The accuracy of an elimination (sometimes called knockout) tournament is greatly enhanced if the pairings are done correctly, which depends on having a fairly reliable indication of the strength of the programs. Was this done?
The idea is that early rounds should be forgone conclusions - the top half essentially plays the bottom half in the first round for instance, and the the best 2 players meet in the final round. If it's paired EXACTLY by strength and there are no upsets, then in each round half of the players are eliminated, and it's always the weakest half. Of course that is the ideal case - there are always upsets even if minor because the strongest player is never guaranteed a win and it's pretty much impossible to rate players perfectly. It is possible to pair players in such a way that the strongest player has low odds of winning too and you want to avoid that. For example it's clearly wrong to pair the best 2 players in the first round of a knockout tournament. - Don On Thu, 2008-12-18 at 10:16 +0100, Rémi Coulom wrote: > Shunsuke SOEDA wrote: > > Another reason we chose the single elimination tournament, is that > > the finals in the single elimination is the "finals", while in other > > matching > > systems, the final game might become a dull game. > > > > We know that we are sacrificing accuracy, and do want to know > > what the participants (and might-be-participants) think about how the > > tournament should be organized. > > #This includes opinions on how should remote attendance be allowed > > > > At first, I was also surprised by the format of the tournament. From a > statistical point of view, it certainly does not rank participants in > the most accurate possible order. But the ranking of a 9-round > tournament always depends a lot on luck, anyways. The advantage of > direct elimination is that there is no risk of tie, and it makes the > final rounds more exciting. I think the format is very good. > > Still, I have a couple suggestions. > > First, it might be better to let everybody play in the qualification > tournament, even the previous top 4. The quality of pairings in the > second day depends a lot on the quality of ranking of the qualification > tournament. Strong programs would have no difficulty to qualify, > anyways. And a program that loses a game because of technical problems > can try to fix the technical problem for the next game (or the next day). > > Also, some participants may feel frustrated that they were eliminated in > the first day. Maybe they could play swiss between them in the second day. > > Regarding remote play, I don't like it, but that is probably because I > don't profit from it, whereas my strongest opponents do :-) > > It seems that the UEC Cup is very well organized, and I thank you very > much for your work. > > Rémi > _______________________________________________ > computer-go mailing list > computer-go@computer-go.org > http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/ _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
