Tourney organizing: How to create brackets - Purely random or not?

Current Fighting Games Fighting Game Discussion
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thread done.

tournament time with money on the line and as long as the bracket was random, I don’t see the problem going up against friends. It happens, deal with it. This prevents top players from being held to a higher standard and all players are on equal footing.

People sandbag typically BEFORE a tournament, I think every one is guilty of this @ some point. However once the tournament is over, players usually start playing hard because now its practice time against players they won’t see very often.

**EVO is doing that seeding BS AGAIN! why? wtf is the point of that? why are other top players able to dodge the gauntlet of 1000+man tourney by going to a smaller tourney?

when EVO rolls around player A is playing in the 1000+man pools while player B is waiting for top 64. Player A and player B are NOT playing the same game period. How many opponents does player A dodge in a 1000 man tourney? something like 10 opponents right? maybe more? **

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This is exactly why seeding is needed. If the random factor happens to put all the top players on side B, all the people on side B will have a hard time while all the other people on side A will have it easier.
When you spread the top players equally across the board, everyone is happy.

No one said anything about letting someone have a shortcut to the finals via seeding, but that’s exactly what the random factor can do.

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I still don’t understand why top players have to be given special privilege. There is no reason to place them any differently than any other player. Unless of course, the top players are the only ones who have a shot at it, and are there for our massive dick riding. Therefore we need to ensure that they don’t enjoy the privileged of being treated like everybody else because of an assumed higher level of existence.

This shit really needs an explanation? how does putting them into the same situation as everybody else in random pairing ensure that they get an easy ride? Really, now we have entered the deep end; SNES-SF2-8 Star- Chun Li- hard mode.

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In order to do that, the organizer needs to judge a person’s skill before he’s seen them play, i.e. Unknown Player is less skilled than Known Player because he isn’t known. That is an inherently unfair way to manipulate brackets.

From my experience at 3 major tournaments and several locals, known players were given as free of a ride as possible to finals at seeding. They were also given special treatment, but I’m not going to get into that since it would open another can of worms in a thread that is already being derailed.

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Pertho there are a bunch or issues with your argument when it comes to running an actual SF tournament.
I’ll reply later when i’m off work but basically there are 2 sides of SRK, and getting your game up to, Plinking, roll cancels, execution, timing, and one frame links are a world apart from the shenanigans that go on at actual tournaments where you have to deal with whining, complaining, rampant lateness, sticky fingers, fixed matches, and complaining, all within a small comunity.

I’ve never played magic competitively so i don’t know how it is, but discussing running a SF tournament in a hypotheical setup where everything goes right is just absurd to most people who’ve dealt with running events in this community.

Even if random is better in theory, its not when the resulting first round matchup causes the group of people who travelled 3 states to get there to never come back to another tournament you hold and then go online trashing your event which has a double and negative effect on turnout in, as i mentioned, an already small community.

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They knew the rules going in and decided to drive through 3 states to participate anyway. Why bend over backwards to accommodate people who won’t take responsibility for their own actions? If a tournament organizer is going to cater to the lowest common denominator, the quality of their tournament is going to suffer as a result.

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Definitely looking forward to your post. Running a magic tournament is a lot more involved than winners/losers bracket but they still run a lot smoother than fighting game tournaments for a lot of different reasons (some of them, of course, being technological as the logistics of having enough set ups and people playing in the right place are a huge pain). But there are definitely some cultural expectations about a tournaments and the mentality towards preparing and competing that differ greatly between the two communities (of course chances are that these may just be personal). Regardless, I’ll wait for your post then will try my best to structure mine like yours so we can keep it legible.

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If he’s unknown but skilled, he’ll be recognized as one when the next tournament comes around.
And from my experience, no champion grows up in a vacuum. You can’t get good while staying unknown especially in small communities.

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Happened over here. We had a random blanka player show up at a tourney and wreck everybody. Had never seen the guy before because our play sessions were during the week and he had no time for them.

Guess for now I’ll wait 'til blackshinobi gets home and posts or hope that some of the more prominent members of the community can shed a light on something that looks like blatant favoritism.

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Everyone pays the same entry fee so they should all be treated equally at seeding. Nobody should have to ‘make a name for themselves’ just so they can get preferential treatment at next year’s tournament.

Tell that to the guy who won the Gamespot HD Remix tournament in 2008. He came out of nowhere to beat both Graham Wolf and Join Choi and was never heard from again. The videos are still up on their site.

