2015 Tiltyard Open format

Here's a somewhat more in-depth explanation of the sets of matches that will be played in the 2015 Tiltyard Open. Hopefully this will help make sense of the overall tournament structure and how match results affect the final results.

We expect to use version 0.0.7 of the ggp-tournament library for scheduling the matches, so you can check out that library for details beyond the explanations here.

Swiss rounds

 The Swiss format will use a number of 1-, 2-, and 4-player games. Players will earn a number of points in each match equal to their goal value times a pre-determined weight for that match. The four players with the highest number of points at the end move to the finals.

There will be a page to keep an eye on the rankings, but the link isn't quite available yet.

Matches in these rounds will use a start clock of 120 seconds and a play clock of 15 seconds.

In some cases, the number of players will not divide evenly among the match assignments (unless we get lucky with the number of participants). In that case, some players will receive byes. In most cases, a player receiving a bye will be among the lowest-performing players at that point, and will receive the highest score of any player in that round (usually 100). Some non-fixed-sum games have their players matched up randomly; in those cases, the points for a bye are instead the average of what other players received.

Single-player game 1: One match, weight 2
Two-player game 1: Three rounds with two matches each, weight 0.5 per match
Single-player game 2: One match each of two variants, weight 1 per match
Two-player game 2: Three rounds with two matches each, weight 0.5 per match
Single-player game 3: One match, weight 2
Two-player game 3: Three rounds with two matches each, weight 0.5 per match
Four-player game 1: Four matches, weight 0.5 per match
Two-player game 4: Three rounds with one match each, weight 1 per match
Four-player game 2: Four matches, weight 0.5 per match
Two-player game 5: Three rounds with one match each, weight 1 per match

Note that the total weights for two-player games are 3 each, and for non-two-player games are 2 each. The highest possible weighted total score would be 2500.

One more thing: I'm using an unorthodox definition of fixed-sum games when more than two players are involved. There are some details in the README of the ggp-tournament library. The upshot is that some games that have fixed-sum goal values but also have kingmaking-like interactions between the players will be treated as non-fixed-sum, and so will have random player assignments.

Final rounds

The four players that rank highest after the Swiss rounds will play on Saturday for the championship in a single-elimination bracket. Matches in these rounds will use a slightly longer start clock of 180 seconds, but the play clock will remain at 15 seconds.

The semifinals are a "best-of-five" and the finals are a "best-of-seven", but there is some ambiguity about what that means when players can draw matches. In this case, the winner of the semifinals is the first player to accumulate at least 251 points in their matches and have more points than the opponent. The finals work similarly, but with 351 points.

There will be specific games lined up for the players to play; in the event that they finish the first five (or seven) matches tied, additional matches will be scheduled until one player outperforms the other. (All games will be fixed-sum.)

The winner gets bragging rights; if they RSVPed, they may also receive a small prize (TBD).