2014 Outwitters World Cup! [Grand Final]

[Thrutchy]

Near the final though, the interest drops off dramatically because of the number of players left. The 2 players left aren't in a big auditorium filled with fans watching the competition, so I don't think a big finale matters that much. Something I like about Elite tourneys that Magic has hosted is that everybody stays in and active until the tourney is over. I've seen some very high quality games in season 1 and season 2. Those were very big round robins too - up to 14! I was very skeptical at first this this would work with so many high level players, but it has. Compare this to previous Super-Duper Titan elimination tourney that just fizzled. Even for the big elimination tournaments that finished, most people probably thought the tournament died or was already over when the winners were announced.

With round robin, there is also less reason to do best of 3 or 5 games for each match. One game for each player pair should be sufficient. There is also no need to limit the number of players to a power of 2 - final round robin could be for example of 5, 6, or 7. Even a round robin of 6 would be the same number of games as a best of 5 finale. I also like the idea of each level being like the group stage where you keep top 2 from each group. Let's say you did this with groups of 6 (5 games per player per stage) so that each stage would have a 3:1 reduction in players. 3 stages would support 54 players and 4 would support 162. Seeding would have a much lower impact since you keep top 2 for each group at each stage. The group sizes per stage can be adjust based on the number of players.

Anyway, a hybrid of elimination and round-robin seems like a good idea. Magic has shown round robin works well even for high-level play.