Advantaged Final?

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BroNi
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Advantaged Final?

Post by BroNi »

When exactly should an "advantaged final" be used?

For instance, Saturday at MITBAT, HHHW finished the (Swiss Pairs) 6 round Preliminaries with the only perfect record of 6-0. Kellenberg A (5-1) was one of the teams they beat. The top 6 teams were then moved into a Playoff round robin. Kellenberg A swept the field, including HHHW, and went 5-0. We were informed that Kellenberg A and HHHW would have to play an advantaged final. If Kellenberg A won, they then would be the Champions, but if HHHW won, there would be an additional game to determine the champ. But HHHW had lost to another team (which Kellenberg A had also beaten) in the Playoff round and were 3-2. In fact after the Playoff round robin, then top 4 teams were 5-0, 3-2, 3-2, and 3-2.

Should there have been an advantaged final?
Bro. Nigel, Coach, Kellenberg Memorial HS, NY
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dtaylor4
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Re: Advantaged Final?

Post by dtaylor4 »

BroNi wrote:When exactly should an "advantaged final" be used?

For instance, Saturday at MITBAT, HHHW finished the (Swiss Pairs) 6 round Preliminaries with the only perfect record of 6-0. Kellenberg A (5-1) was one of the teams they beat. The top 6 teams were then moved into a Playoff round robin. Kellenberg A swept the field, including HHHW, and went 5-0. We were informed that Kellenberg A and HHHW would have to play an advantaged final. If Kellenberg A won, they then would be the Champions, but if HHHW won, there would be an additional game to determine the champ. But HHHW had lost to another team (which Kellenberg A had also beaten) in the Playoff round and were 3-2. In fact after the Playoff round robin, then top 4 teams were 5-0, 3-2, 3-2, and 3-2.

Should there have been an advantaged final?
If it was announced that prelim records carried over, then yes.

Whatever is used to determine the W-L record used to rank teams, an advantaged final takes places if a team is 1 game ahead. In this case, if prelim records carried over, Kellenberg A wouhd have been 10-1, with HHW A going 9-2, and an advantaged final was justified.
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Re: Advantaged Final?

Post by cvdwightw »

An advantaged final can be used any time the tournament director decides that it should be used. This is further complicated by the fact that there are three different kinds of finals formats, of which ACF is the most commonly used (arguably because it is the only one without the potential for anomalous results).

An ACF-Format advantaged final occurs if at the end of all meaningful games*, the top team is a single game ahead of the second-place team. If the first-place team wins the first game, then it has a 2-games better record than the second place team with one to play; even if the second-place team were to win the second game, it would still have a worse record than the first-place team, so the second game is not played. If the second-place team wins the first game, then the teams are tied with one game left, and whichever team wins the second game will have a 1-games better record with no games left to play.

An NAQT-Format advantaged final occurs if at the end of all meaningful games*, the top team has a better record than the second-place team. No matter how many games ahead of the second place team the first place team is, that team will only receive a one game advantage. Thus it is theoretically possible for a team with 3 losses to win the tournament over a team with 2 losses, if the 2-loss team only lost the two games of the advantaged final to the 3-loss team.

A Canadian-Format** advantaged final occurs if at the end of all meaningful games*, the top two teams do not have a tied head-to-head record (presumably if head-to-head record is tied, there's only a one-game final regardless of the teams' records). In this format, the team with the better head-to-head record earns the advantage, and must beat the other team once more to win win the head-to-head battle and thus win the tournament. Thus it is theoretically possible for a team with 3 losses to win the tournament over a team with 2 losses, if the 2-loss team's only two losses were to the 3-loss team.

*By meaningful games, I mean "games that carry over into the final standings." If prelim statistics count, then "meaningful games" encompass all games played. In other scenarios, it may mean "games played in the top playoff bracket" "games played against top bracket teams, in both prelims and playoffs," "games played during a double-elimination playoff," etc.

**This term was coined by me to reference the only known tournament to use this format, a Canadian college tournament. It is probably not actually used all over Canada.

In the given scenario, if the stated(?) ranking was either overall record within brackets or record against teams within the bracket, then Kellenberg had 1 loss and HHHW had 2 losses, and thus the ACF-Format advantaged final was justified. However, if an NAQT-Format advantaged final had been announced, then Kellenberg and HHHW could have played an advantaged final even if only playoff records counted. Presumably the Canadian-Format final would not have been advantaged.
Dwight Wynne
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UC Irvine 2008-2013; UCLA 2004-2007; Capistrano Valley High School 2000-2003

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Re: Advantaged Final?

Post by Stained Diviner »

NAQT uses a different advantaged final because they format the whole tournament differently. If you are referring to HSNCT, then losses from the first day do not carry over to the second day (except for last year, when a team's fourth loss carried over but their first three losses did not). The second day is entirely double elimination, so you play until every team except one has lost two matches. This usually results in what seems like an advantaged final, because generally when there are two teams left one of them is undefeated and one of them has one loss. However, with this system the advantaged final is just a continuation of the playoff rounds played using the same pairing system as all the playoff rounds. In ACF, the advantaged final is played after the regular playoff matches are over to check to see whether or not the regular playoff matches produced a fluke result.

MITBAT used a format common to ACF throughout the tournament, not double elimination, so it makes sense to use what Dwight labels as an ACF-Format advantaged final.
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Matt Weiner
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Re: Advantaged Final?

Post by Matt Weiner »

NAQT uses the same one-game-maximum-advantage format in the ICT, which uses crossover playoffs rather than double-elimination; the team with the #1 seed gets an exactly one-game advantage no matter how many games they are ahead of the #2 seed.

In the 2007 ICT, an undefeated Chicago team faced an Illinois team with 2 losses under this format and lost the first game of the final, meaning that, had Illinois won the second game of the final, they would have had the same record as Chicago for the tournament but been declared the champion. This scenario happened at the 2005 ICT in DII, where a 10-3 Chicago team defeated a 12-1 Michigan team in two straight finals games; both teams ended up at 12-3 and Chicago was declared the winner.
Matt Weiner
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