UKTerrorist

Segregated By Seedings

Segregated by Seedings

Another CPL is over, and what a CPL it was, filled with highs, lows, good points, bad points, easy victories, treble overtimes and network stepping hilarity. Some 34,000 tuned in to HLTV and another thousand were in attendance watched the climatic final on the huge double-sided projector screen as 6th seed Eyeballers defeated top seed, and 2003 CPL grand slam winners, Schroet Kommando to win the CPL 2004 Extreme World Championships.

Beneath this glossy exterior of the CPL final, where winners are catapulted into online celebdom and poor performances result in ceaseless player changes, there is a very critical error in format of the event. The format did not originate, and not does it permeate via the CPL alone, it is a critical error that exists in a vast number of gaming competitions, the CPL, perhaps unfortunately, just happens to be the easiest example of what it is applicable to the majority.

The purpose of gaming events is not to determine the best player/team in the world, but to give the most accurate and reliable account of the present standing amongst the world’s greatest players. Due to the use of a double elimination format and event seeding the majority of teams are inhibited from demonstrating their true potential. We are all well aware that online success attributes little to the typical consensus of a team’s abilities, unless they can equal their success in LAN competitions such teams quickly become known as ‘online heroes’ (which in itself is a euphemism for configgers). Why a LAN competition? Well the answer is simple, a LAN competition is fair, and everyone uses the same system, has the same ping, players the same game and has tournament configurations.

So why when event organisers go to so much effort to ensure that the competition is fair for all, do they then make the astounding error of giving the better sides a huge advantage over everyone else? How can a tournament be fair if the teams that organisers believe will win receive easier routes to do so?

The CPL explains “Seeding is designed to protect the integrity of the tournament by predicting to the best of the CPL's ability the outcome of specific matches.”

Firstly this explanation is flawed in the fact that the CPL is not predicting the outcome of specific matches rather than ensuring that the better teams play the lesser teams to win these specific matches. Also why would the CPL want to have a predictable event? Where’s the fun in predictability? Having the top teams playing each other earlier in the event would not damage the credibility or the integrity of the event, but more likely attract more interest in the opening days. The statement by the CPL above all but claims it’s better for them if the better known teams remain in the tournament for as long as possible, which to a lesser journalist may breathe new life into an aging debate over bias. A debate which will not be divulged upon here.

This is not an article aimed at degrading the CPL event in any way, the CPL as I’ve stated before is the main catalyst for the explosion of professionalism over the past few years, and it is the CPL that remains the most significant event for judging a teams’ ability. There are much fairer alternatives however to the way that they, and most others, run LAN competitions.

Example 1

There are several examples from CPL Summer 2004 which can be used to demonstrate the flaw in seeding. The Four-Kings Call of Duty team were seeded 6th at the CPL. Due to a bye and a no-show 4K knew they had finished in the top 16 without even playing a game. They went on to defeat Saviour Six, before losing to TAU and U5, finishing joint 9th. Given my TAG allegiances I know some might claim this is an attempt to discredit 4K’s placing, it isn’t, and 4K might or might not have been the 9th – 12th best team in the competition. Sadly it is impossible to know because they only played and won one map.

Example 2

Team AMD Gamer, Counter-Strike. TAG were originally seeded (fairly) at 32nd seed. Following a bye in their first game they were supposed to play 6th seed Eyeballers, an encounter which would have almost certainly relegated them to the lower bracket where they would have had to play some good American/European sides much earlier on in the competition. Fortunately due to some confusion they were given an absent 16th seed position and went on to defeat Surreal Skill and Reckless Theories ensuring them a top 16 finish. Then they played SK and NoA in successive games to be eliminated from the competition. If they had kept their original seed reaching the same position would have been much more difficult and required them to play many more games. This is evidence that seeding combined with double elimination can be more significant in determining a team’s final position than their abilities.

The Random Argument

Many people say that random results and upsets are what make competitions fun and exciting to watch. Single elimination for example, is more likely to produce and unlikely winner than any other format of competition (Virtus-Pro 13 – 9 SK). One bad performance by a team at any stage results in their elimination. There are an equal number of people that say it is more far important to follow a tournament that, once ended, has separated the teams fairly in terms of ability.

I believe in the latter, I do not want to watch a tournament where the winner “gets lucky”. I want to watch a tournament where the best team wins and the following 16 teams are determined by ability rather than fortune of seeding. Lets not forget that everyone has a different opinion on the ranking of the world’s top 10 teams, so much so that Gotfrag? to establish any sort of ranking has to question 20 people. The seeding of the CPL is done by much less with the overall decision being that of the CPL league commissioner.

The more you look at the format of CPL competitions the more random, unfair and harsh you realise it can be. The single elimination stage in particular can be brutal, especially for those that have travelled long distances and paid large amounts of money just to be eliminated by the 5th seeded team that did not qualify at a designed CPL qualifier.

It’s time for a change, something more progressive, something more exciting and something more challenging. It’s time to adapt to include group stages.

An Alternative Method

Day 1 - Preliminaries

After registration, separate the top 48 teams from the rest, they all receive a bye to the finals of the CPL tournament. Then divide the next 80 teams by skill into blocks of 16, so the 49th – 64th best team in block A, 65th to 80th best team in block B, 81st to 96th best team in block C and 97th to 112th in block D and 113th to 128th in Block E.

For the first round of the prelims the 16 teams in block E are drawn to play the 16 from block D at random. The winners of these then play the 16 from block C, the winners then play block B and then the winners of that play block A. After which there will be 16 qualified teams remaining.

Why go through this process? It gives a much fairer account for the teams that have travelled a long time to get to the competition, no longer will least skilled team at the event play the best non-qualified team (which can include some extremely top teams) and instead they will have an opportunity to prove themselves and the skill of their opponents will increase gradually. Thus they can be rated by their skill a lot easier. The teams that have spent weeks practicing in a LAN centre could well advance far, rather than play a top European team and be eliminated in their first game.

This method of preliminaries can be completed within a day of competition leaving just 64 teams for the 2nd day of events.

Day 2 – First Group Stage Games

Divide the remaining 64 teams into blocks of 16, and then draw one team at random from each block to form 16 separate groups of 4. The top 2 teams from each group advance into the next stage of the competition. This can be completed in one day with 32 teams remaining for the next stage of the competition.

Day 3 – 2nd Group Stage Games + 16 team Double Elimination

For the 2nd group stage games determine the groups by using the 1st Group A, 2nd Group B, 3rd Group C, 4th Group D = Group 1 and so forth. The 2nd group stage games can be completed by 5:00pm if with 100 computers we determine that 5 groups of 4 teams can be playing at any one team with each group taking 4 – 5 hours to complete.

If you aim to finish playing by 10pm each day that leaves plenty of time to play 4 ‘blocks’ of matches to whittle the remaining teams 16 teams down to 6, 2 in the upper bracket, 4 in the lower bracket.

Day 4 – 1st – 8th place games

Begin the games in the morning and finish all but the final games by midday, play the final at 5:00pm.

The above method would place a greater strain on the admins to organise, but would also ensure the CPL is a more positive performance for the majority of teams. Also no-shows under no circumstances would result in some teams finishing in a top 32 placing without playing a game.

Final Thoughts

Despite using CPL for example purposes many competitions can and are benefiting by adapting to group stages. Double group stages are an idea competition format with the intensity and excitement of the competition rising steadily throughout.

In these times of sponsorship explosions it is important to ensure that teams that struggle to gain financial support have the opportunity to benefit from it, and those teams that do spend far more time than their counterparts practicing, are rewarded with an equal rating in world stature.

- Myers