Tournament question

About what percent of players in a diminishing Swiss tournament go 0-3?

Well, if you always have players with no wins playing against each other, then you’d expect about 1/8 of the competitors to go 0-3. But that’s assuming the number of competitors is a multiple of 8. In practice it’s usually not, so you’d have byes, and matches against people with 1 win, that would bring that proportion down, and there might be dropouts that complicate things. In recent Seasonal Swiss tournaments, you’re looking at two or three players.

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Thanks. I was wondering what statistic I escape if I somehow don’t go 0-3.

I think the Seasonal tournaments are best viewed as being the community’s equivalent of fighting game communities having regular tournaments. Sirlin mentioned a while back that Japanese players would have a tournament every week, and the signup thread for the next Swiss tournament on here usually starts pretty soon after the previous tournament’s final. You can probably imagine that most players’ rankings will change dramatically from week to week.

Even if you’re a good player, the vagaries of chance will mean you’ll occasionally go 0-3. Just play a few tournaments, and see how it washes out.

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I’ll echo @charnel_mouse’s sentiments here; these tournaments are mostly casual, for fun events to give people a chance to sharpen their swords in a “play-to-win” environment with no actual stakes. It’s meant to keep interest in the game alive. I’ve participated in just about every tournament we’ve run on these forums and the old ones, and I’ve won the tournament and gone 0-3 at various points with various decks / rulesets. Ain’t no thang, I’ve had fun every time :slight_smile:

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