Other 1v1 Tournament Policy Discussion Thread

  • Add SS to Classic
  • Cut DPP and ADV
  • Make the Cups Swiss Format
  • Players get eliminated at 3 losses to reduce the amount of sand-bagging/deadgames/lower the overall load of the tournament.
  • 3 weeks delay between cup signups, so people will only be playing in 2 cups at a time at the very most
  • Only your 3 best performances out of 4 count for playoffs
love this idea. Another perk of Swiss format is people like me who don’t really play in the team tours, or people that don’t play those formats in team tours get a chance to play/experience the meta.
 

DEG

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Yo, so we decided some stuff. Before starting, I would like to mention that we've been discussing stuff in #tournament-hosts in the 1v1 discord regarding the circuit and future tournaments. From now on, we will be discussing tournaments publicly with tournament hosts and then decide in the TD channel so that we can get a larger part of the community involved in decisions. Special thanks to Rosa STABLE crucify and Lumii for the discussions this time.

Below, you will find the latest decisions regarding;
- 1v1 Premier League
- 1v1 Classic & the future
- Old Gens PL
- "Unofficial" tours planning

I - 1v1 Premier League
As we all know 1v1PL will go forward and implement retains for this season so it's a good time to remind everyone about them. Each team will be allowed to retain up to 2 players from last year's squad. The retained player will have to approve the retain. The minimum price of a player is 10k, which means any retain of a player that costed less than 7K will be automatically worth 10k. Otherwise, it is old price + 3K.

For slots, logically we will be going with 1 SV Bo7 / 2 SV / 2 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW but we're open to revisit the decision incase a lot of people have different opinion.

II - 1v1 Classic
1v1 Classic will keep the same format as last year's. We thought we could revamp the tournament but we were wrong, we cannot fit a swiss cup into poffs tournament inside the circuit right now without major overlap so we decided to keep the same format as last year's with the gens being DPP, BW, ORAS, SM, SS (Au revoir ADV). We will work into implementing an Old Gens circuit next year that will keep Classic in its spirit but spread over the whole year.

The 2023 Classic will start directly after PL (7th of May) and will be done before WC.

III - Old Gens PL (RetroPL)
We will be trialing an Old Gens Premier League that will be hosted around November. It will most likely be 6 teams and we will be discussing slots at and more specifics.

IV - Unofficial tournaments planning
We will be hosting more unofficial tournaments, hooray! We will try to gather idea and publish a rough schedule of tournaments every once in a while after PL (no other tours during PL!!).
 

frogfacts

Banned deucer.
hi so i had this thought since alot of people seem to openly dislike sv (for good reason the meta is terrible rn) has 2sv slots been considered my thought process was that that should be fine if you just throw like mg/dpp in the tour so this is what i had in mind 2sv 2ss 1sm 1oras 1bw 1dpp/mg or something like this because i cant imagine people wanting to willingly play this meta before home i understand that there will always be people but that means that you have to force people into a meta they dislike which just sounds dumb as fuck like why would you play pokemon if you are not having fun
 
hi so i had this thought since alot of people seem to openly dislike sv (for good reason the meta is terrible rn) has 2sv slots been considered my thought process was that that should be fine if you just throw like mg/dpp in the tour so this is what i had in mind 2sv 2ss 1sm 1oras 1bw 1dpp/mg or something like this because i cant imagine people wanting to willingly play this meta before home i understand that there will always be people but that means that you have to force people into a meta they dislike which just sounds dumb as fuck like why would you play pokemon if you are not having fun
I think this is a bad idea and dangerous precedent to set. A relatively unexplored meta should not be disregarded before given the chance in teamtours, and it has always been the case that current gen has proper representation following a release. PL is the best thing that could happen for gen 9 in terms of improving competitiveness/innovation, and while I don't think people are bringing up this point seriously I wanted to address it as soon as possible to nip it at the bud. Beyond that, neither DPP or Multigen are particularly well-known for fostering peak competitive environments, with the former being removed for the exact reason as SV in this post. I do not believe that this proposal is one that has the potential to garner even minimal support, but I wanted to emphasize that PL should prioritize current gen because it needs development and tiering, not the opposite.
 

DEG

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Yo, so we decided some stuff. Before starting, I would like to mention that we've been discussing stuff in #tournament-hosts in the 1v1 discord regarding the circuit and future tournaments. From now on, we will be discussing tournaments publicly with tournament hosts and then decide in the TD channel so that we can get a larger part of the community involved in decisions. Special thanks to Rosa STABLE crucify and Lumii for the discussions this time.

