17 Entries, But Only One 2-Player Match In Step 1

[Meeplelowda]

Can anyone figure out why this tournament only has one group and one match in Step 1 when it is supposed to have 8 groups?
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=598888

[dschingis27]

Because 2 players per group are supposed to advance to the next stage and BGA only creates groups where at least one person can be eliminated. It never creates groups where everyone advances. With 17 players in 8 groups and two players per group must advance, only one group can be created so that someone is eliminated.

(All players not appearing in stage 1 are still in the tournament, they are automatically seeded to stage 2 and will appear there.)

A somewhat related case: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50015

[Meeplelowda]

Because 2 players per group are supposed to advance to the next stage and BGA only creates groups where at least one person can be eliminated. It never creates groups where everyone advances. With 17 players in 8 groups and two players per group must advance, only one group can be created so that someone is eliminated.

(All players not appearing in stage 1 are still in the tournament, they are automatically seeded to stage 2 and will appear there.)

A somewhat related case: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50015

Makes sense. I should have realized this, because I always set my minimum number of players so that each group has at least one person more than the number that advance, or else what's the point of having a Stage 1 IMO. I guess you can argue that maybe the organizer wants to guarantee 4-round single-elimination stage, but doesn't want to cap the number of entries at 16. I still think the floor should be 32 just to make Stage 1 interesting.

So I'm one of the unlucky 3.

[tbhp]

Tournaments can be a bit absurd like that when the organizer doesn't put enough thought into setting the minimum number of players. Or sometimes even the maximum.

I was recently in a tournament that was set at 20 players and it got filled, except that the set up of the first stage was Swiss system with 8 groups and 2 players per group advancing. It seemed obvious that there was gonna be 4 groups of 3 players and 4 groups of 2 players playing each other several times just for the fun of it, then automatically advancing.

I still subscribed because I thought it would be fun. But as it turns out, the system just skipped creating those groups, since they would have had zero stakes anyway.