Semifinal Byes

[fishbane]

I don't understand the bracketing that Flo has for 65KG.  Below is their bracket.

I think this is dumb.  To make the top semifinal a wrestler must be best of 3 wrestlers.  This is the case for either quarterfinal that feeds into it.  To make the bottom semifinal you must either be Zain Retherford or the top wrestler out of 6 guys.  This makes no sense.  It makes the bracket unbalanced and the 4 seed more advantageous than the 2 or 3 seeds.  It would make more sense to give Retherford his own semi spot and then distribute the 12 wrestlers equally to feed into the other three semi spots.  This would make either semifinalist the top wrestler out of 4 instead of two semis being feed by small brackets with 3 wrestlers each and the other semi having 2x as many guys.  

I would probably do it something like this

Here I've made Retherford/the guy with the bye to the semi as the defacto 1 seed distributed the other wrestlers according to their seeds.  If there is something in the procedures that favours the actual 1 seed over the guy with a bye to the semifinals I'd switch Retherford with Lee's quarter bracket.  This would give the 1 seed Lee the most advantageous semifinal position avoiding both the two seed, Diakomihalis, and the wrestler with the bye, Retherford, until the finals.  It would look like this

I can't figure out why they do it that way.  I thought they would have realized how stupid it was to do it like this the last time after they looked at the 74kg bracket.  Totally unbalanced.  Nolf had to win only one match to make the finals the same as Dake who had the bye.  Meanwhile All the wrestlers on the bottom like the two and three seeds would have to win 3.  

[Doublehalf]

Agree 100%

[Eagle26]

1 hour ago, fishbane said:

I don't understand the bracketing that Flo has for 65KG.  Below is their bracket.

I think this is dumb.  To make the top semifinal a wrestler must be best of 3 wrestlers.  This is the case for either quarterfinal that feeds into it.  To make the bottom semifinal you must either be Zain Retherford or the top wrestler out of 6 guys.  This makes no sense.  It makes the bracket unbalanced and the 4 seed more advantageous than the 2 or 3 seeds.  It would make more sense to give Retherford his own semi spot and then distribute the 12 wrestlers equally to feed into the other three semi spots.  This would make either semifinalist the top wrestler out of 4 instead of two semis being feed by small brackets with 3 wrestlers each and the other semi having 2x as many guys.  

I would probably do it something like this

Here I've made Retherford/the guy with the bye to the semi as the defacto 1 seed distributed the other wrestlers according to their seeds.  If there is something in the procedures that favours the actual 1 seed over the guy with a bye to the semifinals I'd switch Retherford with Lee's quarter bracket.  This would give the 1 seed Lee the most advantageous semifinal position avoiding both the two seed, Diakomihalis, and the wrestler with the bye, Retherford, until the finals.  It would look like this

I can't figure out why they do it that way.  I thought they would have realized how stupid it was to do it like this the last time after they looked at the 74kg bracket.  Totally unbalanced.  Nolf had to win only one match to make the finals the same as Dake who had the bye.  Meanwhile All the wrestlers on the bottom like the two and three seeds would have to win 3.  

I agree it’s messed up, but how do consis work in your bracket?

[Caveira]

Why not treat the semi bye as the 1 seed.   That’s essentially what they are going for stylistically no ?    Ignore ish the seeds that help facilitate the 1 seed getting to the semi and it looks like this     (Pre Vito skipping I’m just not re drawing)

similar to fide chess candidates world champ tourney    The returning champ sits in the finals…. While the next 8 qualifiers play 14 total games (double round robin) for the right to play the returning champ.    Sometimes (last year I think) the returning champ does not play.   In that case whoever wins the challenge tourney is world champ.  

 

 

 

Edited April 17 by Caveira

[JuanMogen]

I’m not sorting through all of that, but I probably agree with you. 

[fishbane]

51 minutes ago, Caveira said:

Why not treat the semi bye as the 1 seed.   That’s essentially what they are going for stylistically no ?    Ignore ish the seeds that help facilitate the 1 seed getting to the semi and it looks like this     (Pre Vito skipping I’m just not re drawing)

similar to fide chess candidates world champ tourney    The returning champ sits in the finals…. While the next 8 qualifiers play 14 total games (double round robin) for the right to play the returning champ.    Sometimes (last year I think) the returning champ does not play.   In that case whoever wins the challenge tourney is world champ.  

