Tournament Tie Breaker (Round Robin)

[Timoteo32]

I'm currently in a 2P round robin tournament (my first) and it looks like everyone gets 2 points per win. But then it seems like the next level for determining ranking is margin of victory, so I'm currently behind 2 players who I beat in our matchup. How does this make sense? Why would advancement be based on whether or not you got lucky big one game or an opponent didn't. Is 4 extra points across 13 games of Wingspan really a better indicator than the game we actually played against each other?

What I'm not sure about is if this was something decided by the tournament organizer or the default for BGA. Just seems weird.

[dschingis27]

I'm currently in a 2P round robin tournament (my first) and it looks like everyone gets 2 points per win. But then it seems like the next level for determining ranking is margin of victory, so I'm currently behind 2 players who I beat in our matchup. How does this make sense? Why would advancement be based on whether or not you got lucky big one game or an opponent didn't. Is 4 extra points across 13 games of Wingspan really a better indicator than the game we actually played against each other?

What I'm not sure about is if this was something decided by the tournament organizer or the default for BGA. Just seems weird.

It is the default on BGA. It's probably easier to implement. And it is the default in many European Soccer Leagues or real-world sports tournaments with round-robin groups.

Advantages of the "score margin system":
- It is easy to display the score margin in a standardized table
- It is based on all games played, not only one or two games
- It is open who wins the tiebreaker up until the last game (in contrast, in the direct PvP tiebreaker, it is pre-determined who wins the tie if the direct PvP game(s) finished early in the tournament)

"Why would advancement be based on whether or not you got lucky big one game or an opponent didn't." Well, you could say the same thing about the one direct game you played against each other. Why would advancement be based on the luck in the one game you played against each other.

I am not saying that the direct game(s) against each other couldn't be good tiebreakers, too. I am just saying that taking overall score margin is far from ridiculous and probably the prefered choice for many people.

[Meeplelowda]

It is the default on BGA. It's probably easier to implement. And it is the default in many European Soccer Leagues or real-world sports tournaments with round-robin groups.

How does this work on BGA with games that don't have "scores"? In some games, the win occurs when a certain end game condition is met that is not based on a score. The most obvious example is abstract games where the result is simply win, lose, or draw when a certain game state occurs.

[dschingis27]

It is the default on BGA. It's probably easier to implement. And it is the default in many European Soccer Leagues or real-world sports tournaments with round-robin groups.

How does this work on BGA with games that don't have "scores"? In some games, the win occurs when a certain end game condition is met that is not based on a score. The most obvious example is abstract games where the result is simply win, lose, or draw when a certain game state occurs.

You mean like this? https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?i ... 9#overview In those cases, the "score margin" tiebreaker is redundant and doesn't provide any extra tiebreaking ability. In case both the round-robin score and the "score margin" is equal between two players, then the tie is broken by player id. https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34998 What would BGA do without breaking ties by good old player id.

[Meeplelowda]

What would BGA do without breaking ties by good old player id.

That's horrible, especially when for RRs there is something else that is commonly used, as discussed above. I won't debate whether head-to-head result should be the first, second, whatever, tiebreaker, but it's better than player id by miles.

[Timoteo32]

I'm currently in a 2P round robin tournament (my first) and it looks like everyone gets 2 points per win. But then it seems like the next level for determining ranking is margin of victory, so I'm currently behind 2 players who I beat in our matchup. How does this make sense? Why would advancement be based on whether or not you got lucky big one game or an opponent didn't. Is 4 extra points across 13 games of Wingspan really a better indicator than the game we actually played against each other?

What I'm not sure about is if this was something decided by the tournament organizer or the default for BGA. Just seems weird.

It is the default on BGA. It's probably easier to implement. And it is the default in many European Soccer Leagues or real-world sports tournaments with round-robin groups.

Advantages of the "score margin system":
- It is easy to display the score margin in a standardized table
- It is based on all games played, not only one or two games
- It is open who wins the tiebreaker up until the last game (in contrast, in the direct PvP tiebreaker, it is pre-determined who wins the tie if the direct PvP game(s) finished early in the tournament)

"Why would advancement be based on whether or not you got lucky big one game or an opponent didn't." Well, you could say the same thing about the one direct game you played against each other. Why would advancement be based on the luck in the one game you played against each other.

