PCM ITA Swiss Sprint

emmea90 · 8 Febbraio

Rulebook

The PCM ITA Swiss sprint will be an experimental tournament of sprint to test the Swiss Tournament format.

In a Swiss tournament, participants are not eliminated when they lose a match, unlike in a single-elimination tournament. Instead, participants are paired against opponents with similar records, typically based on the number of wins and losses they have accumulated throughout the tournament.

The basic idea is that each participant plays in every round of the tournament, and after each round, participants are matched against opponents with similar scores. This format ensures that participants are consistently challenged by opponents of similar skill levels, and it allows for a fairer determination of overall rankings by the end of the tournament.

In a Swiss tournament, players will be paired with an opponent with the same record as them based upon the previous rounds results adjusted so players do not play each other twice. This means that in Round 1, you could be paired up with anyone else in the tournament. However in Round 2, you'll be paired up against someone else with the same record as you (0-1 or 1-0). This will continue on until all rounds of the tournament have been played. In the case where there are an odd number of players within a group, players may be paired off such as a 2-0 being matched with a 1-1.

The tournament will so consist on two phases, the League stage and the Knock-out stage.

League Stage

The league stage will consist of a single classification with pairs done according to Swiss Tournament rules. The number of rounds will be as follow

For 6 to 8 players: 4 rounds
For 9 to 12 players: 5 rounds
For 13 to 20 players: 6 rounds

In every round four rounds of sprint will be played, with two rounds hosted by each member of the pair. It's therefore actually possible to end in a draw.

As the system is complex, the couples will be done using challonge with the first round being done according to seeding. The seeding will be done according to IMA World Cup Seeding rules for sprint (the one integrated in IMA website)

Byes

In Swiss system tournaments, byes are used to accommodate an odd number of participants or to balance the number of players in each round when the total number of participants is not a power of 2 (e.g., 8, 16, 32, etc.). Here's how they typically work:

Odd number of players: If the total number of players is odd, one player will receive a bye in each round. This means that they won't play a match in that round but will still receive a point or points as if they had won a match. The player who receives a bye is usually determined by a predefined criterion, such as seeding or random selection. In subsequent rounds, players who have received a bye in previous rounds might still get paired with each other.

Balancing the number of players: In some cases, even if the total number of players is even, it might be necessary to give one or more players a bye to ensure that the number of players is balanced for each round. This can occur due to dropouts, late arrivals, or other factors.

Byes are typically awarded in a way that minimizes their impact on the tournament's fairness. Players who receive byes are often given points equivalent to a win for the purpose of calculating standings, but they don't contribute to tiebreakers in many systems. The pairing algorithm ensures that players with similar scores are matched against each other in subsequent rounds.

Tie-breaks

At the end of the League Stage, the following tie-breaks will be applied

Head to head match, if played
Rounds won
Median-Bucholtz system (calculated by challonge)

Knock-out stage

The Knock-out stage will proceed as follow: the first six players of the league stage advance to the knock-out that will be played according to this table

QUARTERFINALS:

QF1: 3rd placed vs 6th placed
QF2: 4th places vs 5th placed

5TH PLACE FINAL:

Loser QF1 vs Loser QF2

SEMIFINAL:

SF1: 1st placed vs Winner QF2
SF2: 2st placed vs Winner QF1

3RD PLACE FINAL:

Loser SF1 vs Loser SF2

FINAL:

Winner SF1 vs Winner SF2

In quarterfinals and 5th place final, the game will be best of 5. In semifinals and 3rd place final the game will be best of 7. In the final the game will be best of 9. The player with the best league position start to host and then the host alternates. To win the game the player must win with a gap of 2 points, otherwise the game continues.