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On July 09 2011 18:10 Talin wrote:Ugh, the results of the poll are so discouraging.  I really dislike any form of double elimination in Starcraft. Single elimination tournaments are pretty much a tradition, and all Korean competitions are single elimination. If you lose a BO5, there's no reason at all for you to stay in the tournament in any way.
The thing that makes double elimination superior is that it reduces the luck of the draw factor. In single elim, the 2nd best player can lose to the best player in the first round. With double elim, there's still a chance for that to be the final (as it should properly be.)
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I'm really surprised people actually like double elimination. It's kinda good for players but messy for spectators. I actually find shorter tournaments better for double elimination. With a larger player pool, you will have so many games in the losers, it's not practical to see them all and it's harder to schedule it. Winner and losers still need to played in parallel too. Right now your getting every game shown on the main stage one by one. This cannot happen with double elim system. Single-elim gives the clearest concise picture of how a tournament can go down.
With a single elimination, I can easily piece together who plays who by just seeing the bracket once. I can't do that with dbl elim without a bracket check online. It also allows a spectator to imagine how a tournament plays out. Remember bracket contests? You never see those with double elim.
Korean ESPORTS has used single-elim for a decade. Almost every major sport uses single-elim and it's not just cause of time restraints and for the casual audience that it's used. I'll tell you why:
LESS is MORE
People figured out years ago single-elim games create better games. Yes, that's right better games. There's a reason why season games and group stages don't get as many views as when playoffs start: Player's aren't really in danger yet. That's the beauty of single-elim: You either Win or you're finished.
Single-elim also has greater drama, as the reason why they allow games to start off with smaller sets start of the tournament is not just cause of time restraints but to allow for upsets. That's right UPSETS. Whether most people realize this or not, it is upsets that help tournaments become memorable. (e.g. MC vs ThorZain - TSL3, Huk vs July, DHS2011) This is incentive for viewers to tune in to early stages of a tournament. It balances the top end of a tournament that has greater prizes on the line with the harder fight for survival at the bottom end of a tournament. Keeps you watching start to finish.
Double-elims do rank players better in order from 1st to X, but single-elims are just that much more exciting. Every stage of the tournament is that much more important. Does it suck Ret loss 2-0 right off the bat against Puma? Yea it does. But, it's also part of the many story-lines that will make up this tournament due to this format. It turned the start of the tournament into something must see and gives a weight of importance to every match.
This is why I am pro for single-elimination. It gives great benefits to organizers and unbeknownst to most viewers, it them gives the most epic showing.
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single elimination, less games but being bo3 / bo5 already is a fair advantage to solid players, being single you have:
- tradition
- potential royal roaders and lucky runs
- every game is epic, you lose, you go home
- it won't always be won by the best player, but the player who wins always deserves it, variety.
so yes, less games but probably the same amount of dramah
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I usually favor the single elimination format over double. However, I think the NASL grand finals should have been double elimination. Flying across the globe for a single bo3, only to get eliminated is just awful in my eyes. They have scheduled the tournament over 3 days, I'm sure they could have squeezed in a losers bracket somewhere there. They don't even have to broadcast the games, just let them play on the side or something.
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On July 09 2011 18:16 AndAgain wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2011 18:10 Talin wrote:Ugh, the results of the poll are so discouraging. I really dislike any form of double elimination in Starcraft. Single elimination tournaments are pretty much a tradition, and all Korean competitions are single elimination. If you lose a BO5, there's no reason at all for you to stay in the tournament in any way. The thing that makes double elimination superior is that it reduces the luck of the draw factor. In single elim, the 2nd best player can lose to the best player in the first round. With double elim, there's still a chance for that to be the final (as it should properly be.)
I do see your point, and I can't really argue that it's wrong (because it isn't). Honestly I can't really articulate why I don't have a problem with that, hopefully someone else will do it better, but I'm going to try anyway.
I think it's conceptually wrong to get into the moot area of considering that there are players who are among the best, but they got unlucky with draw, they got a hard opponent or a hard matchup or hard maps, so they need a second chance or a third chance or a fourth chance to get less unlucky, but even then he might get unlucky again or he might get extremely lucky, and might win having to only play "easy" opponents... you can get stuck forever in that line of thought.
Elimination tournaments are essentially about players eliminating one another until there is only one player remaining, which means that one player can always eliminate another who is better than some player from the other side of the bracket. You can't really change that, so why even try?
The thing is that elimination tournaments are not designed to give a clear and accurate ranking of best players. The tournament isn't meant to determine the "best player", or second best, or third best. The tournament determines the tournament winner, and how successful the player was in the tournament. There's always a big difference between a good player and a successful player. Bisu is pretty fucking good at BW, but his individual league performance is now a running joke in the community. MC is extremely successful at SC2 - but is he actually that good skillwise? We can have opinions one way or the other.
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United States22883 Posts
Keep in mind we would've (potentially) gotten to see more games yesterday if NASL had used a double elimination format. Not every game needs to be a stage game, so you set up 2/4 stations backstage and have the losers bracket play out there. Run those games in the downtime between Winner's bracket games.
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As a competitor, I really like formats that lend themselves to having the results as a good representation of skill differentiation for that event. Thus, I really like round robin seeding and double elimination brackets.
