it was just a starting point, but top 50% is also reasonable. I was just thinking that it becomes more difficult to determine top 50% in a split player pool of rookies and vets. Do vets get knocked down to the rookie pool if they don’t finish in the top 50%? I also would prefer the rookie pool stay relatively small and most players graduate to the vet pool, to avoid people trying to game the system and stay in the rookie pool somehow for “easier” matches. Seems like a complicated issue.
I was taking your previous suggestion, so my addition was that if you ever finish above 50% in a tournament, then you’re out of the rookie pool forever (unless that is not what you meant?).
That is one of my concerns, the other concern I had was how to merge pools without presenting other issues.
Some things make it so I doubt we can find a perfect solution for all situations but we should find one with a good solution for common situations and a consistent way to handle awkward situations.
If we have a 16-4 pool split (either way), things can get awkward real fast.
When and how exactly the pools merge becomes quite important, and ideally we would like the top result players to have played a reasonable number of games, but we don’t want to favor one pool or the other. The other big thing to avoid would be some people having to wait a long time to start playing games while everyone else is (presumably this would be an issue we run into when trying to merge a smaller pool into a larger pool).
If our rookie pool is consistently small maybe we could have double elimination for rookies or something?
We can do some nicer things if we have say, 8-8 split pools; vets+rookies do pairings in pool and it is pretty easy to pick some point to merge the pools (say 50% through the pool maybe, then match top records of each pool together?)
You are correct as to what I meant, I just wasn’t sure if the vets are included to determine what 50% is.
I know large 2-day Magic tournaments have a cut in order to play on the second day, which is based on number of wins, and they also have PRO points in order to even enter into some tournaments, but we aren’t really a big enough pool of players for that kinda thing, imo.
These are all good points/considerations, and I’d be curious what EricF thinks.
The main point I’m trying to make is that everyone wins if we have more competitive matches, even if we have to get a little weird/creative with how the tournament is set up. It’s also worth noting that there are no prizes and the opportunity to cheat is pretty real, so I’m personally more interested in seeing how decks/players match up than anything else.
The swiss format already helps give players equal skill matches, but for the next RACE I could certainly split off separate pods by skill level.
Final Standings
EricF - 4 wins, 56.25%
FrozenStorm - 3 wins, 83.33%
Kaelii - 3 wins, 62.5%
Zejety - 3 wins, 50%
zhavier - 3 wins, 42.86%
Mooseknuckles - 3 wins, 40%
Shax - 2 wins, 58.33%
jalias - 2 wins, 56.25%
cstick - 2 wins, 50%
Barrelfish - 2 wins, 26.67%
CarpeGuitarrem - 1 wins, 75%
Shadow-Night-Black - 1 wins, 43.75%
petE - 1 wins, 42.86%
SamRS - 0 wins, 60%
robinz - 0 wins, 50%
Top 4 Parings:
LLL 2: EricF ([Blood]/Strength/Growth) vs. Zejety ([Necro]/Blood/Fire)
LLL 2: Kaelii ([Past]/Peace/Anarchy) vs. FrozenStorm ([Discipline]/Blood/Truth)
I like the idea of splitting the pods by past RACE / Tourney points for the next RACE 
I’m also psyched to see how @EricF does with my last CAWS deck!
tiebreakers always feel bad
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To @Mooseknuckles point and just to make sure everything’s on the up&up @EricF, I only won 2 games (not 3 as you have stated in standings).
Are your standings essentially giving me a free win for my bye in Round 1? Is my tiebreaker value (which seems high but I guess I beat the others “in the tiebreaker area” and lost to the undefeated #1 seed) accounting for that win being totally free (Strength of Schedule wise I don’t feel like a free win should be worth all that much)?
You can’t punish someone for a bye, though. You faced the hardest competition and only lost once.
@zhavier, up for a consolation round?
The bye counts as a full win. For tiebreaker purposes, your bye opponent won 0/0 games.
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@mooseknuckles I would be happy to take a consolation match 
Need to figure out what our random decks are.
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@Mooseknuckles ([Anarchy]/Strength/Growth) goes first against @zhavier ([Necro]/Blood/Fire)?
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will do - I’ll start it tomorrow
Finals
LLL 2: FrozenStorm ([Past]/Peace/Finesse) vs. Zejety ([Finesse]/Discipline/Strength)
Congratulations to our two finalists!
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