Help Strange League Cup Pairing

[Dave Sontag]

If anyone can help by explaining how the TOM system pairs rounds and calculates placements, I would love some insight. The following is an explanation of the events:

-My son Eddie played in a league cup.
-There were 12 masters, 6 seniors, and 5 juniors. They paired the seniors and juniors together.
-The juniors and seniors were scheduled to play 3 rounds
-After the first round a 6th junior entered with a game loss.
-After 2 rounds there were 2 juniors with 2-0-0 records (my son Eddie and Owen)
-After 2 rounds there was 1 senior with a 2-0-0 record and 4 seniors with a 1-1-0 record.
-Please see below for Eddie’s and Owens’ rounds and who they competed against:

Eddie VS Junior Opponent - Eddie Wins
Eddie VS Senior Opponent (1-0-0) Record – Eddie Wins
Eddie VS Senior Opponent (2-0-0) Record – Eddie Loses

Owen VS Junior Opponent – Owen Wins
Owen VS Junior Opponent (1-0-0) Record – Owen Wins
Owen VS Junior Opponent (1-1-0) Record – Owen Wins

-It seems like the 2 juniors with 2-0-0 records should have played for first (since they had not played each other in the first 2 rounds), and the senior with the 2-0-0 record should have played another senior with a 1-1-0 record that they hadn’t played in the first 2 rounds.
-Instead, for round 3 Eddie played his second senior, the one with the 2-0-0 record, and the other 2-0-0 junior, Owen, played his third junior opponent that had a 1-1-0 record.
-And after ending the tournament with a 2-1-0 record, beating a 1-0-0 senior in the second round, with his only loss to another senior who went 3-0-0 winning his age division, my son Eddie ends up coming in third.
Could you please explain the following:

1. I would like to know why each the juniors and seniors did not play within their own age group.
2. I would like to know why my son had to face 2 seniors while the junior who ultimately won faced no senior players.
3. I would also like to know why after two rounds there were 2 juniors with the same record 2-0-0, but they did not face each other for first place.
4. I would also love to know how Eddie finished 3rd.

Could you please help me understand how I can explain to my son how this was fair in any way? Please explain how I am supposed to keep my son interested in competitive Pokemon when situations like this happen, and happen frequently. Thank you for your time.

 

[snoopy369]

That does seem weird. I have been told that usually it should ‘up pair’ lower record juniors rather than higher - for example my son has played a cup with one junior opp (loss) then all seniors after that (all losses) supposedly for that reason (so juniors with better records play other juniors).

My suggestion for talking to your son - weird stuff happens in small tournaments, and sometimes he will be in Owen’s spot. Just learn from the results and improve for next time. Buy him an extra stuffie to compensate and be happy he got some great competition and did amazingly well!

Regionals have much more sensible pairings due to the volume - as do larger cups. But even the cup we went to in Green Bay (55 or so masters) had only a handful of juniors. It’s unfortunate, and unfortunate the TO can’t do much about TOM.

 

[DorilMagefont]

Speculation: the system started with age-modified Swiss, combining Juniors and seniors together and kept this the whole way through the tournament. Per the official rules, the magic number for age-restricted pairings is 6 people per group so it makes sense that Juniors/seniors got blended together initially. I think ideally this would have changed after the 6th junior joined but my guess would be TOM cannot accommodate it, so it just continued to run the tournament as one big junior/senior group. Your son was just the unlucky one who got the "unfair" matches.

One of my local leagues runs a casual, no stakes tournament every week with TOM and there are never enough people in each age group. Even when there is an even number (ex. Exactly four Masters and two Juniors) we usually end up getting blended together based on score. So I suspect something similiar went on for that league cup

As to how to explain it...I'm not sure. Kind of a rough lesson of "life's not fair" for a younger kid.

 

[Dave Sontag]

This is from Pokemon’s Tournament Operation Procedures section 3.1.2 (Age-Modified Swiss)

Play! Pokémon requires Age-Modified Swiss to be run for any tournament in which there are one to five players in one or more of the age divisions. This style is a slight variation of the standard Swiss pairing method, allowing players to be matched with opponents in the same age division whenever possible.

When pairing players in an Age-Modified Swiss event, the process described in Section 3.1 is modified slightly.

