Reading this in the context of @pinwizj’s role in his day job makes this even funnier.
@pinwizj, since this thread has been necroed now anyway, here’s something I’ve been wondering about:
What’s the definition of the “qualifying portion” of a tournament, or more specifically, does it make sense to always consider the first stage of a multi-staged tournament its “qualifying portion”, regardless of whether that stage is direct play or not? Whenever the rules talk about the qualifying portion, there’s always language like “qualifying attempts”, “(un)limited qualifying attempts”, etc., and I feel like the “eliminate 50% of players, else it’s seeding” rule was made specifically for non-direct-play qualifying situations, to avoid people exploiting pre-tournament play for TGP.
The reason I’m asking is that this can be awkward for multi-staged direct-play-only tournaments, where I want a specific number of players in each stage for the formats to make sense. Like, I want to start with 2^n players, so that’s how many players I go for, and eliminate down to 2^(n-1) for the second stage, but if only one doesn’t show up, that’s it, first stage doesn’t count. Can’t take more registrations, either, just to be safe, because there’s no place for more players in the format. That wouldn’t be an issue at all if I had an actual “qualifying portion”, where I can take an arbitrary number of players and just eliminate however many I need to for the direct play formats to work–but most tournaments in my neck of the wood don’t do it this way.
So, I guess this boils down to, what was the thinking behind the “eliminate 50%” rule, and does that actually apply to direct-play-only tournaments?
I wonder how helpful it would be to, regardless of format, change that 50% rule to something like 55%. That would give leeway on a capped format (say, 64 players max), so if one or two people don’t show up, you can still take the top 32 without screwing up your next phase of the tournament.
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Practically speaking, that would go a long way towards making this a non-issue.
From a rules consistency perspective, there’s the question, though, why this rule should apply to only the first stage of a tournament and not the later stages. For the tournaments I think the rule was originally written for, the answer is probably because the first stage isn’t direct play and allows for TGP exploits. For direct-play-only tournaments I don’t think this makes much sense, since there isn’t a fundamental difference between the stages.
Pretty sure the rule applies to all stages.
Direct play or not
Oh interesting I guess that makes sense for ladder formats
IMO I think the rule is there not for the fairness of TGP but for the integrity of pinball tournaments and making sure people who go to a tournament get to have fun and guarantee a certain level of quality. Would you really want to go to a 100 person tournament where you play three games against people and the top 4 make final four? Basically anyone who got 1st-1st-1st? It’s like launch parties all over again…
That’s the argument for the 10% rule. But you’re talking about the 50% rule, right? Hmmm yeah I thought for a while and I actually can’t give a good reason why it should be allowed in finals but not qualifying… I guess because by definition the first round is QUALIFYING and any other later rounds are FINALS and thus are just plain treated differently.
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How is qualifying defined? The period of time before anyone has been eliminated?
The distinction of when a player’s seed is ‘locked in’ is what we look at, regardless if that qualifying portion is DIRECT or INDIRECT.
If a player’s previous activity is never wiped clean, then there wouldn’t be any distinction between qualifying and finals.
For example 10 group play rounds, and every round the lowest 4 players are eliminated. This is perfectly fine to all be considered “meaningful” because there’s no distinction between qualifying and finals.
For Pinburgh the seeds get locked in for finals once 40 players remain. At that moment all previous qualifying activity has no impact on where players move in the standing.
That’s the moment in time where we ask, did the tournament have more than 80 players? If the answer is yes then all of that qualifying activity is ‘fine’. If the answer is no then it’s not.
@umbilico I would need more details on your format with respect to what the “stages” mean, specifically how those stages carry forward from one to the next in order to answer your question.
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Okay, I think I get the idea. Two questions about that:
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If there are three stages, and the previous activity is wiped clean after each one (except for seeding the next stage), does this mean the 50% rule applies to all of them, and not just the first? Say, first stage some rounds of group play, then eliminate half. Second stage grouped round robin seeded by the first stage results, then eliminate half. Third stage single elimination, seeded by the second stage results. Does the rule apply to both the first and second stage then?
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How “clean” does “wiped clean” have to be? E.g. first stage is 4 strike knockout, second stage is group play, but players take their remaining strikes as points into the match. Or first stage head to head matchplay, and the results are used to break ties in the second round. Both certainly have some sort of impact on where players move in the standing, but is it enough to not apply the 50% rule?
Btw, part of the confusion on my part is that that “locking in” of the seed isn’t big around here. I know there’s lots of US tournaments where there’s an actual qualifying round, the results of which inform game and position choices throughout the rest of the tournament, but that’s not a concept I’ve ever personally encountered in a tournament I’ve played in.
