Board Game Arena

Replying to post in https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=196437

Arrigo II:
Hi and thanks jjthejetplane246 for organising this! I have a question/suggestion.

Is Stage 2 planned to be played in a single week as it was last year?

As a spectator, I didn't enjoy that as much as I would if it were more diluted - I mean, 2+ months of preparation and then everything ends so abruptly?

Maybe more importantly, I would have certainly hated to have to play so many simultaneous games in case I had qualified myself. Of course the fact that it was in August - big holiday season in many parts of the world- wouldn't have helped.

What do other players think about this? If it's technically possible and if it's not only a concern of mine, I would suggest to play Stage 2 at 1 game per week as it is with Stage 1: that's what I would see as an appropriate ending for such a magnificent tournament.



My Response:
hey Arrigo, thx for bringing this up. I appreciate the concern, and I think it's a valid one.

When I was setting this tournament up initially, I set it up exactly as you mentioned. Unfortuantely, Round Robin (as the BGA format) has to be played simultaneously. The only way to break it out over multiple sessions is to make it a 7-round Swiss where players are not to be paired with players that they had played before. That way, everyone would be guaranteed to play each other and it would effectively mimic a Round Robin. However, my new concern with this is with players dropping. I thought it was much more likely that players would drop if they lost their first few games and didn’t want to slug it out for another 4-5 weeks. A single player dropping would completely ruin the standings/result of the tournament. I felt like having all of the games in a single week would make this much less likely to occur. It also makes collusion much less likely when games are simultaneous. I’m not insinuating that any of our top players would do this, but it’s best to be safe when designing large tournaments like this.

On the point of have all the games in one week, I understand it’s a very fast way to end the tournament. You play one game a week for 10 weeks (12 this year), and then boom, you make top-8 and have to play 7 games against top competition in a single week. I’d be curious to hear what the previous top-8 felt about this experience, and I’ll actually take an action item here to go and poll them.

Thanks for your answer and for being so receptive with my suggestion. I suspected that there could be a technical issue related to the Round Robin implementation, which is a shame.
About the Swiss system, do you refer to the option that tries not to pair players that have been paired before? How much is that reliable? For the 7th and last game, would it pair someone with 6 points with someone with 0 points, in case they haven't played each other?

I also thought about the problem of dropping. My hope is that top 8 players would take it seriously enough to complete the tournament, but maybe I'm being too optimistic. My naive view is that people at the top level kinda know each other by nickname, and dropping from the tournament after losing some games would be a huge loss of reputation, if that means anything. Also that would prevent them from playing future tournaments like this, I guess.
I wouldn't be so much concerned with people not playing games at their best either, as those are still registered games that affect ELO, and with possibly a bit of "audience".

In any case, I think that asking last year's top 8 players about their experience is a very good idea, and I encourage you to go ahead with that.

Thanks for asking for our opinions on this and to Arrigo for raising this.

I was totally blind sided last year by having to play the second stage as a simul, and played quite poorly there. Was quite bummed to have focused intensely to win my group over 10 weeks, and then get thrown in with the very best players in a simul that I was just not mentally ready for. I had expected one game/week in the second phase as well, and would very much prefer that.

I think players who make it to Stage 2 are unlikely to drop out!

Cheers

Arrigo II wrote: ↑15 February 2023, 18:07 Thanks for your answer and for being so receptive with my suggestion. I suspected that there could be a technical issue related to the Round Robin implementation, which is a shame.
About the Swiss system, do you refer to the option that tries not to pair players that have been paired before? How much is that reliable? For the 7th and last game, would it pair someone with 6 points with someone with 0 points, in case they haven't played each other?

I also had this worry, I haven't tested this and was just going to hope that it would work lol. BGAs tournament implementation logic in general is not totally fleshed out so this was a secondary concern which led me to look at Round Robin directly.

