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On November 12 2010 14:06 Almeisan wrote:Thank you for doing this. I had to cringe so hard hearing Nony explain the point behind extended series and then Day9 going "Gee, I didn't think of that, wow." Then later on both him and Idra claimed the purpose of a tournament format is not to have the best player win because eventually someone not the best player will win. Yeah, it will. Unless you play an infinite round robin. But you can't play so many games. So then Day9 went into this line that as a math graduate he knew that it doesn't matter what structure you use since the variance of the coins will never be evened out by a tournament structure. This is obviously very wrong as it is very likely for a person to win once when he is only 30% likely to win. But if you need to get that 30% odds several times then that's not going to be likely. The argument that it was fundamentally wrong to even think that a tournament structure would have any effect was so obviously wrong, I was sad Nony got a little intimidated. Yeah, it would be hard for him to make the actual argument as he couldn't run these simulations on that spot in his head and use that as evidence. Anyway he would have to do some handwaving and it wouldn't have looked strong to many viewers, who were already in favour of normal double elim. People just hate to accept that what they did for years wasn't that good. It's hard for people to accept that in the past people went out of tournaments, eliminated by people they had a wining record against. They have to accept that that was somehow just. Show nested quote +I don't understand why numbers are needed to argue that a format with lots of games played has less variance than a format with few games. What does your conclusion show that we don't already know? Didn't you hear what Day9 said on that podcast? And, there's still people here that dispute the result. I remember when people didn't understand why the person in coming to the finals of the loser bracket had to win twice. Some people aren't very good at this stuff.
If I'm interpreting what Day9 said correctly (which its possible I'm not) his point that was that you would have to play an infinite number of games to see who is the best player if each player was a weighted coin flip (e.g 70% win, 30% lose rate). A player who had a 99% chance of winning each game could still lose 1000 games in a row. He is correct in saying that a tournament doesn't provide an absolute rank of player skill, it provides a poor estimation of player skill. That is assuming you believe that win probability is the same thing as skill too.
The main issue of contention appears to the purpose of double elimination. Some people believe that the purpose is to help determine the best player, other people believe it is to give players a second chance if they simply screw up in one Bo3.
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On November 12 2010 14:15 nzb wrote:
Hahahah... This is exactly why I was inspired to do this. I was like... "C'mon Day[9]! You are representing all science grad students in the universe on this show, and you come up with this crap?"
Yeah, it was like Incontrol and Idra hammering down the dogma of the bracket: "That's not how it works so it's artificial and it shouldn't matter."
Then Nony says: "Extended series gives you are more accurate ranking. And if you guys don't care about how accurate a ranking a tournament produces, I am confused. Day9 please help me out."
Then Day9 comes in and says: "I am going to step in and be like super fuking mathematical on everybody. A tournament does not determine a ranking of players, period." Then he does come up in his head with the idea that you can actually simulate this stuff and find out. But then he does "I personally feel that regular old double elim clicks a little bit better in my head."
Then Nony respond, repeating his point.
Day9 again "That again is a series of arbitrary judgments."
That made me facepalm so hard...
