KS-IA-MO Circuit - Season 2!

Welcome to the Second Season of the Kansas, Iowa and Missouri Brawl Circuit! I would like start off by thanking all the TO’s for their help in running the previous circuit. After a fairly rough - yet successful - first circuit, I got word that there was an interest in doing another one... so what are we waiting for? Like last season, the purpose of the circuit will be to foster competition and improvement for every participant by keeping an active tally of tournament records to which players are ranked via Circuit Points. The first event in the circuit will be on 7 May 11 in Lawrence, Kansas! Events will run until December, and the circuit will conclude with a Championship Event in January. If you have any questions regarding the circuit, feel free to ask a TO or me personally on AIM ( lShana24l ), Skype (Fino0437) or by text (913) 787-5282; however, all final decisions regarding the circuit will be made by me.
Season 1: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=277121


~Events~
Event 52
Location: Lawrence, Kansas
Date: 7 May 11
Link: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=12236197

Brainshock Beta
Location: Iowa City, Iowa
Date: 25 June 11
Link: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=296956

Rauleen's Host (TBA)
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Date: August (TBA)
Link:

~Rules~
While we will try to uphold a consistent rule-set throughout the circuit, it is to the TO’s discretion on which rules apply to the event. However, each event will be required to follow the Unity Stage-list. It is encouraged that the unity rule-set is adopted at each event, but not required.


~Payouts~
15% of the total amount will be taken out from each event and added to the Circuit Pot. Payouts will be calculated afterward. Should there be less than 32 entrants, payouts will be altered to 55/30/15

Singles
1st: 55%
2nd: 30%
3rd: 10%
4th: 5%

Doubles
1st: 60%
2nd: 30%
3rd: 10%
Payouts given will be rounded and equalized in accordance to “fairness,” meaning they will not always equal the percent amount. In general we try to make sure the lowest placing player in the money at least earns their entrance fee back.

Singles Circuit Payout
1st: 50%
2nd: 25%
3rd: 15%
4th: 10%

Doubles Circuit Payout
1st: 60%
2nd: 30%
3rd: 10%


~Points~
For each event you attend you will receive points based on how you place! The higher you place, the more points you receive. Points will be accessed after the results for each event are posted. If a tournament fails to reach a minimum of 16 singles entrants and 8 teams entrants then the points for singles and doubles will be halved. Doubles points will be awarded to a team, not an individual player. The Championship Event will be worth 1.5x KsIaMo Circuit Points.

Teams points are for your team. Should a player change team members, their most recent team will get half the points from each player’s previous placements added to their score. Any other team(s) cannot be considered for prize money and are effectively "disbanded." This is to reward consistent teams meanwhile not punish those who switch or those who team with someone random too harshly. You may only receive prize money for one team at the end.

Circuit Events
1st - 40
2nd - 30
3rd - 20
4th - 15
5th - 10
7th - 8
9th - 6
13th - 4
<13th - 1


Championship Event
1st - 60
2nd - 45
3rd - 30
4th - 23
5th - 15
7th - 12
9th - 9
13th - 6
<13th - 2

~Important Changes~​

After experience of the first circuit under my belt, I decided to make a few revisions to the circuit. If you disagree with the changes I have made, I encourage you to reply with a lucid argument as to why you disagree with the change and what you feel should be done. Until then, here is what has changed from Season 1.

*Changes as of 9-2-11*

***** The cap for attendance points has been changed from 17th to 13th.

***** Payouts for singles and doubles have changed. The new payout system is to balance the distribution of money; however, you may notice it appears to favor doubles. The reason behind this is that the payment in doubles is split between two players, which has now taken into account.

*Changes as of 8-2-11*

***** The MLG rule-set will no longer be used (thank goodness), see rules section for more information.

***** The penalty for switching partners in teams reduced from 2/3 to 1/2.

***** All finals sets will be played / recorded on my Wii. This is not negotiable - finals sets not played on my Wii will be considered friendlies, or (under a unanimous decision of all the attendants) the event can be removed from the circuit.