Below, you will find the latest decisions regarding;
- 1v1 Premier League
- 1v1 Classic & the future
- Old Gens PL
- "Unofficial" tours planning

I - 1v1 Premier League
As we all know 1v1PL will go forward and implement retains for this season so it's a good time to remind everyone about them. Each team will be allowed to retain up to 2 players from last year's squad. The retained player will have to approve the retain. The minimum price of a player is 10k, which means any retain of a player that costed less than 7K will be automatically worth 10k. Otherwise, it is old price + 3K.

For slots, logically we will be going with 1 SV Bo7 / 2 SV / 2 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW but we're open to revisit the decision incase a lot of people have different opinion.

II - 1v1 Classic
1v1 Classic will keep the same format as last year's. We thought we could revamp the tournament but we were wrong, we cannot fit a swiss cup into poffs tournament inside the circuit right now without major overlap so we decided to keep the same format as last year's with the gens being DPP, BW, ORAS, SM, SS (Au revoir ADV). We will work into implementing an Old Gens circuit next year that will keep Classic in its spirit but spread over the whole year.

The 2023 Classic will start directly after PL (7th of May) and will be done before WC.

III - Old Gens PL (RetroPL)
We will be trialing an Old Gens Premier League that will be hosted around November. It will most likely be 6 teams and we will be discussing slots at and more specifics.

IV - Unofficial tournaments planning
We will be hosting more unofficial tournaments, hooray! We will try to gather idea and publish a rough schedule of tournaments every once in a while after PL (no other tours during PL!!).
Following this initiative, we have decided to create a Tournament Council to help in future decisions that are tied with Tournaments Planning, Rule, and decisions. Welcome STABLE crucify and Lumii to the team. Tournament Leaders (Rosa, and I) will be the ones to announce final decisions and we'll be the only two taking care of tourbans.

With that being said, we've had a lengthy about PL (managers prices, retains, franchises names and renames) and have decided to maintain status quo on the matter. We're looking forward finalizing the circuit, so stay tuned.
 

DEG

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Elo Bandit, frostyicelad, Arai, and Mubs were added to the Tournament Council that will be lead by me only.

Elo Bandit, Arai and Mubs are prominent faces in 1v1 and the tournament scene and I trust their judgments regarding future tournaments, rules, and policies.

Frostyicelad is only here at the start to help us and give his opinion. He lead randbats and did tournament circuit stuff there so his experience is great to have for the time being.

Thank you for understanding the situation, when I have other news/announcements I will let you know.
 
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DEG

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Two is better than one! Arai will now co-lead the tournament section with me. Arai extensive knowledge about policy in general is a perfect fit for the role. He has a lot of tournament hosting experience so knows policy in and out. He also doesn't join much tournaments so he'll be able to review cases in a more neutral-way. We think Arai will be a great addition as a TD.
 

DEG

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We would like to open the discussion on LT playoffs format. After we've trialed various formats throughout our preview tournaments official or not, I personally believe DE has run its course as being the preferred / most competitive format. Double Elimination is a sensitive case and I don't expect everyone sharing my opinion - but what I believe is that Double Elimination doesn't necessarily achieve successfully giving people another chance. Being out early just sends people into defeatist mode and there's a high chance they stop caring and reduce the overall competitivity of the playoffs format, also there hasn't been much comeback from losers which makes the tournament pretty linear with extra steps.

Anyway, I will survey LT Playoffs format after the tournament but why not get things moving from now. What do we think of changing the tournament poffs format to Swiss top cut/GC format? - I mostly likely hover over Swiss instead of DE? Do people think DE is fine? I think we can go on a poffs voting system with the people that qualified this year.

Hoping to close this at the end of the week and then open the PL bo7 discussion.
 
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We are currently half way through this tour... I don't necessarily see the issues with Double Elimination. In last year's edition, we saw XSTATIC COLD go from losing Round 1 to getting to the Grand Finals. The reward for the tournament is circuit points, which increase for each win. My motivation, at least, if I played in a Ladder Tournament would be to try to get circuit points. Losing in Round 1 should not be a motivation killer for a player who is trying to get circuit points. Overall, if there are issues that come up in this edition of the tournament, I would like to deal with them when we are attempting to create the circuit. However, for now, I do not see any such issues that would warrant a change.
 