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this experiment is awesome and it was a fun read, thanks OP
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On November 12 2010 14:27 Gudeldar wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 14:06 Almeisan wrote:Thank you for doing this. I had to cringe so hard hearing Nony explain the point behind extended series and then Day9 going "Gee, I didn't think of that, wow." Then later on both him and Idra claimed the purpose of a tournament format is not to have the best player win because eventually someone not the best player will win. Yeah, it will. Unless you play an infinite round robin. But you can't play so many games. So then Day9 went into this line that as a math graduate he knew that it doesn't matter what structure you use since the variance of the coins will never be evened out by a tournament structure. This is obviously very wrong as it is very likely for a person to win once when he is only 30% likely to win. But if you need to get that 30% odds several times then that's not going to be likely. The argument that it was fundamentally wrong to even think that a tournament structure would have any effect was so obviously wrong, I was sad Nony got a little intimidated. Yeah, it would be hard for him to make the actual argument as he couldn't run these simulations on that spot in his head and use that as evidence. Anyway he would have to do some handwaving and it wouldn't have looked strong to many viewers, who were already in favour of normal double elim. People just hate to accept that what they did for years wasn't that good. It's hard for people to accept that in the past people went out of tournaments, eliminated by people they had a wining record against. They have to accept that that was somehow just. I don't understand why numbers are needed to argue that a format with lots of games played has less variance than a format with few games. What does your conclusion show that we don't already know? Didn't you hear what Day9 said on that podcast? And, there's still people here that dispute the result. I remember when people didn't understand why the person in coming to the finals of the loser bracket had to win twice. Some people aren't very good at this stuff. If I'm interpreting what Day9 said correctly (which its possible I'm not) his point that was that you would have to play an infinite number of games to see who is the best player if each player was a weighted coin flip (e.g 70% win, 30% lose rate). A player who had a 99% chance of winning each game could still lose 1000 games in a row. He is correct in saying that a tournament doesn't provide an absolute rank of player skill, it provides a poor estimation of player skill. That is assuming you believe that win probability is the same thing as skill too. The main issue of contention appears to the purpose of double elimination. Some people believe that the purpose is to help determine the best player, other people believe it is to give players a second chance if they simply screw up in one Bo3.
The purpose of a tournament is to determine a "winner" by sorting the players based off their performance in the tournament. People will naturally try and correlate the rankings produced by the tournament to their own estimations of player skill. Maybe b/c I take a computer science approach to the discussion I can't help but view the tournament itself as just another sorting algorithm.
Philosophically skill isn't quantifiable in any abstract sense and characterizing it in terms of probability creates some issues.
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On November 12 2010 14:33 Almeisan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 14:15 nzb wrote:
Hahahah... This is exactly why I was inspired to do this. I was like... "C'mon Day[9]! You are representing all science grad students in the universe on this show, and you come up with this crap?"
Yeah, it was like Incontrol and Idra hammering down the dogma of the bracket: "That's not how it works so it's artificial and it shouldn't matter." Then Nony says: "Extended series gives you are more accurate ranking. And if you guys don't care about how accurate a ranking a tournament produces, I am confused. Day9 please help me out." Then Day9 comes in and says: "I am going to step in and be like super fuking mathematical on everybody. A tournament does not determine a ranking of players, period." Then he does come up in his head with the idea that you can actually simulate this stuff and find out. But then he does "I personally feel that regular old double elim clicks a little bit better in my head." Then Nony respond, repeating his point. Day9 again "That again is a series of arbitrary judgments." That made me facepalm so hard...
What really made me facepalm was Day9 saying that regardless of what Tyler said it doesn't "feel" right. Thankfully we were able to prove the world was round, if we went by our feelings we'd still think it was flat.
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I hate the extended series model, primarily because it adds such a huge element of luck to any one player's individual performance. If you lose to a player in the WB and he subsequently losts his next round, the future of your tournament now depends on you randomly not getting paired with that one player. Likewise, his performance will get a boost with that random pairing. Besides, he already beat you in a Bo3 series, so he is more likely to have the advantage anyway, why exaggerate it?
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I want to ask why extended series would let the better player win more often in your model if the worse player won the first series and starts out with a lead in the extended series. Wouldn't the extended series format in this case make it harder for the better player to win?
If the better player wins the first series, then the extended series format merely protects the player's skill advantage so that upsets are less likely to occur compared to a normal double elim. format.
If the better player loses the first series, then wouldn't the extended series format make it less likely for the overall result to adjust itself meaning for the better player wins the second series?
I assume the slight edge extended series has over double elimination only signifies because the better player wins the first series most of the time, the extended series thus ends up protecting a lead of the better player most of the time. However in reality where skill level is much more difficult to quantify than with a few variables, the extended series format merely adds extra protection for whoever wins the first series, rather than for whoever is truly more skilled.
