Multiplayer Elimination Question

Tournaments organization / Organisation des tournois
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Rhydon MK2
Posts: 6
Joined: 08 June 2020, 03:32

Multiplayer Elimination Question

Post by Rhydon MK2 »

Question for developers.

I was joining a tournament with 4 player games where only the last will be eliminated each round: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=89957

After many rounds with some players being skipped each round, at certain point we had only 7 players left. Then 3 will be skipped and the other 4 will play in a table.
I think what should happen according to the rule is:
1) One player is eliminated from the table and 4 of 6 have a game.
2) Another player is eliminated from the table and 4 of 5 have a game.
3) Another player is eliminated from the table and the last 4 have a final game.

Instead, what happened was, three players were eliminated from the table and the last 4 had the final match.
Is there any hidden score between the participants so the high score players are skipped? If so, can I see the algorithm?
Otherwise, if random 3 were skipped and passed to the final game, I think that's a bit unfair.

Thanks in advance
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Nereid
Posts: 50
Joined: 21 August 2011, 14:52

Re: Multiplayer Elimination Question

Post by Nereid »

I support this report, there is something similar going on in this tournament:

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... ge_display
FSKFSK
Posts: 428
Joined: 12 January 2019, 07:22

Re: Multiplayer Elimination Question

Post by FSKFSK »

If a tournament has byes (people being skipped), most/all the byes should be in the first round or two.

4 players with last being eliminated doesn't work at the end of the tournament. The only way to make it work is to have some rounds where two players are eliminated. It also doesn't work in the middle of the tournament (see below). The only way to make it work is to mix rounds so that some tables eliminate one player and some tables eliminate two players.

The last round has 4 players.

The next to last round should have 8 players, with 2 eliminated at each table.

The round before that should have 12 players, with 2 tables eliminating one player and 1 table eliminating 2 players.

The round before that should have 16 players, with 4 tables each eliminating one player.

The round before that should have 24 players, with 4 tables eliminating one player and 2 tables eliminating 2 players.
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Rhydon MK2
Posts: 6
Joined: 08 June 2020, 03:32

Re: Multiplayer Elimination Question

Post by Rhydon MK2 »

@FSKFSK,
Firstly, why 'most/all the byes should be in the first round or two' ?
And secondly, that was not even true in our tournament, https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=89957
FSKFSK
Posts: 428
Joined: 12 January 2019, 07:22

Re: Multiplayer Elimination Question

Post by FSKFSK »

If you were doing a traditional knockout tournament with 2 people per match and one person eliminated, they have enough byes in the first round so that after that the number of players is a power of 2.

I.e., if 97 people sign up, you want to have 64 players after the first round, so you play 33 matches in the first round (66 players), and the rest get byes.

With multiple players per match, it should be analogous. Give enough byes in the first round so that byes are no longer needed for the rest of the tournament.

Now it's a sticky math problem. If you want to play matches of 4 people with 1 eliminated per match, there's just no way to make it work without having byes all over the place. It's a "fairer" tournament if people just aren't being randomly given byes near the end.

It's a defect in BGAs tournament engine. "4 players with 1 eliminated per match" just doesn't work due to the way the math turns out. The only way to fix that is to either have some 3 player matches, or have some matches where 2 people are eliminated.
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