User:Cancermania/Swiss System: Templates, Formats & Explanation

This page has been made with the intention of informing about the Swiss System's purpose, it's 4CC and Invitational history and it's many interpretations, as well as providing templates for my different versions of the system. While it's also made with the intention of encouraging the system's use in future tournaments, it doesn't claim that the Swiss System or any of it's current or future variations should be used in an official Cup anytime soon, as that is for fans, managers and /admin/ to decide.

If anyone wants to contribute anything of value to the page, whether it's new, corrected or missing information, better writing, or even, opinions on the matter, feel free to do so.

If you aren't willing to read all of the bullshit I'm about to write below, go to the TL;DR section for an attempt at a reduced version.

Main Purpose of the Swiss System

The Swiss System is designed to provide close encounters between teams of similar strength. This is done with the purpose of creating matches in which the opposition's level is fair for both teams involved and the result of each match is more difficult to predict. There are many ways of making the pairings for each match, and depending on which one is chosen, and the amount of teams and rounds involved in the process, the results may vary based on how much does the presumed strength of each team match their actual strength.

Formats

Sexcopter's 2014 Proposal

Competitors and Schedule

This format was designed for a 40 team tournament, in which the teams were split in 2 groups of 20 teams. The tournament was scheduled to take four 3 day weekends to complete the group stage and one 2 day weekend to complete the knockouts. In order to make sure the required amount of teams was met for the tournament to take place, dead teams would be revived by the 4CCC to fill the gaps left. This tournament format was supposed to be used twice a year, replacing the old format for the Elites and killing the Babbies.

Group Stage

The groups would be drawn following a pattern in which the teams would go to different groups depending on their previous Elite Cup result. Only the Top 8 from each group would qualify for the knockout stage.

The drawing pattern was the following: 1st goes to Group A, 2nd and 3rd go to Group B, 4th and 5th go to Group A, and so on until 40th filled the remaining spot on Group B. This was apparently done for balancing purposes, as they claimed a Single Group Swiss System was unbalanced. However, a simple look at this process reveals that this isn't the truth. Group A is clearly stronger than Group B and that is due to this drawing pattern being wrong.

There would be 3 rounds of matches in each group that, across the next four weekends of group stage, would provide 5 matches per matchday.

The pattern used for each group stage weekend was the following: 1st Half of Group A - 2nd Half of Group A - 1st Half of Group B | 1st Half of Group A - 2nd Half of Group A - 2nd Half of Group B | 1st Half of Group B - 2nd Half of Group B - 1st Half of Group A | 1st Half of Group B - 2nd Half of Group B - 2nd Half of Group A.

This pattern was supposedly used to give every team the same amount of time to prepare for their matches which, once again, seems untrue based on how some teams go from getting slightly less than a week to prepare to almost two entire weeks to get ready for their next match.

Pairing Method

The pairing method for all of the rounds of group stage would be determined by Challonge which, at first glance, seems lazy and a proof that they truly didn't know how to properly pair the teams up by themselves. The only round of matches that could have avoided the Challonge pairings was Round 1, which they considered to draw randomly or from a hat like it had been done up to that point.

Purpose

The reasons given for the use of this system on the 4CC were the need to deal with the excessive amount of teams that were active during that time and the cup's schedule being too busy for the streamers and organizers to sort things out.

Controversy and Rejection

This format was announced as the future cup format during November 2014, with the intention of using it for the next Elite Cup in 2015. However, there was an obvious problem that was quickly pointed out by everyone shortly after the announcement was made. Apparently, they took this decision without asking managers or fans for their opinion and/or approval. This of course started a shitstorm that eventually forced the return of the old format to keep most fans and managers happy.

A video about the whole debacle is listed on the wiki's Videos section.

Gio's Tag Team Cup 5 Format

Competitors and Schedule

This format was designed for a 16 team tournament, in which all teams shared the same group. The tournament was scheduled to take 5 days, in which 4 of them were dedicated to group stage and one was used for the knockouts. The only abnormality is the last day of group stage, which takes 9 matches to complete unlike the rest, which only take 8.