In this case the debate between the two format becomes only an ethical consideration of whether the player who wins the first series deserves an advantage despite having the same status as his opponent, that is both players are in the loser's bracket.
I'm not very good at stats so you'll have to explain exactly where the % difference between double elim and extended series comes from. Again I disagree with your player model. If skill level needs to be protected then a seed format would be more than enough. I agree with a standard bo7.
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Maybe Day9 can be 'excused' because he wasn't listening to the earlier discussion because in the context he said it in it basically sounded like he meant that any tournament is an inaccurate ranking so the accurateness of a tournament system doesn't matter. Incontrol and Idra earlier had already said that tournaments are never perfectly accurate. Which of course is an obvious point in which Nony responded that it matters how much accuracy you can get with a certain number of games. It really sounded to me that he said that because there's no 100% win coins, tournament results are never accurate so the effect of a tournament structure is irrelevant.
I think tournament accuracy is a huge problem for SC2. And I think it will get worse in the future. In SC BW really strong players can consistently get into the top4 of starleagues. And in SC BW there's a really strong player field. All those B teamers are really strong and there isn't that much skill difference between them and say Flash or Jaedong. But in SC BW the more skilled player wins most of the games. SC2 is a lot more like WC3 where there's just a lot of luck. We already see this in MLG and GSL results. The top 8 has been quite different every time even in such a short time period. And when players get better and skill margins get even smaller we may have 500 people or more who are really all no worse than 45-55 vs each other. And especially without prize money this will mean that when the initial hype of SC2 as a new game is gone no one will really be able to be professional.
When in more than 50% of the cases the top 8 best players all won't be in the top8 of this 512 player tournament, that is a problem.
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On November 12 2010 14:56 Almeisan wrote:
Maybe Day9 can be 'excused' because he wasn't listening to the earlier discussion because in the context he said it in it basically sounded like he meant that any tournament is an inaccurate ranking so the accurateness of a tournament system doesn't matter. Incontrol and Idra earlier had already said that tournaments are never perfectly accurate. Which of course is an obvious point in which Nony responded that it matters how much accuracy you can get with a certain number of games. It really sounded to me that he said that because there's no 100% win coins, tournament results are never accurate so the effect of a tournament structure is irrelevant.
I think tournament accuracy is a huge problem for SC2. And I think it will get worse in the future. In SC BW really strong players can consistently get into the top4 of starleagues. And in SC BW there's a really strong player field. All those B teamers are really strong and there isn't that much skill difference between them and say Flash or Jaedong. But in SC BW the more skilled player wins most of the games. SC2 is a lot more like WC3 where there's just a lot of luck. We already see this in MLG and GSL results. The top 8 has been quite different every time even in such a short time period. And when players get better and skill margins get even smaller we may have 500 people or more who are really all no worse than 45-55 vs each other. And especially without prize money this will mean that when the initial hype of SC2 as a new game is gone no one will really be able to be professional.
When in more than 50% of the cases the top 8 best players all won't be in the top8 of this 512 player tournament, that is a problem.
You are incorrect in thinking there isn't much of a skill disparity between some random B-teamer and Flash or Jaedong. The skill disparity in BW is significantly greater than SC2.
EDIT: I understand you're trying to say the playing field is generally strong in BW which is true and you're right about SC2 having more luck involved, I don't want to detract from the point you're trying to make ^^
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On November 12 2010 14:59 space_yes wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 14:56 Almeisan wrote:
Maybe Day9 can be 'excused' because he wasn't listening to the earlier discussion because in the context he said it in it basically sounded like he meant that any tournament is an inaccurate ranking so the accurateness of a tournament system doesn't matter. Incontrol and Idra earlier had already said that tournaments are never perfectly accurate. Which of course is an obvious point in which Nony responded that it matters how much accuracy you can get with a certain number of games. It really sounded to me that he said that because there's no 100% win coins, tournament results are never accurate so the effect of a tournament structure is irrelevant.
