Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 23:01:16 11/29/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 30, 1999 at 01:28:49, Dave Gomboc wrote: [snip] >>To use the Swiss in this way (without proper seeding) is incompetent. > >That's a pretty strong statement. I meant mathematically, not from a business standpoint. They may or may not amount to the same thing. >If Sampras and Agassi are playing against a bunch of weakoes, and they happen to >be paired in the first round because the organizers didn't have a clue who they >were and assumed everybody was equally bad, then after the first game, both >players would likely go on to win the rest of their games anyway, and finish >1-2. But suppose that all the other entries are random also. Maybe one chain of events would be rafter -> agassi -> sampras and another wimp -> doofus -> dolt. Even that single event renders the contest unfair. In Swiss format, every error in seeding is magnified greatly since there are so few matches. The point is that the Swiss algorithm has internal assumptions about the participants: Either they are all exact peers Or: The strengths are known and the weakest is pitted against the strongest, the second weakest against the second strongest and so on (or at least a near approximation). If this pairing system is used and these assumptions are violated, then the tournament is unfair. The only real benefit of Swiss over Round-Robin format is that you can greatly reduce the number of comparisons (matches) to complete the data structure. However, since we only did a small fraction of the matches needed for a Round-Robin where everyone plays everyone there is information missing from this format. That missing information is implicit in the two assumptions above. That's why I said that Swiss -> Round-Robin is backwards. If anything, it should be Round-Robin -> Swiss. At least that is the case for chess programs because contests invariably have new or modified entries and the strength is an unknown. If Swiss is doable, then Round-Robin seems redundant.
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