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Smogon Masters III - Top 8 [REPLAYS MANDATORY]

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Princess Autumn

Princess Autumn

Anyways - so then I cursed her.
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Art by Blazenix
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Welcome to the third edition of Smogon Masters! This is a Swiss bracket, Bo3 tournament with each set consisting of ORAS OU, SM OU, and SS OU. Players will decide which metagame to play first (with the higher seed choosing come Top Cut), then the loser picks a different generation for the following game. If both players cannot agree on a metagame to play first, each round will have a default generation randomized at the start of each round. After several rounds of the Swiss bracket, all players with 2 or fewer losses will be advanced onto a single elimination, Bo3 bracket which will culminate in a grand finals where we'll crown our winner of Smogon Masters III and the purple trophy
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! Last year's Masters was won by none other than Empo in a closely fought finals, do you think you have what it takes to take his title?

Rules & Tournament Format

General Tournament Rules
  • This is a tournament that will employ the standard rulesets for ORAS OU, SM OU, and SS OU, being a Best of Three with one game of each tier.
  • Smogon Masters III will be a Swiss tournament with a to-be-determined Top Cut size depending on signups.
    • Players will be automatically dropped when they hit three losses as they are no longer in contention for top cut. Players who achieve top cut scores before the end of Swiss will not be matched up for the remainder of the Swiss rounds.
    • Players will be assigned a random opponent out of the pool of players with the same record as them each round, although on rare occasions, players may face someone with a better/worse record to avoid having more than 1 bye in any given round. Players will not face the same opponent during the Swiss portion of the tour.
  • Matches are to be played on Pokémon Showdown!. If you can't agree on which server to play on, the Smogtours server is the default option.
  • Saving replays is required and must be posted in each winpost starting in the second round.
  • There are no extensions due to the nature of a Swiss tournament, so please get your games done on time. This will be removed for the single elimination Top Cut stage of the tournament.
  • Princess Autumn is the primary host of this tournament and the co-hosts will be a fairy, Eledyr, goldmason, and vmnunes.
This tournament uses a Swiss format, where everyone plays until they lose three times, or until Top Cut begins after Round 10 (or 11). The Top Cut will be single elimination and based on a 32-player bracket, although this may vary depending on the tour's player count. All matches will be a Best of 3, involving ORAS OU, USUM OU, and SWSH OU.

This tournament is expected to fall into of the following sizes:
384 - 512 players = 10 rounds of Swiss, 32 person Top Cut with varying numbers of byes
513 - ~978 players = 11 rounds of Swiss, 32 person Top Cut with varying numbers of byes
~978 - 1024 players = 11 rounds of Swiss, 64 person Top Cut with varying numbers of byes

Byes will be awarded based off of seeding which will be calculated by the following tiebreakers: fewest number of losses, highest opponent's resistance, highest opponent's opponent's resistance.
Opponent's resistance is defined as the average win% of a player's opponents expressed as a decimal, for example:
  • I have a record of 3-0
  • My R1 opponent's record is 0-3
  • My R2 opponent's record is 1-2
  • My R3 opponent's record is 2-1
  • My opponent's resistance is (0 + 1/3 + 2/3)/3 = 1/3 = ~0.33
  • This value has a hard coded minimum of 0.25
Opponent's opponent's resistance is the average of each of a player's opponent's resistances, and is calculated in a similar manner.
If players are still tied after these, their seeding will be determined by a coin flip.

There will be no substitute slots this year, instead week 1 will last for 2 weeks; substitutes will be allowed to signup for the duration of week 1 and come Sunday, inactive players will be replaced on a first-come first-serve basis.

Players who achieve a Top Cut-qualifying record before the final round of Swiss will be removed from the Swiss rounds. They will be seeded in brackets depending on when they qualified.

You can find the full standings and bracket here.

Top 8
1) Giannis Antetokommo-o vs 25) Hairoll
18) Attribute vs 23) zinnias
14) BAGANHA13 vs Bye
4) c0mp vs 21) Na

The deadline for extensions is <t:1766026800:F>! The deadline for this round is <t:1766372400:F>!

If there are any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to myself or any of the other hosts!
 