***** There were some issues last circuit where the full 15% cut could not be made, due to venue issues and so forth. Note, I will not be accepting anything less than what is promised. If you have a problem with that, increase the venue fee - it’s not my problem.

***** Instead of designating states to have an event for the circuit, I am going to be open to which months are easily accessible to that state. Additionally, circuit events will not necessarily be limited to the KsIaMo region so long as the TO is willing to make their event part of the circuit (via 15% cut and similar rule-set). Yes Rob, that means if you can secure a venue and generate enough interest for a tournament in Nebraska, it is a possibility that the tournament may be apart of the circuit.

***** Out of all the events you attend, the event in which you placed the lowest will be dropped from your overall score before the Championship Event. Due to the overwhelming gaps in points from the last circuit (in both singles and doubles), this will be a test to attempt to equalize the point spread as well as eliminate a potential state bias. To be fair, players who attend every event will be given 5 points after the low score drop.

***** Random seeding will replace seeding based on Circuit Points. TOs will be encouraged to use random seeding, but I won’t stop them from seeding based on region/state.

Why? Seeding discriminates against weaker players, while doing anything but seeding discriminates against stronger players - neither should be favored. Egalitarianism isn’t necessarily fair, but it is my belief that if a player deserves a top 3 spot, they will find a way to get there - play to win.

Exceptions:
(1) If pools are done, then naturally the event should be seeded by pools.
(2) Should an event exceed 64 entrants, the top 4 players/teams can be seeded at the TO’s discretion.
(3) The Championship event will be seeded based on points of the top 8 players/teams.

For more on random seeding, I’ve included some literature below on my personal reason for it being used. If you ignore any of the points I make (ie, cry when I clearly already gave a reason to your argument) you will be ignored.

Spoiler

So why random seeding again?

Click to expand...

(1) Technically the first state to host has an unfair (though slight) advantage for the rest of the circuit. Factoring in variables such as travel fatigue or lack of sleep due to travel (etc johns) to OoS players may affect their overall ability to play. This is the primary reason pools supersede my view on seeding, as it tests the ability of the player in the "now" rather than gives them an advantage regardless.

I don't get it, so what if someone does well at the next event?

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(2) A “weaker player” may do better than a “stronger player” just because they had the convenience of the first event in their home state (due to being able to achieve peak performance easier, ie johns listed in the first point, or even the ability to attend). When the second event comes by, that “weaker player” may be seeded BETTER than the “stronger player.” Due to the nature of seeding, favoring stronger players, the “weaker player” now has a better chance of advancing further in bracket.
--Plainly put, those who do well early (in theory) will solidify their lead as soon as they attain it (ex: Ks-Ia-Mo Season 1).

But with random seeding you might have two “stronger players” play each other early on!

Click to expand...

(3) Say that a strong player did not have the chance to attend the first event, and is considered a last seed. At the second event, he has an even greater probability to play a strong player early in bracket than with random seeding. You essentially run into the same problem either way.

People should just get better instead of whining about being bad.

Click to expand...

(4) First off, when events are seeded by the circuit points, you will find a lot of “weaker players” playing the same “stronger player” at every event. This can be somewhat discouraging:
Person 1: “You should come to *insert ks-ia-mo event here* it’ll be a lot of fun”
Person 2: “Well, I was unable to attend the first 2 events, so if I go, I’ll have to play a really good player first round, regardless of my skill so it hurts my chances of being able to win.”
The goal of the circuit is to promote growth - a poor way of doing that is discouraging attendance. By seeding via circuit points, we essentially penalize potentially “strong players” simply due to the fact that they may not have been able to afford to go, had some other outside influence that prevented them from going, had an off day, or simply wasn’t able to capitalize on gaining a point lead early on in the circuit. More importantly penalize weaker and middle level players with a guarantee that we will make the bracket in a way that they lose early.
To the actual point though, it can be difficult to get better when your best chances of improvement are inhibited by being seeded against someone who is so much better than you, that you're overwhelmed beyond the point of learning from the game.

