I had three minor issues at my DCI tournament yesterday all of which relate, at least partially, to the DCI Reporter software. I would like to get the general consensus about these issues from those here who play a lot of DCI and/or use the DCI Reporter software a bunch.

First issue:

We had 15 players and went four rounds of Swiss. Some of the participants were upset because I didn't "cut to the top 4" (or 8 ) after the Swiss rounds. Frankly, I didn't see a need for it as it would only extend the tournament another two hours or more -- time we didn't have left at the convention. Besides, I don't see anything wrong with doing a standard Swiss tournament and declaring winners after the four rounds when there are so few players. This is exactly what was done at GenCon for the non-Championship games I played in.

So...given 15 players, is four rounds of Swiss sufficient or do you prefer playing Swiss then having single-elimination for the top few players?


Second issue:

The player who took fourth place thought he should have had third place. Honestly, I was surprised he finished fourth, but that's what the Reporter software figured. When looking closer, the third place winner lost only to the first place winner and the fourth place winner lost only to the second place winner. So, clearly strength of schedule was a factor.

I know there's lots of complaining about how the DCI Reporter software figures standings, but given that the fourth place player was consistently higher in the standings throughout the tournament than the third place player, right up until the final results, everyone was a bit shocked. What's the opinion of this?


Third issue:

Two brothers were paired against one another in the first round. I didn't notice this until the pairings had already been publicly announced. So, it was pretty much too late to do anything.

I know from personal discussions with them and their parents about their HeroClix tournaments, they get really p***ed off when they are paired against one another. Well, the boys were asking to switch with other players, Dad was pretty miffed yesterday and I anticipate Mom giving me a word or two at our local game tonight.

Anyway, assuming I'd actually paid enough attention ahead of time to catch the pairing, should I have reshuffled everybody in the DCI Reporter until Brother 1 and Brother 2 were no longer paired? Or should they -- like everybody else -- just have to suck it up and deal with the random first-round pairing of the computer. I mean, how fair is it for the Guy Who Learned To Play Yesterday who gets paired against the Guy Who Has Played for Years? Why should brothers or friends or whatevers have any "special considerations" over everybody else?



Just some questions I'd like to see discussed. Thanks.

1st Issue:
Yes, 4 rounds is enough to have a clear winner at the top for 16 or less players. Basically, the easy way to tell if you've done enough rounds is to see if the top two players have the same record or not. With 15 players, and 4 rounds, you should have had only player at 4-0, then probably 3-5 at 3-1, etc.

I know of places that typically do 3-4 rounds, and then cut to either a top 4 or a top 8, but it really isn't necessary. The ONLY time I have ever done a tournament with a cut to a top group was the Championships at GenCon. The tourney I did at Dragon*Con (that you were in as well, now that I think about it) was just a straight up Swiss, and as you pointed out, so were all the other tournies at GenCon other than the Championships.

2nd Issue:

Strength of Schedule ALWAYS plays a factor. We had a question about that just yesterday because both the 2nd and 3rd place guys were 3-1. You will almost always end up with situations like that when doing Swiss events. It just happens. However, the DCI software is very good about determining who had the harder schedule to play (the number to the right side, usually like 68, or 55, or something like that for the 2nd place people, is the percentage of how often your opponents won).

What's really screwy is when the person in 3rd place actually beat the person in 2nd place. But it is possible, if they both end up with the same record (say 3-1) but the person in 2nd had to play much tougher opponents all day, while perhaps the 3rd place person played a couple of newbies in the first round or two. Actually, I've seen this happen several times to whoever loses the final game to the winner of the tournament. One person comes out of that game at 4-0, the other at 3-1, but based on how often their opponents won, that 3-1 person can sometimes get knocked down to 3rd or 4th place. It's basically an indication that you got to that final game by getting lucky pairings against weak opponents, and in the end, the Strength of Schedule calculation actually shows that other players were probably actually better players, just that they had tougher opponents.