As a spectator, single elimination brackets are much easier and more fun to follow. Upsets and drama are fun to see.
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Single elim because double elim games tend to be devoid of excitement, and it makes the finals have a dumb format. There's a reason no serious sports use double elim!
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Switzerland1365 Posts
It would be cool to have tripple elimination tournaments.
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Single elimination is fine. But what NASL needed to do was to make the R8 a BO5. Imagine pros flying all over just to get knocked out in a BO3
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IMO single elimination for leagues like GSL and double elimination for international events like NASL. Flying people across the planet to have them loose in 15 minutes is kinda stupid.
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As I see it, double-elimination is more likely to have the better player higher ranked at the end of the day.
Only issue being time-constraints.
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On July 09 2011 20:21 Woony wrote:
IMO single elimination for leagues like GSL and double elimination for international events like NASL. Flying people across the planet to have them loose in 15 minutes is kinda stupid.
I agree with this.
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Definitely double elimination for leagues like NASL. It pains me to see Ret go 8-1 in the regular season, then sent out to CA from Europe just to lose 2 games in 15 minutes and not get the chance to fight in a losers bracket.
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Double elimination is good for earlier rounds, group play and such, but it's terrible for finals.
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Double Elimination since it gives more games + varieties. Every way much more entertaining than single elimination.
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Does anyone actually prefer BO3 single elimination to double elimination?
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On July 09 2011 18:19 RaiKageRyu wrote:
I'm really surprised people actually like double elimination. It's kinda good for players but messy for spectators. I actually find shorter tournaments better for double elimination. With a larger player pool, you will have so many games in the losers, it's not practical to see them all and it's harder to schedule it. Winner and losers still need to played in parallel too. Right now your getting every game shown on the main stage one by one. This cannot happen with double elim system. Single-elim gives the clearest concise picture of how a tournament can go down.
With a single elimination, I can easily piece together who plays who by just seeing the bracket once. I can't do that with dbl elim without a bracket check online. It also allows a spectator to imagine how a tournament plays out. Remember bracket contests? You never see those with double elim.
Korean ESPORTS has used single-elim for a decade. Almost every major sport uses single-elim and it's not just cause of time restraints and for the casual audience that it's used. I'll tell you why:
LESS is MORE
People figured out years ago single-elim games create better games. Yes, that's right better games. There's a reason why season games and group stages don't get as many views as when playoffs start: Player's aren't really in danger yet. That's the beauty of single-elim: You either Win or you're finished.
Single-elim also has greater drama, as the reason why they allow games to start off with smaller sets start of the tournament is not just cause of time restraints but to allow for upsets. That's right UPSETS. Whether most people realize this or not, it is upsets that help tournaments become memorable. (e.g. MC vs ThorZain - TSL3, Huk vs July, DHS2011) This is incentive for viewers to tune in to early stages of a tournament. It balances the top end of a tournament that has greater prizes on the line with the harder fight for survival at the bottom end of a tournament. Keeps you watching start to finish.
Double-elims do rank players better in order from 1st to X, but single-elims are just that much more exciting. Every stage of the tournament is that much more important. Does it suck Ret loss 2-0 right off the bat against Puma? Yea it does. But, it's also part of the many story-lines that will make up this tournament due to this format. It turned the start of the tournament into something must see and gives a weight of importance to every match.
This is why I am pro for single-elimination. It gives great benefits to organizers and unbeknownst to most viewers, it them gives the most epic showing.
As a spectator, i'd rather see a longer tournament, than seeing my favorite players lose a bo3 and see him go home without a second chance.
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Double elimination is the format that - on average - gives a result that's closer to the ranking of "skill" of the players because there are more games and therefore anomalous results are less likely to adversely effect the outcome. Additionally, double elimination is better for some players, as it means that the drawing of early-round brackets doesn't stop someone's tournament dead when they play a considerably better player in the early rounds, leaving them with a disappointing low-ranking place when they could have done much. Seeding is used sometimes so it can be counteracted.
However, pure "fairness" is not the only thing one would take into account when choosing a format. Double elimination takes more time and requires more games to be played which makes it unsuitable for a short event - although more games is arguably a good thing for a few reasons (More games to watch! More ad revenue, etc.) it doesn't always suit a tournament. More games means that casters/referees must do more work (and maybe be paid more) and it takes more time.
As also mentioned, the idea that "Loser goes out" does add more tension to each game and makes every game count, so for spectator's it has some good points.
Overall, I'm in favour of double elimination when appropriate (and that tends to be when there's a lot of money or a big title on the line) but there are times when single should probably be used (Smaller tournaments in a restricted amount of time). A tournament is - afterall - supposed to hand out the first place prize to the best player and any method that makes this more likely is good in my eyes (Assuming there aren't practical issues stopping its implementation).
I'm not a fan of extended series; they seem to give a further advantage to someone who's probably (In that they won the first round) better anyway.
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Double elimination is generally, the better format. Makes it so the best player will usually win. However, a lot of tournaments use single elimination, probably due to time constraints? Double elimination is a lot more taxing on the players, staff, etc. I mean it definitely sucks to fly all the way from wherever to the US, lose 2 games and be out of the tournament, but due to the streaming schedule and what not. It would be impossible for the NASL to have done double elimination with a 3-day finals. TBH, the 3-day finals seems a bit long already...
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EPT