The point is that nobody should be judged before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves and they shouldn’t be given preferential treatment after they’ve proven themselves.

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Either way you’re likely to screw players. Why should we favor better players against worse players when we’re running a tournament? They put the hours into the game! I can go through the most garbage bracket in random and be a really bad player and still possibly get 3rd just because I fight garbage until winner’s final. If the brackets are seeded, then I am far more likely to go against a player better than me before I get to winner’s final. Should we favor the flowchart Ken who practices an hour a week vs. the hardcore dedicated gamer who practices 8 hours a day just because we have this strange notion that influencing a bracket is an inherently bad thing?

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I don’t wanna take out the punk ass normal folk “wash my hands of the entire situation” and yet act like I’m giving you an easy, wipe your ass answer. I really don’t. trust me on this shit… but for those who have ideas on how to run tourneys, why don’t you go and run your own? then come back and tell us later about how broke you got from trying

everyone seems to agree on some way of running a tournament being bad, yet… why isn’t anyone questioning why that “bad” method is in place? this entire thread is gonna be everyone going “This method sucks because I say so. It should be done this way”. for instance, in concern with non-random over random, I saw like one fucking poster who got it. “It’s a business” he said. I don’t even know shit about tourney organization and I could easily deduce that. so with that in mind, for those of you who support random, do ANY of you have a way to not only keep it business-like, yet objectively strives to prove who the best is?

as for the argument of total randomness = best way to determine the best player, I don’t think tournaments work as mercilessly and scientifically as possible to prove who the best player is. not referring to who plays who, but more of the entire system itself. don’t bitch about the picks, bitch about the system (ex. single elim, double elim). if the system were perfect, the picks wouldn’t matter. the best system I’ve seen so far that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt who the best mother fucker is has to be in tennis. in tennis, even if two players are 1 point away from winning, they create a totally new fucking game: advances. even if you win 1 game, they don’t stop there: they let the other guy serve the next game. hell they even switch the sides of the court they’re on. and all of this shit to prove that it doesn’t matter who has what advantage, THIS person is gonna win because he’s the best.

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The guy who won the gamespot HD remix tourney is not an unknown, he’s an old school player.

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Everyone playing everyone in a FT3 or higher and the person with the most points at the end wins, is also a pretty good “ultimate” solution. Of course, it would be very time consuming and extremely unhype (as there is top 8 / final climax), so it’s not really viable.

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Oh also, if everyone had the mentality “don’t compete unless you plan on winning” then very few people would ever compete and that would be horrible for Street Fighter in general. It’d be even less mainstream than it is now. Good people would have fewer competitors, bad people would never compete, local tournaments would be rare (since there’d be such little interest). I mean, you can’t just say “well, even unskilled people should have this mentality” because honestly you’re asking for people to be idiots. I was in a tournament with Evil Rahsaan once. First tournament of my life and I already knew before the tournament that locals could destroy me. If you were to say “only compete if you plan on winning” and I STILL entered, I’d be beyond stupid. But if I don’t compete? Well, that’s one less person to compete in the tournament.

Back to the topic at hand: If you’re not that good at Street Fighter and you play it for fun, props to you but you should expect to lose. If you get 2-0’d whether by random or by seeding, then what disservice is done to you? None, because you’re not that good to begin with. If you go are a legitimate competitive player and you’re top three material and you get have to play the number 1 player and then the number 2 player (or something along those lines) then you just got screwed. Bad players don’t get screwed by seeded brackets because they’re bad anyway.

Once you get to “middle of the pack”… sure a middle of the pack guy could have a more difficult time getting through a seeded bracket than an unseeded bracket since he’s almost guaranteed to play a top player fairly early on, but guess what: he’ll lose to the players he’s worse than and win against the players he’s better than and will achieve a ranking somewhere in the middle, like he deserves. If it turns out that the seeding was incorrect, the player who beats him will now have the same situation put upon him. He has to earn his way to the top without screwing over other top players.

Exceptions do happen, but which situation is more likely to give you one?

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Tennis can go suck a dick. That’s not what this thread is about. This one is not about massive dick waiving either. If I could run a tournament, I would. Unfortunately as far as a fighting game community is concerned; and holding something close to a major would be a headache because I don’t have the equipment. This thread is not about the dedication that people have in running tournaments, the passion that goes into it nor the willingness of somebody to run a tourney.

