Board Game Arena

It is brought to my attention that the Swiss Pairing System for BGA tournaments is purely random (besides obvious fact where players with same points should meet). Is there any way we can adopt a more standard Swiss system? For example if there are 30 players Round 1 should look like this: #1 plays #16 in the tournament, #2 plays #17, #3 plays #18... #15 plays #30. It is not that ideal for top players to meet at the start I think. Just my opinion, I hope to see some feedback.

Regards

Drawn at random seems fair. Everyone has the same chance of facing any opponent. If you have enough rounds, even top players meet at the first round, the loser can catch up. If losing a single game and you are out of the tournament and top players have to meet later, then better play it as elimination mode.

If the tournament is set according to your example, then the question is: why as #1, supposed to be stronger than #2-#15, has to face a stronger opponent than #2-#15?

I was extremely delighted, trying out the tournament mode for the first time and barely scratching together the required 100 ELO points, to be matched in the first encounter against a veteran player with over half a dozen "won 1st place in a tournament with this game" trophy as well as numerous others. Playing against the player with the absolute highest ELO score from the start, with me having the absolute lowest ELO score, of 128 players. Got eliminated on round 1, what a coincidence. "gg" indeed.

Brisbane Roar wrote: ↑07 May 2020, 01:51 It is brought to my attention that the Swiss Pairing System for BGA tournaments is purely random (besides obvious fact where players with same points should meet). Is there any way we can adopt a more standard Swiss system? For example if there are 30 players Round 1 should look like this: #1 plays #16 in the tournament, #2 plays #17, #3 plays #18... #15 plays #30. It is not that ideal for top players to meet at the start I think. Just my opinion, I hope to see some feedback.

Regards

Hi Brisbane Roar!
Yes, I completely agree, the current pairing system is quite confusing.
...and pairing top-players in the first round is just tip of the ice-berg. Besides that the secondary evaluation (after your points) is also quite basic. It would need some more robust settings as the real swiss pairing system provides. However, what is really troubling for me is that in games like hive, chess where it is very important with which color do you play (white or black), the BGA pairing "system" uses again just a random logic. I would say that this is a big incapability because it should not happen that you play many times with the same color. For example mainly in Hive white has a big advantage if he/she can play with white (on a certain level).

I would be really glad if this could be improved. Thank you for your understanding!

Regards,
Oliver

One solution for the color balance is a double round tournament. In each round you play two games against the same opponent, one going first and one second. For a turn-based tournament these games can start simultaneously.

This solution has already been suggested in a bug report, but it hasn't collected enough votes to be implemented: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=9671