Ticket to Ride 20th Anniversary World Tournament

[Knockando]

Pechnik won against paolo in decisive game

[daedin28]

The one missed is Oldthousand.

[Rwain]

That also means that there might be an odd number of semifinalists.

I hope a system will be found for this as a player could be penalized by a "bye" gaining only a 1/2 point only, especially in the first round. And this would also significantly impact the schedule of 9 players at random (while messing up the strength of schedule tie breakers, if used, which are already really flawed to start with, as ELO on BGA is very unstable).
Tie-breakers will have to be rock solid.

It think it's not that bad. Player who gets a bye wins 1 point (a free win). It cannot happen twice. Once a player had a bye, he cannot get another one.
Then, about tie-breaker, it can be easily handled too. Now, the first tie-breaker is the sum of all points of your opponents during the Swiss tournaments. We just have to consider average points and it will stay fair for all. Players who have played 9 games will see the sums of their opponents'points divided by 9, those who only played 8 games wills have it divided by 8... the best average is ahead.
About ELO, it will be used on last resort. It should not be a determinant criteria for tie-breaker.
And that is only if we have an odd number of players in semifinals.

About duplicate players.... the number of duplicate players who were in a qualifying position is equal to........ zero !
Not a single duplicate player was on the list of semifinalists. That means that all players who are now semifinalists qualified in the same conditions.

[Knockando]

About duplicate players.... the number of duplicate players who were in a qualifying position is equal to........ zero !
Not a single duplicate player was on the list of semifinalists. That means that all players who are now semifinalists qualified in the same conditions.

So it means there will be 60 players ?

[Rwain]

It means there can be 60 players, but I won’t force anyone to register

[daedin28]

I think that the question is that some player could not agee with the conditions to play the semifinal.
About do the media, I think is quite unfair, I think that the better solution would be apply bucholz -1, the sum of the scores of all your opponents except the small one. It also prevents that some player leave the tournament.

[Rwain]

59 !

We now have almost a complete list of semifinalists after the qualifications of two more players in the Central European Tournament 4. As this tournament did not reach the 256 players registered, only 4 players could get a ticket for the semifinals. Therefore, we had to wait to know the winners of the quarterfinals to know whou would qualify here.

The first to get his ticket was Pechnik, a Russian player that we already presented last time, as he was sure to qualify being opposed to Paolo2207 in this quarterfinal, a player who was not eligible for the semifinals. Anyway, Pechnik's qualification has nothing to do with chance, as he won his quarterfinal 114 - 111 ! A close victory, but a victory anyway, and a victory who proves that his participation to the semifinal has nothing to do with the fact that he was opposed to a "duplicate".
And that is the occasion for me to insist on this point. We announced a special rule to deal with duplicate players :

about the possibility of someone who registered in more than one tournament and access the top8. He will be replaced by the last player he defeated if this player is eligible. If not, no one will take his place.

That rule has been useless... totally and completely useless. Not a single "duplicate" player (among the 289 who were registered in more than one of the qualifying tournaments) managed to qualify for the semifinals. Not a single one. That means that there's no way to contest the presence of any of the semifinalist.

The second to get his ticket is the first latvian player to qualify : Mihails .

With only 77 games recorded on BGA, he was not amongst the favorites at the start of the tournament.... yet ! With a ELO higher than 400 thanks to a good winning ratio, he was one of the highest ratio of the CET4. Therefore, his course during the tournament was mostly against less experienced player than him. And he made no mistake in his 5 rounds, with clear victories each round : 123 - 29 against WelshExile (ELO 168) ; 112 - 72 against syh9337123 (ELO 219) ; 106 - 64 against windgatch (ELO 248) ; 119 - 82 against Sandy50 (ELO 360) and finally 119 - 98 against jeroenh (ELO 317). His last opponent was the one who defeated seed n°1 of the tournament CoroNino, which explained why Mihails had not to face a seed to qualify.

