Tournament Finals and Seating Selection

Bloodartist wrote:

Already did. Full randomization.

Full randomization can result in:

- no players moving between tables (but possibly rearranging on the same table)
- tables staying exactly the same
- tables staying exactly the same, except table one and table two swap places
- player A preys on player B in every (non-final) round
- player C starts with one transfer in every round(*)
- player D goes fifth in every round
- players E and F using the same Scarce vampires ending up on the same table every round, even when there are sufficient players and sufficient rounds for that not to happen

(*) LSJ's point of view on this was, as I recall, that it didn't make much difference, but some players really don't like it a lot.



These sorts of things tend to generate a lot of complaints (hence the pain-staking creation of the Archon seating charts), and full randomization does not stop them happening. Some of them will, of course, happen rarely, but with lots of fairly rare corner-cases possible, some of them will turn up.

If you would filter out some of the worst of these things from happening, that's understandable - but it's also not full randomization.

Ankha wrote:

They will answer against: "I am willing to take the risk".
The problem is that they don't realize that it is hopeless: optimal seatings are optimal, you can't find something better by chance.
That is why I want to focus on a real example. I am waiting for them to tell me if we can take the last finnish tournament as an example.

What information do you require exactly? There is a tournament here on next sunday, although its looking to be a small one (~8 players)

Also we seem to have differing opinions on what is "optimal".

I will be get back to this when I'm not as busy but here are some.

www.vekn.net/forum/event-reports-and-twd/76803-twd-riihimaeki-anarch-salon-7-7-2018

In Riihimäki the start of the tournament was actually delayed for a long while when people discussed alternate seating methods. This was to no avail since no alternative method to archon could be found. The delay led to the highest seeded player (two table sweeps) having to drop from the tournament before the final since he had timetable issues (had to attend a birthday party).

www.vekn.net/forum/event-reports-and-twd/76465-twd-6th-hiekkaharju-nightmare-10-03-2018-vantaa-finland#85874

Here we had the unfortunate case of a returning player coming from a long hiatus, being loaned a stanislava deck, and having to contest that Stanislava in two back-to-back tables with a person who travelled a long distance to the tournament.

ps. noteworthy: both tournaments had 15 players. If I'm not mistaken, 15 players will always result in a table where only one person changes between rounds.