I've received and heard many complaints about the structure of 6-team Premier League tournaments lately.
I think there are many occasions where 6 teams is simply optimal due to the available playerbase, and it's worth it to spend energies optimizing the 6-team PL format rather than just saying "skill issue; find players for 8 teams".
So, I thought I'd try to come up with format tweaks that offer solutions to the problems that have been raised.
Problem 1: The 5-week season
5 weeks is, quite simply, very short. Teams don't get much time to gel and by the time they do, the tournament already ends for many of them. A 5-week season gives little time for teams to grow in or out of shape, and fluked wins and losses can heavily impact the final standings.
A double round robin (= playing each other team twice) leads to a 10-week season, longer than even SPL/SCL, which is obviously undesirable for more casual, unofficial PLs.
Problem 2: The 1st seed bye week
Taking the top 50% - three teams - and putting them in playoffs results in giving the first seed a bye week. Many people (Leru but also others) argue that this is a disadvantage, as disconnecting from the tournament for a week tends to be harmful for team momentum and investment.
However, 2 team and 4 team playoffs are just as awkward: advancing the top 2 directly to final feels really bad for 66% of the teams, especially in combination with the 5-week length, and leads to teams giving up after a bad start, even just starting off with a single loss is enough to make top 2 look really daunting due to the short season length. Advancing the top 4 leads to the opposite issue, where the first 5 weeks feel pretty irrelevant to any team that starts off well, and the whole thing feels pretty trivial until it's sudden death playoffs.
Proposal A: Two Conferences
Teams are split at random into two conferences of three. Teams play other teams in their own conference x2, and teams in the other conference x1, for a 7-week regular season.
As far as playoffs go - the two conference winners could head directly to finals, or you could have conference A's winner play conference B's second place and vice versa in the semifinal.
Pros:
- Fixes problem 1, with a 7-week season
- Fixes problem 2 with either of the possible playoff formats - in either case, races within a conference should be more open to the end given that there are more direct head to head series within each conference that you can use to make up ground.
- Likely to generate fun, healthy, competitive rivalries
Cons:
- 10% of the time the three strongest teams in the tournament will be drawn into the same conference and one will be unable to advance. 40% of the time, the two weakest teams will be drawn together and one will get a free ride to semifinals by being less trash than the other.
- There's no way that I can find to avoid some teams having pretty awkward schedules; see attachment for the cleanest solution I could find, and note the Vaporeons schedule (W2 then W5 against the same team, W3 then W6 against the same team - no way that I can find to split these rematches further apart)
Proposal B: Just Run It Back
Add a Week 6 and run back the match ups that were drawn for Week 1. Add a Week 7, run back the match ups that were drawn for Week 2. Keep going or cut it whenever you like. A 7-week example schedule here:
Pros:
- Fixes problem 1, and even allows for a flexible number of weeks
- Simplest of the proposed solutions by far
Cons:
- Doesn't really address problem 2 much, though I think heading to a direct top 2 final is not as bad with a longer season (you're not immediately doomed if you start slow etc)
- Much like proposal A, luck of the draw could have a real negative impact on qualification scenarios
Proposal C: Belgian Pro League Moment
Literally stealing from professional sporting leagues here but hear me out:
Each team plays each other team once. After 5 weeks, the bottom 2 teams are cut. However, rather than going straight into a playoff bracket, the four remaining teams play another round robin, adding another 3 weeks of play for an 8-week "regular season" (though the worst teams only play 5).
The points from the first five weeks carry over, but they are halved. This means teams are fully incentivized to do well in the first half of the season - both to qualify of course, but also to get a leg up for the final part of the season - but even a team that qualifies in 4th place is not so far off that they can't mount a comeback in the final three weeks if they do well.
Taking from the last GSCPL as an example:
After this regular season, the Death Scythes and the Wii Fit Wolverines would be immediately eliminated. The other teams play on for three more weeks against each other - the Machamps start with 4 points, the Vaporeons with 3.5 points, the Tyranitars with 3 points, and the Raikous with 2.5 points. Wins still award 2 points, ties still award 1 point.
At the end of those three weeks, the top 2 teams advance to a standard final.
(notice how in the actual tournament, in Week 5 the Tyranitars used a troll lineup, and the Raikous/Scythes didn't even bother playing out their set, because playoffs were already decided. 5 week format leads to stuff like this all the time. also notice how in this proposed format neither of these things would happen.)
Pros:
- Length is perfect
- Playoffs are perfect
- The teams that get eliminated after 5 weeks are probably the ones that are happy to be done with the tournament since they did miserably
- Literally everything here is good
Cons:
- A little complicated to explain, people will no doubt misunderstand and take time to get used to it (skill issue)
---
Ultimately it's down to individual communities to pick the format that they think is best, but I think it's useful to have this debate and these solutions discussed in a visible public forum. I would be happy to hear out any feedback on my proposals, or any further proposal of your own to improve the 6-team PL format - it's a necessity for many of our communities and it could use some care.
