AEI wrote: "A simple calculation proves that, if the ladder play system works as it did last year, if there are only four rounds, only teams ranked in the TOP SIX have any chance of winning whatsoever. In a 42-team tournament, that would be like running four divisions, and taking only winners and two wild-cards. This hardly seems fair--especially to the two "runner-ups" who didn't quite make the playoffs." I don't think you're quite understanding the format. This is nothing at all like running four divisions (which might be unequal in strength) and taking only winners and two wild cards into the playoffs. After 11 rounds the teams are already ordered 1-42 based on how they have performed to that point, with every team having started the tournament with an equal chance to wind up in any position, talent aside. The tournament _could_ end right there, once teams had been ordered 1-42, but the four ladder rounds provide for second chances and additional fine tuning of final position, pitting teams only against exactly those teams with whom they are still in direct competition for adjacent positions in the final standings. Certainly only the top six at that point still have any mathematical chance of finishing at #1 -- the purpose of the final four rounds is not to overturn the results of the first 11 by still allowing great jumps in the standings, but to fine tune final positioning throughout the field. Teams 5 or 6 to that point _could_ still move all the way up to #1 (by winning all four of their ladder matches), but they could also still move down out of the top six with others coming up from below. The point is, Teams 1 and 2 have performed better to that point than any other teams in the field, and have earned their positions. They can still fall from there, but only a limited amount now. Teams 3 and 4 have not performed quite so well as 1 and 2 to that point, but better than 5 and 6 (and the whole rest of the field); accordingly they could still move up to the top, or fall some--to a position lower than is now possible for 1 or 2, but higher than the lowest possibility still out there for 5 and 6 as ladder play begins -- and so on throughout the field. Ladder play is playoffs for final positioning, in which all teams "make" the playoffs -- though the championship itself is no longer a possibility for 36 of the 42 teams, a situation into which teams have placed themselves by their wins and losses over the first 11 rounds. The "dynamism" you ask for, in which teams can still move up and down more quickly, is present over the course of the five rounds of power matching, which can very powerfully correct the rough sorting of teams produced by the first six rounds. But after 11 rounds, with only 4 to go, what is left is fine tuning in which teams play the exact teams adjacent to them in the standings to contest exact final position; the time for great leaps in the standings, endlessly forgiving second chances, has passed. [continued next message]
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