I think tournament accuracy is a huge problem for SC2. And I think it will get worse in the future. In SC BW really strong players can consistently get into the top4 of starleagues. And in SC BW there's a really strong player field. All those B teamers are really strong and there isn't that much skill difference between them and say Flash or Jaedong. But in SC BW the more skilled player wins most of the games. SC2 is a lot more like WC3 where there's just a lot of luck. We already see this in MLG and GSL results. The top 8 has been quite different every time even in such a short time period. And when players get better and skill margins get even smaller we may have 500 people or more who are really all no worse than 45-55 vs each other. And especially without prize money this will mean that when the initial hype of SC2 as a new game is gone no one will really be able to be professional.
When in more than 50% of the cases the top 8 best players all won't be in the top8 of this 512 player tournament, that is a problem. You are incorrect in thinking there isn't much of a skill disparity between some random B-teamer and Flash or Jaedong. The skill disparity in BW is significantly greater than SC2. EDIT: I understand you're trying to say the playing field is generally strong in BW which is true and you're right about SC2 having more luck involved
Yes and in rare cases where top level players have to go through a large player pool in offline prelims for examples, the more accomplished ones are given byes. I don't follow the SC2 scene but the normal double elim. format has worked for years and years in competitive gaming, I would love to see why this extended series format was introduced. If top players are constantly getting cheesed, then make the series longer. If the player pool is too big, then start assigning seeds. I see no purpose for extended series.
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On November 12 2010 14:48 space_yes wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 14:33 Almeisan wrote:On November 12 2010 14:15 nzb wrote:
Hahahah... This is exactly why I was inspired to do this. I was like... "C'mon Day[9]! You are representing all science grad students in the universe on this show, and you come up with this crap?"
Yeah, it was like Incontrol and Idra hammering down the dogma of the bracket: "That's not how it works so it's artificial and it shouldn't matter." Then Nony says: "Extended series gives you are more accurate ranking. And if you guys don't care about how accurate a ranking a tournament produces, I am confused. Day9 please help me out." Then Day9 comes in and says: "I am going to step in and be like super fuking mathematical on everybody. A tournament does not determine a ranking of players, period." Then he does come up in his head with the idea that you can actually simulate this stuff and find out. But then he does "I personally feel that regular old double elim clicks a little bit better in my head." Then Nony respond, repeating his point. Day9 again "That again is a series of arbitrary judgments." That made me facepalm so hard... What really made me facepalm was Day9 saying that regardless of what Tyler said it doesn't "feel" right. Thankfully we were able to prove the world was round, if we went by our feelings we'd still think it was flat.
Don't be so dramatic, we are talking about a tournament not the objective nature of reality. In a way what "feels right" or what the viewing public wants is the only factor that should be important to MLG. From their perspective the only reason they even put on the tournament is so people will watch it so they can make money from advertising and HD pass purchases.
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On November 12 2010 14:51 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I want to ask why extended series would let the better player win more often in your model if the worse player won the first series and starts out with a lead in the extended series. Wouldn't the extended series format in this case make it harder for the better player to win?
First of all the stats show it's true. I assume you accept that. So let me give an example of what could happen.
Ok, I know you know the BW scene so let me make a BW player analogy as it's hard to judge absolute ranking in SC2.
Say we have a bo3 double elim tournament with Flash, Idra, G5 and a bunch of irrelevant amateurs.
If we would do an infinite round robin Flash would clearly be 1, Idra would clearly be 2, G5 would clearly be 3 and then the rest. That's the expected result.
Say Idra runs into G5 early. Idra is the better player and expected to win. He wins 2-0. Next round Idra plays vs Flash. Idra loses as he would most of the time. In a single elim he would be out and he wouldn't even reach top 16. And he wouldn't not reach top 16 because he played below his standard. He was expected to lose vs Flash and expected to beat anyone else and he did exactly that. He game the performance that should give him no.2 but he doesn't get that. Double elim gives players in this case a change to show their no.2 performance.
