Re: Possible Alternative to Ladder Play?

jpahk · Mon, 10 Apr 2000 12:31:52 -0700

I like Adam's idea--mostly. We used something
like it for a singles tournament at Harvard last
spring, and it has its merits. However...

The
thing I don't like about it is that it penalizes #3 and
#4 more than I think it should. They essentially
play single-elim during the "up-down" round, whereas
in the NAQT ladder format only #5 and #6 face
elimination during the first round of ladder play. I don't
think that #2 is so different from #3, but #2 gets a
bye and an automatic bid in the top bracket whereas
#3 has to play #6, who (presumably) is going to be a
damned good team capable of taking out anybody on a
given packet.

Perhaps this seems like a minor
quibble, and it's certainly possible that such quibbles
could be raised against virtually any proposed format
for a championship on such a large scale. Then again,
almost all of the objections that I've seen to NAQT's
ladder system also seem like minor quibbles. I, for one
(and maybe I'm the only one), like ladder play. It
does seem to put some emphasis on when you win games,
but trying to eliminate that problem can only cause
other problems. For example, let's say you make the
finals best 2/3 with no advantage. What if one team is
much, much better than everybody else and beats the
2nd-place team three times (once in power-matching, twice
in ladder play)? If they win the first game of the
finals, should they really have to win again? It's
certainly possible that team #2 could get hot and win the
next two, but even if they did they would still be at
least two games worse, and 2-4 head-to-head against
team #1. Do they deserve to win?

It could just
be that any finals system is inherently unfair (or
has the potential to be unfair). I personally would
like to see something like 5 random games, 3
power-matched games, and then 7 games of RR among brackets of
8, with no finals if one team has proven sufficient
dominance--but this format also has problems (like putting too
much importance on Friday night's games). I'm willing
to believe NAQT has thoroughly considered all kinds
of options for their format, and I like the one
they've chosen.

Joon