HermanHiddema/Double Elimination plus McMahon

Mixing McMahon with a 16 player Double Elimination Tournament

This is a suggestion of how the European Championship could be decided unambiguously and without outside interference through a double elimination tournament, without separating it from the European Open completely.

Table of contents Mixing McMahon with a 16 player Double Elimination Tournament Definitions Selection of Top 16 for the European Championship Settings for the European Open How the Main Tournament is played Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 Round 6 Round 7 Round 8 Round 9 Round 10 Pairing the European Championship Evaluation Advantages Disadvantages Discussion

Definitions

• European Championship: A 16 player double elimination system tournament.
• Top 16: The 16 players selected to play in the European Championship
• European Open: A 10 round McMahon tournament, open to all nationalities.
• Primary Bracket: Players in the European Championship with no losses so far.
• Secondary Bracket: Player in the European Championship with one loss so far.
• Main Tournament: The combination of European Championship and European Open.

Selection of Top 16 for the European Championship

Suggestion: Select the 16 top players based on peak rating in the period since the last congress (i.e. starting with the resulting rating of last year's congress).

Optional: Allow the organizers to nominate one player (local champion, youth talent, or similar), and select the remaining 15 by peak rating as above.

Settings for the European Open

The top McMahon bar should be set in such a way that there are between 12 and 20 players in the top group. If no setting achieves this, use a top bar resulting in the smallest possible number of players larger than 20, then use a super group of 16 players from this top group. These players, and those in the Top 16, start with an equal number of points for McMahon purposes.

How the Main Tournament is played

The European Open is played as any other McMahon tournament, with players on equal MMS paired amongst themselves, avoidance of pairing the same players twice, and mostly fold pairing based on SOS within score groups (Same Country/Same Club avoidance only in lower groups).

The European Championship is played as follows:

Round 1

• The Top 16 play amongst themselves, the 8 winners go into the Primary Bracket, the 8 losers go into the Secondary Bracket

Round 2

• The 8 players in the Primary Bracker play amongst themselves, the 4 winners remain in the Primary Bracket, the 4 losers move to the Secondary Bracket for next round.
• The 8 players in the Secondary Bracket play amongst themselves, the 4 winners remain in the Secondary Bracket, the 4 losers are eliminated and will play their remaining rounds in the European Open

Round 3

• The 8 players in the Secondary Bracket play amongst themselves, the 4 winners remain in the Secondary Bracket, the 4 losers are eliminated and will play their remaining rounds in the European Open
• The 4 players in the Primary Bracket play in the European Open, paired by McMahon normally, but not against each other.

Round 4

• The 4 players in the Primary Bracket play amongst themselves, the 2 winners remain in the Primary Bracket, the two losers move to the secondary Bracket for next round.
• The 4 players in the Secondary Bracket play amongst themselves, the 2 winners remain in the Secondary Bracket, the 2 losers are eliminated and will play their remaining rounds in the European Open

Round 5

• The 4 players in the Secondary Bracket play amongst themselves, the 2 winners remain in the Secondary Bracket, the 2 losers are eliminated and will play their remaining rounds in the European Open
• The 2 players in the Primary Bracket play in the European Open, paired by McMahon normally, but not against each other.

Round 6

• The 2 players in the Primary Bracket play against each other, the winner remains in the Primary Bracket, the loser moves to the secondary Bracket for next round.
• The 2 players in the Secondary Bracket play against each other, the winner remains in the Secondary Bracket, the loser is eliminated and will play the remaining rounds in the European Open

Round 7

• The 2 players in the Secondary Bracket play against each other, the winner remains in the Secondary Bracket, the loser is eliminated and will play the remaining rounds in the European Open
• The player in the Primary Bracket plays in the European Open, paired by McMahon normally.

Round 8

• The player in the Primary Bracket plays against the player in the Secondary Bracket. If the player in the Primary Bracket wins, he or she is European Champion, otherwise he or she moves to the Secondary Bracket.