Vertigo

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While Double Elimination has its flaws such as motivation loss for people who lose in the first round among other things and Single Elimination allowing more time for other options, I don't think making changes mid-tour is a great thing. Exploring options for future years would be a great thing and a lot of great options have been brought up already, but doing so mid-tour would just feel rushed and even if we were to trial something, there is a very high chance that it's going to be a one-time instance and that it's not going to stay for future LTs.

TLDR: Keep current format for this year, discussion is open for changing the format for next years and feedback from this year's top 16 would help improve it too so let's wait for this and then try to find solutions.
 

LittEleven

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We would like to open the discussion on LT playoffs format. After we've trialed various formats throughout our preview tournaments official or not, I personally believe DE has run its course as being the preferred / most competitive format. Double Elimination is a sensitive case and I don't expect everyone sharing my opinion - but what I believe is that Double Elimination doesn't necessarily achieve successfully giving people another chance. Being out early just sends people into defeatist mode and there's a high chance they stop caring and reduce the overall competitivity of the playoffs format, also there hasn't been much comeback from losers which makes the tournament pretty linear with extra steps.

Anyway, I will survey LT Playoffs format after the tournament but why not get things moving from now. What do we think of changing the tournament poffs format to Swiss top cut/GC format? - I mostly likely hover over Swiss instead of DE? Do people think DE is fine? I think we can go on a poffs voting system with the people that qualified this year.

Hoping to close this at the end of the week and then open the PL bo7 discussion.
GC format is pretty bad at 16 and takes too long, a bo16 tour that takes 1 month under DE takes 2 under GC + you have to build so many more teams, especially given the fact you've played so many ladder games to get here in the first place
[independent of this,I believe GC should go to single elim top cut around 16p because its just such a long event but yeah]

Swiss is just DE that removes top cut immunity, a 16p 3 round Swiss that cuts to semis + finals is basically "if you lose 2 games you're out, except for if you reach semis from where it's one loss" which

functionally both Swiss and DE are acceptable formats (same time frame because of losers finals taking up the extra swiss week); i think it's pretty acceptable though either way, it's just a reformatting of the tour rather than a huge change and voting on it should be fine if like 10+/16 people consent to changing it
changing the tour to SE from here would not be very kind imo, having your week of laddering be invalidated by one set of bad matchups is not something I think most people would be in favor of

I think it's fine for qualified people who are playing to vote on what they'd prefer to play, but have the decision favored to retain DE (66% approval rather than 50%, say) so it's a consensus and not purely a majority; there's an issue if the playerbase prefers a format for the tour but are forced to play with a different one even with that knowledge.

tldr: gc bad, single elim bad, swiss=double elim, voting = good
 

DEG

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I- On LT Playoffs;

All good, we will be keeping Double Elimination for this year. While I don't like the format, changing with such short notice and on a tight schedule isn't something I should encourage plus there's been voices against this sudden change. I will survey LT playoffs post-tournament, and we can see from there.

II- On PL Formats;

a) SS Bo7
OGPL and the 1v1 tournament survey (refer to the image below) has shown that we're ready to transition into more best of 7 slots.
Forms response chart. Question title: Should we discuss adding two Bo7 slots to 1v1PL? (SV, and SS bo7). Number of responses: 49 responses.


What is the community opinion on this matter? Note that we're only going to discuss ONE Best of 7 slot for SS - any other discussion about any other generation will be not be entertained as of yet, we should start by taking slow steps.

b) DPP in PL
The tournament survey result (refer to the picture below) showed an okay support for DPP in PL. While I do support DPP and would love more gen inclusion - I don't think we're ready to change our current slots so I will NOT discuss any slot change since the support isn't overwhelming. However, I am ready to entertain DPP in PL if we're going to extend to 10 slots. This is a more hypothetical question; what should the signups number be so we consider expending to 10 slots? - for reference last PL had 230~

Forms response chart. Question title: Should we discuss adding back DPP to 1v1 PL?. Number of responses: 49 responses.


The PL slots if we're only going with 8 slots will be;
SV Bo7
SV bo5
SV Bo5
SS Bo5 or Bo7
SS Bo5
SM Bo5
ORAS Bo5
BW Bo5
 
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DripLegend

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I'm just writing something short as someone who has been spectating both of these slots throughout OGPL. I think it should be a no-brainer to add another bo7 slot for SS, as it has been shown throughout OGPL to be a very intense and competitive slot. There's also a good amount of strong SS players, so having a bo7 slot for them does them justice and provides them the overall more competitive format of bo7 without SS being CG. As much fun as it was watching some DPP series throughout OGPL (all of Euphonos's games) I don't think it should be included. Overall, the tier wasn't that enjoying to watch, and seemed stale for the most part outside of dedicated mainers bringing new techs (usually owning people learning the tier for the first time). The meta in DPP is also pretty cut and dry, as building outside of the top 10 best pokemon is usually already putting someone at a disadvantage, which can definitely make the tier feel drier and more uninteresting to watch or play over time. DPP also has future tournaments with Classic later this year, and can still see metagame development outside of PL.

