Cutting to Top 8 early..?

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Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules (More info?)

I was in the #mtgjudge channel on EFnet tonight, and an interesting question
came up. Basically it's this:

If you have a tournament where you cut to top 8 after X rounds of Swiss, and
all but 8 people drop early, can you do Top 8 pairings right then and there,
or do you have to go the full X rounds? Let me give an example.

You're running a tournament with 247 people. According to
http://www.wizards.com/dci/downloads/Swiss_401.pdf you have to run 9 rounds
of Swiss before going to the single-elimination rounds. Let's say that after
6 rounds, you're looking at the list of players, and 239 of them have
dropped (maybe Star Wars: Episode Alpha-Nought is showing early tonight..),
leaving you with 8 people. Do you still have to run the remaining three
rounds, or can you cut straight to top 8 right and start pairing?

We've not yet been able to find any rules to support one side or the other.
The best we can find SEEM to SUGGEST that you have to run the full distance,
but there's nothing definite. We've looked all over the WotC site for
Tournament Players, for Judges, and even had one check the TO area, and
nothing definite. (By we, I mean the people in #mtgjudge, where it turns out
Rune and Sheldon occasionally hang out, amongst others.) Umm.. help?

Erich

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules (More info?)

Erich Leibrock <eleibrock@symDELETETHECAPSpatico.ca> wrote:

> I was in the #mtgjudge channel on EFnet tonight, and an interesting question
> came up. Basically it's this:
>
> If you have a tournament where you cut to top 8 after X rounds of Swiss, and
> all but 8 people drop early, can you do Top 8 pairings right then and there,
> or do you have to go the full X rounds? Let me give an example.
>
> You're running a tournament with 247 people. According to
> http://www.wizards.com/dci/downloads/Swiss_401.pdf you have to run 9 rounds
> of Swiss before going to the single-elimination rounds. Let's say that after
> 6 rounds, you're looking at the list of players, and 239 of them have
> dropped (maybe Star Wars: Episode Alpha-Nought is showing early tonight..),
> leaving you with 8 people. Do you still have to run the remaining three
> rounds, or can you cut straight to top 8 right and start pairing?

I'm not a judge myself, but would anyone see a potential problem with
the remaining 8 players all doing intentional draws for the remaining
rounds?
--
Daniel W. Johnson
panoptes@iquest.net
http://members.iquest.net/~panoptes/
039 53 36 N / 086 11 55 W

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.rules (More info?)

"Erich Leibrock" <eleibrock@symDELETETHECAPSpatico.ca> writes:
> If you have a tournament where you cut to top 8 after X rounds of Swiss, and
> all but 8 people drop early, can you do Top 8 pairings right then and there,
> or do you have to go the full X rounds?

Unless you have unanimous agreement by the players, I think that you'd
need to go the full X rounds. While it might not affect who got into
the top 8, it would affect the player's ratings for the remaining
rounds, as well as their seeds going into the brackets.

Even with unanimous agreement, it's hard to find rules explicitly
allowing it, although they seem to be pretty flexible in allowing TOs
to organize events in many varying ways.

I really doubt anyone would have a problem with it if it were
announced at the start (or in some document listing the TO's policies,
maybe) that if there are <= 8 players remaining at the end of a round,
that the top 8 pairings would happen then. But it seems like an
obscure enough case that most TOs probably wouldn't bother.

--
Peter C.