Our experience is mostly with tournaments that have a qualifying/finals distinction if you will, so it’s hard for me wrap my head around some of these hypotheticals.
Ultimately we’ll have to just review the actual format you’re proposing when it’s submitted, and can provide feedback at that time.
Those “hypotheticals” were all actual large tournaments I participated in. I get that you prefer judging on a case by case basis, so let me give you some big picture info to help with that:
In all the tournaments I’ve ever played in, in several different countries, the only times anyone was ever allowed to choose a machine or position was when this was mandated by IFPA rules (e.g. ECS finals). This just isn’t done, the concept of using the first stage results to determine a bus driver in later stages doesn’t exist. Even when matchplay.events says that some player “chooses position”, everybody knows to ignore that and that the actual play order is the order in which the players are listed, that’s so clear to every participant that it isn’t even announced at tournament start.
That’s something to keep in mind when reviewing tournament formats—it just doesn’t make much sense to anyone in this part of the world that the first stage of a tournament won’t count because not enough people were eliminated, so it was just “seeding”. Well, there wasn’t any meaningful “seeding” going on, either, so I guess we were just twiddling our thumbs then.
Let me give you an example, the last tournament I played in was this: First stage 96 players head to head Swiss, eliminate half, 48 players left. Second stage, 6 groups of 8 players round robin, eliminate half, 24 players left. Third stage, 3 rounds of best-of-3 single eliminmation, 3 players left. Fourth stage one 5-ball game. Nobody ever chooses a machine or position. Well, there weren’t 96 players to begin with, so they had to cut down to 44 players and fill up the 4 empty spots with byes for the second stage. After that, it was no problem at all to cut down to 24 players to get back on track with the format, because for some reason the 50% rule was very important for the previous stage, but not at all for this one. I bet you all my WPPRs that none of the participants could tell you why that makes sense.
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You don’t need to cut the field in half every time. If I understand correctly, you just need to be having players drop off at some point. Since each stage loses players in this format, I believe that every part of this event will feed the value for IFPA. Even if you didn’t cut the field in half each time. Look at a ladder format. You only lose one player per game. That all counts. And each game can be seen as a stage.
In your scenario above, had stage one eliminated no one, it would be like the tournament hasn’t even started yet, because that play has no bearing on the outcome of the event.
I could be wrong on all this btw. But as I type I totally see why the IFPA looks at these events on a case by case basis. Haha
It is my understanding that I don’t need to cut the field in half in any stage except the first, but if I don’t do it in the first, e.g. I cut the 89 players down to 48 to make the format work without having to give out byes, that’s a whole tournament day of 16 rounds head to head matchplay that won’t count jack for the TGP.
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Yeah I was staying that you don’t need to cut 50% in stage one either. You’re losing players every stage, while having direct play the whole time. I think you’re good. Like ladder format. I think you can have different stages of a tournament without having qualifying be any of them.
You’re tournament starts immediately. No qualifying to determine anything. It just starts. I see your tournament as being multistage finals. No qualifying. All counts towards TGP.
I agree with your interpretation, but this has not been the IFPA’s stance in the past. A few years ago, there actually was a tournament with pretty much the same format I described, planned for 64 players, but one of them didn’t show up, so the whole first stage didn’t count.
Well that’s stupid. Haha
It seems like this is the first point in the tournament that you are “locking in seeds”?
Unless your single elimination bracket pairings are decided randomly or change each round?
Any prior stage seems ‘fine’ to me as there is no distinct separation to what would feel like a “finals”.
I actually don’t know how the single elimination bracket was seeded, but here’s what I’m thinking, please tell me if you agree: If the stage 3 single elimination is also seeded by stage 1 results, then clearly the seeds were locked in after stage 1 for the rest of the tournament, so the 50% rule should apply to stage 1. If it’s seeded by stage 2 results, then the seeds for the “finals” clearly weren’t locked in until after stage 2, so the 50% rule should apply to stages 1 + 2 combined. If it’s seeded randomly, or by current IFPA rank or whatever, then this obviously isn’t one of those tournaments that lock in seeds for the finals at any point at all, so the 50% rule shouldn’t apply to any of the stages. Am I close?
The thing is, people sometimes ask me about their formats and how they fit the current WPPR rules, and I’d like to be able to give them some informed advice, because often there’s a language barrier to clearing things up with you directly, and it’s just easier this way. It would be very helpful for me to know if I got the gist of the rule, so if I tell someone they’re gonna be fine eliminating less than half, they’re not in for a bad surprise.