Only a couple of days after it’s over and we’ve already got a good pool idea. As long as EVO can implement this without too many obstacles this should be good.
Just a suggestion for EVO next year:
Have one group use all 16 monitors on one side, and one group use all 16 monitors on the other side. You could have pools done in 1 hr 30 min this way. Then just have pools assigned every 2 hours so you don’t get a clump of 400 ppl waiting on each side of the room. Makes for a steady flow.
had
The whiteboard suggestion (if you were responding to me) was only so that you could easily see whether or not you need to go to the front of your pool and get ready to play shortly by glancing over and seeing if your name is written down on it. The brackets would still be a separate thing, the whiteboard-on-a-stick would just be a way to get peoples attention.
I approve of this method and it would be great, quick and much easier to manage.
However I see the only backlash of 128, 16 man pools being people who are late or out of ear shot for some reason. While I agree it’s ultimately their fault in most cases, the blocking of brackets from progressing due to people wandering out of earshot will increase. That problem however, is easily covered by a more stringent time slotting system and further solidification of the rules to make sure people don’t think they fuck around and waste the other player’s in their brackets time. You’d have a hard time convincing me that you need to go eat or were justifiably missing for over 15 mins when there is only 8 matches in the first round.
This also would make it easier to stream without long ass delays for the rest of the bracket.
omfg QFT… i’m still hoarse from calling out my pools names.
yeah i likes these ideas too.
That’s fantastic news Tony. This was my first EVO and going to Vegas in July will now be my yearly “thing”, even after I move to the UK! 
I was thinking of only spectating next year and not participating because of the pool stress from this year, but this new system you speak of sounds fantastic and it looks like I’ll have to register again next year 
Tony, that makes a lot of sense. How do you think you’d time it though? I think in SSFIV, a 16 man bracket on 3 setups would take about 2.5 hours max. 32 runners assigned to 4 pools each, 32 pools at a time? 1-32A, B, C, D. 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm. 9pm start the 16x16 brackets. Finish by 11:30~12 again. Or was that too late this year?
Very happy to hear that, Tony. Thanks for listening to the feedback.
heres my suggestion:
stop bitching and making suggestion threads.
so instead of 16 128 man pools, you’ll have 128 16 man pools? Hopefully you won’t have to buy too much equipment and the space will be accomendating enough for all those pools.
If you ever get someone to sponsor for laptops as well as the monitors, you’re welcome.
16 128 man pools or you’ll have 128 16 man pools are no big different. you can save more time and use the same number of setup(equipment).
you tell those people(16) when to show up and finish their pool before they can leave.
128 people a pool is hard to manage and sometimes you have to wait 30mins+ before you play a game.
I would think the pools would run even faster if you consider that there will be much more space (with so many pools there won’t be so many people in the room at once)
I think it’s a good idea.
The advantage is that every player’s match times are kept within a smaller time window. Like you said, matches can be played in bunches, which results in fewer DQ’s and less waiting.
However, the disadvantage is that it is more prone to statistical anomalies. Let’s suppose a pool has 3-4 very strong players, while another pool may have zero players of the same calibre. It’s a bit of an injustice to a player who is 3rd best in his pool, but would be the best in just 100 other pools. Or, what if one half of a 16-man bracket has a bye, and 2-3 disqualifications. A player can potentially advance to the next round by winning one match. I realize that all of this can potentially happen even with the current format, and that the luck of the draw will always be a factor, regardless of how the brackets are set up.
I would think somewhere in the middle would be best. 64 x 32 man brackets (preferable) or even 32 x 64 man brackets. A tournament can still be completed within a reasonable time frame. Still manageable by a single tournament director (Most local tournaments are about this size anyway). Yet less prone to those shock statistics. Also, the second round would leave 128 players remaining, which is manageable under a single semi-finals bracket. Only three rounds are necessary.
64 Pools of ~32 players each (top 2 qualify)
~1 Semi-finals bracket of 128 players (top 8 qualify)
1 Finals bracket.
NOTE: I am not Evo staff, so take my answers with a grain of salt.
In all fairness, I think the one problem with proposing the 128 16-man pools is that scheduling them might be a bit hectic. It wouldn’t just be Pools A to H in the morning and Pools I to P at the afternoon. People will still have to be around no matter what, and that will still cause DQs in one way or another. Hell, we might even have more DQs because we’ll be leaving less time for the players to arrive.
As a judge, I would love the megaphones to be around, but it would also pose a problem, since having that many stations, and that many judges, all you’re probably going to be hearing all weekend long ARE the megaphones. Ponder’s idea for 16 man pools would also rectify this situation since we’d just need 16 people to be around. If we switch from a 128 man bracket to a 16 man, the megaphones become obsolete.
Someone mentioned carrying laptops around with texting capabilities for Twitter and such. This would be awesome, but it would be expensive or just a little improbable to get a sponsor for all the laptops, since Alienware is already providing Evo with their monitors and external speakers. The other part that I actually like about having a printed out bracket is that you can’t hide changes. If you start giving people Tournament Maker, it would be nearly impossible (next to having the Cannons and Wizard keeping backups of the original brackets and actually checking/comparing) to enforce judges not providing floats or making changes to the bracket. This access gives them enough administrative freedom and opportunity to attempt to get away with it. There’s been some talk about integrating a text feature to Tournament Maker in the past, but having all these laptops would make it a bit cumbersome. Evo staff would also need to purchase Wi-Fi from wherever things are being hosted in order to send out the texts. Using Twitter might be a good idea, but the results might be a bit limited. You would need to have a very specific hashtag such as #evo2010ssf4poolp and then call for the match.
