Cockatrice tournament system May 12, 2016, 4:53 PM
GalacticPresident I think the system for the cockatrice tournaments with group stage and final stage is great, with one exception. Two people from each group advance to the final pool to play against the successful players from the other pools. The result from the match between the two players from the same group is transferred, which means it counts double, once for the group stage and again in the final pool. It is now possible to win the group stage but still go to the final pool with a loss if one happens to have only lost against the second seed of one's group. I think we should find a way to change that because it is just not fair and also distorts the end result!
Imagine this: Player 1 wins group A with 4 wins and 1 loss to Player 2. Player 2 comes in second with 3 wins and 2 losses. In the final pool, both players win the same amount of matches. In this case, player 2 ends up in front of player 1 in the final standings, despite having won 1 match less.

In my point of view, the player with the most points in his group should have an edge in the final pool, no matter if he won or lost against the player who happens to come in second.

I can think of 2 fair scenarios who the system could be changed:
1: The results from the group stage are not transferred at all.
2: The results from the group stage are not transferred at all and the group winners enter the final pool with +3 points.

What do you guys think of that?
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Max2070 May 14, 2016, 2:00 AM @Vlalutscher:

regarding my explantion of the interest and the impact of report system, I find it really better than just not play a match (cause, more the result we have, more accurate the final ranking is)
Vlalutscher May 14, 2016, 3:17 AM 2: The results from the group stage are not transferred at all and the group winners enter the final pool with +3 points.

I only talked about this scenario, because there seemed to be a question about it. But I can't find it anymore. Should have worked with quotes before. So, I just wanted to repeat that the one scenario would be neither report nor replay the match.

I also talked about the reward of winning a gruup in my post, what describes your other scenario. And yes, you're right. We start final phase with a free win right now and until your post, nobody complained about that fact, but I understood what you were talking about. I would prefer ignorimg the results from the first phase and not transfer it. So all players start equally in final phase. It could be ok, to give the winners a small reward for winning the first phase, at least it would make more sense than giving it to the second by transfering a win of him to the final phase. But I can imagine corner cases with drops of one or more players, where it we have kind of the same problem, we are discussing right now. Someone (player1) lost to player2 who had to drop afterwards, because of time problems or player2 just disn't play the rest of his matches. player1 won the rest maybe, but got second,, because player3 won every match including a free win against player2. You could call it unlucky, but I think you could also call it unlucky, if the only only result that is transfered is a loss, because of all participants the one, you lost against became second. So I can see that it feels wierd, unlucky and/or unfair, that someone with a worse performance starts with a free win. But if I take both corner cases into account I would say it's better not transfering the result, not replaying it, because of the time problem and not giving any player a reward. But I'm only writing about my opinion. What I think about this fact. I'm aso only a regular player and no organizer.


About the league points:
I know the rule of (number of players)/4. Because we had this discussion once I would have been the last one to be listed in a result of a cockatrice tournament. But I (and also others I think) was told, that it has to be changed/done differnt for our online tourneys. Max and Zombie explained to me, that it wouldn't be correct to list someone going 5W 5L or 4W 5L taking both phases into account. So there is a "reasonable" cut-off each of the tournaments. So I just said that I would prefer changing this arrangement instead of getting league points. But if both coincide, this is of course fine for me. And I also know that this rule takes part in every tournament, also the small ones. My point was, that in a tournament of let's say 10 players and 3 rounds, we list 3 decks and one could also have 2W 1L. But they don't have to qualify for a special group, so it feels a bit wrong to me that they get the reward (being listed) but a player of the final phase doesn't. But this is the benefit of a small tourney as I said before. I could have the same, if there would be small ones in my area.
But I checked the page again and it seems that the old rule of #players/4 doesn't exist any more, because there are 4/10, 4/12, 2/14 amd 3/6. I don't know.

So for 3 pools the match is always replayed and you would keep it like that? Regarding the "bonus" there is no problem, because all player start equally. A solution that is valid for all circumstances (i.e. 3 and 4 pools) would be more preferable. But maybe that's just me.

@GalacticPresident: Maybe my english wasn't the best, but it really felt like we were talking at cross purposes. Especially about the league ponts.
Vlalutscher May 14, 2016, 3:24 AM @Max: Sorry, I was writing during the time you posted your anwswer!

GalacticPresident May 14, 2016, 2:37 PM Ok, now I figured out where our problem is.
I did read your comment Max, but both of us didn't grasp what the other wants to say. I now understand your point (see below). My point never was to replay a match (which I failed to make clear), but rather to just not play it.
I'll try to sum up where we are. (Remember this whole discussion is only viable if there are 4 groups and 8 players in the final stage.)

