Winter World Cup WINNER - poweewee (Philippines)

[awpertunity]

Woooo, alright, this is why I will never be a politician. I wish I hadn't already posted saying concede to allowing top 2 from each group to participate, because if I hadn't I would have gone with the original rule-set after speaking to Adam. Unfortunately, I know people were excited to hear that the top 2 would advance and it will be even more frustrating to take that away now. I have an uncontrollable need to please everyone, but clearly that is not going to happen. I think it is also very clear now, especially to me, why Adam/Alex avoid discussions even after so many players beg for a response :] No doubt they are reading them, but anything they say will cause severe backlash as we see here, and so they are very smart in keeping to themselves (while of course listening to everything people say), making one decision and sticking to it.

As for all the arguments for and against top 2 players advancing...

Yes, I agree a reduction from 232 players down to 32 is VERY HARSH, and not even ideal. Perhaps in a different setup the top 3 finishers of the entire tournament all fell into the same group (in which case why don't top 3 advance instead of just top 2??), which obviously sucks to get eliminated right away.

As for people claiming that they want top 2 advancing because this will be more interesting and allow more participation from lower leagues in the final bracket, I would argue it is the exact opposite. If player A has a 40% chance of winning against player B, what is the best chance of player A moving on? Playing only one game. The current setup actually stirs things up a lot more, rather than giving the ST's who are expected to win, more chances. The more games player A and B play against each other, the higher the chance that B moves on. There are already a good number of groups in which the top seed in the group has lost a game, which means there are lower league players that are going to advance.

As for the rules changing with number of signups, no, this did not happen in public. I let Gfich know in confidence what my original plan was expecting a maximum of 144 players. But when the Qualifier rules were originally posted and I announced it at the top of the original post, it clearly said only the top player of each group would advance. As for people saying that the argument that rules should not be changed after the tournament has started is invalid because the post said "The tournament officially starts on February 1st", this is just a technicality and I am not even going to address it. The tournament has clearly started, the time limit for when games should be started was February 1st. I'm sorry I forgot to get my lawyer to look through my rules before publishing them.

Are the original rules the optimal set of rules? Not by ANY means. If you want the best players to stay in the tournament just because they lost one game they shouldn't have, you are looking for a League not a Tournament. Tournaments are much more unpredictably and the upsets are precisely what make them more exciting, which the original rules do as I argued above.

Basically, as hinted at above, I really wish I hadn't said anything and just stuck to the original rules, but I did and don't want to keep flip flopping back and forth just to try to do what's popular. Adam also believes the tournament should just continue the way it was originally intended and stated in the rules, which is exactly the attitude I should have had rather than trying to please everybody.

THAT SAID, HERE'S WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN:

The winner of each group will advance to the Group Play round.
The runner-up of each group will advance to a Consolation Group Play round.

The top two players in each group of the Group Play round will advance to the Elimination Round.
The top two players in each group of the Consolation Group Play round will advance to the Consolation Elimination Round.

The two finalists of the Consolation Elimination Round will play with the two losers of the semi-finals of the Elimination Round (i.e., 3rd and 4th place) in a 4-person Single Elimination bracket. The winner of this bracket will be the winner of the consolation (3rd place) prize.

So if you finished 2nd in your group after the Qualifiers, the best you can do in the overall tournament is 3rd place. This is the best way I can think of to keep as much of the original rules as possible, while still allowing participation from 2nd placers in the Qualifiers.

AND THAT'S THAT.