As for people suggesting that we run the brackets from top to bottom: that’s what most judges were doing. We were instructed to run first matches, then one round of winners, two of losers, etc. If some names were not being called, it would usually indicate that the first person to be called for your match did not answer, which limited the need of calling your name (ie. I have to call a Sanford/fanatiq match in Marvel, I would just call the first person’s name, and if they didn’t answer, I would just skip to the next one to save time and my voice since your match would not be up anyways). I understand that this ended up with some people wondering if they were being called and I deeply apologize for it, but both myself and SK (we ran SSF4 pool B and I ran Tekken pool P as well as Marvel pool 4) agreed that we would speed up the whole process as such. We had to run every available match until we would hit the DQ phase, and from what I could tell, we did a good job at it, as well as the other judges.
I can’t comment on the stream and commentary for obvious reasons, but SweetJohnnyCage posted this earlier that makes sense:
Addressing the desire to have a commentator that can be heard on Evo floors, I don’t approve. These get in between the players and the game currently being played. You don’t hear TNT and ESPN staff while you go watch a basketball game live, do you? Let’s say for example, I specifically practiced something against a specific player, and one of the Tekken commentators notices it and mentions it over a loudspeaker, and the other guy I’m playing hasn’t specifically noticed. He just told him something about my strategy and it gets in the way. Commentating is for the live stream as well as the televised special (airing on July 20th folks!) and it should stay as such.
The stage was awesome! Everything looked completely sweet. But in the end, the critiques are somewhat justified. Yes, there were a lot of people and things in the way. The only way to get around this would be to have the players actually play somewhere that isn’t on the main stage in order for the display to be completely free, but this would probably seep away some of the “main event” feel that the stream setup actually offers. I’m pretty sure Justin wouldn’t have been that sweaty in his Vangief match if it wasn’t because he was up there on the spot. This could probably be remedied by placing stands and spaces for camera equipment on the exterior in a way that would not intervene. An example of this was when the matches were played on the furthest setup to the right of the stage. Less people and gear would be in the way.
By the way, Alienware setups were AWESOME. I’ve had my run-ins with my Asus monitor for Tekken, noticing a little lag (you can feel it when you try and break throws on it) and I felt none of that on the Evo setups. Many thanks to Evo staff and Cicada for doing the adequate tests in order to make the decision and finding an awesome piece of hardware for the community.
Someone suggested numbering the matches: something like this was the system attempted at Evolution 2002. When you entered, you were given cards with your match number. It was good, until people started trading their cards. I don’t believe it happened, but the possibility of losing your match was pretty big. Shortly after, this method was scrapped since I don’t remember it existing for Evolution 2003.
For the person saying that matches needed to be assigned to stations beforehand, that could work, but it also means that if you want to keep it strictly to that, you lose the option of playing with player availability. We judges were told to keep as many matches “on deck” as possible so things would run smoothly. All of these things depend on player availability, so it’s not necessarily the tournament organizer’s, nor the judge’s, nor the bracket’s fault. Some people just don’t show up on time and mess it up for the rest of us.
Online brackets face the same problem as mentioned for the laptops earlier in my reply. You give the judge too much control.
All in all, Evolution 2010 was a professional and awesome experience. Japan noticed it too, since now they’ll be getting their own. 
Huge steps were taken this year and what you saw is a refined product. Big ups to the Cannons, MrWizard, Level-Up staff and everyone else running things. I’ll be there again next year to help out.
Cheers,
Paco Vilaró
I remember that moment from the stream. You’re voice and demeanor is very appealing and hype. Reminded of the classic Cyclops moment “WE JUST GOT A REAL MATCH!”
And if I could throw in a request it would be to please ask jchensor to do the finals videos at evo2011. The 09 ones could have used some flashier editing, but were beautiful and hype ideas.
“crossposted” from monitor thread
It might be good to move the pools further away from the main speakers. This is a magnificent video:
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YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.
showcasing how bad the audio was on the TVs on the back left of the room (from door) where Marvel was being run. You can’t hear anything. And this is during a quiet time in pool 3 (middle of the room, really): there pretty much was no audio at all in pool 1 between the quiet monitors and the HYPE from the crowd/speakers. If you watch some of MegamanDS’s videos in striderzer0’s playlist you’ll see he’s not following up on stuff that he usually would… I personally feel that’s because there’s no audio cues. I was having the same problem myself.
Bringing external speakers for the monitor you’re playing on might not be a bad idea to gain that extra “know what you’re doing” edge. 
I wasn’t there, but was there quikc and easy access to food and water? Like some sort of reasonably priced catering?
Food you had to travel out. Water was always accesible.
EVO is now 32x greater from its 1st tournament and succeeds itself every year. Its has outgrown its current schedule and really needs to focus on running a 4th day. Mixed with some of the suggested revisions it can only get better.