I'm trying to understand the underpinnings of tournament design. So far, it looks like tournaments are ultimately unfair and unreliable inherently. I guess the idea is to design them to be as fair as possible. So... I read that in single-elimination tournaments, there are disadvantages to this design. I read the Wikipedia article, and a paper here: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/369601-on-tournament-design . Yet I still don't understand the problems with this design. I have a tiny bit of experience here, as a captain for a junior high school chess team about twenty years ago. I guess that wasn't substantial enough to experience the worldly problems these articles briefly mention. "Opponents may be allocated randomly (such as in the FA Cup); however, since the "luck of the draw" may result in the highest-rated competitors being scheduled to face each other early in the competition, seeding is often used to prevent this." Why does this matter? What's wrong with starting a competition this way? "Another perceived disadvantage is that most competitors are eliminated after relatively few games." Why is this a disadvantage? "In a random knockout tournament (single-elimination without any seeding), awarding the second place to the loser of the final is unjustified: any of the competitors knocked out by the tournament winner might have been the second strongest one, but they never got the chance to play against the losing finalist. In general, it is only fair to use a single-elimination tournament to determine first place. To fairly determine lower places requires some form of round-robin in which each player/team gets the opportunity to face every other player/team." I don't understand this at all. "Also, if the competitors' performance is variable, that is, it depends on a small, varying factor in addition to the actual strength of the competitors, then not only will it become less likely that the strongest competitor actually wins the tournament, in addition the seeding done by the tournament organizers will play a major part in deciding the winner. As a random factor is always present in a real-world competition, this might easily cause accusations of unfairness." I don't understand this, either. "The determination of how seeds are distributed amongst a given competitor pool is the classic problem of any elimination tournament, and is most acute in the single-elimination tournament, because of the unforgiving nature of the winner-take-all approach inherent in its design." Why is this "unforgiving"? What makes this a "winner-take-all" and what's wrong with that?
Okay, I'm going to take a stab at this for you. Say there are four teams, right? Team 1, 2, 3, and 4. Team 1 is the best, and team 2 is a close second (little distance in performance between the two--if any). And Teams 3 and 4 are worlds behind the performance of 1 and 2, but they are still 3rd and 4th best. if team 1 plays team 2 in the first round, then you're not getting a championship with the two best teams. You're getting one of the two best, and a lesser. Now, single elimination can be called unfair because it doesn't take into account an off game. So if you have team 1 vs team 4 in a single elimination, and team 1 has a bad game, then the best team doesn't get a chance to play in the championship based on a fluke. A lot of people don't believe that's totally fair because all of the previous performance could be wiped out based on a fluke. I hope this answered your questions, but I'm not sure I did. If you want any clarification, let me know. I'm not sure I've said anything different from what you've already read.
These come down to the business of sports. Money drives business. If half the 'best' teams are eliminated in first-round play, revenue takes a dive. Fans want to see exciting games, not blow-outs. So a championship game should be the two best matched teams, matched in various ways. If there is a blow-out, revenues drop for the next year. If it happens two years in a row, revenues drop further, then 'conspiracy' enters the conversation. Simply not enough games played to really determine a winner. Think rock, paper, scissors; do you ever only play one, or best out of three? The 'best' team can have a bad night and be out. Revenues again, and a touch of pride. Team A can't win in rain. Team A does badly against teams that average over 6 foot 2 inch players. Real grass vs fake grass. Who just played and who has had rest? It is a single chance. Would anyone watch the NBA finals if it were only one game? No. People & teams have 'bad days', everyone understands this. These things become a real problem in amateur sports. There isn't enough oversight. I had a roomie that was hired to play on tourney softball teams. He hit home runs EVERY time at bat. There were a lot of these guys, so tourneys changed the rules to only X number of hime runs per team per game. Tournaments are numbers, and those better with numbers can influence.
I would like to add this scenario, which rears it's ugly head regularly. A problem with tournaments, but the only way we can figure out how to run them, is to schedule them. So, we both watch soccer. I like team Win, you like team Suck. The tournament is set up to run best of 3 out of 5 games. It is scheduled to be Mon, Tues, Wed, then travel Thurs, then game 4 & 5 on Fri & Sat, Everyone rests Sunday and back at it on Monday. Now, if team Win is a dominant team, is this set up 'fair' for team Suck? Probably not. Team Win will probably win the first 3, then rest for 4 days, then play again. Team Suck will probably need all 5 games to win, they get 1 day of rest. On top of that, injuries come into play. Team Win player twists his ankle at the end of game 3, he potentially has 4 days to heal while not letting his team down. Team Suck doesn't get to heal without changing their lineup, to most likely worse players than the starters.
I would say that you weren't in the right position to hear about it. You were captain of the chess team, but an adult or two ran the chess club/team. The adult was the one to get phone calls and letters that say something like: "We cannot afford to send our child to the tournament if there is a possibility that he will be eliminated after one game. There is travel and time involved. He has to be present for the entire tournament. The tournament is 30 miles from home. That means that he, and either me or his father, will be gone for over 8 hours, at an expense of nearly $80 total. We just cannot afford that for one game." Whereas my parents liked to look at it as "We can go out on a limb and spend time and money to give our child the experience of a tournament. If he does well and likes it, we will see how much he will be involved." As this happens as economies rise and fall, tournaments for schools tend to change their rules. If you do not have enough competitors or money, there is no tournament.
Okay. I think that will help me understand now as I read these over some more and let them churn. I really appreciate your help! Thank you.
Actually, in chess there is a tournament system called the Swiss system, which is a sort of cross between knock-out and all-play-all. Assume you've got 8 teams (pretty small for any tournament). First round A beats B C beats D E beats F G draws with H Second round (winners play each other - just like a knock-out. But in the Swiss, everyone else plays a second game) A beats C E draws with G H beats B D beats F Final round (highest-scoring teams play each other, and so on) H beats A E draws with C D draws with G B beats F And you end up with H winning the tournament, with A who won twice (and led going into the last round) coming equal second with E who won once and drew twice, etc. This way, you get a result (there are supplementary rules to settle a tie in the event of multiple teams on equal points) in a small number of games, without the unfairness of one bad day completely ruining your tournament. It's the way most congresses are organised, and gets over @antlad 's objection to spending all that money for just one game...everybody gets a whole weekend of games. As far as the unfairness of a "winner-takes-all" one-off game. Yes, it is unfair, but that's what we call the magic of the FA cup...where a lowly team can, on the day, beat one of the glory teams. OK, the Manchester United/Chelsea/Arsenal/... fans will whinge, but every neutral spectator will be cheering for the underdog (maybe it's a British thing?)