I am not saying that the direct game(s) against each other couldn't be good tiebreakers, too. I am just saying that taking overall score margin is far from ridiculous and probably the preferred choice for many people.

Most of this is fair, it just seems weird to me.

One primary advantage of head-to-head is that you're playing under the same conditions. So like for a sporting event one person gets good weather and a chance to score more, but that doesn't really apply here.

The best argument here is that in a lot of games you have control over how long the game goes. For something like Terraforming Mars, winning 180-160 isn't any more impressive than winning 90-80, but it would be given double the weight.

[tbhp]

That's kinda the whole concept of round robin tournaments. All games have equal importance, so you can't rely on just beating the best players, you have to score the most points overall. This means that you have to be careful not to lose points against easier opponents.

This is nothing new, lots of sports competitions work like that. Football national leagues, and the Rugby Six Nations for example.

[tbhp]

The best argument here is that in a lot of games you have control over how long the game goes. For something like Terraforming Mars, winning 180-160 isn't any more impressive than winning 90-80, but it would be given double the weight.

Well in those cases, you have to use your knowledge of the game in question to your advantage to rack up the points. Playing in a way that is optimized for round robin tournaments can be a skill in of itself. People sometimes even lose on purpose in order to ensure they don't lose too many points.

The problem is that since on this site the games that run out of time are counted as 1-0, players can purposefully time out a game in order to only lose a single point in the round robin rankings, at which point it becomes clear bad sportsmanship.

[Timoteo32]

The best argument here is that in a lot of games you have control over how long the game goes. For something like Terraforming Mars, winning 180-160 isn't any more impressive than winning 90-80, but it would be given double the weight.

Well in those cases, you have to use your knowledge of the game in question to your advantage to rack up the points. Playing in a way that is optimized for round robin tournaments can be a skill in of itself. People sometimes even lose on purpose in order to ensure they don't lose too many points.

The problem is that since on this site the games that run out of time are counted as 1-0, players can purposefully time out a game in order to only lose a single point in the round robin rankings, at which point it becomes clear bad sportsmanship.

Yeah, but in Rugby or Football don't involve RNG lol. You need to optimize for the cards you're dealt, so it seems like punishing someone for not getting high point cards is pretty unfair.

And that seems like a pretty easy thing to fix. If they run out of time, just use whatever the current game was when the game ended. If it's close, they don't have any reason to do it and if the gap is big, they don't gain anything by doing it. Seems fairly incentive compatible?

[tbhp]

Yeah, but in Rugby or Football don't involve RNG lol. You need to optimize for the cards you're dealt, so it seems like punishing someone for not getting high point cards is pretty unfair.

I don't really see it. If we accept that in those games randomness can affect who gets more favorable cards in a singular game, then it seems that the natural continuation of that is that randomness will also play a role in determining groups rankings.

I can sort of see your point that it seems unfair given that games that have nothing to do with each other are being compared, but then again, luck is part of those games in the first place.

The same thing goes for real sports, in a way. If two football teams have a game that goes crazy offensive where they end up scoring a lot of goals (which is a random occurrence no one could have predicted), then those two teams will be advantaged over the other teams in the group if the tie breaker comes down to number of goals scored.

And that seems like a pretty easy thing to fix. If they run out of time, just use whatever the current game was when the game ended. If it's close, they don't have any reason to do it and if the gap is big, they don't gain anything by doing it. Seems fairly incentive compatible?

They'd still have a reason to do it because in most games the score differential is changing from turn to turn, so they'd try to stall the game at the turn where it seems the most advantageous for them, given how many points they need in the groups rankings.

Sure it might seem more fair to use the current score, but that really depends as in a lot of games the current scores don't give you a good indication of who is more likely to win that game.

Also if they are ahead in points at the moment they decide to time out the game, do they get a positive point difference even though they lost the game? Seems kinda wonky.