mini-TST 9.2.20

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Titanoboa
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mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

The first in a series of miniature Team Sumo Tournaments will be played on Sunday, February 9th, 2020.

Opening round will start at 18:00 UTC (that's 19 CET and 1 pm EST).

Sign up here! Registration closes on Saturday, Feb 8th, 18:00 UTC (24h before the tourney).

Tournament info / home page

Brackets and registered teams list

Make sure you give the rules a look as there have been some changes made from previous TSTs. Most notable is the new score limit of 2000 and having only one match per round. This will bring the average time down by a little, as we used to have to win 2 or 3 matches to 900 (which sometimes took ages in close matchups). Other than that, classic TST settings are used as much as possible.

Another reason to call it "mini" may be that we plan on only advancing one team from each round - this will allow for a potentially huge bracket to be done in no more than 3 rounds. A 2 round tourney can field 16 teams! However, the brackets will ultimately be decided by how many teams actually sign up (advancing more than 1 team per round might be required).

Brackets (including servers) will be randomized when registration closes, 24 hours before the opening round.

The reason we've chosen to move away from the wiki on this occasion is to make it as easy as possible for old, returning players and new players alike to sign up without having to create accounts or reset passwords.

Use the short url http://mini-tst.tk to advertise the tourney in a server or to a friend! :)

Most importantly: find yourself a teammate and sign up now! Let's go!
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Magi
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Magi »

If I'm available I'm down
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bye
johnny.nbk.
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by johnny.nbk. »

Cool
I’m down
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Rnoodles »

I think i might have to chuck a sicky on monday that weekend so i can play the tourny after seeing everyone online today!
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Pre
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Pre »

signed up :done:
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Titanoboa
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

Note: Unless we get between 14 and 16 teams signed up, 3 rounds may be necessary. Opening round will always begin 18:00 UTC, and the following rounds will be played after. In some cases, the opening round winners will have a bye in the second round and go straight to the final. Just a friendly heads up to keep an eye on the brackets around the 8th.

Also, if you're reading this and haven't been on tron for a while, now is a good time to get back on! We've had very busy sumo evenings EU time, with both my team sumo and the sumo bar filling, and if I'm not mistaken the US evenings have been rather busy as well. Here's a neat server list you can keep open in the background.

Screenshot from Saturday night:
Screenshot_271.png
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Titanoboa
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

Server owners will be granted access to the document. It looks like we need at least one more EU server. Contact me here or on discord if you'd like to donate a server. :)
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desgorn
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by desgorn »

in there 8)
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Titanoboa
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

Sign-ups are closed and brackets have been randomized!

15 teams signed up for this tournament.
I have added an Open Team as a 16th team, hoping a couple more people show up wanting to play tomorrow!

Screenshot_289.png
Last edited by Titanoboa on Sun Feb 09, 2020 6:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Z-Man
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Z-Man »

Small notice: A storm is predicted to hit us this evening. Nothing too big, nothing dangerous (unless you create the opportunity for a tree to fall on your head), but power and internet may be unstable. We'll be fine, just maybe offline. My server's datacenter should be unaffected, the storm is going to arrive there fully only after the tournament anyway.
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by assaindan »

Good luck have fun SAIN OUT
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Titanoboa
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

Z-Man wrote: Sun Feb 09, 2020 9:24 am Small notice: A storm is predicted to hit us this evening.
Thanks. With this in mind, let's keep our feelers out for which of the two EU servers is most suitable to hold the final match. Hopefully we won't have to switch.

We ended up swapping the two EU servers around for finals as Z-man's crashed at the beginning of the first round. That is why the final server remained EU (Noodz' EU) in the end. To clarify: the decision to swap was made *before opening round finished*. In hindsight, a more transparent option would have been to go for the final backup server, but it didn't hit me at the time of the decision (the coin toss deciding an EU final was present in my mind). An EU/US hybrid team ended up winning the finals, so there's an argument that the impact to the final result wasn't decisive in the end.
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Titanoboa
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

Congratulations to mister and me (appleseed & mr) for winning the tournament!

2nd place Unlimited Power ((Cat & Toast) a.k.a Titanoboa & vov)

3rd place acronym (jericho & Andrei)

The brackets:
Screenshot_292.png
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Titanoboa
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Titanoboa »

Now, with a triple post (sorry forum purists!), I'd like to invite everyone who participated to a discussion about how this first rendition of the mini-TST (which I intend to be a series, either monthly or bi-monthly (every other month)) went.

The most common feedback I received were within 24 hours of the tournament, and it was about too few teams advancing through from the first round. Many players wanted 2 teams to advance from the opening round, as well as the second round (16->8->4 instead of 16->4). For the record, this is something we could have considered if it were brought up some time before the randomization of the brackets.

Firstly I want to explain the initial decision of "16->4". Back when I was introduced to TSTs, ran by epsy, they had a limit of 32 teams and it went 32->8->4; one team advancing from each opening match. This made it quite prestigious even to reach the semi-finals and, in my opinion, made for a more stacked semi-finals than if it had been 32->16->4 (or 32->16->8->4), and it also made for a faster-paced tournament overall*.

*Semi-finals still took quite some time as it was first to 2 wins (à 900 points).

I've seen the argument that it's discouraging for some participants that 75% are knocked out in the first round, but this was commonplace in the original tournament.

My aim with the bracket design is a stream-lined tournament that old, returning players could make time for on their Sunday.
We are about a decade older than back then, meaning many of us have full-time jobs and families.

It was a very unfortunate randomization for this particular tournament, as one of the quarter finals was stacked with 4 potential winners of the entire thing, and I think this was a big reason that so many reacted and reached out to me, asking for a last-minute change. Now, with the tourney over, let's reset from any potential bias caused by the brackets and weigh the pros and cons.

I think we can potentially hope for a 24 team tournament in the future, and that's when the "as streamlined as possible" method is the most appealing to me. That of course doesn't stop us from allowing 3 rounds in a 16 team tournament as well. We can be somewhat flexible with the rules depending on community feedback.
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Re: mini-TST 9.2.20

Post by Zenith »

gms,
Servers I played in were all pretty stable. Thanks to the organizers, everything seemed to run smoothly.

I recommend the "top 2 teams move on" method until high team count (>24 like you said). More people getting to play longer into the tournament.
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