Let's talk about initial seeding in tournaments

[ryanwanger]

@Slamtilt

I hear what you’re saying, but when it comes to competitions that are paying out large sums of money or prizes of large value, I’m not sure that catering to those that need encouragement is the correct way to go about it.

I don’t mean to argue that we should be catering to those that need encouragement…I’m more of the position that we shouldn’t cater to the highest skilled players - which is what happens if an open event seeds based on the WPPR ranking.

I think poker is a pretty fair comparison to pinball in that they have a similar mix of luck and skill in the short term (although the luck factor is higher in poker, and pinball gives more opportunities to make decisions per match/game/event/hand/ball).

@Slamtilt

this almost never, if ever, happens is any other form of competition.

I don’t quite understand your point here…is it that other competitions always seed based on skill? The heads up championship of poker uses random pairings: National Heads-Up Poker Championship - Wikipedia

@chuckwurt

I must be misunderstanding this. Are you doing initial pairing based off ifpa rankings and doing slaughter?

Nearly all leagues here form groups by pairing people of similar ranks/skills. The largest monthly creates groups in a similar manner to initial Pinburgh groups would be formed (ie: with 16 players…group one is 1,8,9,16, group two is 2,7,10,15, etc). It’s round robin where you play everyone in your group twice (and groups are 5 or 6 people generally). This round robin is the qualification portion of the tournament. Top two advance out, and everyone else goes home.

@unsmith

It’s tricky, because past a certain point, IFPA ranking means nothing. I’ve heard this described anywhere from 500+ to 50+. Unless you’re at a high major or happen to have a glut of high ranking players in your area, IFPA ranking is likely to be almost as random in terms of true skill as drawing names from a hat past the top 5 or so.

Are you suggesting that difference in the “true skill” of a player ranked 500 and one ranked 5000 is basically random? I couldn’t possibly disagree more.

I agree that past a certain point, it probably doesn’t mean much, but if we must declare a point, it’s way into the thousands. Drawing the line at the Top 5 is preposterous.

@Slamtilt

I think the situation you’re talking about here would be better applied to tournaments that have an open format with no qualifying component.

Absolutely, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. My two examples were of events where players were immediately seeded into “fair” groupings based on past performance.