Omnus wrote:
We ended up with 4 players who were 5-1. I played all 3 of the other ones. my other opponents went 3-3, 4-2 and 4-2. I think I ended up with 73% wins on my opponents. It was a tough day. It felt wierd to place above Shinja, who beat me but it was a hard day. He is getting my pass anyway. Honestly Daniel was going to give him the pass aswell if he ended up winning.
Must have been tough for Sithfan who was 4th and his only loss was to me by 1 point (52-51). I just think at the end of 6 rounds and you get 5 wins and 1 loss by only a single point. Thats damn close. Great Player too.
SoS does alot to show how tough it was for that player to get wins. It is helpful to get less drops because thats can really hurt people. I guess my point overall is that in alot of 4 round events I feel like I have one tough game but some events you get 4-6 tough games.
This is excellent and it shows exactly why SoS solved problems that Head to head first would create. Let's look at it the other way, if Head to head were 2 and SoS was 3. You played and beat 2 of the other 5-1s, so you would obviously be ahead of them. Shinja played 2 of the 5-1s and went 1-1 against them. But with H2H as 2, Shinja would place first, and you second. That certainly is no more fair than what TimmerB faced in 2007.
Now, the other issue, that I expect to be brought up here, is the playing of that last round. I know many players think the event should end when one undefeated is made, which can happen (and would have in your event) a round early, so after 5 rounds instead of 6. I have consistently argued against doing so (although in most local events it rarely bothers me because usually we all want to get out of there, particularly in sealed at midnight
). In championship play, you cannot do that. That final round has a lot to say on the final rankings, even in cases where it doesn't end up affecting 1st place. Sometimes you can end up with say 7 4-1s and one 5-0 after 5 rounds, and what if you are placing to 4?
In your case, Shinja's record prior to that last round probably was significantly less strong than yours. Heck, he would have at that point only had one game against a 4-1, and you would have already had 2. Playing that last round is critical in determining the true champion and more accurate final rankings. So I applaud you guys for doing it right. Swiss works best when you use all the rounds given, that is how the algorithm is set up to work, not to cut it short.
I think people often confuse the required number of rounds to get one undefeated (which is how Swiss determines the number of rounds) with the central idea being that you are trying to get one undefeated and that is it's only purpose. That is not the case. Swiss is meant to do several things. It is meant to allow each player to play every round. It is meant to determine a champion. It is meant to give fairly accurate ranks from top to bottom, and there is very strong mathematical proof that with each round, the rankings get better and better. Standardized testing with computer programs (like the GRE) use the same principle of weighting that Swiss formats use.
And I am not just saying it. I was a victim of it in 2007 I remind you all. I was the last 6-0 after 6 rounds. We had to play a 7th, I lost and ended up ranked 2nd in the top 8 that night, rather than 1st. I then had to play a tougher opponent than if I was 1st. There were 5 people at 6-1 that year. I beat number 3 (his only loss) and beat 2 5-2 people (neither of which made the top 8, but one was 9th I think). Number 1 (Dr. Divot) lost to number 3 but beat me. Now in our case, was it totally fair that I got dropped down to 2nd? Probably not because it was likely due to our early opponents, as we both beat equally strong players at the top, although I think mine was stronger overall. And head to head wouldn't have solved it as we had 3 6-1s who all played each other, and were each 1-1 against each other. Not to mention the 4-5 guys who did not play us. So you get my point here I think.