10 end with a tier where the groups are 1,32,33,64, 2,31,34,63, etc., then simply converge slower throughout the tournament so that round 10 is just the next progression in the series. It just felt weird to me (and lots and lots of other people I’ve talked with about it, although I won’t name names here) to “expand out” in Round 10 after converging for the first 9 rounds. I will greatly miss the old seeding structure for the many reasons that I presented above, but really, I don’t feel like my criticism here has been toxic or disrespectful at ALL.
It seems that in the case of round 10 seedings rule change, the argument is that the old tourney format encouraging not playing your best in some cases and proof of people doing it is justification for the rule change.
But, in the case of A/B/C/D qualifying, the tourney format clearly begging the question of whether one should sand bag to a large fraction of players, there’s evidence of it happening, yet there has not been a attempt to thwart it.
I’m not saying either decision the TDs have made is wrong, but the rhetoric used to justify each decision on this forum seems far too simple, because that rhetoric applied to the other situation would imply a different decision should be made.
2c from the peanut gallery of someone not able to make it this year :(.
I understand this was an honest mistake. I think that I would have made different pinball decisions had I been prepared for this situation. [quote=“bkerins, post:13, topic:2966”]
If you have suggestions for improvement, please make them. Patrolling Round 10 diligently is not an option when there are 200 groups and 5 tournament directors.
[/quote]
Introducing the ROUND 10 BONUS ROUND!!!
Tim’s first half-baked idea on what to do with Round 10. (I’ve thought about this for less than 20 minutes. Open to any and all suggestions.)
What’s before Round 10? Round 9. And what’s after? PLAYOFFS. With a coveted 4 Double Byes and 12 more single byes. But we don’t want these players to collude, we want them to BATTLE. How do we do that? By forcing them to fight for every last point!!!
Each of the top 4 (inclusive, round up if needed) players play the lowest seeds in the division. Are you totally eliminated from the tournament? Well it’s up to you to TAKE KEITH DOWN!!! Don’t worry, we’re all counting on you. 
What about the next 12 (round up if needed) players? They’re still in the hunt!!! But they have to prove they’re also able to seize every last point.
And the guys fighting for a top 40 spot? At this point, filling out the rest of the groups starting from the top of the remaining seeds, and adding players 1 point below each previous player removes the 6-6-6-6 collusion potential (unverified and untested) and still gives the players a reason to fight for every last point. Do you dare try to risk it all and jump your Pinburgh peer group to get into the single-bye tier from the 30th seed?
Every incident of throwing games that has been reported to a TD has been investigated and in some cases players have been penalized.
This year zero incidents were reported.
TDs cannot react to a problem if they are not made aware of it.
People claim ‘this person’ or ‘that person’ doesn’t belong in 'X" division. If a player does not meet the tournament restrictions, they are eligible to play in that division.
Pinburgh is a different tournament than the PAPA WC. At Pinburgh players make a division based on their performance, not any perceived skill level. Restrictions for Pinburgh are intentionally more lax than at the PAPA WC.
As the tournament grows we can look at expanding the restrictions.
As always if anyone wants to contact me directly about any Pinburgh related matter I can be reached via email: dougatpapa.org.
I meant, there has been no attempt to thwart people being motivated to sandbag through tournament format changes, like was done with round 10 changes.
Has any thought been givin to making the intentional 6-6-6-6 totally allowable and in some cases encouraged? In other professional high level gaming tournaments like Magic The Gathering, the final two rounds are full of “intentional draws”. These occur when both players agree it’s in their best interest to draw. Sometimes this does not align and then you have a “dream crusher” scenario, with one person playing for seeding while the other just wants to survive. It’s entirely up to the players.
Usually in the last round of these tournaments, there are only a few matches that actually get played out because of these intentional draws. Those are the players truly on the bubble and are known as “win-and-ins” and are quite exciting.
Maybe this would only work in a 100% Swiss tournament, but I’m throwing this idea out there because it appears to work for them. It’s just built in to the tournament structure.
Many A players were unhappy with the unbalanced round 10; I had several ask me if I agreed with them that it was a bad thing to do. The only thing I heard more complaints about was the crappy wifi during the Intergalactic that backed up scorekeeping there.
My own experience has been to be near the cut line most years for round 10 and while we kidded about chopping [we all knew where we stood, you can’t help but think “what if” somewhere along the way], none of my groups ever did, we all played hard knowing that anyone who did well enough even in the cut-level groups could rise up to get a single bye, as each time someone did. I had to survive tiebreakers for the A finals the previous two years as a result. I know of other cases where one or two players knocked the others in their round 10 groups out of contention in the first two or three games, but even knowing they were eliminated, the others still played hard games 3 and 4 and knocked those players out, too. [Me, at least once.]