 

 

 

This is essentially what I did at 65kg.  I just kept the pre-seed assignments instead of reassigning them the number where they would be placed in a 16 man bracket.  

The problem is that the procedures are set up to allow for two semifinal byes.  When there is only one then the other becomes a bye making the bracket very unbalanced.  If there are two wrestlers with semi-final byes then it works just fine.  However two semifinal byes are only possible at three weights and has never happened.  They should make a separate procedure for the situation where only one wrestler has a bye.  Here is the sample bracket from the procedures.

In this case the one world medalist position turns into a bye and makes everything stupid.

[Wrestleknownothing]

Nobody, but USAW, thinks the current brackets make any sense. 

And nobody, but USAW, gets a say.

Hopefully they heed our complaints in the future.

[fishbane]

2 hours ago, Eagle26 said:

I agree it’s messed up, but how do consis work in your bracket?

There would be byes, but they would be less messed up than they are now.  Below is the consolation bracket from 74kg in 2021.  There were 8 wrestlers in the bracket.  The championship bracket had three wrestlers on the top and 5 on the bottom including Dake who had a bye to the semis.  The consolation bracket contained the 6 wrestlers who lost before the final with two on the top and 4 on the bottom.  

If I were to draw them up it would look something like this

Championship
	Nolf
	1	Nolf
	bye	7
			Nolf
	Gantt		10
	2	Gantt
	Joseph
				Nolf
	Massa			12
	3	Massa
	bye	8
			Wick
	bye
	4	Wick
	Wick
					Dake
	Marsteller
	5	Marsteller
	bye	9
			Marsteller
	bye		11
	6	Carr
	Carr
				Dake
			Dake

 

and the consolation would look something like this 

Bye (missing quarter)
	Joseph
Joseph (loser 1/2)
		Carr
Carr (loser 9)
	Carr		Wick
Bye (loser 3/4)
		Wick (loser 10)
				Marsteller
		Marsteller (Loser 11)
Massa (loser 8)
	Massa		Marsteller
bye (loser 5/6)
		Massa
Gantt (loser 7)
	Gantt
Bye (missing R16)

The entries missing due to the matches eliminated to accommodate the semifinal bye are in bold.  You can see there is one on the top and another on the other side making the backet balanced.   Brackets were filled out progressing wrestlers, but what I think their seeds were for illustration purposes.  These matches never happened.

 

Edited April 18 by fishbane

[bnwtwg]

This is obviously the first time many of you have worked with a federally funded agency and it shows

[wrestle87]

9 hours ago, fishbane said:

I don't understand the bracketing that Flo has for 65KG.  Below is their bracket.

I think this is dumb.  To make the top semifinal a wrestler must be best of 3 wrestlers.  This is the case for either quarterfinal that feeds into it.  To make the bottom semifinal you must either be Zain Retherford or the top wrestler out of 6 guys.  This makes no sense.  It makes the bracket unbalanced and the 4 seed more advantageous than the 2 or 3 seeds.  It would make more sense to give Retherford his own semi spot and then distribute the 12 wrestlers equally to feed into the other three semi spots.  This would make either semifinalist the top wrestler out of 4 instead of two semis being feed by small brackets with 3 wrestlers each and the other semi having 2x as many guys.  

I would probably do it something like this

Here I've made Retherford/the guy with the bye to the semi as the defacto 1 seed distributed the other wrestlers according to their seeds.  If there is something in the procedures that favours the actual 1 seed over the guy with a bye to the semifinals I'd switch Retherford with Lee's quarter bracket.  This would give the 1 seed Lee the most advantageous semifinal position avoiding both the two seed, Diakomihalis, and the wrestler with the bye, Retherford, until the finals.  It would look like this

I can't figure out why they do it that way.  I thought they would have realized how stupid it was to do it like this the last time after they looked at the 74kg bracket.  Totally unbalanced.  Nolf had to win only one match to make the finals the same as Dake who had the bye.  Meanwhile All the wrestlers on the bottom like the two and three seeds would have to win 3.  

I yelled this same thing in my own head when I saw this bracket structure…just lazily constructed.

[fishbane]

11 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Nobody, but USAW, thinks the current brackets make any sense. 

And nobody, but USAW, gets a say.

Hopefully they heed our complaints in the future.

