Super Go Team Tournament System

    Keywords: Tournament

Q: I'm trying to explain the SuperGo team tournament system here. Any help is very appreciated. The first version of this page is just to give the folks at KGSClans an idea on how this works.


The format is known by the two names: Win and Continue Team Tournament Format as well as win and continue.

The SuperGo system is great for team/clan/house/club matches. Different from most team matches there will be always only one game played at a time (no boards 1-4 for example).

Each team/clan/house/club has a list of its players. Let's say 5. These lists are sorted by strength[1], so the best player in each team is number 1. In each round one player will drop out, so we have a maximum of 9 rounds (there are 10 players). The match starts with a game between both bottom players in the lists. The loser drops out, the winner will play number 4 of the other team, etc. The first team without any further players is out obviously and the other team the winner of the SuperGo.

Two links: [ext] http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/orient/go/international/necsuper.html [ext] http://www.dgob.de/index.htm?news/vergleichskampf.htm

The second link is German, sorry. I will substitute it if I find something better. But it's just to see those 3 lists (1 match list, 2 team lists). It was a SuperGo between the cities Berlin and Hamburg (Berlin won 10:8). They were 10 players each team (in my example above we had just 5), so there is a maximum of 19 games (18 were played). "S" in the match list means "schwarz"/black. Maybe easier to understand the idea while watching those lists. Berlin had 2 players standing in the end, one of them didn't even have to play.


Discussion:

Q: I really would like to see this system for the upcoming KGS Clans. I don't really like those 4 player team versus 4 player team thing on board 1, 2, 3, 4. That's just a desperate attempt to transform a 2 player game into a team game, but there's no interaction between the boards. SuperGo feels a lot more as a team experience, at least in my feeling and opinion. Besides that: Do you think you'll get a review if you play at board 3 and 4? I don't think so, board 1 is much more interesting usually. In SuperGo the whole clan would concentrate on your game, because it's the only one going on right now. This way a clan match would go on for several days on KGS, of course. Well, it's just a suggestion, but in my opinion this brings together the great aspects of Go and clans: Focus on a single game and team competition.

Alex: Sounds like it'll be really boring for the last player on the winning team's list, though, since chances are he won't get to play.

Q: You are right to a certain degree. But it really depends on what you expect from this. I already saw 2 clans with 7d players, the rest mostly kyu. Do you think those 7d expect a serious competition? I think they do it mostly just for fun and the social aspect of this whole clan thing. I suppose when schedules come up ("We have to be all here at 3.00pm GMT at saturday!") most people will leave clans. Very hard to manage time with groups of more than about 5 people from around the globe. With SuperGo those very strong players are just backup for their clan, in a very informal way. They don't even have to be there when members of their clan are playing, though it would be nice if they could review the game with their weaker clan member later, of course. I have even games in mind, by the way. Handicap stones are good, but for clan wars they are too softish, haha! Well, that's just my opinion but I think this way it's much less pressure for the stronger players in the clans. The single game has a deeper meaning with SuperGo, and it's more fun to study games with a meaning. There is no "board 4 game" no one is interested in. Besides that clans can be "at war" with more than one other clan at the same time, in my opinion. So I can understand your point, but there are different ways of viewing it and different expectations. The SuperGo system doesn't consume too much time and scheduling, and still gives a good "team experience". That's why I like it. With other expectations it might be slow and boring, I agree.

Alex: If the clans are made up of a bunch of weak players with one high dan per clan, that's even worse. Then the story of the tournament is predetermined: the kyus battle it out until one group of them is eliminated, at which point their 7 dan hero steps in and wipes out the rest of the kyus from the other team, then plays a single game against the other team's 7 dan to determine the outcome of the tournament. That course of events essentially renders all previous games meaningless. For a tournament like this to work, for every game to count for something, there needs to be a steady strength gradient on both teams, so that the (n+1)th strongest player on one team is always close enough to the (n)th strongest player on the other team that he has some reasonable (10% at least) chance of beating him. If there's a big jump in strength at any point, all games prior to that point have no effect on the outcome of the tournament.

Kenn: I agree with Alex that this makes the lower level games meaningless. Also, it isn't like sports where after winning one game you are too spent to win another, unless there are hard time constraints. But then the difficulty remains: Most tournaments are free-for-alls, so they don't make much sense for Clan matches, and I agree that the simultaneous game model is not right either. Any ideas on adopting a round robin or flighted tournament to teams? Maybe just restrict matches to be between opposite teams?


[1] Bob McGuigan: Not necessarily sorted by strength. In the old china-Japan Supergo matches often the strongest player was the last one. Nie Weiping played that role often. The idea is that the strongest player could save the match by defeating the last few members of the opponents team. Nie earned the nickname "iron goal keeper" for that role. But you might want to have the strongest player be the first up, to try to eliminate as many of the opponents as possible early on.


Super Go Team Tournament System last edited by velobici on January 16, 2009 - 15:23
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