Doesn't seeding still offer improvement to all players? We should just stick with seeding because that's what I'm used to (and I don't like change!)

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(5) Regardless of seeding by skill or seeding randomly, you still achieve improvement. I argue random seeding offers more potential to improvement of every member in the community. With random seeding, those who deserve a top spot will find a way to get there. Placing well (or poor) at one event does not influence your ability to place well at the next since you are still on an equal playing field as everyone else. Think about it this way, weak players will eventually get owned in the face... but at least they have a chance to score some wins. The great thing about tournament matches (compared to friendlies or even money matches) is your opponent will have no legitimate johns as to why they lost. Giving opportunity to low/mid-level players to experience wins against other players closer to their skill opens up a learning opportunity that they otherwise may not have gotten with seeding. A few "stronger players" might suffer in the process, but my initial points stands: if a player deserves a top 3 spot, they will find a way to get there. Tournaments outside the Midwest (or even ksiamo) won't be seeding you guys easy brackets, so complaining about playing another "strong player" suggests you aren't ready for serious competition.

But if you do random seeding, there's a greater chance of there being a stacked side of bracket! That's not fair!

Click to expand...

(6)You are just as likely to be on the stacked side as the easy side and just as likely to play a “weaker player” as you are a “stronger player” at every event. The difference being, with seeding, only the “weaker players” have the chance to be given a stacked bracket. That's not necessarily fair either, nor does it promote growth to the community... rather the select few.
--Additionally, an easy bracket only takes into consideration of the amount of “weaker players” in relation to “stronger players.” Due to some form of depth in Brawl, being put into the stacked side of bracket doesn’t necessarily affect you as much if your main counters most of the characters on the stacked side (or may affect you more being placed in the weaker side comprised of counters to your main). There are a lot more factors at work that may negate the effects of a stacked bracket.

Well, all that aside, random seeding might affect the outcome of the circuit. Shouldn't we keep that in mind when the payout is more than a regular tournament? Why don't we just spin a roulette wheel and give whoever guesses right 15%?

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(7) With random seeding, the top 3-5 players (relative to attendance) are generally accurate in results, while afterward the accuracy decreases quickly. Initially, this may seem to be an issue, but when you look at the point distribution the top 3-5 spots are the ones that matter in the end when points are being calculated for the circuit pot. Overall, the laws of statistics still promise that the best players will be paid at the end of the circuit.

So why are there circumstances in when there is and isn't random seeding? Shouldn't we be consistent?

Click to expand...

(8) The beauty of double elimination is that it negates most of the arguments against random seeding (in terms of playing good players and in terms of accuracy of results). Like I mentioned before, the circumstances in which random seeding won’t be used is when there is high attendance and at the championship event. These are both instances in which we should favor “stronger players” (my subjective bias). In the event of a high turn out, I feel the top 4 players should get seeded due to the amount of money on the line. By the time we reach the Championship event, we should have collected enough unbias data to determine accurate skill seeds. Additionally, since the Championship event gives higher points AND it's the last event to gain points, it's important we favor those at the top of the board for the accuracy of the overall circuit results. Pools will also negate random seeding since pools relatively test player ability in the “now” of when the event is being played.


I probably contradicted myself somewhere in the explanation... oh well

Zeton - 12
Arty - 10
Clel - 10
Kain - 8
Mr. Doom - 8
Johnny Deadshot - 8
Yoshq - 6
Sago - 6
Trent - 6
Nicole - 6
Joker - 6
Delux - 5
Bpow - 5
Rockstar - 4
Fource - 4
Rob - 4
Rick - 4
Sword_Master91 - 4
Count - 4

2 or Less:

