Scoring one day tournament events

[Wake of Godzilla]

Recently there was some debate over the future of the rankings in the way in which tournaments can be scored. I wanted to suggest a system to see what peoples thoughts where.

 

While over the Christmas break I was catching up with a bit of Rugby (union obviously) and looking at the points system they use in the Premiership. For those not in the know essentially the offer incentives for more interesting play – an additional point for the winning team for a runaway victory and an additional point for a close defeat.

 

Could this be used in a one day tournament to decrease the number of 2^nd and 3^rd tier tie breakers.

 

An example amendment could be - +1 TP for a win of 4 VP or more than your opponent and a +1 VP if you are 1VP difference of your opponent for a loss.

 

Could this work?

 

Could the > 4VP lead to an even greater swing if some 1^st round n00b stomping occurs?

[mythicFOX]

Toy Solider used to used this system for Malifaux a few years back.  I went into my last round (on table one) knowing that even if I lost that game 0-10 I would still win the tournament because I had enough bonus TP that no one could score more than me.  (I was using 1.5 broken Dreamer)

 

My issue with this system is this;

 

We have to begin from the POV that VP difference at the end of the game is reflective of the skill difference between the two players. You'll find that all things being equal as tournaments go on the average VP diff in games drops round on round as players are more accurately paired together by skill. 

 

Winning by a margin of more than 3VP really requires a significant skill gap between the players. I'd actually argue that where a game is won by 4VP or more the losing player must have made a blunder.  This means your chance of getting a higher VP win is better in the early rounds, the aforementioned "noob stomp". Therefore you're going to essentially hand bonus TP to players who get lucky pairings. 

 

This isn't a spectator sport. An 'interesting' (fun) game of Malifaux is a close game between well matched opponents, IE low VP Diff, not stomping people.

 

I'd actually rather see the reverse of this system and weight VPD lower in the calculations for early rounds to mitigate the noob stomp. Not encourage it.

[Wake of Godzilla]

Cool, thanks for your thoughts.

 

How many rounds was the Toy Soldier event? I'm thinking that this would only be for 3 round events. But by the sounds of things it just make the stompings have an even great swing. 

 

What are you suggesting (if anything) about the landslide victories? It already feels like winning big is a disadvantage as you are likely to meet a stronger opponent in the following rounds where an optimum strategy would be to have narrow wins in the early rounds and then a big win (if possible) in the late rounds. Would looking at bring down the VPD not add strength to this kind of play (not that I think anyone does it). 

[mythicFOX]

TS was 5 rounds, and is an extreme case.  

 

To be honest I think we have the right scoring system today.  The problem is (for the right reasons) we're pushing three round events beyond the number of players they can practically handle.   There's no escaping the fact that the more players we have the more rounds we need to come to a fair result.

 

I also think Diff is already doing the margin of victory element effectively as is.

[Tapdancer]

Large VPD is more about luck of the draw in terms of opponent, master matchup or a bit of critical luck/bad luck which make games swingy.  Even the sudo-submarining  of winning small doesn't work as an active playing strategy because round two/three you can run in to a high skill player who has drawn tough opponent early.

 

Everybody knows the answer is increasing round numbers that however brings all sorts of downsides.

[Oshova]

I would want to try squeezing more rounds into an event than having bonus points for stompings. Although, I could see the 1TP for a close loss being a nice thing to help seperate things out a bit. I know for sure that I would have scored more TP at the GT with that system... and I'm all for any system that means I get more TP =p

 

But seriously, 1TP for a close loss, 2TP for a draw, and 3TP for a win could work... but then winning isn't THAT great a thing. I certainly think it's something to be played around with... maybe 4TP for a win in that scenario? It would have to tested out at events... and in reality, those events may have to end up not being ranked... which means less people will attend in all likelyhood.

[Clousseau]

Interesting discussion, and I basically agree with James that the current system seems to work OK.

One problem can be first round match-ups (i.e. noob stomping for some, close calls for others), but I do feel this tends to even out over the rounds. I've tried playing with seeded or 'biased' pairings in Round 1, but it was very situational, and not something I'd offer as a solution (though I would consider it again if the circumstances were right).