The Tarrytown regional just concluded their very successful week-long tournament, including a return of the Freaky Knockout Teams events (previously known as Far Out Knock Out In A Day).
(EDIT: The Masterpoint formula has changed following the Tarrytown event)
DISCLAIMER: This post is about the quirks in the ACBL formula, from the point of view of a data nerd. The directors and folks from District 3 did an amazing job running the tournament. The Freaky KO format is an innovative solution to knockouts in one day, and GNYBA is considering a similar format for the upcoming regional.
Masterpoint Payments Very Freaky
The current ACBL Masterpoints formula requires adjusting the points when knockout matches are shorter than the usual 24 boards. For example, a compact knockout with 12-board matches pays half as much as 24-board full knockouts. A freaky knockout with 18-board matches pays 3/4 as much as 24 boards. Simple and linear until you reach 24.
A Swiss, however, has no such adjustment, as long as the swiss qualifies as “2 sessions”. Technically, the swiss that lasts 4 rounds with 9 board matches beginning at 12:30pm and ending 6:45pm qualifies as two sessions. It’s a creative solution and works well with the Freaky KO format. However, shouldn’t we adjust the award to account for only 18 boards per session? (EDIT: Yes, we should and will from now on)
(EDIT: Following the Tarrytown regional, the formula has been changed. The 36-board swiss will be multiplied by the 0.75 factor as well. However, it is still possible for the swiss winners to win more points than the lower brackets of the KO contributing to the swiss)
Transcending Brackets Becomes Freaky Too
With bracketed round robin events, a team can either choose to play in the top bracket or the bracket mandated by their team masterpoints. However, with 7 brackets of 7 teams on Saturday of Tarrytown, 3 teams from each bracket were knocked out in the first round. The Freaky Swiss afterward had two brackets, one with teams knocked out of brackets 1-3, the other one with 12 teams from bracket 4-7.
For teams hoping to play in a wider field or play slightly above or below their bracket, losing the first round of the Freaky KO becomes an awkward way of getting an A/X Swiss and a B/C/D Swiss. You CAN skip the morning festivities, sleep in, and register directly for the Freaky Swiss at 12:30pm. I don’t think any teams took that route.
Losing the Freaky KO and Winning the Freaky Swiss
This part is mind-blowing. In the very top bracket, the eventual KO winners won 19.38 Gold. The winners of the higher Freaky Swiss with 9 teams from brackets 1-3 won 18.33 gold (much more than 2nd place in the KO).
In the lower brackets, things get even more odd. The winners of bracket 4 won 8.37 Gold. The winners of the lower Freaky Swiss won 8.69 Gold! That’s more than the winners of all the KO brackets who sent their knocked out teams to the swiss! As it turns out, the winning team came from Bracket 7, the very bottom. That same team would have won 3.94 points, half red half gold, had they won all their matches that day.
It’s a bit of a fluke because the original KO bracket had 7 teams, and the swiss afterward had 12 teams. But something seems weird about losing the first round and eventually getting more points than all the teams from much higher brackets.
As it turns out, running all 7 brackets as a Brackted Round Robin would pay more points to the eventual winners than what the knockout recipients received. However, if you add the points paid in both the Freaky KO + Freaky Swiss, the tournament ends up paying much more, which is a nice perk. We created a spreadsheet showcasing the two scenarios for the lower brackets, but the findings hold for higher brackets as well.
Tarrytown January 25th Freaky KO vs Round Robin Data
Are Knockouts In A Day Successful?
I had lots of fun participating, as did 200 other people each day they held the event. Any regional team event with 7 brackets is a success, especially with concurrent gold rush and open pair events. And this is across two different days back to back! Granted, it’s hard to know whether attendance would be unchanged holding the usual Bracketed Round Robin. Some people enjoy Knockouts more than Swiss. Some vice versa. But without a doubt there are more Swiss events than Knockouts, especially at regionals. Outside of NABCs, there are limited chances to enjoy the longer matches of a Knockout.
As a reminder, the Freaky Knockouts attempt to solve 2 problems – that the entire bracket is complete in just one day, and any teams knocked out early have events to play. Freaky Knockouts shrink a full 4-round knockout with up to 16 teams into only 3 rounds with brackets up 8. You can finish 3 rounds and 54 boards all in one day. Teams eliminated in round one automatically join a 36-board swiss with 4 rounds and 9 boards per match. In all cases, teams just pay for two sessions, $176 in this case, to play a guaranteed 54 boards. At every point in the day, the team is technically eligible for gold points.
Lee,
Very well researched and written. The master point anomaly is clear, but not easy to solve. The ACBL masterpoint committee will need to come up with a solution specific to this type of hybrid. That will take some time and I doubt anything will change before the GNYBA KO event in May. Overall player reaction to the event was mixed with players having strong opinions pro and con. The impact on attendance is not clear. I can send out some numbers. The directors did get the opportunity to determine tie breaking procedures so we will be prepared for that possibility in May.
Very insightful. Fully agree that the directors are doing a great job. They are in the impossible position of having to try to make everyone happy. That aside, if given the choice, I would forgo playing KO in the future and opt for just the freaky Swiss now that I better understand the angles.
Thanks Lee for the analysis and the post. It’s so important for the community to work together proactively and to try to find compromises and solutions for the ever-changing game we all love.
Perhaps for the May regional, we instruct directors to err on having larger KOs and fewer brackets, rather than many small brackets?
Did directors put us in 7 brackets of 7 because they are avoiding a 3-way match with only one survivor?
Had we done 6 brackets of 8 with a few brackets containing 9, that solves many of the masterpoint problems. The original knockout bracket would have 8 or 9 teams (so a small handful of 3-way one survivor matches). The Swiss would have fewer teams.
In Freaky KOs, it’s ok to have 3-ways that eliminate two teams, because those teams aren’t really eliminated. They go to the Swiss. Directors might be too used to the “pay-as-you-go” KO model where 3-ways with 2 survivors is clearly the best for the tournament sponsors and players. But the masterpoint formula drops off a cliff as KO brackets dip below 8 teams.
The rules for this event were actually modified effective in February. If we run the same event in May, the KO will receive masterpoints based on the same rules as used in Tarrytown. The swiss will have its award reduced by a factor driven by the number of boards played. The effect will be that winning the KO will award more points than winning the Swiss.