Hi vlr, in a previous video I was saying that I hate how the doble loose bracket with 12 team is made, and when I say something is bad, it’s not suffisent, and that mean I need to propose an alternative, and this one will be kinda out of the box, and rely on the fact that one way or another we will be in a situation where we will have to sort out 3 teams. The actual format give a bye to the looser of the first game, but I will rely on an equivalent of the round robin with 3 team, but this format have issues, so will propose an alternative that will solve the issues. So i’ve created something that I will call the « Tri-fractionned format » That is basically a round robin with 3 BO3 where the game are played in a specific order to ensure the competitive integrity and hype.
So how does that work ? At start, you make all the 3 map vetos at the start of the day, next, you play the 3 first game of each BO3, and then you play the 2nd game of each BO3 but in a specific order based on their rank after the 3 first games. 1st versus 3rd, 1st versus 2nd and finally 2nd versus 3rd, so now the 6 first game of the 3 BO3 are done. Finally if 2 team are tied then we play the decider that was planned at the start of the BO. In 7 games this is over, versus the actual 9 games we have today, Well we could choose play the 9 games if every team are in 2-2, but this will almost never happen, and even if that happen, we can also make rule in that specific situation to reduce the number of game. If you want to play more deicder and be sure no team are tie, then you can instead book 8 games instead of 7.
Ok so since this idea is sound coming out of nowhere, and you probably think it’s a bad idea, so here is my train of thougt, and why this solution indeed work…
First, why does we need this solution, is they are really a problem with double elimination with twelve team. Hear me out : I like the doble elimination bracket in a lot of situation, I like it for 4 team, for 8 teams, but also for 5 team and all his variation with ten team twelve team and fourty teams, because even if some team receive a bye, every win matter, and a loose doesnt grant any round of bye, so thats good to me. But double elimination bracket doesnt work for three, six or twelve team, because the first team that loose receive a bye and having more time to preparate themself, and potentially receive an unfair advantage, as I kinda show it in 2 of my previous video.
In the current format we also give a round of bye for the 4 best team based on their last result, but what if we decided to keep the double elimination format, but not give a bye to anyone ? In that scenario after the first round we would have 6 team with 1 win, and 6 with 1 lose. After 2 round we would have 3 team eliminated with 2 loose, 6 team in 1win-1lose that we can pair together, and the three winner will stay alive in the looser bracker… And finally, in winner bracket, 3 team 2-0… And thats here the problem start, because we have 3 team with the same reccord and we need to pair them for the next round, so we don’t have any choice and we have to put them together.
In that situation we usually use the classical round robin with 3 BO3 all played the same day, but this have some issues, you can have a full BO3 without any stakes, but even worse, you can have in the last BO, a situation where a team have played their 2 BO, and will watch the last game between a team that could steal their 1st place if they win, and a team that could win on the paper, but that is already eliminated giving them less motivation to win, making the last BO fully biased.
So first, something is important : we need that every places give a different outcome, because if only the first place count, a team that loose 3 games in a raw, will be eliminated no matter what, and may give bias in their last game, and to be honnest, you can even being eliminated after 2 games. So it’s important to make sure every place matter, and the 2nd place give you a better position in the bracket than the 3rd, so you make every games matter, and reduce every bias.
In the tri-fractionned system that I propose they are only 1 case out of 8, that force a team to play, even if they have no more stakes for them, and when it’s happen, it’s not a probleme because it’s not creating any bias, because, if this precise team loose, then, it’s just enable(énèybeul) a decider game between the 2 best teams. And this is only for the tri-fractionned format with 7 games, if you choose to go to 8 games maximum, the stakes come back.
So I need to proove my claim, and to do so we will check every possibilities, so we play the first 3 games with everyteam playing the 2 other team in one game, and then we arrive to the 4th game. It must feature the team that finished 1st on the 3 first game, against the worst team in the 3 first game, because at this point, everything can still happen, and the worst team, can still mathématically hope to finish first if everyone end in 2-2, and this will be broken if we play any game before that. This game have to be played first, because this is the one that have the most chance to have no stakes for one of the 2 teams, if another game is played first.
For the 5th games, it have to be the 2 best team in the first 3 games, because here, the 2nd best team have still their destiny in their hand to finish 1st, if we play the other game first and the 2nd loose against the 3rd, then the best team is already insured to finish first, and they will have to play against a team that need to fight for the 2nd place, and will probably make the win easier for them and a create a huge bia for the 2nd place.