[Tournament] Lum's Long Odds - Ongoing!

My god I’m on tilt just reading this

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Thats the whole meaning of this tournament! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Yes stop playing those high tier characters :joy:

Why do people want to play Gloria Vs Midori against Leontes of all people! You will never win enough to make it worthwhile points wise! :expressionless:

@vengefulpickle I think @Leontes has a point about being trapped in the good side of a lopsided matchup and therefore unable to score highly. His 5-0 is worth the same as my 3-2 this round because his opponent was unwilling to swap out the bad matchup. Next time maybe there should be an option for the game winner to switch one time per set? Or is this a problem you imagine going away in successive iterations as people adapt?

It’s especially rough because this is midoris one highly lopsided matchup in his favour. The chart correctly favours not picking strong overall characters like Zane and Troq but it should favour Midori as long as the opponent doesn’t pick (and stay in) Gloria

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That just sounds like playing to win.
:menelker:

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Being “trapped” in a good match-up is what this tournament is all about, IMO.

A character like Midori becomes a specialized tool - don’t bring him out if you suspect your opponent of having a pocket Gloria. (Relatively few people do, so he’s far from unplayable.)

I don’t know for sure that they even need to have confidence in the character. It seems to me that many people are spamming low tier/reverse counterpicks. The situation that happened to Leontes will happen from time to time. The good thing is that he picked up fifteen points. It is possible that the situation could have played out better, but then again maybe he loses a match or two in a more even or uneven the other way matchup.

I think playing all five matches should maybe be looked into further. For instance, @MysticDeadman conceded high value matches likely because he was already down 3-0. In this situation, it is possible he was not motivated by the points enough to overcome the already guaranteed 3-2 loss at best.

This is my personal anecdote. In a 2-2 situation with @neigutten, I had the chance to CP his Quince. Normally, it is rush down Zane all day, but the points steered me towards Setsuki. Historically, I have struggled in this matchup. It does bother me that my Yomi record and ELO was affected by this greed for points. Granted, it doesn’t bother me that much, but I went against Play to Win for this tournament. I don’t feel good about that.

Overall, I like the tournament format very much. I am only giving input about how I think at the moment.

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Picking Setsuki over Zane in that situation is perfectly valid from a playing to win perspective in the context of this tournament though, because the outcome of sets is irrelevant, only points standing matters. Going for a riskier match-up with a higher payoff over a better chance of fewer points is just a playstyle/circumstantial choice.

Again, spamming reverse counterpicks is what this tournament incentivizes, by design. Balancing that with not getting too greedy and maing sure you can still win the matches you end up in is what the format is all about.

Does that make it a bad format? That’s another matter. I personally don’t think so, but it’s a discussion that could be worth having.

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Yes, I was pointing out that my historical record is affected by the outcome. For instance, a person could not care about winning this tournament and enter to boost his/her overall record by beating up reverse CPs, or play to win points for this tournament and potentially hurt there overall record. This may be a niche concern, but it is valid.

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That’s a very good point. I’d almost say that this tournament shouldn’t affect your record or ELO for other tournaments in more traditional formats, since the format and incentives are so different - I know I’m harping on this but it takes some getting used to: Set wins are irrelevant, only points matter. For the most extreme example, if 5 rounds of Midori-Gloria are played and the result is 3-2, the final points will be 9-14 - so the Gloria player wins the exchange for purposes of this tournament despite losing more matches.

I know that @mysticjuicer is recording the set wins based on the point values. The ELO is computed based on set hwins, not game wins. That said, if folks feel strongly, i could exclude these sets from the ELO calculations.

I think that your tournament game record should absolutely reflect games from this format.

I feel I should also point out that the math is such that if you’re playing a lopsided matchup over a long period (and your win chances are the same as the historical MU chart) you will get fewer points per game than you would playing a 5-5 matchup. So, unless you think you have an extra advantage in the MU against your opponent, you’re probably better steering towards a more neutral MU.

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If you’re worried about your ELO don’t play a tournament that incentivizes CPing yourself. Or just pick winning chars anyway. Or just win. Ntillerman isn’t here anymore we don’t have to worry about people “gaming the system” for ELO or whatever, especially since ELO doesn’t actually do anything other than grant bragging rights.