Round 9

• If the Player in the Primary Bracket did not win last round, then the two remaining players, now both in the Secondary Bracket, play against each other. The winner of this game is European Champion. Otherwise, both play in the European Open.

Round 10

• Everyone plays in European Open

Pairing the European Championship

• In the first round, a slide pairing (1-9, 2-10, ... 8-16) based on peak rating shall be used.
• In the Primary Bracket, a fold pairing based on peak rating shall be used.
• In the Secondary Bracket, a fold pairing based on peak rating sall be used, with avoidance of pairing the same players twice (unless there is no other option).

Evaluation

Advantages

• There is one unambiguous winner of the European Championship, who wins on points, not SOS lottery
• Non-Europeans do not interfere in the European Championship in any way.
• The European Champion can also win the Open Championship
• Top 16 players will play a total of about 100 games in the European open, an average of about 6 per player, which gives plenty of opportunity for match-ups between top European players and top non-European players.

Disadvantages

• The European Champion might end lower in the European Open than some of his Top 16 rivals.
• A Top 16 player who loses the first or second round could conceivably play 9 out of 10 rounds in the European Championship without facing anyone from the European Open (scoring a maximum of 8 points in those 9 rounds if he or she becomes European Champion)

Discussion

Bass: You would need some serious marketing skills to make the strong Korean players want to come to the tournament, since the system would guarantee that their only interesting matches would be against other Koreans for the first week and a half of the tournament. Maybe something along the lines of having a superbowl type special event on the final day, with the winner of the "eastern division" (open tournament) facing the new European Champion (western division) to decide the Overall Champion of the Congress. Or something. :-)

Herman: This is not true, because the players in the winners bracket play rounds 3, 5 and 7 in the Open. That means that except for rounds 1 and 2, at least 8 of the top 16, including the very strongest, will be playing in the Open. And since those in the winners bracket will not be paired against each other, they are pretty much guaranteed to play against strong Koreans (e.g. if there are 16 players in the top of the Open, then the 4 of them with 2 wins after round 2 will all meet a top 4 European)

Bass: Sorry, my mistake.

isd: It might be that CJK players simply come to congress to enjoy Europe. I think the top CJK players already know they are better than European players and wouldn't be that interested in playing them.. ? Just a thought :)

RobertJasiek: The geatest disadvantage is the possible small number of 5 wins to become the European Champion. The disadvantage is so great that your otherwise cute construction is not good enough.

Herman This is a generic comment that double elimination is a bad system. I disagree, and given the fact that even single elimination is in wide use in top events, so do most other tournament organizers, it seems. In the current system, you can be European Champion with 7 wins against mostly 3-5 dans, while never having played against most other top Europeans, so my system is clearly an improvement over that.

RobertJasiek: Regardless of what I think of double elimination as a system per se, my comment above is not meant to be a generic comment that double elimination is a bad system. - If you look at earlier EGCs, you will notice that the EChampion usually wins 8 to 10 games.

Herman: Actually, the most usual score for EC in the last 12 years is 7, especially in recent years with the participation of strong Asian players. With the current system, top European players can generally expect to play 2-3 of their games against Asian players, and 1-3 games against weak European players. Effectively they only play about half their games against other top Europeans and need to win 4 or 5 of those to be EC.

RobertJasiek: I will post a table on life_in_19x19.

Bass Another kind of tournament bracket could be used to give more games to the winners' bracket; the only (AFAIK) reason DE has one bracket missing half of the rounds is that the system can easily be generalized for any number of players that way.

Willemien I have more and more problems with it. Maybe if it could be transformed into a 6 or 7 rounds swiss tournament then I think it would be okay. But can we discuss this all at [the discussion at L19| http://www.lifein19x19.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=727&p=12420#p12420 ]

tapir: I wonder if the current system will lead one day to the opposite result, that a player contending for overall victory in the egc, will lose that one on a tie breaker because he was playing in the european championship sub-tournament.