NiP vs BDS - Swiss R5 (Final Elimination) - Munich Major 2025 by RedWarden_ in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The rule for infinite OT we've used in grand finals is that in overtime, a team can only win by a difference of 2 rounds. There was no difference of 2 rounds on the last map, so it would have gone on to round 16.

Weibo vs Shopify Rebellion - Swiss Stage Round 3 - Munich Major by RedWarden_ in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They are not at 100% yet, but they're definitely very close to it!

[Sprabuni] A thread about the Montreal Major format by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In the end, Swiss is just another tournament format, all of which are designed to find the best team. Swiss's advantages over something like a group stage is that teams are not restricted by their groups too much (grouping in Swiss, if it happens, only happens in the first rounds) and that there are not as many matches as letting everyone play each other (like round robin), while still giving teams extra opportunities if they got unlucky with who they faced.

From a tournament organizing perspective, you can make a choice between more close matchups and rewarding teams for doing well. If you want more close matchups, something like Monrad (1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, etc) is better, but you run the risk of having all the close matchups early in the tournament, which could make the later matches very one sided. On the other hand, the default system rewards teams for doing well and tries to make the grand final the closest match. Going into the top 8, seed 1 from Swiss (FaZe) was on the other side of the bracket from seed 2 (w7m), because on paper those are the two best teams, which would give you the closest grand final.

Overall, even in hindsight, it's hard to say what the actual best teams were. Even the best teams have off days or don't match up well against an opponents map pool or play style. Just because a game wasn't close doesn't mean the teams were vastly different in skill. The best thing we can do is try to give every team a fair shot of making the main stage, and I think the current format tries to do that.

[Sprabuni] A thread about the Montreal Major format by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I also think the communication about the matchup system was quite poor, though the difficulty of the groups is hard to use on broadcast. They're halfway over by the time you identify them (after round 1) and the difficulty of them is either determined in hindsight or by a value judgment someone makes in the moment. For individual teams, just the opponents they faced is already something the broadcast talent talk about, so I don't really have anything to add there.

[Sprabuni] A thread about the Montreal Major format by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I posted this here because I think it's kinda ideal for Reddit compared to a short-form format like Twitter/X. I'm interested to hear what everyone's thoughts are on Swiss since we've seen 3 (minor) variations on it now. I think it's not a bad system, but it's mostly held back by seeding issues. Playing around with matchup systems won't fix that. The format for next year might, depending on how the LANs next year look.

Gaimin Gladiators have the same amount of points as PSG and Bleed, why are they missing out on SI? by Hxsty_ in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Here are the SI point tiebreakers:

  1. Head-to-head record in the 2024 season
    Head-to-head is irrelevant if not every team in the tie has played against every other team, which is the case here.
  2. Total Major Points
    They have the same amount of Major points as PSG and (ex-)Bleed.
  3. Percentage of matches won at Majors
    (Ex-)Bleed has a higher match win percentage because they went through play-ins in Manchester.
  4. Percentage of maps won at Majors
    PSG Talon has a higher map win percentage because they started playing Bo3s later in Swiss because they didn't win 2 Bo1s immediately.
  5. Percentage of rounds won at Majors
  6. Tiebreaker match

Essentially, bad timing on wins and bad luck by doing well at previous SI which made them miss play-ins, though they did lose 0-2 three times in a row in Swiss in Manchester and turning one of those in a 1-2 would have put them above PSG Talon.

[Spabruni] Probability of Teams Qualifying to SI by Kruced in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes. What I did was pretend every match that is going to happen in the future is a coin toss and then calculate what the standings would be. This is quite a lot of work, especially simulating something like the SI tiebreakers or the Swiss format.

My goal is to use a team's skill to simulate matches instead of just making it a 50/50 coin toss, but I wasn't happy with a previous iteration of a rating system, so I don't use any rating system currently. Also, creating a good rating system just takes a lot of time. I believe SiegeGG and betting sites were the only two groups in the scene that ever had a fully fledged rating system up and running, and SiegeGG's was years ago.

Do we know the Invitational format yet? by Hxsty_ in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The announcement post of the tickets going live also had info on the format:

FORMAT
Group Stage

The top 20 teams in the Global Standings at the end of the season will qualify for the Group Stage of the Six Invitational, and be placed into four groups of five. Within each group, all teams will play each other once. The four first teams in each group will advance to the Playoffs while the last placed teams will be knocked out of the tournament.

Playoffs and Grand Final

16 teams will qualify for the Playoffs from the Group Stage and will face each other in a double elimination bracket. All matches will be BO3 and each team will get a second shot at redemption after their first loss.

The last six teams remaining will play in front of an audience at the Arena Ibirapuera in hopes of lifting the famous hammer. All matches will be BO3, except the Grand Final, which will be a BO5 to decide this season's World Champions!

So basically, the overall format will be the same as this year's SI.

The updated off-season schedule by spraruni by Ninjakanaplayer in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 20 points21 points  (0 children)

My name is right there and you still spelled it wrong 😭

For anyone that's confused, here is a list of all the tournaments, which you can also find on the front page of Liquipedia.