Now the tournament is double elim. Flash makes it all the way to the finals and wins that too. But what happens to Idra and G5. They meet again in the loser bracket. Now G5 has a nice abusive style Idra is weak against. G5 beats Idra 2-1. Idra is out. He is eliminated twice. Once by Flash and once by G5.
But paradoxally the stats of the the games show Idra performed as he should vs G5. He won most of his games vs G5. He gave his no.2 performance. Yet he is out and G5 is the player Flash beats in the finals.
So it's not that Idra performed worse than G5. He was expected to perform better and he did. He went 3-2 vs G5 which translates to winning a Bo5. Yet the double elim judges G5 to be the better player.
The point of the double elim is that you need to be eliminated twice. You need to lose vs 2 players that are better than you, to even out no1 and no2 meeting early. Flash eliminated Idra once. That's clear. G5 also got eliminated once, vs Flash. And then Idra got eliminated by a player that performed worse vs him, namely G5. That's odd and against the idea of double elim in the first place. That's why they have extended series.
Now you can argue for whatever reason that the first bo3 is rightly thrown out. But that's besides the point. It is information that was available. It is information that can be used to judge more accurately what the playing strength of each player actually is. We have this coin flip that is maybe 65% in favour of Idra. When you flip it 5 times you get more info than when you flip it 3 times. If you already thrown it twice and you discard those results you are just going to have more incomplete info compared to using the info of the first bo3 as well. Now the difference may be not so big. But if you have a certain coin that has anywhere from 1/99 to 99/1 probability and you throw it 1000 times, you know a lot about that coin. You can estimate what the probability of that coin is. But if you throw it 1000 times and then only look at the last 3 flips, you are throwing out valuable information and you are going to be way less accurate in your estimate. Normal double elim does the same thing, just with a smaller error margin.
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Almeisan, hilarious you picked Idra and G5. Your post reminded me of their game on Destination lolololol (if you've seen it).
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On November 12 2010 14:51 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I want to ask why extended series would let the better player win more often in your model if the worse player won the first series and starts out with a lead in the extended series. Wouldn't the extended series format in this case make it harder for the better player to win?
If the better player wins the first series, then the extended series format merely protects the player's skill advantage so that upsets are less likely to occur compared to a normal double elim. format.
If the better player loses the first series, then wouldn't the extended series format make it less likely for the overall result to adjust itself meaning for the better player wins the second series?
I assume the slight edge extended series has over double elimination only signifies because the better player wins the first series most of the time, the extended series thus ends up protecting a lead of the better player most of the time. However in reality where skill level is much more difficult to quantify than with a few variables, the extended series format merely adds extra protection for whoever wins the first series, rather than for whoever is truly more skilled.
In this case the debate between the two format becomes only an ethical consideration of whether the player who wins the first series deserves an advantage despite having the same status as his opponent, that is both players are in the loser's bracket.
I'm not very good at stats so you'll have to explain exactly where the % difference between double elim and extended series comes from. Again I disagree with your player model. If skill level needs to be protected then a seed format would be more than enough. I agree with a standard bo7.
I think this is where the 58%/4% comes in. As someone else has already stated, these numbers can't be taken literally, but it gives some frame of reference for what can happen.
Basically, if the better player loses initially, then he has a 58% chance in my model to come back and win.
However, if the better player loses initially, then he has only a 4% chance of losing in the extended series.
So it is heavily skewed towards protecting the better player, regardless of the outcome of the first BO3.
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On November 12 2010 15:09 Almeisan wrote:Show nested quote +On November 12 2010 14:51 zulu_nation8 wrote:
I want to ask why extended series would let the better player win more often in your model if the worse player won the first series and starts out with a lead in the extended series. Wouldn't the extended series format in this case make it harder for the better player to win?
