Board Game Arena

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑22 May 2025, 01:13 Episode 6 is open for registration.

T72on1 wrote: ↑22 May 2025, 14:27

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑22 May 2025, 01:13 Episode 6 is open for registration.

What does the number of games = auto setting mean? How many games are being played exactly?

In a Swiss tournament of a two-player game, a clear winner (i.e., an undefeated player) will emerge after N rounds if 2^(N-1) < P <= 2^N, where P is the number of players in the tournament. This assumes there are no ties, which applies here because even if a game's rules allows for ties, BGA's tournament framework always assigns a winner of a two-player game.

Currently the number of rounds of a BGA Swiss tournament is determined when the tournament is configured before registration is complete and the number of players is known. So it's possible for there to be more rounds than necessary, like 5 rounds for only 7 people when 3 rounds would suffice. Or too few rounds, like 4 rounds for 50 people.

Yes, a minimum and maximum number of players can be set when the tournament is configured, which is one way to deal with this issue, but that leads to the possibility that the minimum will not be reached and the tournament will be canceled.

Instead, there could be an option to set the number of rounds to log_2(P) rounded up which would guarantee neither too few nor too many rounds are played without the risk of the tournament canceling (except for a default minimum of maybe 4 players / 2 rounds).