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A few of the top dogs have fallen, but first, here are the records so far this tour of everyone who's left:

Giannisc0mpBAGANHA13AttributeIkaishizinniasHairoll
Sheet record in Masters tiers1-717-131-29-80-00-00-0
Record w/o byes or act wins10-010-110-19-29-110-29-2
All games18-319-1019-719-719-620-619-8
ORAS5-29-110-05-36-25-24-3
SM7-07-25-37-24-49-17-3
SwSh6-13-74-47-29-06-38-2

1) Giannis Antetokommo-o vs 25) Hairoll

Somehow, I actually think this chart underrates Giannis a bit. Like, yes, he's the only player returning from last year's top 8, and he has an STour finals appearance from when the tournament had these exact tiers (a tournament whose title is, as of yesterday at the time of writing, vacant), and he made STour finals again just earlier this year, but that's not actually what I'm talking about. No, what I mean is that two of Giannis's three game losses so far happened in the playoffs, an ORAS loss against Nemosse and an SwSh loss against DeeJ. He went undefeated in the qualifying phase except for a single ORAS game, which happens to have been against the site's best ORAS player, Santu. He beat Dj Breloominati, GeniusX, and 3d, all SPL-caliber players in these tiers, all without dropping a game.

I don't want to overreact to small samples. After all, Giannis took two losses in Swiss last year, and actually went negative in SM there. If you want to find holes in the resume, you can always find them, and people can point to the fact that Giannis has a career sheet record of 1-7 in these tiers (all in SwSh, all in WCOP). But I picked Giannis as my favourite for this tour a while ago, and I've only become more confident in that as various other contenders have been taken out, and I'm certainly not going to change my mind now. Hairoll actually has a few pretty clouted wins so far in SoulWind, GeniusX, and Malekith, but they just have no track record.

18) Attribute vs 23) zinnias

Prior to this tournament, the selling point for Attribute was mostly the recent SV OU dominance; 9-8 on the sheet in SwSh OU is good, but probably doesn't make you a safe playoff bet with little else in Masters tiers. As Swiss progressed, losses to Typh and DeeJ were respectable, and Attribute picked up a bunch of solid if unspectacular wins: damien the genius, PZZ, Metallica, Luigi, and IPF are all legit SPL players in these tiers. But if we're being honest, fade and ChrisPBacon were each the toughest challenges for Attribute yet by the time he drew them, and while the fade win was a little fraudulent (that game wouldn't have counted if Attribute lost since fade was already banned by then), ChrisPBacon was a defending finalist with a dominant record to that point. That, to me, changes Attribute's outlook.

zinnias actually has the second-best gamecount of anyone left in this tour despite losing twice in Swiss, because most of them were 2-0 wins, albeit having mostly avoided any huge obstacles. Attribute is probably their toughest matchup so far, the other options being DeeJ (to whom they lost) and NoName (who they beat last round). They've gone 9-1 in SM with their only loss coming to feen, but neither of the other tiers stand out as obvious weaknesses by record.

I think I'd favour Attribute. At first glance, zinnias looks favoured in SM, Attribute in SwSh, and ORAS a tossup. That said, I think Attribute's advantage in his tier of choice is more pronounced, and he took ORAS against both fade and ChrisPBacon, so I'm inclined to have more confidence there. Attribute also just has more big-game experience; I'm picking him to make his first individual semifinal. This is the closest matchup for me, though.

14) BAGANHA13 vs Bye

Let me put aside my annoyance with the TD decision that makes this next round a bye. I get why it's made; following precedent makes for the cleanest ruling, and the precedent is that if a player gets DQ'd, the previous game only gets nullified if they cheated in that game. I just don't agree. If 3d had insisted on playing the game right before the deadline, then he would have moved on, but because they played that afternoon, TJ won only to get immediately DQ'd, leaving us with a bye in top 8. I don't like having an incentive to play as late as possible (or even to push for an extension) just in case your opponent gets banned. To me, that shouldn't be the case. But whatever, I'm not going to spend more time complaining.

