Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Bracket Link

Since the sign ups closed early, I'm giving everyone the weekend (until the tournament starts on 12:01am EST on Monday, July 15th) to submit brackets to me via PM (brackets submitted in this thread will not be accepted). The best bracket will win $5 for Cactus Game Design. You may submit a bracket even if you did not sign up for the tournament. One bracket per person.

First Round - 1 Point per correct guess.
Second Round - 2 Points per correct guess.
Third Round - 4 Points per correct guess.
Championship - 10 points for a correct guess.

Let me know if you have any questions.

First Round - 1 Point per correct guess.
Second Round - 2 Points per correct guess.
Third Round - 4 Points per correct guess.
Championship - 10 points for a correct guess.

I would propose changing the scoring system for bracket picking.  Although PLAYING in a tournament I can see that winning the championship could be 10 times more important than winning a first round game, I don't think that is true of guessing the outcomes of games.

The skill of guessing the outcome of a game is the same whether it be between 2 players in a first round game or 2 players in a championship game.  So I don't think that someone who happens to guess the last game right, should get so many points that it makes up for guessing tons of the 1st and 2nd round games wrong.

Really the only thing that should be rewarded for predicting games is giving bonus points for upsets.  It is certainly harder to correctly pick a 15-seed beating a 2-seed, than it is to have the 2-seed beating the 15-seed.  Of course since this bracket is randomly seeded, it would be impossible to give these bonus points in this particular instance.

However I still think that the number of points per game should be flat across the rounds, or at least only go up slightly.  Perhaps like this:
Round 1 - 10 points
Round 2 - 11 points
Round 3 - 12 points
Round 4 - 13 points

Quote from: Chris on July 12, 2013, 01:40:01 PM

First Round - 1 Point per correct guess.
Second Round - 2 Points per correct guess.
Third Round - 4 Points per correct guess.
Championship - 10 points for a correct guess.

I would propose changing the scoring system for bracket picking.  Although PLAYING in a tournament I can see that winning the championship could be 10 times more important than winning a first round game, I don't think that is true of guessing the outcomes of games.

The skill of guessing the outcome of a game is the same whether it be between 2 players in a first round game or 2 players in a championship game.  So I don't think that someone who happens to guess the last game right, should get so many points that it makes up for guessing tons of the 1st and 2nd round games wrong.

Really the only thing that should be rewarded for predicting games is giving bonus points for upsets.  It is certainly harder to correctly pick a 15-seed beating a 2-seed, than it is to have the 2-seed beating the 15-seed.  Of course since this bracket is randomly seeded, it would be impossible to give these bonus points in this particular instance.

However I still think that the number of points per game should be flat across the rounds, or at least only go up slightly.  Perhaps like this:
Round 1 - 10 points
Round 2 - 11 points
Round 3 - 12 points
Round 4 - 13 points

It's far more difficult to accurately predict the winner of the championship round than those of the first round games.  That is why the standard for single-elim bracket guessing is very similar to what Chris has here (8 pts for correct champion is more expected, but 10 makes sense in that progression, too).  You're not updating your bracket after each round after the results are in - you're basing your latter round predictions based on your own early round predictions.  Chaining together three or four successive picks like that deserves a more drastic point increase than what you laid out here.

instaposted by Kirk

Jordan, I'll have an easier-to-update bracket up in the competition topic. I just put this up for people to know the bracket and submit guesses, and I'll be deleting this thread on Sunday night. Thanks for the offer though.

Alstad
Jbeers
MKC
Olijar
Hobbit
Chris
Kirk
Slug

Alstad
Olijar
Hobbit
Kirk

Olijar
Kirk

Olijar

Now I'm curious which Alstad you are referring to...since I can't see the bracket, and there are three of us.

The one who actually has Alstad in his name

I get what you guys are saying about it being harder to pick a champion at the beginning.  But if you look at the brackets below (green is correct picks, red is incorrect), I think it's clear who did a better job picking winners (bracket 2), but with this system Bracket 1 will win.

That's not entirely fair though because bracket 2 didn't pick Prof A to win a game. Does bracket 2 still lose if it picks ProfA to go to the championships?

He's not mocking out this specific tournament with those brackets, he's showing two generic cases of a person picking a 16-element bracket.

Prof U, in most bracket selection contests, the point is predicting the champion, not getting the highest volume of picks correct.  In light of that, yes, Bracket 1 deserves to win because it attained the goal better than Bracket 2.  Chris' point system falls in line with the majority of bracket selection point systems, therefore I believe he is aiming at rewarding the guessers who correctly chose a champion over the guessers who nailed the first round, but missed badly on the later rounds.

Even if you disagree with the logic here, I still chose that option because it's what people are used to. If you don't like it, take it up with people running March Madness tournaments.

You all keep saying that everyone else does it this way, and I acknowledge that.  However this is your tournament and you can do it however you want.  So don't follow the crowd and give in to the peer pressure.  Be a man and go against the flow.  Throw caution to the wind, and score your tournament in a way that is logical, fair, and fun!

P.S.  I really don't care a ton since I'm not even participating in this.  I'm just arguing on principle, and giving friends a hard time