On June 07 2011 06:03 [MLG]GCA wrote: I truly believe extended series is the only fair way to handle two players meeting twice in a double elimination tournament. It rewards players that win early and often, and is the best way to reward the best players over the tournament as a whole.
For example, player X meets player Y in Winners, and X wins 2-0. The two players meet again in Losers, and Y wins 2-1. Player X has won more games against Y over the course of tournament, but is eliminated by him. That just doesn't seem right to me.
That is exactly why extended series will be here to stay. Sure it sucks that you or your favorite player has to beat more times that he beat you ... but MLG believes that the better should advance, and that is the guy with the more wins. Sadly people will still hate it extended series even with this fact but gladly silently praise it when they or their favorite players they advantage of it.
@the poster above me That would be true if the two players meet again a week after, of course it would suck if they count your losses from the same guy a month ago. But MLG is a 3 day event.
So something like the Champion's League isn't fair? Ok....
All that really matters is that an overwhelming majority don't want it so it should disappear.
Again .... that's a league format ... this is a tournament.
It would really surprise me if MLG will abandon extended series. I think (and I hope) that they will stand their ground as they have been in the past few years.
It's not a league format...it's pool play (called group stages) to knock out half the teams and provide seeding, then it's knockout.
A team in the CL could win both their group games then lose the final. This is considered perfectly fine by every football fan, because everyone knows that the group stages (aka pool play) is just about seeding and it doesn't matter if you lose a couple games.
Group/pool play should be to seed people and should otherwise be completely self contained. Results should not carry at all.
3) Extended series. If A wins the Bo3, then the rematch becomes a Bo7 with the first 2 or 3 games "already played" - and extended series guarantees that the player who advances has the better overall record between the two.
I'm a big fan of extended series: when I watched MLG a couple years ago just for the Halo competition I thought it was a brilliant idea.
The other question is of course whether to apply it from pool play into the bracket. I don't really care. On the one hand, pool play is a different thing: on the other hand, the head-to-head record is a big part of what MLG looks at.
And that scenario is what MLG is trying to accomplish. People say past results shouldn't matter, that would be true if the last match was played a week ago, but this is a tournament not a league.
I also remember double elims before where Team X beat Team Y 2-0 then they meet again couple hours in the losers bracket and Team Y beat Team X 2-1. Do you really think it's fair to sent Team X packing? As you mention MLG is really focuses on the head-to-head record.
It's fair and should be used. People don't realize how tiring it is to play for so many hours under lots of stress. Forcing players to play a Bo7 series after they had already played for hours that day will just create lesser quality games as both players try to end the game as soon as possible.
I believe there is a psychological aspect to being down 0-2 at the start of a match. This is the reason I don't like extended series. Theoretically, the better player will win more games, but that's not the case with SC2. There is an element of metagame in SC2, and it gives one player an advantage. Being up 2 games allows you to play riskier knowing you can afford to flip a coin.
On June 07 2011 06:36 Corrosive wrote: Its fair but its stupid.
Its fair because Say you 2-0 them, then lose 2-1
You have beaten him 3 times and lost twice but you are eliminated from the tournament.
Its stupid because it gives one player a mental advantage going into a match.
I think they should just do bo3's and ignore the fact that one player has more wins (like my example above)
That player deserves that mental advantage because he won twice already. He would have the same mental advantage was it bo5 and he was up 2 games. If the point of a tournament is having the best players at the top, then when two players are going aggainst each other, and we are to determine which of the two is more worthy of it, then we shouldn't ignore the previous matches. Not only is extended series fair but desirable.
I think most people don't realize that MLG does not have a double elimination tournament.
You have 3 separate tournaments.
Pool play Open brackets Championship brackets
The Pool play and Open brackets only function as seeding for the Championship Bracket. This means that the Championship Bracket is a separate tournament.
In the pools you can't play someone 2 times, so the extended series rule doesn't apply here.
In the open brackets it is possible to meet the guy who knocked you down. The extended series rule could make sense here. But why would you use extra rules for a seeding tournament.
In the Championship bracket the only way you can meet the guy who knocked you down from the winner bracket is to meet him again in the finals. Where the guy from the winner bracket already has an advantage. He only has to win 1 Bo3 and the guy from the loser bracket already has to win 2 Bo3s (At least that is how it should be, MLG does not do this because of the extended series rule.)
I think the problem that should be discussed is: Are the different tournaments (How I like to call it) really separate tournaments, or is it 1 big tournament.
On June 07 2011 06:43 nalgene wrote: The players play the first half of the Bo7 earlier and then resume playing it if they meet again. Nothing wrong with this at all...
MC reversed it from 0-2 to 4-2 with his 4-0 win... he just had jet lag on the first day, but everything was fine 2 days later
The thing that is wrong with it is that it produces shitty series. Stupid allins to pick up gambled wins cause you're 2-0 up anyway. Non contests because the 0-2 guy has almost no hope. There are exceptions to these of course, but generally this is what happens.
It also means you get stupid 2 game finals which is just rubbish!
Specific examples from this last MLG include a mere 2 game finals between two sick players, and the MC-Thorzain rematch being a damp squib because Thorzain never had much hope.
