Hi all. I need some help clarifying, or confirming my understanding of, the pairing rules in ITS Leagues as printed in the season 9 ITS document. I am not a 100% that I am getting this. The official text states: Pairings for the first league round are assigned randomly. From the second league round on, a Swiss system is used. Players are ranked according to their Tournament Points scores, and ties are broken by comparing Objective Points scores. If the tie persists, compare the players’ accumulated Victory Points and, if this fails to break the tie, the total Objective Points from all their previous opponents in the league. Once all players are ranked, opponents are assigned in descending order of ranking (first against second, third against fourth, etc.). Looking at the bolded section of the text my question is; are participants not ranked for overall standing in the league when pairing for a particular round? Is only their previous round ranking used for this? (unless to break ties) Best regards, Ivar
Since you add up all of a player's accumulated TP, OP and VP during the league the players are paired according to their overall standing.
Thanks for the reply. This is actually how I first interpreted it. Then I looked at these two lines, and then this is confusing. From the second league round on, a Swiss system is used. Players are ranked according to their Tournament Points scores, and ties are broken by comparing Objective Points scores. If the tie persists, compare the players’ accumulated Victory Points and, if this fails to break the tie, the total Objective Points from all their previous opponents in the league. Once all players are ranked, opponents are assigned in descending order of ranking (first against second, third against fourth, etc.). Any thoughts?
Yep, first you add up all of the players' TP, if any have the same number of TP you compare the player's gained OP and so on. For example after two games three players with the same amount of TP would be ranked as follows: Player A: TP 6 OP 17 VP 354 Player C: TP 6 OP 16 VP 479 Player B: TP 6 OP 16 VP 378 In regard of counting the previous opponent's OPs it is actually not clear how the ranking is decided. Personally I'd rank the player who faced the higher OP gaining opponents first since one can assume these opponents are stronger players.
Hmm... I am still not convinced. ;-) 1. "Players are ranked according to their Tournament Points" - Off the bat I would interpret this as total, or accumulated, but neither of these terms are used. 2. "...ties are broken by comparing Objective Points scores." - Same as before; off the bat I would assume totals. Now the plot thickens :) 3. "if the tie persists, compare the players' accumulated Victory Points". - Here they mention "accumulated" for the first time leaving me to believe that points 1 and 2 are indeed just from the last round. 4. "if this fails to break the tie, the total Objective Points from all their previous opponents in the league". - Here again they mention "total" and from "all previous" which they clearly don't do in point number 2, leading me to my current conclusion. From the second league round on, a Swiss system is used. Players are ranked according to their Tournament Points scores, and ties are broken by comparing Objective Points scores. If the tie persists, compare the players’ accumulated Victory Points and, if this fails to break the tie, the total Objective Points from all their previous opponents in the league. Once all players are ranked, opponents are assigned in descending order of ranking (first against second, third against fourth, etc.). All this leads me to think that basing everything off the last round will give a better mixed pool of opponents (as higher-tier winners will play lower tier-winners, and vice versa), whereas basing everything off a total score list will mean the same people are more likely to be matched against each other, as they are likely to occupy a certain range in the overall list.
Well, my example shows how it's done by every TO (whose tournaments I attended) and the OTM itself thus it's hard to believe the current modus operandi would be the wrong one.
And I think you are right. Looking at generic rules for pairings in Swiss tournaments in other communities; i.e. chess they support what you are saying. I just think the wording in the document lends itself extremely well to a different interpretation and that bothers me. Thanks for all the answers, they eventually set me right ;)