TLDR: yes bo7 SS, no to DPP
SV bo7
SV bo5
SV bo5
SS bo7
SS bo5
SM bo5
SM bo5
ORAS bo5
ORAS bo5
BW bo5
 
I feel like I say this everytime but I’m really not the type to write posts in tournament policy threads. Regardless, I want to share my thoughts as the topic of an SS Bo7 slot in PL is something I feel strongly about. Just bear with me if this doesn’t turn out to be the perfect post.
That being said, I’ll cut to the chase immediately : we should 100% have one of the SS slots be Bo7 in the upcoming PL.

This stance of mine should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me since I’ve stated my opinions on Bo7 as a format on several occasions (mostly in the 1v1 Discord and other 1v1 related servers) but nonetheless I’ll reiterate what I consider to be a few key points.

  • For starters, Bo7 punishes cheese strats. In a Bo5 you might end up winning a series by cheesing your opponent in a game (and a single game in a Bo5 can matter much more than you think) but in a Bo7 a single game holds a different weight and if you can adapt to your opponent and get ahead of them, losing a game or even 2 hardly matters
  • As such, Bo7 truly places emphasis on adapting to your opponent and showing a certain level of mental fortitude throughout the series, adding new interesting layers of intricacy
  • The better player almost (I say this because it’s pokemon we’re talking about after all and RNG exists) always prevails in the end. There are many cases of people stumbling into a win in Bo5s but the same can’t be said about Bo7s
  • It’s objectively less punishing than Bo5. Going back to what I’ve briefly touched upon in my initial point, if you go down 0-2 in a Bo5 you’re done for most of the times whereas in a Bo7 being down 0-2 is hardly a problem. Hell, even your opponent being up 3-0 doesn’t necessarily spell doom for you (look back at PL V finals tb, I would know)
  • The infamous “building strain” that I’ve seen brought up numerous times when arguing against Bo7 is actually completely fake. Re-using teams during a Bo7 series is a more than viable strategy, you are not contractually forced to build 7 fresh teams every week, as some make it out to be
  • Consequently, the playing or mental “strain” that supposedly derives from playing a Bo7 is also fake. If we hypothetically take a Bo5 series and a Bo7 one and assume max games for both, that’s a mere 2 games difference. Stop whining.
I highly encourage everyone who has a horse in this race to make a post about this topic too, you know who you are.
That’s all I wanted to say about this though, I might edit this if I feel like I forgot to mention some other points.

TLDR ; make one of the 2 SS slots Bo7
 
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Didn't realise DenisTheMenace also mentioned the topic of Bo7s above. I'd like to go to a further extent though and recommend every tier becoming Bo7 in team tournaments.

People will get put off by this and complain that they haven't enough time to build teams despite the fact that you have a whole week of preparation to do so and an entire team backing you up. Saying Bo7s should be in every individual tournament would be absurd, but to keep the competitive integrity in team tournaments I feel as if it should be enforced.

Bo7 does everything right. It lessens luck and heightens skill, heightens the usefulness of preparation and encourages variety in teambuilding and counter picking mid series. Dedicated players who do more preparation and make every team they use in the series as good as each other will be rewarded which I think is a good thing, people who don't do as much preparation will be at a disadvantage hypothetically but can still win through their skill by reusing teams.

Speaking of reusing teams, if you are struggling to find time to prepare enough teams you will want to use less cheesy bait and more solid teams as a result which I think is good for competitive integrity in general.
 
I feel like I say this everytime but I’m really not the type to write posts in tournament policy threads. Regardless, I want to share my thoughts as the topic of an SS Bo7 slot in PL is something I feel strongly about. Just bear with me if this doesn’t turn out to be the perfect post.
That being said, I’ll cut to the chase immediately : we should 100% have one of the SS slots be Bo7 in the upcoming PL.

This stance of mine should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me since I’ve stated my opinions on Bo7 as a format on several occasions (mostly in the 1v1 Discord and other 1v1 related servers) but nonetheless I’ll reiterate what I consider to be a few key points.