YES I KNOW PEOPLE ARE IN THESE TWICE, I'M TOO LAZY TO MATH THE TEAMS POINTS N SHIZ.​

- PM me if you need it changed so you can show off to your friends or w/e


Count & arty - 15
Zeton & Clel - 15
Fource & Joker - 10
Nicole & sago - 10
Nappy & Moe - 10
Team We Both Have Eye Infections - 10
Zeton & Bpow - 8
Tmacc & joker - 8
Stealth & Scrub - 8
Dillan & Daniel - 8
Mitchell & Denton - 6
Legalize it - 6
Ripple & Pierce7d - 6
FAE & Future – 6
D. Disciple & Rob Gambino – 4
Akashi & Meneil – 4
Oro & Kirk – 4
Sponge Jordan & Red Ryu - 4

1 point

yay another circuit. time to save some money

I should get an update on the Lawrence Event on 2/14.

It's going to at this point be a charitable event as a way to mutually benefit the circuit with a type of venue we normally couldn't afford and whatever organization we're supporting.

Hopefully my two shots don't fall through and have to hit the drawing boards again. It SHOULDN'T, but weirder things have happened. I have one more backup plan after that. If that falls through then we'll have to reevaluate.

All the changes look like improvements except for random seeding. I agree with you that seeding does discriminate against players that have placed worse, but you gotta seed by region at least. It sucks to start off playing against people from your state.

I really think dropping the lowest placing is great idea. Does that go for simply not attending a tournament as well?

Looks awesome Fino, nice work. Can't wait.

Great job with the changes. Looks solid

Much more clear, a solid improvement over the last ruleset.

Nebraska would probably need to wait until after we have some Con's to attract new gamers, so past June at least. Not that I read the OP or anything. Can I host one?

lol @ Fino pulling some elements from our conversation from last night.

Trent said:

Does this mean tie breakers for 5th place will be played out and 4th place gets 5%? Or did you mean 5th place here, and both players getting 5th get 5%?

Click to expand...

It's not an elmination tournament. There most likely won't be ties. Ties like that happen in tournaments because the bracket process necessitates it by definition.

Edit Nvm. you're talking about the individual events lol


Small Issue: In my proposals for venues, I listed different payouts along the lines of the 48 first place baseline. Which is different than the circuit rules. I think you should leave payouts up to the TO's.

I don't have the numbers on me because I'm at work.

I think this mostly looks pretty good. The only thing I would change if it were up to me is I wouldn't make the point gap between 4th and 1st so big. I probably wouldn't do more than 5 points between any consecutive placings, to be honest.

Well, it's mostly just opinion, the opinion being that the best way to foster growth is to make it seem like everybody has a chance to do well. I mean, not EVERYBODY, but that there are several candidates for top 3. When there are large gaps in points then it often becomes pretty clear early on who is going to win because it is really hard for other people to catch up. When the difference in points is not as big then people can make comebacks throughout the circuit and there are more contenders for getting money at the end, which I think makes it all more interesting.

A counter-argument, though, is that with big gaps the stakes are higher, and the higher stakes will in fact do more to increase competition. Plus, if the gaps are smaller, but the championship event is still worth 50% more points then the championship event becomes way too weighted and whoever wins it has a much better chance of winning it all, even if they didn't do that well during the rest of the circuit.

So, I think that it really comes down to opinion and which method you personally think makes things more competitive/interesting. Btw, this doesn't have anything to do with personal bias because I def don't expect to be anywhere near the money at the end of this thing no matter how the points are spread out, I just think it's a lot more interesting if it isn't obvious after the first two events who is going to win.

Edit: Also, I think that changing the points based on how many entrants there are is a good idea.

Shouldn't the "championship event" pay in a greater percent of its pot for it to be worth more points, to make things equal?

I'll host something in July

In the third system how many places do you give points for?

defining which system is "fair" is arbitrary though, and depends on how close you want the people who place to be. there is no mathematical formula that will determine the "fairness" of either of the system sadly. however at a minimum the system cannot allow someone who just goes to the camionships to place in any of the circuit money spots, beyond that its all fair game imo.

