WOW: Bracketing Rules To Change!

The always productive Competitions and Conventions Committee met for the first time in 2024 and passed some extremely sweeping changes. The big one that will impact many of us in the greater District 24 area is the bracketed KO and bracketed RR method.

The Problem

As many of us have seen, most tournaments in NJ / NY / New England all follow the same rule: you may either play your natural bracket based on Masterpoints, or alternatively you may play the top bracket. However, you may not play partially up, for example, upgrading from the bottom bracket to the 2nd from bottom or 3rd from bottom.

For years this was a frustration point for not just underrated teams, but teams who wanted to play complex conventions only allowed in Open Chart, or systems disallowed in Basic, etc. More importantly, the other teams are happy to see the ringers depart their bracket. Win all around.

Proposal for Playing Up in Team Events

A team playing in a KO or round robin may state the number of Masterpoints they would like to be bracketed as (in addition to their actual masterpoint total). This must be more than their actual number of Masterpoints. This must be done at the time of initial entry. The directors will place the team in a bracket as if they had that many points unless doing so would cause a disruption to the event.

BOOM.

And just like that, years of underrated B and C players arguing with directors become moot. The C&C Committee passed the proposal unanimously, with a nod toward the convention chart uncertainty problem, and that the ultimate decision is still down to the directors who have your original actual Masterpoints handy in case granting your playing-up request would disrupt the event. That is codeword for saying they really don’t want to push a team down, because point wise it just doesn’t make sense.

Why At the Time of Initial Entry?

As for why the election must be done at the time of the initial entry, we specifically don’t want teams trying to inspect the brackets looking for marks. Therefore, you are not allowed to see the brackets forming and then decide how far up you want to play. If you invoke the new rule, be prepared with the augmented number your team is comfortable playing because you won’t be allowed to toggle it down.

What Number Would Your Favorite Team Choose?

So imagine your favorite and usual 4-person Bracketed RR Team going to a large regional. What team total would you put down? Do you start with double and see how that goes? For example, everyone has right around 1000 but you write 8000 as your total? Or perhaps make it more objective: Take your actual team point total, but add 100 for each Red and Blue Ribbon Qualifier?