8 teams; 10 packets. Best format?

[the return of AHAN]

Full RR, obviously, but then what? 7 rounds is awfully brief for teams that finished 3-8. Thoughts?

[mithokie]

Here are a couple of ideas...


If you just want to give teams more games, then you could have teams seeded 3-5 play a round robin, and teams seeded 6-8 play a round robin.

Packets 1-7 8 team Round Robin
Packet 8 3 vs. 5, 6 vs. 8 1 vs. 2, (single final, or 1st game of advantaged file)
Packet 9 4 vs. 5, 7 vs. 8, (2nd game of advantaged final, if necessary)
Packet 10 3 vs. 4, 6 vs. 7

Every team is guaranteed 8 games, teams seeded 3-8 after prelims get 9 games and team 1 and 2 will play 8 or 9 games depending on how the final progresses.

PROBLEM created: No packets are available for tie breakers, so you must rely on a statistical tie breaker (ppg in prelims would be preferred) to seed teams that might be tied in record.)
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I guess another way to do it would be the following
Packets 1-7 8 team Round Robin
Packet 8 Tie breaks (using half packets if 3 or 4 teams are invovled in a tie... if the pathological case of 5 teams tied occurs, then I guess you would eliminate the tied team with the worst ppg and use half brackets to play off the other 4 teams for the tie breaker)
Packet 9: 3 vs. 4, 5 vs. 6, 7 vs. 8, 1 vs. 2
Packet 10: 3 vs. 5, 6 vs. 7, 4 vs. 8, 1 vs. 2 (if necessary)

PROBLEM created: It will be more difficult with the uneven scheduling to determine the order of placement of teams 3-8 (which probably won't matter since these teams won't qualify for nationals... unless you want to award a 3rd place trophy).

[jonpin]

The one tournament Bergen ran under those controls, we had a round-robin, used round 8 to break ties, and then held advantaged finals (regardless of record) for 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th. This guaranteed everyone at least 8 games.

With only 10 packets, you can't really do much more, without risking the complete collapse of your tournament should a packet get read out of turn.