Thank you for reading
I think there are many occasions where 6 teams is simply optimal due to the available playerbase, and it's worth it to spend energies optimizing the 6-team PL format rather than just saying "skill issue; find players for 8 teams".
So, I thought I'd try to come up with format tweaks that offer solutions to the problems that have been raised.
Problem 1: The 5-week season
5 weeks is, quite simply, very short. Teams don't get much time to gel and by the time they do, the tournament already ends for many of them. A 5-week season gives little time for teams to grow in or out of shape, and fluked wins and losses can heavily impact the final standings.
A double round robin (= playing each other team twice) leads to a 10-week season, longer than even SPL/SCL, which is obviously undesirable for more casual, unofficial PLs.
Problem 2: The 1st seed bye week
Taking the top 50% - three teams - and putting them in playoffs results in giving the first seed a bye week. Many people (Leru but also others) argue that this is a disadvantage, as disconnecting from the tournament for a week tends to be harmful for team momentum and investment.
However, 2 team and 4 team playoffs are just as awkward: advancing the top 2 directly to final feels really bad for 66% of the teams, especially in combination with the 5-week length, and leads to teams giving up after a bad start, even just starting off with a single loss is enough to make top 2 look really daunting due to the short season length. Advancing the top 4 leads to the opposite issue, where the first 5 weeks feel pretty irrelevant to any team that starts off well, and the whole thing feels pretty trivial until it's sudden death playoffs.
Proposal A: Two Conferences
Teams are split at random into two conferences of three. Teams play other teams in their own conference x2, and teams in the other conference x1, for a 7-week regular season.
As far as playoffs go - the two conference winners could head directly to finals, or you could have conference A's winner play conference B's second place and vice versa in the semifinal.
Pros:
- Fixes problem 1, with a 7-week season
- Fixes problem 2 with either of the possible playoff formats - in either case, races within a conference should be more open to the end given that there are more direct head to head series within each conference that you can use to make up ground.
- Likely to generate fun, healthy, competitive rivalries
Cons:
- 10% of the time the three strongest teams in the tournament will be drawn into the same conference and one will be unable to advance. 40% of the time, the two weakest teams will be drawn together and one will get a free ride to semifinals by being less trash than the other.
- There's no way that I can find to avoid some teams having pretty awkward schedules; see attachment for the cleanest solution I could find, and note the Vaporeons schedule (W2 then W5 against the same team, W3 then W6 against the same team - no way that I can find to split these rematches further apart)
Proposal B: Just Run It Back
Add a Week 6 and run back the match ups that were drawn for Week 1. Add a Week 7, run back the match ups that were drawn for Week 2. Keep going or cut it whenever you like. A 7-week example schedule here:
Pros:
- Fixes problem 1, and even allows for a flexible number of weeks
- Simplest of the proposed solutions by far
Cons:
- Doesn't really address problem 2 much, though I think heading to a direct top 2 final is not as bad with a longer season (you're not immediately doomed if you start slow etc)
- Much like proposal A, luck of the draw could have a real negative impact on qualification scenarios
Proposal C: Belgian Pro League Moment
Literally stealing from professional sporting leagues here but hear me out:
Each team plays each other team once. After 5 weeks, the bottom 2 teams are cut. However, rather than going straight into a playoff bracket, the four remaining teams play another round robin, adding another 3 weeks of play for an 8-week "regular season" (though the worst teams only play 5).
The points from the first five weeks carry over, but they are halved. This means teams are fully incentivized to do well in the first half of the season - both to qualify of course, but also to get a leg up for the final part of the season - but even a team that qualifies in 4th place is not so far off that they can't mount a comeback in the final three weeks if they do well.
Taking from the last GSCPL as an example:
After this regular season, the Death Scythes and the Wii Fit Wolverines would be immediately eliminated. The other teams play on for three more weeks against each other - the Machamps start with 4 points, the Vaporeons with 3.5 points, the Tyranitars with 3 points, and the Raikous with 2.5 points. Wins still award 2 points, ties still award 1 point.
At the end of those three weeks, the top 2 teams advance to a standard final.
(notice how in the actual tournament, in Week 5 the Tyranitars used a troll lineup, and the Raikous/Scythes didn't even bother playing out their set, because playoffs were already decided. 5 week format leads to stuff like this all the time. also notice how in this proposed format neither of these things would happen.)
Pros:
- Length is perfect
- Playoffs are perfect
- The teams that get eliminated after 5 weeks are probably the ones that are happy to be done with the tournament since they did miserably
- Literally everything here is good
Cons:
- A little complicated to explain, people will no doubt misunderstand and take time to get used to it (skill issue)
---
Ultimately it's down to individual communities to pick the format that they think is best, but I think it's useful to have this debate and these solutions discussed in a visible public forum. I would be happy to hear out any feedback on my proposals, or any further proposal of your own to improve the 6-team PL format - it's a necessity for many of our communities and it could use some care.
Thank you for reading
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