Group Stage

The group stage format used for this competition was a triple elimination format, in which the matches were redrawn with swiss pairings after each round was completed. The teams that managed to get 3 wins after an indefinite amount of matches qualified for the knockout stage. On the other side, any team that got 3 losses would get eliminated.

A notable thing about this format is that draws are not allowed to happen, which basically forces one of the two teams to win.

Pairing Method

The pairing method used for this tournament was the Standard Swiss Pairing Method, with the exception that, as the teams got qualified or eliminated, the pool in which the pairings took place only affected the teams that were still fighting to qualify for the knockouts.

This is better explained in this explanation, but with a small exception. The sheet states that rematches cannot happen, however, there are two rematches in the actual tournament. Whether this is a result of a change of plans or someone fucking up, I do not know, but I feel like I needed to point that out.

Cancermania's Akko League III Format, including Modifications and Variations

Competitors and Schedule

This format was designed for a 16 team tournament, in which all the teams would share the same group. The group stage would take 4 days to be completed, while the playoffs and knockouts would each be completed in one day, making it a 6 day tournament.

Group Stage

The 16 teams would share the same group, in which the Top 4 in the standings would seed the knockout bracket, the next 4 would seed the second round of playoffs and the remaining 8 would play in the first round of playoffs.

To avoid ties between competitors in the standings, a stat called Buscholz Score would be added as the most important tie breaker. A team's Buscholz Score is the addition of all the points every single one of the opponents they faced had. The remaining tie breakers followed normal 4CC rules except for alphabetical order being used in the very unlikely case of two teams having the exact same stats in every other category.

While teams aren't allowed to be tied in the standings, the matches can end in a draw, unlike with Gio's format.

Pairing Method

The teams would be paired with a live draw for Round 1, while all the other rounds would be determined by increasingly tougher pairing procedures.

For example, Round 2 pairs the first quarter of the standings with the second quarter, while the third is paired with the fourth. Round 3 pairs the first 1/8 of the standings with the second 1/8, the third 1/8 with the fourth 1/8, and so on, until all 1/8s are paired. Finally, in Round 4, 1st is paired against 2nd, 3rd against 4th, and so on.

The only exception to this happens when two teams that have already faced eachother are drawn together. In that case, the teams are paired with the closest team that hasn't played against them and hasn't been drawn yet.

Playoffs

The playoffs resemble what most people will recognize as /vg/ League's Survival Round playoffs. In this iteration, the first round pairs 9th - 12th with 13th - 16th and the second round pairs 5th - 8th with the appropiate winner of each first round playoff.

The main thing to understand here is that the matches are set up to give the knockout bracket teams an opponent that's as close to their level as possible. This means that, for example, 1st place would either get 5th, 9th or 13th as their opponent based on the results of the playoffs, while 2nd would get 6th, 10th or 14th, and so on.

Purpose

This format was suggested to the tournament organizer as a way to make a 16 team tournament last for the six days that were booked in advance. This format also had an alternative version, in which teams placed 13th - 16th would get eliminated at the end of group stage and the playoffs would become a two legged affair between teams placed 5th - 8th and teams placed 9th - 12th. This last version was probably rejected due to two legged matches not being as exciting as survival round playoffs and the first version giving a second chance to the less skilled managers (which was fitting for a tournament that focused around new and struggling managers).

Modifications to the Original Format

The modifications made to the original format focused on rebalancing the playoff and knockouts brackets. While the matches themselves were properly arranged, the brackets were set up in such a way that one side of the bracket would have a stronger average strength than the other. That means, that the quarter-finals and semifinals could potentially be more competitive than the actual final, which would undo a lot of the work done prior to keep things fair for everyone.

As a result, the brackets went from being seeded with 1st and 2nd on one side, and 3rd and 4th on the other, to, 1st and 4th on one side, and 2nd and 3rd on the other. Once again, this only affects the brackets, the matchups and way the playoffs feed into each team's away side still works in the exact same way, with 1st getting 5th, 9th or 13th as their opponent, and so on.

Variations

After the correcting the original format, a 32 team variation was created with the normal Cup schedule in mind. Not long after, a 16 and 32 team two group version of the format was also created to help with potential scheduling issues tournament organizers and managers might have to deal with under the one group format, especially when making nightlies and announcing matchdays. Each of the two groups are set up to have the same team strength as the other.