First of all the stats show it's true. I assume you accept that. So let me give an example of what could happen. Ok, I know you know the BW scene so let me make a BW player analogy as it's hard to judge absolute ranking in SC2. Say we have a bo3 double elim tournament with Flash, Idra, G5 and a bunch of irrelevant amateurs. If we would do an infinite round robin Flash would clearly be 1, Idra would clearly be 2, G5 would clearly be 3 and then the rest. That's the expected result. Say Idra runs into G5 early. Idra is the better player and expected to win. He wins 2-0. Next round Idra plays vs Flash. Idra loses as he would most of the time. In a single elim he would be out and he wouldn't even reach top 16. And he wouldn't not reach top 16 because he played below his standard. He was expected to lose vs Flash and expected to beat anyone else and he did exactly that. He game the performance that should give him no.2 but he doesn't get that. Now the tournament is double elim. Flash makes it all the way to the finals and wins that too. But what happens to Idra and G5. They meet again in the loser bracket. Now G5 has a nice abusive style Idra is weak against. G5 beats Idra 2-1. Idra is out. He is eliminated twice. Once by Flash and once by G5. But paradoxally the stats of the the games show Idra performed as he should vs G5. He won most of his games vs G5. He gave his no.2 performance. Yet he is out and G5 is the player Flash beats in the finals. So it's not that Idra performed worse than G5. He was expected to perform better and he did. He went 3-2 vs G5 which translates to winning a Bo5. Yet the double elim judges G5 to be the better player. The point of the double elim is that you need to be eliminated twice. You need to lose vs 2 players that are better than you, to even out no1 and no2 meeting early. Flash eliminated Idra once. That's clear. G5 also got eliminated once, vs Idra. And then Idra got eliminated by a player that performed worse vs him, namely G5. That's odd and against the idea of double elim in the first place. That's why they have extended series.
Thanks for the explanation, I see the point now. However as I'm sure others have mentioned, meeting in the loser's bracket in a single elimination format is different from meeting under double elimination, therefore it should not be obvious the Idra in your scenario should be given an advantage upon meeting G5 again.
I don't necessarily think both players should start out even when they meet again, but if an advantage is to be given to the player who won the first series, I think the better format is to have a best of three series on top of the loser bracket series, with Idra starting out 1-0 so that G5 would have to win two bo3 or bo5 series to advance, similar to the format of the grand final in a normal double elimination format. In the multiple BO system the player who lost the first series would be allowed to lose more games than in an extended series bo7.
Atm I'm not sure which format I agree with more. But in the study done in the OP, the player model has way too few variables. Maybe Idra performs worse than G5 when facing elimination, or maybe G5 performs better when warmed up after having played a few BO series. In any case if two players are close enough in skill level that they can go 1-1 in two BO series, I can't imagine the regular double elim system to be so unfair that the advantage given by extended series is required to correct an "injustice" within the format. Having a 2-0 lead in a bo7 is too much of an advantage imo.
Edit: Actually I still disagree with any kind of advantage given to the initial winner. My opinion is only influenced by BW however. I think winning the first series already gives enough of a psychological advantage that no further changes in the format is necessary to protect it. If two players are close enough in skill that one can come back to win a BO3 series after having already lost a series earlier, the format should have no responsibility to give extra advantage to either player. The most important aspect is that the players play a BO series, and not single games. The BO series itself should do enough to even out variance. In your example, Idra might win 3 out of 4 games he plays vs G5 in normal circumstances, but because of various factors he loses the single elim series 1-2, the result isn't really that farfetched, certainly not enough so that a change in the tournament format should be instated so that Idra will always win at least 2 out of 3 no matter what.
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Atm I'm not sure which format I agree with more. But in the study done in the OP, the player model has way too few variables. Maybe Idra performs worse than G5 when facing elimination, or maybe G5 performs better when warmed up after having played a few BO series. In any case if two players are close enough in skill level that they can go 1-1 in two BO series, I can't imagine the regular double elim system to be so unfair that the advantage given by extended series is required to correct an "injustice" within the format. Having a 2-0 lead in a bo7 is too much of an advantage imo.
You are, obviously, right in some sense. But the purpose of the study is to find the "big picture" statistical behavior, and to capture the effects that influence this most heavily.