A “bigger” concern is Leontes’, but it’s not because of how his match went, but I’m not sure that I think it’s a bad thing. It’s not matches like his that are as concerning it’s more the matches where someone loses and keeps picking a char that gives them less than 5 points if they win. The inherent balancing act that I assumed would be at play here is that when someone keeps winning they won’t get as many points per win because the other person will pick a char to maximize their points while still maintaining a matchup that they think they can win. But when somebody loses and keeps picking a good mu it inflates the total points that can be had by a winning player to some pretty unreachable levels if everyone else plays “sensibly”. But even then if you’re winning that many matches that you’re unfavored in you deserve some nice points for being such a beast.

This format is of course extremely possible to game by collusion. One person just picks Jaina the other Geiger and throws the games and now that person has a trillion points and is nigh uncatchable. But I am glad that our community is better than that because it opens up the possibility of awesome tournament formats like this.

Also yes, Midori vs. Gloria is truly a headstomp. Try and gain life when you get hit for 52 damage.

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Hopefully my example didn’t come across as a complaint; Midori Gloria was the first thing I thought of when I saw the rules. I just didn’t think it would come up in Week 2 lol.

The tricky thing is that if you play Jaina Geiger (the worst matchup on the chart at 8-2), a 4-1 for the Geiger player leads to an 8-8 tie lmao. And the Geiger would be forced to play this.

So it’s a bit like any character who had a 7-3 or better matchup is very risky, as they can run into a situation where losing once or twice is devastating. So you kind of have to play a few characters that are generally disadvantaged against most of the cast, and have NO good matchups, lest you get “trapped” winning.

PtW in the final weeks might actually involve throwing matches to screw people out of points. But that’s okay; this isn’t supposed to be the most competitive format ever but rather one that makes you counterpick yourself and see different matchups, and we all knew that when we signed up.

I am happy to get Midori vs. Gloria closer to 9-1 if you guys like :wink:

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Ivan vs Fusxfaranto -> 18.0 - 5.5
:midori::psfist::pschip::rook: -> 4.5 - 0.0
:midori::psfist::pschip::rook: -> 9.0 - 0.0
:midori::psfist::pschip::menelker: -> 13.5 - 0.0
:midori::psfist::pschip::menelker: -> 18.0 - 0.0
:midori::pschip::psfist::rook: -> 18.0 - 5.5
Great set mate. Midori vs Rook is always a big chalange for both. All games were so close and tense.

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Southpaw Hare vs @mysticjuicer

:vendetta: :psfist::pschip: :troq: (5.0)
:vendetta: :pschip::psfist: :troq: (5.0)
:gloria: :pschip::psfist: :troq: (4.0)
:bbb: :psfist::pschip: :troq: (4.5)
:bbb: :psfist::pschip: :troq: (4.5)

Southpaw Hare 14.0 - 9.0 MysticJuicer
Southpaw Hare wins!

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Nah, I’ll get there eventually! :smiley_cat: :chibigloria:

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Are risky match-ups worth it? Some points are better than no points. Deliberately sticking to a bad CP did not work out there and the Gloria gained nothing from it.

Risky? No, definitely not worth it. The trick is to pick a matchup you know you’re better at that the historical odds, regardless of what the numbers are. If you can win Midori/Gloria 100% of the time for 3 points apiece and win Vendetta/Gloria 40% of the time for 6 points apiece go with Midori every time.

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This is not strictly true. The winner of both of these situations gains the same number of points, but the amount of points the loser gets is different, and that’s still significant. At the end of the tournament, we’re still going to be comparing the points of everyone, so taking someone down is still somewhat important (although not as important) relative to raising yourself up.

That said, I don’t think this method makes you more likely to get that sort of result, and still probably isn’t worth the risk.

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True but the sadness was not at the number of points his opponent was getting, but more that he was winning 5-0 and only getting 15 points for it. A 3-2 of 5-5 matches gives 15 and 10 points respectively so that’s probably about as baseline as you could get for a close set

Hearing everyone’s thoughts on this are really interesting. I agree that including these results in the general record of set wins is probably inappropriate. The thing you’re building towards is the final points total, and therefore maximising individual game payoff, not winning the set of 5 matches. However it is probably hard to win overall without winning the majority of your sets.

I’m guessing @mysticjuicer will let us filter this tournament out of set wins with “non-ft3/ft4” or maybe even a new category for “points based” since it is so different to what’s come before. I haven’t had the chance to look yet so I haven’t seen how it’s been handled.