An example of Age-Modified Swiss in use would occur if a tournament has only four players in the Junior Division—in this case, the Junior players would play together with the Senior Division players.

The best pairing is when the player and opponent both have the same match record and both are in the same age division.

If there are no opponents left who meet those criteria, then age division takes precedence over match record.

If there’s only one Masters Division player with a 2-3 record, that player would be paired against a Masters player with a 1-4 record, rather than a Senior Division player with a 2-3 record.

At the end of an Age-Modified tournament, the highest-placing player in each age division is considered the winner of that group, regardless of final standing

Unless I read this wrong, according to their procedures the TOM system should give priority to those with the same record in the same age group. Even the other players and tournament organizer and judges where confused as to why the 2 juniors didn’t face off.
As far as my son, he understands what happened. He’s played enough to know that TOM does strange things sometimes. He had a good time up until the last round and was a bit upset but he understands that things just happen.

 

[AlphaVoxel]

Hello!

Right now I can easily tell you one thing that I'm pretty sure everyone knows already: TOM is pretty darn stupid. Nearly every tournament I run, I end up with problems like this: people getting paired up/down, JRs/SRs playing against the Masters when they shouldn't be, et cetera. I've helped run prereleases where the 2 undefeated players (who were like 4-0, same age division and everything) both got paired down. Random stuff like this happens all the time with TOM. As previous posters have noted, having smaller numbers of certain age divisions does increase the likeliness of that happening, but there's nothing that can really be done about it. This is one of the reasons why I avoid using TOM for casual tournaments.

If this becomes a problem, it might be worth having the TO look into it, and/or see if they can talk to Support about it.

 

[Dave Sontag]

Hello!

Right now I can easily tell you one thing that I'm pretty sure everyone knows already: TOM is pretty darn stupid. Nearly every tournament I run, I end up with problems like this: people getting paired up/down, JRs/SRs playing against the Masters when they shouldn't be, et cetera. I've helped run prereleases where the 2 undefeated players (who were like 4-0, same age division and everything) both got paired down. Random stuff like this happens all the time with TOM. As previous posters have noted, having smaller numbers of certain age divisions does increase the likeliness of that happening, but there's nothing that can really be done about it. This is one of the reasons why I avoid using TOM for casual tournaments.

If this becomes a problem, it might be worth having the TO look into it, and/or see if they can talk to Support about it.

I know that TOM is terrible and glitchy at best. I run a League and am a TO myself. I know the organizer of this tournament as we have run tournaments together. I don't want him to get involved, because I know how frustrating it can be dealing with Pokémon. This is one of the reasons that most kids don't want to play competitively anymore. The local tournaments aren't giving them a fair chance. If you only could go to Challenges and Cups to qualify for Worlds, and TOM does things with no consistency, why would you want to continued to be cheated by TOM. It's frustrating and unfair to the kids who are spending money to play to get screwed out of a potential wins and points. It's just not worth it.

 

[Dave Sontag]

This is from Pokemon’s Tournament Operation Procedures section 3.1.2 (Age-Modified Swiss)

-Play! Pokémon requires Age-Modified Swiss to be run for any tournament in which there are one to five players in one or more of the age divisions. This style is a slight variation of the standard Swiss pairing method, allowing players to be matched with opponents in the same age division whenever possible.
-When pairing players in an Age-Modified Swiss event, the process described in Section 3.1 is modified slightly.
-An example of Age-Modified Swiss in use would occur if a tournament has only four players in the Junior Division—in this case, the Junior players would play together with the Senior Division players.
-The best pairing is when the player and opponent both have the same match record and both are in the same age division.
-If there are no opponents left who meet those criteria, then age division takes precedence over match record.
-If there’s only one Masters Division player with a 2-3 record, that player would be paired against a Masters player with a 1-4 record, rather than a Senior Division player with a 2-3 record.
-At the end of an Age-Modified tournament, the highest-placing player in each age division is considered the winner of that group, regardless of final standing

Unless I read this wrong, according to their procedures the TOM system should give priority to those with the same record in the same age group. Even the other players and tournament organizer and judges where confused as to why the 2 juniors didn’t face off. According to Pokémon's own procedures, what happened should not have happened, and my son was robbed of a chance to play for a first place finish and the points that come with it.