Tournament seeding....

So, being that I'm planning on focusing more on standard, "traditional" tournaments, I've been reading up and "Swiss" style seems to be the way to go.

The main issue I've seen is most agree these type of tournament run better, especially with fewer rounds, when properly seeded.

I've tried a few ideas, such as player voting (I simply asked a few players to rank the tournament player on a 1-10 scale) or something similar..... they all had issues. (Ppl voting on player they hadn't actually played, didn't agree with playstyle, uncomfortable ranking other players, etc.) Just not good.

Then I realized I basically have a database of the last year and a half of tourney play.

What I did was basically "scale" the tournament results. If you got 45 battle points out of 60 possible, that 75%. These were then averaged over all the tournaments played. I ended up with something like this.


Robyn M. 63.33%
Ben M. 56.67%
Adam W. 55.83%
Scott 52.92%
Jesse 50.83%
Matt G. 50.83%
Mark 47.92%
Alex 42.92%
Dom 31.67%
Tom 30.00%

This is abbreviated, and only includes the players who have said they'd play in the Escalation tourney. It's also inperfect, as many of the results are from the team tournaments. If i continued using this method (or something like it) it'd probably be something like the last years worth, or 10 tourneys or something like that.Does this seem like a fair/reasonable method to seed players?

It seems I need to step up my game. Bring forth the Spyders and Scarabs! Let the Green Stuff flow!

Don't be too cocky, 2 guys would bump ya:)

If I had the time, I'd rather do a 2 day tourney, Round Robin the first day to seed, and then swiss for the championship.

I still have 1 1/2 tourneys to enter, but I think most of the current players are taken care of.

There's a lot of ways to do this, it's just a matter of picking one and going with it:)

Which is the way where everyone who plays gets a steak? I'd vote for that one.

What I always did, especially when running tournaments back in PA, was put people together in round 1 that I knew would make an interesting game, or people that hadn't played each other before. Worked out nicely when we had visitors from Saskatoon. After round 1, I let things swiss themselves out. Seemed to work out, I think.

How in blazes did I make it to #2?

That was Jimmy's idea for a tourney, Maybe next tourneyw will be a DeadCow tourney.

Tom: FWIT, you've hit upon one of the issues of this system. It caught your first 2 tourneys (one of which you'd literally just started playing). A few % points on this is basically random chance, and it doesn't account for where you are NOW as a player, just where you WERE. This has less of an effect on veterans and people who play the same army. Rookies tend to have drastic changes in ability their first year or two and changing from say, Tau to Grey Knights or Space Wolves would likely casue issues. Hell just having your codex change can cause some issues.

By and large tho, I think everyone listed is within 2-3 spots of where they "should be" which is "good enough" for most purposes.

I think if I'm able to get a better tournament schedule and a few other organizer, this could make things easier in the long run.

Ben: You're #2 out of these 10. When everyone is included you fall a bit, but not too much. I also dont have all the tourneys in yet.

Robyn: Longshot, but you don't still have the ToonCon results do you?

Definately

Muti-Day tourneys end up being the most fair, just because you have more time for more matches and can narrow the victors down so they play against each other.

On the flip side, i'de bet that a multi-day tourney would get fewer attendees. Us old folks have a hard time scheduling it, and the young-uns work on those sacred gaming days.
unless of course, it was split up over a couple weekends.


Only problem i have with keeping records and running a "Rating" system, is that it quickly becomes a job, especially if you post the rankings, like below. Sooner or later, someone's ego is going to bruised and drama can rear its ugly head.

That being said: Rankings, leagues and such can give people a "Raison d'être" and keep folks interested, so if your willing to deal with the the above, i'm all for it

Mike: I got no problem keeping track of this, one I get the basic spreadsheet done, it kinda takes care of itself.

Not sure I would actually publish the ratings for several reasons (Really only put the above Battle Point percentages so ppl could see how it worked, etc)
1) Ego bruising as you mentioned; I kinda feel here people should follow Wheaton's 1st law of gaming.
2) Most people don't get how arbitary the system really is. A whole cluster of the current tournament players is rated from 47-52%. That's so small given the sample size, they are really equal.

I do think it gives people a reason to keep playing tournaments. Don't like that you are seeded 8th? Keep playing, as you get better, you'll get seeded higher. It also takes any arguments of "He seeded me there because he doesn't like me" out of it. Here's the spreadsheett, there's your ranking, better luck next time.

I should probably 'splain things more.

I'd like to (with help) get things so we are running roughly an event each month, roughly devided into three catagories.
A) "serious" tournaments: 1500-2000pts, 3-4 rounds. no frills missions (either BRB or NOVA style) no IA.
B)"fun" tournaments: Team Tourneys, 1000pts Tourneys, the Escalation tourney, stuff like that.
C) events: Gamesdays, Apoc battles, Killteam tourneys, stuff more like that.

The more organized the basic structure is, the easier it is run more events, or hand off to another organizer. It's also easier on the players and they will know that the same format/structure is being used at all the events.

I really think with 6-9 guys workign on a rotating schedule, this could happen, quite easily and with people only having to work 3-4 events a year (out of 12).

I'm all down with more regular events, if you need a hand with anything, let me know.