An Analysis of Tournament Structure

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method using progress trees to analyze tournament structures, evaluating their costs, competitiveness, and ranking accuracy to recommend optimal formats for different goals.

Contribution

It proposes a novel analysis method with progress trees to assess tournament structures, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses for various objectives.

Findings

Single elimination best for a single winner qualification

Double elimination with seeding improves multiple winners qualification

Round-robin provides high ranking accuracy but is costly

Abstract

This paper explores a novel way for analyzing the tournament structures to find a best suitable one for the tournament under consideration. It concerns about three aspects such as tournament conducting cost, competitiveness development and ranking precision. It then proposes a new method using progress tree to detect potential throwaway matches. The analysis performed using the proposed method reveals the strengths and weaknesses of tournament structures. As a conclusion, single elimination is best if we want to qualify one winner only, all matches conducted are exciting in term of competitiveness. Double elimination with proper seeding system is a better choice if we want to qualify more winners. A reasonable number of extra matches need to be conducted in exchange of being able to qualify top four winners. Round-robin gives reliable ranking precision for all participants. However, its conduction cost is very high, and it fails to maintain competitiveness development.