Thanks to this last victory, Latvia will be the 23th country to be represented in the semifinals ! The tenth to have all its hopes placed on a single player ! Mihails told me he was not very optimistic for his chances to visit Paris in May... but who knows ? Surprises have been numerous in the first stage of this 20th Anniversary Tournament, why shouldn't it be the same in the second stage ?


The third player to qualify was more expected here. Sunny369, from HongKong, displayed 225 TTR games on BGA, for 179 victories, and a 578 ELO at the start of the tournament that made him seed 2 in this CET4. This Azul Expert (ELO 852, 4th ELO of all BGA players), proved that he was also a very good TTR player. As for Mihails, the first steps were pretty easy for Sunny369, who faced 4 players with ELO under 250. The Central European Tournament 4 was one of the less dense tournaments, many top players having already registered in other tournaments before this tournament was open.
But... his last round was quite different ! He was opposed to kspttw, an experienced polish player (829 games on BGA, 628 wins, ELO 574). The gap between this two players was only 30 ELO points : we were expecting a tight game !
Sunny369 kept 2 destinations : San Francisco - Atlanta and Denver - El Paso : 21 points... not a big detour for the second ticket, and the possibility to leave it "dead" as only 4 points are lost should it not be completed.
kspttw's destinations seemed less interesting : Boston - Miami and New York - Atlanta : two very slow eastern tickets, with lots of small routes (and small routes means small points ! ) Maybe he should have chosen to keep Portland - Nashville, that can be played with long routes in the center, accompanied by New York - Atlanta, who can be left aside if needed. Anyway, his choice was else, let's see how it ended.

kspttw opened the routes, with Duluth - Helena. A move that must have reassured sunny368, who mostly have to play south. For kspttw, this move was a way to score 15 pts and to control the center of the map, even if his tickets were in the east (once again, it seems that this move would have been more appropriate with Portland - Nashville). He followed with Duluth Toronto while Sunny369 settled in the south : Los Angeles - El Paso then El Paso - Houston.
kspttw then claimed big points around Miami : New Orleans - Miami and Miami - Atlanta ! Sunny369 stayed patient, and linked Atlanta to Houston, before focusing on his western routes. And that's where the game turned to Sunny's advantage !
kspttw had to play 5 routes of 2 trains... 5 moves, 10 trains, 10 points... while Sunny369 scored a lot more in the west ! To stay competitive in points, kspttw claimed long routes in the north ... but routes that were not in his longest path... Once more, it seems that the initial choice of his destination tickets left him no other choice.


Sunny369 (in blue) had a perfect road to connect his tickets and claim the longest path. A clear victory that leads him in semifinals !

Sunny369 is the second player from Hong Lonk to qualify (the 4th from Asia ! ). With will_will, they both have the profile of players who could reach one of the 8 tickets for Paris !


Only one ticket left for the semifinals ! It is in play between shlïtn (from Germany) and Micalis (from UK) in the last quartefinal of the CET4. For now, everything can happen as not a single train has been placed on the board. Less than 2 days to finish it "regularly", let's hope they will find the time to finish this game properly.

[Sysyphus]

My bad, I posted yesterday and was wrong on all counts (Paolo and the 1/2 point for bye winner). Sorry about that.

It'd be good to have a full set of rules for semi-finals.
I believe first round is random. But we may need confirmation on that for instance. And a full set of tiebreakers so that we have clarity. Thanks Rwain!

[thekid]

The odd number of players making us have to have byes should potentially only help 4 people if done this way. Round 1 it's random, round 2 give it to an 0-1, round 3 to an 0-2 and round 4 to an 0-3. All the other rounds give it to anyone with 4 losses or more. To get to the final you are guaranteed to get in with 7-2 record and need tiebreakers with 6-3. This way an 0-3 person gets a bye and still has to win 5 in a row so it gets progressively less likely to matter giving the byes to the people who lose.

[Sysyphus]

Yes looks like you're right. Looking at past Swiss Tournaments it seems like lowest ranked player got the bye.

I think we all did the simulation on the number of wins needed to move through.

I'd still hope that ELO is not used as last tie-breaker.