Templates were made to provide organizers with an easy way of making their own Swiss System tournament under these new formats, including the two different playoff variations and a Draw sheet that allows organizers to properly make a Round 1 draw, whether they use results/rankings or a traditional live draw.

In case you are wondering, yes, you can decide to ditch the playoffs and the template will still work properly. In fact, you can also ditch the knockouts and only run Swiss System group stage if you want to. However, this might require changes if you plan to do more/less rounds than provided.

TL;DR

>What the fuck is it?

The Swiss System is a tournament format that has the intention of pairing teams of the same strength together in an attempt to provide fair and unpredictable matchups.

>Why did I hear bad things of it from others?

The bad reputation of the Swiss System in the 4CC can be atributed to many things: The system's complexity, the lack of a proper, easy to understand explanation (at least until now), Sexcopter's 2014 fiasco, the current Cup format being a better known and easier to manage choice, etc.

>How many of them are there?

There has been three notable iterations of it: Sexcopter's 2014 Proposal, Gio's Tag Team Cup 5 Format and Cancermania's Akko League III Format.

>How does each of them work?

• Sexcopter's proposal used 40 teams separated in two groups of 20. The teams of both groups would play 3 rounds of matches across 4 weekends to determine each group's Top 8, which would later advance to the knockout stage for the fifth, and final, weekend. Groups would have been drawn based on the teams' positions on the previous Elites and matches would have been determined via Challonge except for the first round, where pairings could have been drawn from a hat.

• Gio's format for Tag Team Cup 5 used 16 teams that played in the same group. The teams would play an indefinite amount of rounds in which every team would need to aim for three wins in impossible to draw matches to advance to the knockout stage while, at the same time, avoiding three losses to not get eliminated. Pairings were decided with a live draw for Round 1 and the rest of the rounds were determined by each remaining team's position in the standings.

• Cancermania's format for Super Akko League III Turbo HYPER INT Edition used 16 teams that played in the same group. The teams would play 4 rounds of matches to determine the 4 teams that would seed the knockouts bracket, the 4 teams that would seed a second round of playoffs, and, the 8 teams that would play the first round of playoffs. Pairings were decided with a live draw for Round 1 and the rest of the rounds were determined by each team's position in the standings.

>Can any of them be used in an actual cup?

• It's safe to assume Sexcopter's format won't get used in the cup any time soon due to a long list of reasons: The format itself is poorly thought out, it would kill Babbies and only give us two 5 week long Elites for the entire year, many teams would get culled or revived from out of nowhere, it would be horrible to organize in the current state of the cup's calendar, many long-time managers, fans and /admin/ members would suffer PTSD from the whole affair, etc.

• While Gio's format is a more sensible proposal than Sexcopter's, it still has it's flaws. Mainly, teams playing an uneven amount of games during group stage, some matches and matchdays going on for a long ass time due to this format requiring a team to win each match no matter what, and the length of each Cup potentially increasing depending on the amount of rounds that would be used.

• Cancermania's original format isn't suited for Cup use unless many modifications are made to it, as the tournament's length, fairness and organization would be too difficult to handle both for managers and /admin/. However, these modifications have been made, both with Cup and Invitational use in mind, and can be found below in the Templates section, with an explanation of them being listed in the long version of the page.

Templates

16 Team, Single Group, Swiss System Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/197dj1H2I7apPeiW-HDIK4UPzO6fs8klJtQn4-9rs_a4/edit?usp=sharing

32 Team, Single Group, Swiss System Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t3iRC_802vA5rj-FA4mPGCWfPmhIgiRkXzf5KEE2FWY/edit?usp=sharing

16 Team, 2 Groups, Swiss System Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QCcSXUDhX1VlLiPfbyTY6p1UrP8g3p4kSlz0x6VSiIk/edit?usp=sharing

32 Team, 2 Groups, Swiss System Template: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eIcM-Tgbt5x0kWAy4euXzxeUkcAfNNWhS4MrmNPmmMc/edit?usp=sharing

If (You) have any questions about these templates or you find any issues in them, contact me through >dicksword: Cancermania#4840

Opinions

• Leave your opinions about the Swiss System and/or this page's content in here. Cancermania (talk) Hour, Day Month Year