From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Tue Oct 22 04:45:07 1996 Received: from thistle.csv.warwick.ac.uk by clover.csv.warwick.ac.uk with ESMTP id EAA24533; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 04:44:53 +0100 (BST) Received: by thistle.csv.warwick.ac.uk id PAA25110; Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:37:08 +0100 (BST) Received: from amsta.leeds.ac.uk by thistle.csv.warwick.ac.uk with SMTP id PAA25005; Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:35:46 +0100 (BST) Received: from newton.leeds.amsta (newton.leeds.ac.uk [129.11.36.64]) by amsta.leeds.ac.uk (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id PAA20226; Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:37:01 +0100 Received: by newton.leeds.amsta (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id PAA27944; Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:39:03 +0100 Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:39:03 +0100 From: amtsjh@amsta.leeds.ac.uk (S J Hill) Message-Id: <199610211439.PAA27944@newton.leeds.amsta> To: mackay@mrao.cam.ac.uk Subject: Re: SE Regionals tournament report Cc: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Sender: owner-britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Status: RO Dave great to read report of what went on "down there"... I thought I'd reply to your question... > In the pool play there were a couple of upsets: > First Touch (seeded bottom of the four in pool C) overturned Mohawks > (second in the pool). And Village People knocked Lurkers out of their > 4th seed slot in a tight game (Lurkers playing ironman seven). > > In the knockouts (incidentally, can a different tournament format be > found which reliably identifies and ranks the top 5 teams in a region, > independent of seeding?), First Touch continued to mock their number > 14 seeding by taking the 4th seed slot from Village People 10-7 in a > long game. There are two points here: 1. being independant of seeding 2. getting the seeding right taking 2 first: nobody (except possibly First Touch) could have known that this might happen given their results over the summer. If they had got hold of Chris or myself beforehand and let us know that they had some different players then they may have been seeded higher... but TDs aren't psychic... (In N&M region, we heard that Superfly had some new players and we were able to act on the info.) and then 1.: A tournament format independent of seeding? The big barrier to this is of course the necessity to play the tourney out within a w/e... The only genuine way of ranking all teams is to run a complete league. Clearly this can't happen in a w/e... and a league running over the summer is something very far away from how ultimate seems to work.... However, an alternative is to have a ranking system based on tourney results. This is pretty obvious. What is not obvious is how this should be achieved. However, if the results are to be counted towards some sort of ranking/seeding for nationals then the system has to be clear - but also able to cope with a) ever-changing faces of teams... b) the fact that not everyone can enter every tourney - nor should they be expected to. c) tourneys are thus of varying strengths and a position in some should be "worth more" than the same position in another. I have been working on how we might usefully have such a system working at a number of specified tournaments. An outline of this will probably be in the next issue of ultimatum, (because of course its important that its an idea that most people want to try out). Whilst this won't help from the point of view of your question immediately, I hope that if it works out to be popular it could eventually become a fairer method by which teams qualify for Nationals, although I certainly haven't considered exactly how that would work as yet: there are obviously several alternatives.... Of course if people *are* interested in the idea it will basically give us a league (the ranking tour) and a cup (national finals).... which will open up the intriguing question of how many consecutive years Shotgun can "do the league and cup double"! There are several other motivating reasons behind the plan but I won't go on about it now. Hope this is of interest (and also that it makes sense). Simon