Arrigo II wrote: ↑15 February 2023, 18:07 I also thought about the problem of dropping. My hope is that top 8 players would take it seriously enough to complete the tournament, but maybe I'm being too optimistic. My naive view is that people at the top level kinda know each other by nickname, and dropping from the tournament after losing some games would be a huge loss of reputation, if that means anything. Also that would prevent them from playing future tournaments like this, I guess.
I wouldn't be so much concerned with people not playing games at their best either, as those are still registered games that affect ELO, and with possibly a bit of "audience".

Agreed, like if this were an in-person tournament, everyone's there, people are watching, you're physically there and committed to playing, this becomes a non-issue. Would be wild if someone just stormed out halfway through haha. But with online and having the top-8 be drawn out over the course of 7 weeks, I could definitely see someone who got in, maybe even lower rated, gets beat a few times, and then just leaves which has big ramifications.

My IDEAL setup would be a single-elimination but matches are best of 5 with the final being best of 7, something like this. I brought this up as a suggestion for tournament formats in general but didn't get any traction (viewtopic.php?p=107506). I could achieve this format by hardcoding it - basically end the tournament at top 8 and then force the top 8 to play this format out. but this also requires a lot of coordination and I felt like a round-robin style still gives every a decent number of games to prove themselves. Maybe the hardcoding is worth considering though. You could just throw 2 players into a Swiss tournament with X matches and that would effectively be the same as a best of X format. but again, then it's a lot of coordination. Will think on this and happy to get more comments on this idea.

Best of 5 would be so amazing for top 8, and best of 7 for final sounds really good too. I agree with km1998 that one week to play 7 top players is kinda brutal. I also thought it is unlikely to drop when you're in the final 8. Maybe to avoid dropping, you could make a rule like, if you start to play the final 8, then you have to finish it or you will be banned. That said, playing the final 8 in one week is better than nothing.

Jincarnate wrote: ↑15 February 2023, 20:02 Best of 5 would be so amazing for top 8, and best of 7 for final sounds really good too. I agree with km1998 that one week to play 7 top players is kinda brutal. I also thought it is unlikely to drop when you're in the final 8. Maybe to avoid dropping, you could make a rule like, if you start to play the final 8, then you have to finish it or you will be banned. That said, playing the final 8 in one week is better than nothing.

Yeah I'm starting to lean towards this. It's still early on (tournaments aren't until June). Easy enough to make it a single Swiss (no groups) with X games (10-12 is probably reasonable, more the better without draining people), and then I can make a challonge bracket that i link in there and coordinate with the top 8 on playing out the single elim portion. That portion can just be a 2 player swiss of 5 games and then 7 for a final which the players would play out at their own pace. Yes, it's more work and a bit of a pain, but it would certainly add to the prestige/excitement of the event and anyone who wants to watch can keep tabs on the main tournament page as i update it with the top 8 pairings/results.

was doing some math. currently, the setup is:

7 day matches
12 rounds Swiss
1 final round for final

= (7 days) * (13 rounds) = 91 days, would end August 31st at the latest


if we go to the new format w/ multi-game single-elimination for top-8, i would want to reduce the game time from 7 to 5 days which I think is reasonable. I've seen plenty of tournaments do 5 days and it works fine. The reason it was 7 before was mostly for the final round. So this would be:

5 day matches
12 rounds swiss
5 rounds QF (best of 5)
5 rounds SF (best of 5)
7 rounds Final (best of 7)

= (5 days) * (12 swiss + 5 QF + 5 SF + 7 Final) = 145 days, would end October 24 at the latest

but also the QF, SF, and Final will likely go much quicker than using a full round of time for each match.

I've gone ahead and pulled the trigger on setting up the new format.

7WD World Championship -> https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=196736
7WD World Championship - All Expansions -> https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=196737

Hi, I agree that the final stage last year was very stressful! In the first 2-3 days, I almost ignored half of the games in order to concentrate on the other half.

I understand the reasoning behind this choice. Perhaps direct elimination is indeed the best way to go (with best of 5 / best of 7 and alternating the starting player).

Thanks again for listening to the player base! I also like the idea of multi-game single-elimination for Stage 2.
I'm a bit late too the discussion, so just out of curiosity: have you thought about having 16 players qualified to the knockout phase instead of 8, as that would only add a few games with the new system?