What this thread is about though, is the fact that certain players are being paired up in a completely different fashion than the rest of the community to ensure that they don’t play each other early on (which is fixing the bracket and at the end of the day, giving them an advantage in tournament play). The reason this matters to you is because it puts in question the integrity of the tournament as well as the validity of previous and future tournaments if the practice continues. The community has a history of doing double elimination which is fine for the most part. But that manipulation of pairings is not.

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it’s not you who dictates whether or not something is related to the thread; it’s common sense

the manipulation serves a purpose. you fail to address that purpose. what I’m saying is that you can bitch about the bracket manipulation all you want. if you can’t suggest an alternative method that makes EVERYONE happy (this includes the tourney organizers), then you’re not saying anything important

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meh still at work but,
just to say something about not always assuming your going to win when you enter. (btw i’m only going to use situation that have actually happened so none of these are hypothetical)
Assume you playing a city with a decent size player base and two players (Player X and player Y) come from out of town, another city with a large player base that you haven’t played. Now assume before the tournament Player X got a 45 game win streak where he beat you 5 times with your main, the best player in your area, and most of the locals at least twice. The only reason he isn’t still on is because player Y beat him. You get matched up against player Y first round. you lost to him 5 times already in which he may have been sandbagging but you know you weren’t. In 5 games you didn’t find one hole to exploit now you have to play him in the tournament.

Are you still going into the match with the belief that of course you should win? because he knows your weaknesses and you don’t know his. Thats not negative thinking, its a gap in knowledge and experience, and all the wanting to win in the world isn’t going to make you know something that you don’t know.

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But you’re wrong. If they ever face someone that is BETTER than them that wasn’t seeded appropriately, THAT person now gets those “advantages” once that person wins. The bracket is made so that everyone gets an accurate representation of their rank. People who win should be shown preference in the brackets. What good is a tournament where you can suck and place 3rd? Might as well just draw straws prior to the tournament and say THAT determines your final rank. The bracket is made to be advantageous to better players, not any particular person.

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I have to say something here as a tournament organizer and a player. I will start as a tournament organizer.

Someone wrote a few pages back that this all depends on what type of tournament this is!!! He is 100% correct on that! I have ran several tournaments and help run several tournaments.

If you know that your going to get a crowd say for a 32 man bracket(not a major of course) then you really want to seed this tournament by region/location. Example: I live In Memphis, Tn… most of the time, when we do tourney’s over here, Nashville comes out and some Mississippi guys do too. Now, if you drove all the way out here just to battle your buddies in the first round, then that is dumb! A tournament like this should be seeded by location. You obviously don’t want to play your local crowd either. This is maybe for the first round only, the brackets will show the victor anyway! I don’t have a problem seeding by location at all.

Now once you get to a bigger tournament, 64 man bracket and up, things can change a little. Random is the best way to go but the location thing still becomes a factor. A group of ten guys that just showed up 6 hours away from where the tournament is being held then you should cater to them a bit. Top Player or Not, they didn’t have to come all the way out there. Showing a little gratitude and seeding the brackets by location somewhat in the first round is fine. I say somewhat because that said town/city can have alot of people playing in said tournament. Meaning, some people that always play togther will have to suck it up and play that first round. Round 2 and beyond is totally different I think. Wether in loser’s or Winner’s you are there for a reason. Keep at it and the winner will show itself anyway!

Now seeding by talent and previous winnings is a whole different ball game! Some people have stated good reasons and other reasons have been personal rants and whatnot. By spreading the “Top Player” you are kinda leveling out the competition. I mean, you have to face them one way or the other so let it be. I am talking about a Nationa/Major tourney’s now. Even if Wong, Daigo, Sanford, vVv Scrub, Floe, Mago, Uryo, and Valle all ended up in the same bracket round 1, some will go to winners and other’s to loser’s. They will still have to face everyone else. Spreading them out to not be in the same bracket in the beggening actually levels out the skill!

Now, fucking with the brackets once the tournament already started is bad to me. Once you seeded by location/skill/whatever and start the tournament, that’s it! There is no going back nor floating nor anything like that! Play it out and see who comes out on top.

As before, there are many factors that come into play when doing a tournament. It’s not just gathering system’s and saying, FUCK IT! Lets do a tourney for the hell of it!