  • For starters, Bo7 punishes cheese strats. In a Bo5 you might end up winning a series by cheesing your opponent in a game (and a single game in a Bo5 can matter much more than you think) but in a Bo7 a single game holds a different weight and if you can adapt to your opponent and get ahead of them, losing a game or even 2 hardly matters
  • As such, Bo7 truly places emphasis on adapting to your opponent and showing a certain level of mental fortitude throughout the series, adding new interesting layers of intricacy
  • The better player almost (I say this because it’s pokemon we’re talking about after all and RNG exists) always prevails in the end. There are many cases of people stumbling into a win in Bo5s but the same can’t be said about Bo7s
  • It’s objectively less punishing than Bo5. Going back to what I’ve briefly touched upon in my initial point, if you go down 0-2 in a Bo5 you’re done for most of the times whereas in a Bo7 being down 0-2 is hardly a problem. Hell, even your opponent being up 3-0 doesn’t necessarily spell doom for you (look back at PL V finals tb, I would know)
  • The infamous “building strain” that I’ve seen brought up numerous times when arguing against Bo7 is actually completely fake. Re-using teams during a Bo7 series is a more than viable strategy, you are not contractually forced to build 7 fresh teams every week, as some make it out to be
  • Consequently, the playing or mental “strain” that supposedly derives from playing a Bo7 is also fake. If we hypothetically take a Bo5 series and a Bo7 one and assume max games for both, that’s a mere 2 games difference. Stop whining.
I highly encourage everyone who has a horse in this race to make a post about this topic too, you know who you are.
That’s all I wanted to say about this though, I might edit this if I feel like I forgot to mention some other points.

TLDR ; make one of the 2 SS slots Bo7
SS bo7 slot seems more promising than SV bo7
 
Didn't realise DenisTheMenace also mentioned the topic of Bo7s above. I'd like to go to a further extent though and recommend every tier becoming Bo7 in team tournaments.

People will get put off by this and complain that they haven't enough time to build teams despite the fact that you have a whole week of preparation to do so and an entire team backing you up. Saying Bo7s should be in every individual tournament would be absurd, but to keep the competitive integrity in team tournaments I feel as if it should be enforced.

Bo7 does everything right. It lessens luck and heightens skill, heightens the usefulness of preparation and encourages variety in teambuilding and counter picking mid series. Dedicated players who do more preparation and make every team they use in the series as good as each other will be rewarded which I think is a good thing, people who don't do as much preparation will be at a disadvantage hypothetically but can still win through their skill by reusing teams.

Speaking of reusing teams, if you are struggling to find time to prepare enough teams you will want to use less cheesy bait and more solid teams as a result which I think is good for competitive integrity in general.
Just note i'm saying this as a bo7 player and I have bias

A problem with this is it gets rid of the spectacle that is the bo7 slot. The bo7 slot has generally always been where the most competitive players go and it produces the best matches. If everything was made bo7, there would be no such slot in which all the best players gather to play like that, there would be lots of dodging players as you can dodge to another slot and still play bo7 and the quality of series' would generally go down (lots of really good player vs randoms due to dodging) . Second of all, no one except lumii is trying to watch 7 games of bw. This is an even bigger problem if dpp is in pl. Sorry to be blunt but even if in theory bo7 should make it more competitive than bo5, it would reduce viewers and any hype that was around those matches. Making every slot bo7 makes it a lot harder to slot new players, as managers/other players would be required to help them build even more teams. Lastly, there are people who prefer bo5 to bo7. This is pretty much all i had to say.

Also, it's good to add an ss bo7 slot since there is a lot of interest from previous ss bo7 players and it would definitely attract a strong pool of players.
 

Itchy

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Re: Sword (also kinda re: Denis)

I don't think best of 7 in every slot is feasible, but I don't see harm in expanding it in the generations where there are multiple people playing and prepping (SS as well as SV), especially if the players in these slots want bo7.

In older generations that typically get less support, bo7 would be a burn out factory and bring down team quality and/or force excessive reusing imo. The jump from 5 to 7 doesn't seem like that much on paper, but it takes a lot more time to prep if the whole team is building 1-2 more teams each week for a couple months, especially in oldgens where support is usually a bit more limited. It's only more competitive when you can reliably get enough quality teams together, and won't be if you're getting rushed or repeat teams.

In bo7 slots where you have 2 or more people playing the same tier, this is less of an issue, partly because more experienced players usually play there, but also because these players can collaborate and share excess prep more easily.
 

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