c4countdown

With much excitement, yes, I'll be running the world cup again! Fuck yes!

32 players.
Obviously. One per team in the real thing. First come, first served. So consider this your advance warning. Once I add the tournament to apterous you just gotta be there or be square.
As before, at some point after the 32 players are confirmed, team assignations will match apterous ratings to FIFA rankings.

Timings.
Probably take me at least a month to get round to adding the tournament for signups officially, if not two months, you know how I roll.
The World Cup's group stage runs from 12th June to 26th June, so we'll aim to complete all the group stage matches in these two weeks.

Gameplay.
Went well before. "Apterous World Cup" format on apterous. Winners only scoring, 7 rounds (LLNLLLN). Draws are draws as far as competition is concerned.
The nations that make up the initial groups will mirror the real world cup - see the wiki article for more info.

Entry requirements.
Be reliable. Have a real photo of you that I can access either via Facebook or you emailing it to me. Haters gonna hate.

Signup: http://www.apterous.org/to_tourney.php?tourney=1202

Matt Morrison wrote: Have a real photo of you that I can access either via Facebook or you emailing it to me. Haters gonna hate.

Is this really so important that it's worth potentially excluding a fairly large portion of the userbase over?

Dans.

Zarte Siempre wrote:Dans.

Est dansent.

Innis Carson wrote:

Matt Morrison wrote: Have a real photo of you that I can access either via Facebook or you emailing it to me. Haters gonna hate.

Is this really so important that it's worth potentially excluding a fairly large portion of the userbase over?

I'm with Innis here, I have a photo on facebook if that helps but don't load it onto my apterous profile please I still have confidence issues and would rather not look at my face every time I log in

To answer David, you don't ever have to look at your face, I won't make you. You also don't have to add any image to apterous. You also don't have to play.

To answer Innis, yes.

What do you need the photos for? If people knew they might be more accepting of it rather than just "Photo or fuck off!"

Gavin Chipper wrote:What do you need the photos for? If people knew they might be more accepting of it rather than just "Photo or fuck off!"

I honestly don't want to come across as a twat but I don't really care. Anyone who knows the first thing about me knows it will be a Good Thing. It's also not a secret, I just don't want to make it obvious for those who don't know and might enjoy the surprise.

I agree with Matt insofar as it's his prerogative. Tournaments with far stranger rules regularly pass without comment.

Also the weird logic to do Extra Time and Penalties has been sitting idle in the code for the last four years so it'll be nice to see that in action again.

Also, in.

Is it fair to just do an unannounced first come, first served sign up?

There's going to be more than 32 who want to play I would think - maybe I should allow all signups for a period and then randomly draw 32 from those?

What's best?

Matt Morrison wrote:Is it fair to just do an unannounced first come, first served sign up?

There's going to be more than 32 who want to play I would think - maybe I should allow all signups for a period and then randomly draw 32 from those?

What's best?

I think a random draw is fine, provided you do the draw far enough in advance that people don't avoid scheduling something else only to find they didn't get lucky.

Also if you're changing the rules now you should grandfather in Zarte & Ian (and also me but I prefer to live dangerously).

Matt Morrison wrote:Is it fair to just do an unannounced first come, first served sign up?

There's going to be more than 32 who want to play I would think - maybe I should allow all signups for a period and then randomly draw 32 from those?

What's best?

Another option is to include a preliminary round in order to get the number in the main tournament down to 32. For example, if 40 people signed up, you'd need to get rid of eight people, so eight ties would be needed. Deciding who has to go through the preliminary round could be based on pro ranks or you could decide randomly, for example, with the rest getting byes into the main tourney. If you plan to leave the sign ups as late as you do, there may not be time for this, though. Throwing people out randomly when there's nothing they can do does seem a little harsh but it's up to you.

Yeah that's the thing I don't like about drawing from entrants, would be harsh on some people. But this is still preferable to me than a knockout round, then we end up with 32 better players than we would get randomly, and a mix of qualities is good.

So overall maybe I'll just do 32 and 32 only, first come first served as planned.

Charlie - what does grandfathering someone in mean?

^ Ah yeah, I must have forgotten about that legislation where FIFA put San Marino and Eritrea into the World Cup finals as they would like a good mix of qualities.

Being serious though, I think there'd be a lot of interest for this, especially if Charlie advertises it on the front page, and I'd prefer to see everyone get at least a decent chance to make the final 32. It'd be a shame if participating in something like this came down to luck, or simply being online at the right time.