You're not wrong.  Here is the document with the procedures - https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blteb7d012fc7ebef7f/bltf8d10db3aa328be4/650367e19bcd1b10091d0862/2024_MFS_OLY_Procedures.pdf

Looking at the edit history at the end of the document it was created by Megan Ball and reviewed and signed off on by Rich Bender, Cody Bickley, and Mallory Velte.  I suppose we should be complaining to them.  Maybe they will spend more than a minute reviewing it next time.  All of their email addresses are in the document...

Edited April 18 by fishbane

[Wrestleknownothing]

45 minutes ago, fishbane said:

You're not wrong.  Here is the document with the procedures - https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blteb7d012fc7ebef7f/bltf8d10db3aa328be4/650367e19bcd1b10091d0862/2024_MFS_OLY_Procedures.pdf

Looking at the edit history at the end of the document it was created by Megan Ball and reviewed and signed off on by Rich Bender, Cody Bickley, and Mallory Velte.  I suppose we should be complaining to them.  Maybe they will spend more than a minute reviewing it next time.  All of their email addresses are in the document...

Hmmm. A well reasoned series of emails may be in order.

[Dogbone]

So while I agree @fishbane brackets makes more sense, who does the current method hurt more?  The bye who has a tougher semi draw or the 2 seed (really the #3 guy in the bracket if the bye is #1) who only gets one chance (not 2 out of 3) to beat the bye/#1 guy. 

I actually they think they should seed the bye and if bye earns the #1 seed then the bracket should be like Fishbanes proposal.  The only reason I can think of not doing it that way is if the guy who earns the #1 seed isn't the the returning medalist.   Give the returning medalist the bye but if that guy didn't wrestle for a year and someone else has been going to international tournaments and winning/winning the US Open, etc. an argument could be made that they should get the 1 seed over a guy who hasn't competed in a year. (No one has done that so it wouldn't apply this year, I am just trying to think of reasons why the current method makes sense).

[fishbane]

1 hour ago, Dogbone said:

I actually they think they should seed the bye and if bye earns the #1 seed then the bracket should be like Fishbanes proposal. 

I had thought about this and I also think the wrestler with the bye should be seeded.  I would guarantee the wrestler with the bye a top 4 seed and just more him to that position in the bracket.  In the case of 65kg Retherford could be the top seed, but there is an argument for Nick Lee to be the top seed.  The last time Retherford wrestled 65kg he lost to Nick Lee.  Retherford has never medaled at 65kg.  Diakomihalis has beaten Retherford at 65kg and is the only wrestler to medal at the weight.  I could see someone putting him anywhere between 1-3.  Ideally I'd want the wrestlers distributed so the top 2 guys meet in the finals.  

I could see this being a slight issue if two wrestlers have byes.  This could have been the case this year if Arujau  had gone up.  I don't think many would have him as a top 2 seed at 65 kg.  In this case I say give both Aruba and Retherford guaranteed top 4 seeds.  Putting no further restrictions on the seeding could lead to the two guys with byes wrestling each other in the semis if Retherford is 2 behind Nick Lee and Arujau gets the 3.  Some people might not like that because their opponent will also be fresh.  I'm okay with that as they still only need 1 win to make the final and they will have a big advantage over their finals opponent, but some will want them separated in the bracket.  I think this is a minor point.

[fishbane]

Here are less stupid proposed bracket for 65kg and 86kg.  This keeps Nick Lee and Aaron Brooks in the position of the 1 seed which sounds about right to me since they both defeated the wrestler with the semifinal bye in their last meeting.  

I have the consolations by standard bracketing and it doesn't work out quite as perfect as 2021 74kg did, but it's still better than what was actually used.  There are two byes in the consi quarters (R12) which are created by the missing quarterfinals and R16 matches in the championship bracket.  

Two wrestlers could be moved from the cons quarters to fill the byes in the R12.  This would make  it so no quarterfinal loser would have a bye to the cons semi 1 round (top 8 finish).  This would leave a single first round consolation match at 65 and a full consi quarter (r12) round at 86kg.  I'd probably lean to placing the losers of match 1 and 5 into this pigtail as they would likely be the worst seeded and the last matches to be filled when entering the bracket.  So this would be a bye at 86KG where there its no match 1 (Brooks has a bye).  I've also attached a visualization of this.

65kbBracketLessStupid.pdf65kbBracketLessStupid.pdf

86kbBracketLessStupid.pdf86kbBracketLessStupid.pdf

ConsolationsModified.pdf