Personally, I think the second system sounds the best, but it really depends on how many places you decide to give points to and what gap you decide to use as the base.

The first system can be fine, but the example you gave seems even worse than what you were originally going to use because the gaps are even bigger. It all depends on what numbers you use, but overall I think this system is inferior because it doesn't take attendance into account, so you get the same reward for winning a 20 man tournament as winning a 60 man tournament.

The third one isn't too bad, but I think having the same gap between every placing is not the best way to go about things because I do think that getting first as opposed to second, for instance SHOULD be better than getting second as opposed to third. This is just opinion, though. The problem is making sure that the difference between 1st and 2nd isn't TOO big compared to other gaps, otherwise catching up can be too tough.

So, I guess I would pick the second system. I'm not exactly sure what numbers I would use, though. I would probably give base points to the top 8, but top 6 or top 12 are also reasonable enough. I think it is probably a good idea to start with a fairly high base for 1st place, otherwise someone could potentially win/get top 3 at multiple smaller tournaments but couldn't make it to the one tournament that had like 80 people and still end the season lower than someone who won the big tournament but got like 7th at all the others just because of the almost 80 extra points the second person got from the big tournament.

So yeah, I think the biggest weakness with this system is that if there is one tournament that's way bigger than the others and you miss it then that can really hurt you, regardless of whether you can drop your low score. However, I do think that the guy who wins the 80 man tournament DESERVES to get a lot more points, and it is not his fault if the guy who won several events couldn't attend, so I think overall it is more fair to screw over the few people who were doing well but couldn't make the big event than it is to give the guys who could make it to the big event and placed really well over a lot of competition the same credit they would have gotten from a much smaller event.

These thoughts aren't organized very well, but I think it's clear enough, lol. So, I guess I would propose this:
1st-40 points
2nd-33 points
3rd-28 points
4th-24 points
5th-20 points
6th-18 points
7th-15 points
8th-13 points
Like you said, you get one extra point for every person you place above. I think giving the extra points really will help balance things out by accounting for the difficulty of the tournament. For instance, in a 20 man tournament getting 1st gives you 59 points, while getting 4th gives you 40 points (I think). In this scenario getting 1st gives you almost 50% more points than getting 4th, which I think is fair because in a tournament that size in our circuit the competition is probably pretty stiff. Now lets look at a 60 man tournament: 1st gets 99, 4th gets 80. In this case getting 1st is only 25% more points than getting 4th, which I think makes sense because getting 4th at a tournament that size is a lot harder than getting 4th at a smaller tournament. You can argue that the bigger tournament probably had more scrubs, and that is true, but it probably also had a lot more good players.

I think a possible problem with my proposed numbers is that if the average tournament size is pretty small then that creates the same problems with having too big of point gaps that I brought up to start this whole discussion. However, I think we had an average of probably around 40 people at each tournament last season? I THINK that should be enough to make these numbers work, but maybe they could use some tweaking. Alright, this post is really long so I'm gonna stop now.

tl;dr version: It's too long and unimportant, don't read it.

Come to think of it, there isn't any point to dropping your lowest score if you are keeping a running tally. That will only have an effect if you decide to take everyone's average score at the end and use that to determine what your standing is.

actually i was just about to post that myself LOL

^That way is fine enough also, I think. I still think the system I advocated is a bit better because it makes it so that the gap between places changes by a different ratio depending on turnout, while just doing a straight percent means that 2nd place ALWAYS gets 15% fewer points than 1st place. But it seems like I'm the only one who really cares about all this, so I guess you can probably do what you want!

I definitely wont be missing kahoka me your moves 3 (drinking banned if you reside in Kansas)

NBD, just got venue approval. Will be scheduling event shorty

Uh, oh yeah...Nebraska is going to have one July 9th I think, more info later

Event 52 is only the subtitle to appease the KC Melee people.

I might one host one in August instead....I can't do a big tourney in April. It's too soon..