Baganha would be a pretty unlikely tournament winner, all things considered, just by virtue of being their first individual playoff appearance and their career 1-2 sheet record. They only need to win two more sets, though, and they're undefeated in one of these tiers. It's true that they lost to their toughest matchups in Swiss (Garay oak and Meru), but they actually beat Garay in ORAS. The problem, of course, is that they're barely above even in the other two tiers against mostly unremarkable competition, and they don't have much of a track record to fall back on in any of these tiers. In theory, you could draw up a matchup against a solid player who excels in one of SM or SwSh but struggles in the other, such that Baganha can win at least one relative coinflip, and then take their strongest tier in ORAS. The problem is, I'm not exactly sure if there's anyone left for whom that's true.

4) c0mp vs 21) Ikaishi

Okay, there's actually one specific reason I displayed the stats above for this post, and it's for this paragraph. What should we make of c0mp's SwSh? Because I flagged a few rounds ago that c0mp looked excellent in two of these tiers but just couldn't get a win in the third. And while we're at it, the story was similar last year; c0mp went 2-5 in SwSh at Masters II. He's had a really tough slate of opponents, too. Sole loss to lax, wins over Malekith, Fc, Lusa, and two wins against Tenebricite. That makes the ORAS and SM excellence more impressive, of course. But still, that's 5-12 in SwSh over the past two years. In those wins against Malekith, Fc, and Lusa, as well as the first against Tenebricite, c0mp lost every SwSh game and won every other one. He also lost in SwSh against lax, but also lost SM there. Last round against Tenebricite would have been worst-case scenario, entering a SwSh game 3 having dropped SM earlier, but this was a good time for his first big SwSh win.

Complicating things is that c0mp actually made SwSh Circuit playoffs this year. Decisively, too. I guess my takeaway is that if you think c0mp's better than his SwSh record has shown, then he can beat anyone. Alternatively, if you think c0mp's just better than anyone at ORAS and SM, like he's been this tour, he can win it all. Will he? Well, I think the ideal path to beating him likely involves taking both SM and SwSh, and that's...probably not Ikaishi. It's a shame, too, because they're undefeated in SwSh, but I do think the gap in the other two tiers is just too much. c0mp's 11-5 on the sheet in SM OU, and while he's only 4-7 in ORAS OU, that's also the generation of his only prior individual top 8. I'd favour him here, but if both he and Giannis make it past this week, I think that semifinal will be really quite exciting.
 
Got smoked last round but we will try again

1) Giannis Antetokommo-o (SS, SM, ORAS) vs 25) Hairoll
Any other outcome here would be a massive upset. Predicting Hairoll to make it into top 8 was my only saving grace from last weeks predictions, and he's played well enough but has definitely been the beneficiary of some timely luck. I thought Giannis' SS team pick was a bit lacklustre (or perhaps DeeJ's GWeezing pick was inspired) but he made up for that with some strong play in SM and ORAS (Sub DD Gyara stays broken). This should be clear cut, but it wouldn't be the first upset we see this tour.

18) Attribute (SS, ORAS) vs 23) zinnias (SM)
If you need a representation of Attribute's style of play this tour, turns 2 and 7 of G1 against Chris sums it up well. He did benefit from Chris choking the endgame in ORAS quite uncharacteristically, but I expect Attribute to take that win in his stride and capitalise on it here. He's easily been the most entertaining player to watch these playoffs. zinnias' SM has been quite strong so I think she can take that but the ORAS game this set will be crucial, considering neither player has looked particularly strong there, and both didn't really deserve their wins in the tier last round.

14) BAGANHA13 vs Bye
rip

4) c0mp (SM, ORAS) vs 21) Ikaishi (SS)
c0mp is probably my favourite to win the whole thing. His ORAS game last round was absolute cinema and he navigated the SS game incredibly well with that game never looking in doubt (how tf is he only 3-7). In terms of overall grasp of all 3 tiers and clutch factor ingame I think he clears the rest of the field, and it's hard to see him losing to anyone other than maybe Giannis. Ikaishi has definitely been solid, it's been cool seeing him turn up after teaming with him for SSPL, and he'll absolutely need to win the SS game to have a chance at advancing. He's another player who profited from a healthy amount of luck last week (a theme of the round really), but the play has been strong enough to make some noise this set.

wow ipf so adventurous bolding the higher seed in every matchup
cheers ego for the stats appreciate everything you do. looking forward to some fun games!
 
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