Here are some suggestions which you may consider or dismiss with disdain, as you see fit:

- 'Apterous Masters' style - the top (32 - (n - 32)) entrants according to Pro Rank make it through automatically, and others have a single randomly drawn qualifying game against another player to decide their fate.
- A double elimination qualifying tournament - it stops when there are 32 players remaining and these make it through to finals (NB: works bloody well for 48+ entrants, but quite badly for fewer).
- A Swiss qualifier - could be done in one massive group, or a number of smaller groups, but either way the top 32 would make it through.
- A single game against Prune - take the top 32 scores. Gevin/Stepdown scoring arguably fairest, but would throw up fewer surprise packages than normal scoring.

Might be worth seeing what the interest is like first, or planning ahead based on what the tournament interest could potentially look like, e.g. if it's a slight struggle to make 32, say you get 34 people in two weeks, then first come first served looks really good. However, if there are already 34 people in after one day, then maybe not so much.

I mean it's your tournament, your choice, but it would suck if some really keen players missed out through factors beyond their own control.

I say open the sign-ups now and see what sort of interest there is (I reckon there'll be loads). Andy has some good suggestions on whittling the entry down, although my ideal would be that there was so much interest that qualifying groups would be possible, like the real thing (and with three months to go, there's still time to do it).

But I'm happy with anything really.

I don't even know what a (32 - (n - 32)) is, let alone a Swiss Cottage.

I'll just open sign ups now and we'll work it out later!

The hardest thing to mimic is that the World Cup is neither the 32 best teams in the world nor a random selection of 32. It's a lot closer to the first but with an unexpected element to it. (Admittedly this year is less random, the top 19 seeds all qualified, and the spread is much smaller - the lowest rank is Cameroon at 59th in the FIFA rankings compared to DPR Korea last time at 91st).

Football itself is also a much more unpredictable game than apterous. I hoped to (as best as possible) mimic this with the AWC game format. But now we have to solve that same issue with the 32 entrants too.

The only other thing that is worth saying is that it's nice to assign a team to everyone from day one, team assignations are hugely important to the fun. Obviously with over 32 entrants that can't happen, but I guess that's just the way it is.

I guess I'm liking Jim's suggestion of qualification groups the most. Let's see what happens.

Working it out later when we know how many people are in sounds good. In!

p.s. do I qualify as host? :p

Haha, automatic qualification surely.

I would be very interested in this, and I think Qualification Rounds would be the way to go personally. There's bound to be a lot of interest in this, and as in real life there could be potential for a few surprises. At least if people go out in the Qualifiers, they have at least gone out on merit, rather than just because they weren't one of the 32 lucky ones who got picked out of a hat. Surely this is also the way to get the best players in, rather than the potential for 32 numpties to take part.

We're definitely over 32, so there will be qualifiers.
If we get this many, I'll definitely cap entrants at 64 so that everyone is in the qualifying round, but there is no more than one qualifying round.

However, I'd anticipate we won't get 64 players though so I'll have to make a decision (your input much appreciated) on the methodology for choosing which chunk of entrants go in automatically and which have to qualify...?
Ideally there's a good way to do this without just choosing the best players (or maybe this is correct) and without having to do a "qualify for the qualifiers" thing.

I'll also use Jack's idea of "home and away" aggregate scoring too. Or maybe not, now that I think about this would require Charlie to add "all P1" and "all P2" formats. Maybe just best of two matches but still alternate picking and fuck "away goals" for the avoidance of hassle.

Edited OP just to give a more prominent signup link.

Whatever the numbers work out at I guess I'll do the top x players in automatically but then the rest of the qualifiers won't be seeded, just random.

Signups closed at 48: http://www.apterous.org/to_tourney.php?tourney=1202

I'll put the 16 top players into the main event immediately.

The other 32 will do a double elimination qualifier playoff - you have to win 2 to get through or lose 2 to go home.

To those who know tournamenting better than I do, it's ok to randomise everything about the double elimination isn't it? i.e. a random 16 vs random 16 to start, then each of the next sections (winners, losers, then the leftovers) are all also randomised (though I guess in the leftovers bit you ensure no one plays each other for the second time?) ???

I've just done the top 16 via Pro Ranks. I guess there's no better way of doing it, although it does throw up some ridiculousness with names like Jono not in the top 16 just because he doesn't play much any more. What can you do though eh?

This crudely formatted list shows the top 16 entrants based on pro ranks, numbers at the end being the pro ranks: Notable omissions who will have to qualify: Ben Wilson (17th), Jim Bentley (18th), Jono (24th), Gevin (48th).

Will wait to hear from anyone who cares to chime in about this part of the organisation before officially doing qualifier fixtures on apterous.

Seems fair.

Jon O'Neill wrote:Seems fair.

It's fair - he's just pointing out what massive names there are in this tournament that aren't in the top 16.