My mistake was to think it was arbitrary to "enter the final pool with a free win/loss" which doesn't take into account who won the group stage. I thought in a way where the result would just count double for no obvious reason but it was the wrong way to look at it.
The correct way to look at it is: The group stage is played and 2 players advance. In the final pool we only want 5 matches to be played for everyone, in order to be manageable in time. If there are 8 players, everybody would have to play 7 matches, so we need to reduce it by 2. One is simply discarded and since the two players of each group have to face each other again, instead of replaying the match, the result from the group stage is transferred. All of this happens only because we don't want more than 5 matches in the final pool because of time reasons.

The question now is if it is fairer to transfer a result or to not take it into account (no rematch played!).
Because I strongly disagree with you Max, that the outcome of a rematch randomly restores balance or not. IT IS DEFINITELY NOT RANDOM. And it would definitely be fairer to replay the match (which is is done with smaller tournament sizes as you correctly said). Enlarging the sample size always produces a fairer outcome. If the matchup is 50/50 for example, obviously the fairest outcome is that both players win one match. If one player gets extremely unlucky, it is far better to replay the match, because with doubling the outcome, extreme luck or bad luck are doubled as well.
By transferring the result, we assume that the result would be reproduced and therefore make this one match twice as important as any of the other matchups. The questions is: Is that fairer than to just delete the matchup the same way as the other one that is just not played? In magic, there are a lot of close matchups. Let's look at an example. Let's assume we play a matchup twice, where player A is a 55% favourite (and both players are equally players). The probabilities look like that:
Player A wins twice: 30,25%
Both players win once: 49,50%
Player B wins twice: 20,25%

So if we assume that Peasant matchups in general are rather close than one-sided, it is for sure fairer to not transfer any results.
The disadvantage would be that we have 1 result less in final pool, which is real. With 8 players and only 5 results per player, the top rankings will more often be decided by the ratio of (game wins)-(game losses). I still think that it would be better to delete instead of transfer, because the transferred result is very important due to the few matches and, as I stated, pretty unfair. Its influence is I think a lot greater than the influence of (game wins)-(game losses) on the final order of players.

What do you think?

Regarding the points for the league, I can't seem to find the topic where the system was explained. Would somebody mind posting a link or explain it again briefly please?

[One more thing: It is possible to give the winners from the group stages a very small advantage by not making them play against all the others in the final pool. That means that the "deleted" matchup in finals for the nr.1 players is always another nr.1 player. The deleted matches of the nr.2 players are always other nr.2 ranked players.]
Bri May 14, 2016, 11:31 PM Hey guys!
my oppinion is also to not transfer the results. I would like to compare it to CDF, where (as far is i know) also a group or qualifying stage was held and then ppl played a seperate, additional, final pool. No transfered points. i can understand that you want an as big as possible amount of data to determine the winner, but i think it is more fair to start from zero.

If there shall be a minor advantage my suggestion is to give the winners of group stage diff +1 and the losers diff -1.
Vlalutscher May 15, 2016, 5:24 AM As I wrote before, I also prefer starting by zero and not transfering the result.

The last idea of GalacticPresident sounds good to me and quite easy to implement.

Regarding the points for the league, I can't seem to find the topic where the system was explained. Would somebody mind posting a link or explain it again briefly please?

The last comment here http://mtg-peasant.com/forum/topic/42/?p=7#forum_navig
Vlalutscher May 15, 2016, 5:31 AM The debate started here http://mtg-peasant.com/forum/topic/38/?p=12#forum_navig
AbyssalEasley May 15, 2016, 12:21 PM Hi ! My opinion is that the pool system is the worst system ever. We should pass to the "ronde suisse" system (i don't know the english name) like other online tournaments, with one week to make one round. After all we make only one tournament a mounth, so this will not change anything to the tournament frequency and drops will be best managed.
Toufmade May 15, 2016, 4:17 PM swiss round = 4 match in a month, pool system = 8 to 10 match in 2 weeks. It's a very differents rythm, and lot of people don't want to wait during 1month.

Moreover, it's very difficult to plannify for one month. Besides, if you think :" It's not fun, I know that I can't win", it's the same think if you play with Swiss Round. If you're at 0/0/2 after 2 rounds, you just could drop (you gonna play vs worst deck, and you couldn't win).

But, I agree with the reason why you suggest this idea, and I Think, it's possible to find a solution.
Indeed, the better way is to hide player result (except for the orga), in this case, nobody could know/deduce : who gonna access to final pool, and nobody could deduce what people are playing.
sister_morphine May 16, 2016, 10:32 AM @Galactic President: This makes the problem perfectly clear, thx for your lucid post. So, having your point in mind, i would prefer (A) not to transfer any results and cut two matches randomly. Or (B) to have a classic Top8-Play-Offs with quarterfinals, semifinals and a final match. But i prefer option A, since i like the idea of playing (more) magic there ;-).

@touf: your proposal sounds good in theory, but as soon as someone has three losses, he will drop anyway if he's a dropper. This whole drop/dropnot-thing is basically a question of ethics, in my opinion there's not much changing the rules can do about it.