Outwitters WORLD CUP Winner - Alvendor (SWEDEN)

[GreatGonzales]

(01-19-2013 04:42 AM)Thrutchy Wrote:  Here is a quote from wikipedia:

"In a random knockout tournament (single-elimination without any seeding), awarding the second place to the loser of the final is unjustified: any of the competitors knocked out by the tournament winner might have been the second strongest one, but they never got the chance to play against the losing finalist."

Seeding clearly helps, but 2nd strongest could still easily be some loser to the strongest in a quarter or semi final. When you award 2nd place in a single elimination tournament, realize that seeding plays a primary role.

With a single elimination tournament, round-robin near the end (maybe 4 players left) might be a good final stage to rank the remaining players. The 2nd strongest still could have been eliminated earlier, but seeding reduces the likelihood.

Well, no tournament bracket is going to be perfect. We cannot say with certainty that the player who comes in first place is the best player; it's just very probable. Yes seeding plays a large role, but note that your Wikipedia quote refers to a "random knockout tournament (single-elimination without any seeding)". Now, there are tournaments with strong seeding, tournaments with weak seeding, and tournaments with no seeding, which this quote refers to. I think that the World Cup had very strong seeding, thanks to the initial qualifying pools round. So that's one objection.

My other problem with this line of reasoning is that to say that the loser in the finals is not necessarily the second place finisher, because there may be other players finishing in the semifinals who are better, is kind of a slippery slope. It could very well be that the second strongest player met the best player in the quarterfinals. So when we say that someone came in second place, it's not a statement of certainty of that player's rank among this population of players. Rather, it's a statement of high probability that this is the second best player. But you're right that seed plays a large role, so tournament viewers should always take results with a grain of salt. The league system will always be a better barometer of skill than tournaments; tournaments merely have higher drama.