Honosbinda
Senior Member
Spot on about the rest of the pack, and this is why they want to derail the thread. Also because it's you and you aren't part of the welcoming committee, of courseLet's look at the definition.
1. (in a sport or game) a series of contests between a number of competitors, who compete for an overall prize.
So, a label of Tournament suggests there is competition (compete-strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.)
If we are to assume most players are attending tournaments to have FUN and winning is irrelevant. Then we can conclude that its not really a tournament after all.
Only those few, Usually the top players have ANY chance of winning, that come to compete actually are participating in a tournament.
Which leads us to the rest of the pack. Those that just want to have fun and socialize.
First of all, this is perfectly fine to show up for a Tournament and have fun and socialize...Many of the followers of this thread will completely disregard this comment as to fully attack the other statements.
The rest of the pack, having obtained the mentality of not actually seeing a tournament victory forego the STIFF competition and kinda just go through the motions, having fun all the while. Again, this is ok, but is NOT a tournament setting. It's more like Game Day attitude.
This leaves only the top 8-10 players (based on a 20-30 man tournament) that are actually participating in the Tournament as they are the only ones that have a REAL chance of victory. (Before you go on and say seed 20 won ASLOK ##...please include all the other data of most of all the other tournaments with a significance factor included.)
Given that this is the case. The top 8-10 players don't even really start competing amongst themselves until the 3rd+ round of a tournament...meaning the only competition they are up against only matters in 2 games at most.
The challenge of the tournament doesn't exist until later rounds. Now sure, this is a standard SPORTS format. But this is a game so esoteric that only old farts have come to enjoy...So, why not treat it differently??
Why not actually have a challenging tournament, where the TOP 1/2 compete for the TOP prize, and the bottom have Compete for a Secondary prize.
Both halves of players will likely be playing their peers and will have closer games overall (assuming scenarios are balanced) and THUS be having SO MUCH MORE FUN as the GAMES aren't decided Very early as they typically are vs uneven matches.
AND that the 2nd tier can actually obtain a championship in their division. (Plaques aren't that expensive) More players would leave satisfied than just happy to see their old buddies.
More FUN can be had by the 2nd set of competitors, Those that are there to have fun.
AND the TOP tier players will have a far more strenuous challenge to prove they are Champion material. They will have to win 4-5 challenging games. This will likely result in a greater variety of Tournament winners as they will be competing in more games with their peers than having a 2-3 round "BYE"
I'm not sure why this hasn't been adapted other than just "we've done this for 30yrs".
You can say..."Well, it's not a REAL tournament then"
You'd be correct...as 1/2 the players are there only to have fun as described by nearly all posts above and probably the rest of the readers of this thread....
WHY call it a TOURNAMENT when most of the participants aren't there to compete?
As for splitting the tournaments into levels, I think they used to do this at the Double-One back in the day, where they had groups of proficiencies. It made sense and I think it could work.
However, all of these tournament directors seem to have their own ideas and I don't think it would be easy to apply uniformly -- that being said, somehow they got together and arranged for AREA to be mostly uniformly applied -- there are some tournaments out there that refuse to keep records, ASLOK being a notable exception, probably due to the mass of data that would need to be taken care of. They were thinking about fixing that though, last I heard.