Smogon Grand Slam VI - Playoffs Tiebreaker

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Pearl

Romance は風のまま
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Greetings, competitors! With four of Smogon Grand Slam's five opens coming to a close (note: Ubers open's final result does not matter towards playoff calculations, which is the main reason why this thread is going up earlier than usual), the tournament's playoff stage is almost here! Unlike previous years, however, there's a much bigger tiebreak than ever seen before, featuring some of this website's fiercest threats: the 26 boys club. With that in mind, me and the rest of the TD team felt that fitting these players into a tiebreak that is both efficient and fair was a challenge, but in the end this is what we decided was the best solution. In the hide tag below, you'll find most of the information that was taken into account when making this decision:

After the unprecedentedly large size of the eventual Grand Slam tiebreaker was a fact, the TD team decided to explore various options on how to handle the situation that had arisen. A Round Robin situation, where all parties play each other, is the technically most fair option, but was discarded for two reasons: 1. Having five or more players all play each other would become a big time sink for all involved parties. The tiebreaker could easily take multiple weeks if bad luck and scheduling strikes. 2. The players involved would be put to a massive team building burden by being forced to make 5+ teams for 4+ different opponents, not including eventual ties that'd require at least one set of matches.

This led to a search for alternate solutions. Some theoretical situations that could arise were easy to solve. If there's z players in tie breaks, and z/2 slots in playoffs to compete for, the players would be paired with one another and the winner of each pairing would reach playoffs. The following principles were developed for the remaining cases: For z players in tiebreaks and a number that's larger than z/2 playoff slots to fill, a number of players are immediately advanced to playoffs on predetermined metrics until we have z players remaining to fill exactly z/2 playoff slots. These players are then randomized and put into 1v1 pairings against each other and the winners of those pairings go into playoffs. For z players in tiebreaks and a number that's smaller than z/2 playoff slots to fill, a number of players are immediately advanced to playoffs based on predetermined metrics until there's 2^n1 players remaining competing for 2^n2 (1, 2, 4, 8) slots, who are then slotted into a single elimination bracket. Games are played until there's 2^n2 players remaining, and those players are then advanced into the playoffs. In this specific case, we have 7 players and 4 playoff slots. We'd therefore advance one player to the playoff immediately and let the other six play 1v1 games to determine who'd also join the playoffs. However, the metric chosen to sort players was win rate, which resulted in a tie for first place, and other sorting metrics were chosen to not be used as it'd be a first time for those metrics to be used for official tiebreaking purposes and accusations of bias towards one party or another could be levied. Therefore, it was determined that the two top players based on win rate would play a set of their own, where the winner advances to the bracket and the loser is slotted into a pairing with the other tiebreak participants.

With that said, I'd like to congratulate everyone who's made it this far. Although you still have to make it through this tiebreaker in order to secure a playoff spot, I'd like you to keep in mind that this Grand Slam featured some of Smogon's biggest tournaments ever, and, even if you end up falling short in the end, racking up 26 points across these 5 opens was most definitely a hard task (I would know about this). I'm looking forward to many good games this week, so make sure you all play your hearts out!

Note: Since the playoff tiebreaker went up on a Tuesday and the players weren't told about it in advance, I'll try to be as lenient as possible regarding extensions. However, do not use this as a pretext to request ludicrously big extensions that could potentially delay the whole tournament. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Identity

I expect many battles to be completed under alts and I expect many battles to be completed on other servers to prevent scouting. These kind of factors are pretty bad for tournament security, and thus I will make this clear: If I hear any whispers of identity theft (battling as someone you are not) or proxy battling (helping someone else battle through pm) I will not be pleased and I will take severe actions.

Scouting

Next, I do not want to hear anything about counterteaming, at all. It is the silliest thing I have ever heard, any battler worth their marbles has more than one team. Do not complain about it. I also don't want to hear about any forceful scouting, whether it be spying on another teams irc channel or following your opponent around on PO. There is a difference between "ipl is known for using stall" and "let me follow ipl around all day to watch all his battles since I am his opponent". I expect a lot of the former and none of the latter.

With that said, I give permission to all battlers to ask any person spectating their battle to leave if they do not want them watching. However, given the fact that this is the big stage, I am sure a lot of people want to watch, so don't be too mean.

Timer Clause

As for taking long between moves, if your opponent asks you to hurry up, please oblige. If you are doing a damage calc for a key turn that is one thing, but prolonging every move is suspicious and annoying. Don't do it. Furthermore, Battle Timeout is a rule for a reason. If you run out of time, you lose, simple as that. It does not matter what your opponent says. Do not battle if you think you will have to leave mid battle, and instead reschedule for a better time. Timing out is still classified as a loss, unless the reason for timing out is a disconnection. If there is any suspicion that a disconnect was carried out deliberately to take advantage of this rule in any way, we reserve the right to exercise a harsh punishment.

Disconnections

If a player disconnects and either player contends that they could still win, the optimal solution is to recreate the exact situation the disconnection occurred at during the battle. If it is agreed between players that this is not feasible due to unreasonable battle length, highly improbable circumstances, or some other reason, the player who did not disconnect may choose to rematch with either the same teams or (the option to use) new teams. Timing out is still classified as a loss, unless the reason for timing out is a disconnection. If there is any suspicion that a disconnect was carried out deliberately to take advantage of this rule in any way, we reserve the right to exercise a harsh punishment. Do not do it.

I know that was a lot to read, but it is all necessary for me to have posted here so everyone can see it in the case of a dispute. I don't want any confusion or any problems.


PAIRINGS
[please excuse our look during redesign!]

Gunner Rohan vs. Level 56


Shiba vs. teal6


SoulWind vs. Nintendi


note: KratosMana secured playoff seed 13 after beating Gunner Rohan in the tiebreaker between players with the highest win percentage.

DEADLINE IS OCTOBER 7TH, 11:59 PM EST
 
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Posho

local gaymer weeb
is a Tiering Contributoris the Smogon Tour Season 23 Championis a Past SCL Champion
Cómo coño te clasificas en todo puto Borja lol, go get that fucking trophy!!!
 
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