I recently participated in a tournament where some questions about the new WPPR rules came up. Tagging @pinwizj for clarification, but posting publicly, since this seems to be the sort of forum to do just that.
It was a >64 player 3-mode tournament: First mode was 17 rounds of swiss system, with the best 32 players moving on. Second mode was round robin in 4 groups of 8, with the best 4 of each group moving on. Last mode was best-of-3 single elimination.
The two questions that came up were those:
Luckily, more than 64 players showed up, but it was tight. If it had been, say, 63 players, would that whole first 17 round tournament day have been void in regards to meaningful games played?
If so, I guess the only way for the TD to fix it, would be to cut down further than originally planned, adapt the subsequent modes on the fly, and start throwing around byes, which doesnât sound too appealing.
The last mode was planned as a best-of-3 single elimination, but in order to not strain the patience of the audience and to make the final match more interesting, it was decided to make that one final match a best-of-1 on a potentially long playing machine. Does that mean that with WPPR 5.1 the whole mode would be considered best-of-1, although all but one match were played as best-of-3?
The wording is clear, but the reasoning given seems to imply that the rule is just about preventing last round multi-game exploits, and this example is pretty much the opposite of that.
Yes - If that initial qualifying round didnât reduce the field by at least 50% the games wouldnât be included in the TGP calculation. Iâll typically warn any tournament director when the submit to the calendar if they have a fixed number of qualifiers, that they need to have 2X that number of participants. Usually they are confident that isnât a problem, but some will use that warning as a way to add details to the format (like if we have between 33 and 63 players we will only take 16 finalists after the first round).
The current rule is such that the number of games per round for TGP will include the round with the least amount of games played, so it would be 1 for each of the rounds even though the other rounds were played as a best-of-3.
The goal here is to get organizers to schedule events in a timeframe that will work for them, with the hope of maintaining a consistent, easy to understand format for everyone.
The exploit with respect to the final round being intentionally lengthened Iâve seen happen at other points in time during an event. The second most popular thing Iâve seen is a play in round for the âlast spotâ in the finals that can be a best of 15. In your tournament example it would be having the 32nd and 33rd place finishers playing this play-in match to determine who advances to the field of 32. Fun stuff indeed
Thanks for clarifying, this should help make our local TDs more aware of some of the eventualities that have to be planned for.
Just a quick follow-up, in a multi-mode tournament, is every mode that cuts down the field considered a âqualifying roundâ subject to the 50% rule, or is it just the first mode of a tournament, which most people would typically identify as the âqualifying roundâ?
The other way to deal with this in the published tourney rules, state that the lesser of 32 players or 50% of the field will make the finals. And have a finals format that can deal with the flexibility of not having the âcompleteâ number of finalists you anticipated. If you must have a certain number of finalists for a complete bracket purpose (typically 64, 32, 16, 8, etc), then state that âIf 64+ paricipants, 32 finalists. If 32-63 participants, then 16 finalists.â Etc etc.
I have a couple of questions to address to the IFPA. Rather than doing so privately, I will do it here to share the knowledge. I hope this thread is a reasonable place for this.
So, is it allowered to run an IFPA sactioned event having an element of player handicap? I would like to give novice players a benefit. Some extra tournament life.
Next, this is just a request for change. I know it is not allowered to have a best game tournament without a finals stage. And I know fully well why this requirement was installed. However, could it be allowered for single day events?
It is a nice extra thing to have at an event. And one of the appealing things about it, is that players can attend unrelated to each other. Those who want to play early in the day can do so. And those who want a crack at it late after their main tournament activity can choose to do so.
Short answer is No. Long answer is if you can find a way to do your event both ways you can âmake it workâ. I know that maybe Karl? had a Win-a-pin league where he kept two standings. One was for WPPRâs, and the other was based on the handicap system used for the matches. The pinball machine as top prize was given away to the âhandicap winnerâ, while the standings submitted to the IFPA were based on the non-handicapped results.
âSingle Dayâ is a meaningless distinction. Most of the 2800 events on our calendar are single day events. Thereâs a good chance based on the average player count that we see, most events have less than 40 players. Run a single game 4 player final and âcheck the boxâ for IFPA endorsement, because thereâs no exceptions here to getting around the direct play component. Those that happen to play early can find their way back to play in the âchampionship matchâ if they are really interested in participating.
Our SPL league uses handicapping in the following way:
Each event every player enters with their handicap rating and plays against people close to them in handicap in the first round. The next round is also grouped by handicapping. But once you get to the final round, itâs survival of the fittest so youâll still have the best players moving on, they just are forced to play against better players in order to get there.
The way we get away with reporting to ifpa is, each event doesnât get reported individually. We have a league finals (that is completely UN handicapped, in fact, we give byes to players with higher seed) at the end of the year that determines final results, and then we submit that for the year. Since Josh just sees a giant list once a year, he doesnât question the handicapping that is sprinkled throughout the year
Like the Pinburgh results, we trust our Tournament directors and league organizers to submit honest results based on IFPA endorsed activity . . soooo, yeahhhhhhhh
And here I was wondering why it wouldnât make sense to do 11 events but then we would lose the all the handicap âfunâ⌠I like the Olafâs yearly challenge with individual WPPR tourney using total WPPR for another âfinalâ at the end of the year
SPL is brutal, if you miss more than one, which means you must make 10 out of 11, itâs pretty much itâŚ