Sorry, Bowen, as a math guy, I have to disagree. Examine the situation where two players have identical records for rounds 1-9, and thus played nearly identical level opponents in each of those rounds, with one being assigned position #64 for round 10 and the other #65. The opportunity to advance is definitely not equal for these two players, despite the fact that they have performed the same up until now. And the nuance that they played slightly different people and thus aren’t “totally identical” actually could be construed as a very small bit of unfairness en route, so I consider that not to be a way out of this.
The “equal treatment” argument fails in that while who gets the harder road is random, it’s the fact that the hardness differs that matters, not that they’re equally likely to have to take the harder road. Sure, if both players were 64th and 65th several years in a row, it would statistically even out, but that’s not going to happen.
My own opinion is that it was a flawed idea [“bad” is too harsh a term], but I understand that it was an honest effort to deal with a real problem for which there is no perfect solution. Come game 4 of round 10, there will be some who know they’re out, some who know they’re in and or have one or more byes, some who know they’re in but can’t improve further to get a bye, and some still not sure if they’ll make it or not. Those whose situations are fixed can choose to play hard or not with no consequences to themselves, only to other players. This will occur whether the round 10 groups are balanced or not; it’s just a little harder for the players to figure it all out when it’s unbalanced. In the unbalanced case, they can’t all be “winners” [i.e. qualify] by colluding, but the potential to not try hard and have that help someone else still exists.
FWIW, I looked at the results for the last few years, and more often than not, agreeing to split amounts to someone giving up a bye opportunity most of the time. The difference between top 16 and top-40-but-above-the-tiebreaker is often exactly 3 points. To do the chop this year in A, for instance, the players would have needed to be 73-72-71-70 going into the final game, so they could all come out the other end at 73. But the person with 73 would have gotten a bye had they won that last game to get to 76 points. Ditto B division with 69 for a bye vs. 66 for safe without tiebreaker and 66 vs. 63 in C. This doesn’t prevent collusion, obviously, but should be noted.
Let me know if you want me to participate in discussion of possible changes to this year’s system; I agree going back to the “all even” plan may be too risky, but I think there may be a variation of this year’s plan that would “feel fairer” to the players involved.
I think avoiding any way to cheat is the right answer.
But surely Isn’t the.answer play better? Then it doesn’t matter what happens in the last round?
Just want to say that Adam started this post off with a praise-fest for pinburgh - and as someone myself who has tried to offer constructive feedback in the past, and taken some heat, i know exactly why he did that - he didn’t want to be “reprimanded” for trying to discuss something.
The moment I started reading his post I though to myself “don’t want to get anyone bent out of shape lolz”…
Players are going to want to talk about events, and subjects and sometimes its going to be about things players didn’t enjoy - but for the most part it will be with good intentions.
Replies like this from tournament staff are why a bunch of people I know do not give feedback for events - they don’t want to be accused of mortally wounding or pissing off event staff for trying to discuss something.
But surely each player in your group is in the same situation?
What you are actually complaining about is that you did not have the opportunity to ask other people you knew how the specific tables were playing?
You did not have the opportunity to try and gain an advantage based on table specific knowledge?
Would you have been happy knowing you had won based on the fact that you knew a specific issue with a given table which your competitors did not know? I certainly wouldn’t be, but some people have the win at all cost mentality.
Surely the sign of the better pinball players is the ability to adapt to any given situation on a table as they play it - not be fed information as to how it plays to use to their advantage or the detriment of other players?
I’ve seen a bit of this and I made a comment to that effect myself, but I think in many cases it’s people that know each other and the comment about not belonging is more in the friendly jibe territory than an official complaint. For me, I know a couple of fellow league members had crappy Thursdays and ended up in D, but they’re much better players than the average D player.
I don’t like this because at Pinburgh, we’re not talking about a handful of players, we’re talking about hundreds in each division. A group of 4 choosing the intentional draw can have ramifications for others not in the group, and while personal advancement is the goal for everyone, this tournament has a well-ingrained desire for each participant to do their very best at all times. Allowing the intentional draw would fly in the face of that.
Don’t call me Shirley
If collusion was known to happen for a fact (which it sounds like it is), I’m curious what the penalty was to those players involved. Round DQ, Tournament DQ, future sanctions from participating?
Might make people think twice about doing it in the future if they know what exactly the penalty is.
Bowen’s reaction is not typical of PAPA’s staff. Please understand that we have all poured over 100 hours of work (just in the last 7 days) into this tournament to make it happen. That workload makes some folks a little more emotional.
I stopped and had a conversation with Adam about this very thing Saturday morning as we were preparing the broadcast. I thought both sides were very respectful and Adam presented a reasonable argument. I’m not going to promise any changes at this juncture because we are only two days removed from the event. I want to ensure changes we make are for the good of the event and not reactionary based on emotionally fueled feedback.
As always, I really appreciate the discussions where possible solutions are offered. We’ve had many changes over the years to the event and most resulted in a positive outcome.
Keep the feedback coming!
This is indeed that conversation. Adam was very respectful and I thought I also was in kind.
