You can still play the ranking matches for the team eliminated during the knockout rounds and have all the teams play the same number of rounds.Geggster wrote: I also considered a group stage followed by knockout. You could arrange for the top 8 to play QFs, SFs and then a final. You could also arrange for those that played in the early rounds to avoid each other until the final. It might be fairer that way but it would be less fun. Those eliminated would have less to play for and the knockout rounds might become boring once the round is settled.
If one wants to keep a swiss-systeam with 7 rounds, at minimum you have to:
- use the traditional 2 points fro win, 1 point for draw and use the individual results for tie-breaking.
- use a correct method pairing, not #1 vs #2, #3 vs #4, #5 vs #6 ...
- use correct tie-breakers. I think the results of the EurOpen are misleading (no offence to the winner, it is just a theoretical point of view). Thanks to the swiss method all the 5 best players plays against each other. Among them, 4 have the same number of points so one has all the information to rank them:
- player A has 0 win, 2 draw and 1 loss = 2 points
- player B has 0 win, 2 draw and 1 loss = 2 points
- player C has 2 wins, 0 draw and 1 loss = 4 points
- player D has 1 win, 2 draw and 0 loss = 4 points
The correct ranking should be:
#1 and #2 C and D with an other tie-breaker
#3 and #4 A and B with an other tie-breaker
But the official result is #1 A, #2 B, #3 C and #4 D. I guess the referee rather use (TD+casualties) for tie-breaking, but I think that the mutual information must have the priority.