While I'm sure that my model is missing things, objections need to have systematic effect -- that is, in the long run they favor the better players or worse ones, or the winner of the winners' bracket game, etc.. Otherwise, you would expect that they would balance out after enough simulation (and I ran it a million times). Effects that just increase the randomness will change the results somewhat, but they probably will not change the trends, which is what we care about anyway.
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Double Extended is definitely more accurate a measure then plain double and is efficient.
Arguing that each round is isolated and shouldn't cause an extended series goes against the whole principal of an isolated tournament where its the battle to have the best winning streak. You can't have it both ways.
Either you have only single elimination or double extended. Plain double is never valid in any circumstance. How this isn't understood by tournament veterans is odd.
Over multiple single eliminations the players rank will become more accurate but the double & double extended speed up the process.
The Idra arguement of his zvt is better the anothers persons matchup is completely irrelevent. Race doesn't matter as you either play to win in a tournament setting beating everyone or you want a league where you can lose but overall your average skill level will be shown.
Round robins are the most accurate most fair but no one has that kind of time.
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In my opinion, the purpose of a tournament is not to "find the best player". It is to provide entertainment for both players and fans. If "finding the best player" were the only criteria, then we would just use a round-robin format containing many games.
Thus, since the extended series is deemed as confusing and is disliked by many fans, then it should not be used.
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On November 12 2010 15:56 Adeeler wrote:
Double Extended is definitely more accurate a measure then plain double and is efficient.
Arguing that each round is isolated and shouldn't cause an extended series goes against the whole principal of an isolated tournament where its the battle to have the best winning streak. You can't have it both ways.
Either you have only single elimination or double extended. Plain double is never valid in any circumstance. How this isn't understood by tournament veterans is odd.
Over multiple single eliminations the players rank will become more accurate but the double & double extended speed up the process.
The Idra arguement of his zvt is better the anothers persons matchup is completely irrelevent. Race doesn't matter as you either play to win in a tournament setting beating everyone or you want a league where you can lose but overall your average skill level will be shown.
Round robins are the most accurate most fair but no one has that kind of time.
In the context of Almeisan's example, you can look at it as G5 obtaining an advantage for having gone on a win streak in the loser's bracket before meeting Idra, where the advantage is for their series to start out 0-0. In the grand final the winner's bracket winner starts out with an advantage because he went undefeated.
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Zulu, I added a bit later about how normal double elim ignores available information. Without that part it is too much an argument about why it's better rather than about why it performs worse in simulations.
There is also the problem that G5 got only eliminated once by Idra. That is a flaw, imo. But it's a flaw of double elim in general and the same flaw single elim has. When the two player meet again in the loser bracket one of them is going to be eliminated out of the tournament. There's no way around that. And in some cases it's just impossible to not have the same match in the loser bracket you had in the winner bracket.
It's possible Idra meets Flash early on and that G5 cheesed vs Flashes 12 CC and wins 2-0. Then Idra loses to Flash in an extended series in the loser bracket and is eliminated technically only once and by Flash. That's a flaw that is in both systems that you can only fix by making it a round robin. But it's different from discarding info.
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The dogma of a single elim is that if you are eliminated you are out. The dogma of the double elim is that you need to be eliminated twice.
That going through the loser brackets to make it to the finals is harder and takes more games is not accounted for. The reason there are two finals is that the person from the winner bracket has to be eliminated twice to too.
Also, I think that the simulations show that you can expect the better player to be the one in the winner bracket and not the one in the loser bracket. Someone has to come out of the loser bracket, no matter how much harder you make it. And that person is going to have lost to someone in the winner bracket.
Also, I don't understand the argument "If you want accuracy, why not use round robin so let's use normal double elim". If you don't care about that why use double elim in the first place. Double elim is a compromise. Extended series is a minor fix. It doesn't take many more games and it adds a bit of accuracy as well as avoiding the strange case where you win more games but are deemed to be the inferior player.
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EPT
