Ticket to Ride 20th Anniversary World Tournament

[cofunguy]

Too bad it is 2 player game. Sadly as most TtR players know going 1st in the format gives u a pretty big advantage of 60-70% ( i believe it is actually 65% but cant find the actual post with that data but know it is 60%+) and it being 1 game and u are out can remove some good players due to these odds

Should been done with 4-5 player games in initial rounds. But of course sadly bigger games sadly dont finish either here on BGA.

[Rwain]

We thought about a 4 players tournament, but it was really difficut to organize it without meetings problems.
First, BGA Tournament module is optimized for 2 players game. 4 players games in tournaments have lots of issues, including a lotery to choose the winner should a player be expelled from his game. And that would create lots of unfairness.
Second, even without these problems, a 4 players game turn-base mode is estimated to last around 20 days. We could not propose a tournament that lasts more than a year.
2 players game may have some issues too, but I think it's still the better setting for our tournament.

[Sysyphus]

Top players playing each other have a start advantage of 55/45, which is less than getting longest path for instance.
Learning to play without the start is a skill you can work on. If you replicate the same timing as a non-starter, you'll keep getting the same 65% advantage.

[dandee15]

the draw will consider elo points ?

[Rwain]

Every BGA tournaments consider ELO points during the draw.

[Rwain]

Only a few hours left to get on the train ! 4 tournaments are already full, but 4 are still open :
EST 2 : https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=341900
PST : https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=339387
CET4 : https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=343304
CST : https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=339384

DO NOT FORGET : ONLY ONE REGISTRATION (if you participate in more than one of our qualifying tournaments, you won't be eligible for the semi-final).

[klikkimikki]

Hey, how does the matchmaking work? Is it based on elo ranking or just randomised opponents?

[speedypuzzlement]

Top players playing each other have a start advantage of 55/45, which is less than getting longest path for instance.
Learning to play without the start is a skill you can work on. If you replicate the same timing as a non-starter, you'll keep getting the same 65% advantage.

I did some counting across Knockando's tournaments (example: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=267150) in the past and I get 123/195 > 63% win rate for the player moving first. Perhaps this is not reflective of the top players you are mentioning, but I think it's a shame the elimination is not best-of-two (you go first in game 1, I go first in game 2).

[Sysyphus]

Well I had quite a large sample back then of players broken by their ELO on the former Days of Wonder. App Overall it was 60/40 indeed but for the very top league the rate was closer to 55/45, maybe 56/44 (and quite the level was a bit higher and more dense at the top). Not sure I can still access that data. It'd be interesting to know if starts are given equally in the Swiss round, where it'd be a bigger factor

Best of 2 does not do a whole lot as to how you break a tie. A blowout with good tickets would be worth a lot more than a skilled win with crappy tickets.

Ticket to Ride is not ideal as a turn by turn game unfortunately but it is a game that requires best-of series (5 at least) to separate the players clearly especially in a Swiss format. We used to have a 6-game format for matches in leagues with equal starts for everybody. BGA has not yet implemented such a tool yet unfortunately.

[speedypuzzlement]

Makes sense - thank you for sharing. There are about 75000 TTR players on BGA but I don't know how that compares to the userbase in the past. And I assume the former website had some strategy discussions that are now lost forever :/