On June 07 2011 06:43 nalgene wrote: The players play the first half of the Bo7 earlier and then resume playing it if they meet again. Nothing wrong with this at all...
MC reversed it from 0-2 to 4-2 with his 4-0 win... he just had jet lag on the first day, but everything was fine 2 days later
The thing that is wrong with it is that it produces shitty series. Stupid allins to pick up gambled wins cause you're 2-0 up anyway. Non contests because the 0-2 guy has almost no hope. There are exceptions to these of course, but generally this is what happens.
It also means you get stupid 2 game finals which is just rubbish!
All silly justifications of the extended series rule falls to this above argument. Extended series produces bad games and short finals. That's it. It fails as entertainment.
You know if idra got to the finals of the winners bracket and faced thorzain idra would have been down 0-2 even though he came from the winners bracket and should have an advantage. That imo is a stupid rule.
Regardless of whether or not it's fair, I'm really surprised it is still in effect despite such a majority of the Starcraft community being against it.
On June 07 2011 06:46 Baituri wrote: I think most people don't realize that MLG does not have a double elimination tournament.
You have 3 separate tournaments.
Pool play Open brackets Championship brackets
The Pool play and Open brackets only function as seeding for the Championship Bracket. This means that the Championship Bracket is a separate tournament.
In the pools you can't play someone 2 times, so the extended series rule doesn't apply here.
In the open brackets it is possible to meet the guy who knocked you down. The extended series rule could make sense here. But why would you use extra rules for a seeding tournament.
In the Championship bracket the only way you can meet the guy who knocked you down from the winner bracket is to meet him again in the finals. Where the guy from the winner bracket already has an advantage. He only has to win 1 Bo3 and the guy from the loser bracket already has to win 2 Bo3s (At least that is how it should be, MLG does not do this because of the extended series rule.)
I think the problem that should be discussed is: Are the different tournaments (How I like to call it) really separate tournaments, or is it 1 big tournament.
It's 1 big tournament because you get paid based on your final standing.
extended series is OK but it should only come to effect AFTER the pool play.
Pool play wins already give you an advantage due to higher seeding - punishing the loser twice by putting him down 2 games during the brackets-round is simply too much.
I think it's unfair, the winner gets a win and the loser a loss, it should end with that. The only one who should get an advantage is the WB final winner, he's the only one to go truely undefeated through the bracket and earns the advantage. AND then it should still be 2x bo3 in Grand final, WB winner should only win 1, the person coming from the consolation final 2.
What bothers me more is the bracket composition, it was composed in the following manner:
it shouldn't be that way, you should never be able to play someone you've met in groupplay that early in the bracket. It seems like MLG wants to enforce the extended series in this way and to me it falsifies the competition. I'd rather have a player go through as many different opponents as he can, proving he can win vs all sorts of play styles and prove he's the most complete player in the end and not a player who just keeps beating the same players over and over again.
if anything the brackets should've looked like this:
d2 a3 b4 c5 d6 haypro moon sjow tyler tlo a2 b3 c4 d5 a6 slush sheth thorzain incontrol gretorp c2 d3 a4 b5 c6 mc machine fenix kiwi select b2 c3 d4 a5 b6 july ret major drewbie moonan
the order behind d2/a2/c2/b2 is as follows: you compose the bracket so that seeds 5&8 and 6&7meet in LBR7.
same goes for the WB semi finals, winner of group a(seed 1) plays winner of group d(seed 4), winner of b(seed 2) plays winner of group c(seed 3). The loser of a vs d gets put in the lower part of the LB, loser of b vs d meets the upper half
I think each match deserves a fresh 0:0 score. If someone loses 0:2, then it's going to be a completely different game if they meet again. I feel that in a series, each match is a part of just 1 larger game because all the psychological plays that get involved.
Let's say that someone just gets totally outplayed by me in a bo3. Then further into the tournament, we get paired up again and I lose 0:2 very convincingly. I won't be like "well, we're 2:2... we should be even!". I'll acknowledge that the other person was able to adapt better than me and was able to become a better player after having played me before.
On June 07 2011 06:52 Zaros wrote: You know if idra got to the finals of the winners bracket and faced thorzain idra would have been down 0-2 even though he came from the winners bracket and should have an advantage. That imo is a stupid rule.
Thorzain had to win matches in order to face Idra again, why wouldn't he deserve to keep his 2-0 advantage?
I think it's the best for the format. A player who wins 2-0 the first time and loses 2-0 or 2-1 the 2nd time should not be knocked out with a neutral 2-2 or even 3-2 record. The best of 7 eliminates the possibility of this happening, which ultimately creates the most fair environment for the tournament.
1) If they meet each other again in the loser bracket than it should be a fresh game. The advantage for the player that knocked the other player out is that he has to play less matches. 2) The finals should ALWAYS be 2 Bo3s with the player from the winners bracket only having to win 1.
So someone please explain this to me. There is exactly one case where it is in fact an advantage to the LOSER. In the finals Losira had a Bo7 starting down 2-1, but if it weren't extend series he would have to win 2 Bo3 which I think is harder. The other huge problem with it is that the maps are not set up correctly for it so that essentially there no vetos in an extended series.
EPT