3rd Issue:

They didn't do re-pairings at GenCon when a bunch of guys from our LGS all ended up playing each other in the Championships. Honestly, we have a decent group of guys from our store, and 3 or 4 that could have probably made the finals. However, there were at least 4 games were someone from our store had to play someone else. One of our guys played 3 other people from our own store within those 7 rounds. It's a random software, and if you are brothers/friends that play regularly together at the same place, you have to just be ready for that random pairing to happen. Heck, if both of those brothers were winning their games early on, every game they won increased the chances of them getting paired against each other. It's bound to happen eventually.

You're analogy about the newbie vs. the veteran is perfect. If the parents try to give you crap about it, just tell them straight up, "It's completely random, and it's not really fair to everybody else to re-shuffle everything just because you don't like it. If your kid was a pro and got randomly paired with a brand new player in the first round, and the new player asked to get re-paired with someone else, would you complain then?"

Life happens. "Get over it" is what my drama teacher in high school would say.

Well, as long as you run enough rounds, you can always get down to 1 clear cut winner. It's just a matter of whether it's completely indicative of who really is the best players. Sometimes it is, sometimes you won't know that unless you run the top 8 or top 4 separately. Like at our own LGS yesterday. Guy playing Boba BH managed to Disintegrate I think 6 pieces in the first 3 games (2 in each). And then I wiped him out quite cleanly in the final game with my Han Cannon squad. He had a good squad build, and quite likely could have beat the other players anyways (I believe at least one of the Disintegrations he got was on a nearly dead piece anyways). And we only had 10 people in our group anyways. A cut to the top 4 at that point, probably would've ended up with the same results overall.

There was a reason for this, but it's not my place to say what it was. I think it's obvious to anyone who thinks about it for very long.

In theory I like the idea of a 4/8 person playoffs at the end of a tourny. In practice it was pretty rough the one time my LGS tried it.

1. Generally 4 rounds is enough. A clear winner is decided. However if your entire group (before starting) is interested in playing minis for 7-8 hours then by all means run single-elim rounds. Personally, I've had enough after 4-5 hours and my group pretty much all feels the same way. The difference between finishing 3rd and 4th is inconsequential to you DCI ranking which doesn't care, and generally mostly inconseqential to the way we do prize support. (We crack all boosters and pick from top to bottom, then back up to top. With the exception of picking first, shifting one place rarely means much--if a chase figure popped it's gone and beyond that almost everyone is friendly enough to trade or give a piece someone really needs.)

2. See above. They tied. Tiebreakers are never perfect, and you played the same regardless of whether DCI puts that 3rd or 4th. If the reason people are upset is due to prizes, change the way you do prizes.

3. Too bad so sad. The system works the way it does and it's random. Explain it politely as possible but reshuffling is an abuse and should not be allowed even in the first round. My brother and I get stuck playing each other all the time in tourneys. It just means more trash talking.

Heh, this is exactly how we do it at our store to, and MANY times the person who comes in first will end up choosing a lesser piece to let someone down the line get a VR/R they are missing or something like that. Heck, last thursday, I got 1st place for the night, but I picked a Rebel Vanguard for my first piece, as I didn't care for either of the Rares that we pulled, and the other guys wanted them.

As for the biggest reason against doing play-offs, I think it's quite obvious that time constraint is the killer most of the time. People who play on a Saturday afternoon, often have the freedom to do 3 or 4 rounds, and then a top 4 play-off. But at our LGS on Thursday nights, we start playing at 7:30. If we do 200 points, we're lucky to get 3 rounds finished before some of the younger kids' parents start showing up and making their kids leave. So, there's many times where we have 9 or more people (which would dictate 4 rounds for a clear winner) but we play 200 points, and only do 3 rounds, and call it at that. Then if there are people tied at 1st place, if they want to fight over the top pieces in the prize support, we tell them to either play a game between themselves, or flip a coin.

In Carbondale, (Gametown of the Godfather) Moses pretty well does all of our tournament organizing. He wants me to take it up from time to time, but I am not a sanctioned Tournament Organizer. The problem with cutting to a top 4-8 and then doing a playoff is that in addition to time constraints, (Moses's wife likes him home before 11), there is little for the other people to do during those elimination rounds if they want to get their prize support.