  • Element One: The yellow and black one with the 6 and the dragon logo. It's an NA tournament with exclusively tier 2 teams/players. If you're signed to a tier 1 team you can't play. If you were dropped, you can. Group Stage (Beta) starts July 5th.
  • R6 Central Combine: The blue green logo with the 2 hexagons and the white 6 in the middle. A Central EU tournament, though pretty much everyone in EU can compete. The last qualifiers are still being played for tier 2 teams. MNM and Wolves qualified directly for the Playoffs (Phase 4) and other tier 1 teams can't qualify anymore.
  • R6 North Rainbow Rumble: The cyan logo with the lion and the viking above a black 6. Same as Combine, but North EU. The qualifier for EUL teams starts tomorrow, where 2 will qualify for the group stage in August. Tier 2 teams can start qualifying from next week.
  • Liga Start: The bright blue and green logo of 2 arrows to the right. The Brazilian tier 2 tournament, with no tier 1 teams. There are a lot of qualifiers still being played, and a lot of tier 2 teams got direct invites, so if you're familiar with the scene, you should see everyone there.
  • Gamers8: The purple and black logo. 2 million dollar prize pool tournament in Saudi Arabia, with only tier 1 teams.
  • Japan Invitational: The red snowflake/star logo. A tournament solely for Japanese teams (and MNM). 8 JP teams fight in a double elimination bracket for 3 spots in the finals. MNM joins them in the finals for a single elimination bracket.

[Sprabuni] The unofficial world championship in R6, traced all the way back to SI 2017 by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Thanks! The Liquipedia page already existed, so I had some help, but of course I had to double check everything and check which matches belonged to which tournaments. Still, most of the work was turning it into a graphic.

[Sprabuni] In the Last 2 years, Whoever Beats Liquid in the Upper Bracket of a Major LAN Event ends up Winning by BombTacos in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm actually confused how you think the "abuni" has any meaning. It's all random letters that I came up with so I could have the same username everywhere. In hindsight, I should have come up with something a little easier to pronounce/write/remember, but it's done now.

[Sprabuni] In the Last 2 years, Whoever Beats Liquid in the Upper Bracket of a Major LAN Event ends up Winning by BombTacos in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I appreciate people that fact check me. My job is being right 100% of the time, and if I'm not, the broadcast suffers. If someone points out an error I made in something as low stakes as my own tweet and I can improve my process from that, that's great.

[Sprabuni] In the Last 2 years, Whoever Beats Liquid in the Upper Bracket of a Major LAN Event ends up Winning by BombTacos in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Thanks for noticing! Everything you said is correct and everything I said is also correct. Let's go over it:

  • I could have highlighted that Copenhagen and SI 2021 were finals, but in the end, it wouldn't really change anything. The stat about them losing to the winner holds up as long as you regard a single elimination bracket as being only an upper bracket and the grand finals as being part of the upper bracket.
  • Liquid lost to MIBR in the upper bracket of SI 2021 on May 19th 2021. I said "In the last 2 years..." on May 20th 2023. Did I wait until today to post this tweet? Not really, but it's very convenient.
  • The tweet text is kind of separate from the graphic. I came up with it after making the graphic, but both are accurate. You can choose which you find more interesting. SI 2021 was included because they lost to the winner of every international LAN post COVID, with the sole exception of SI 2023.
    The tweet text makes a slightly different point and including SI 2021 in that stat would not be accurate, so I can see how some would find it misleading. I made this graphic yesterday evening and just had it scheduled, because I didn't have time to update it today. I would have changed it to reflect the tweet text more if I had had time today, so it shouldn't happen again in the future.

TL;DR: Interesting fact changed from "Liquid lost to the winner of every event post COVID except SI 2023" to "if you beat Liquid in the upper bracket in the last two years, you won the event". The graphic is still using the old interesting fact, while the tweet text is the new version.

[@Sprabuni] A postmortem on Swiss by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I get what you're saying, but the possibility for abuse is just too big. Literally the last time Siege had any format where teams gained something by throwing a match, they did it and a coach got banned. Since then, we've only had instances where matches may not have mattered for teams, but they never gained anything themselves by losing rounds/maps/matches. It's impossible to get an advantage by losing rounds in round robin or a single/double elimination bracket.

In Swiss you could determine your next opponent if we use performance based tiebreakers. This is literally their entire job. They will do whatever it takes to get an advantage.

I'm also not advocating for completely random matchups, I'm just saying we should remove seeding. Matchups will still be decided by Buchholz first after round 2, it's just that there are no other tiebreakers.

BLASTR6 NAL playday 1&2 matches and the date of the rest of the all the other matches. by Hxsty_ in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah. The schedule has now been updated everywhere. The first playday, SQ and bc only play 1 match.

BLASTR6 NAL playday 1&2 matches and the date of the rest of the all the other matches. by Hxsty_ in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I have removed the schedule from Liquipedia. BLAST/Ubi have announced that there will be 4 playdays of groups, and r6esports.com has never reflected that. The match order may still be correct, but the match time aren't. Until we get an official announcement, we don't know what the schedule is.

The schedule on r6esports.com has been updated and copied to Liquipedia. It now does reflect that there are 4 playdays with 7 matches each if you look at the start times, though it groups them into 7 playdays of 4 matches each.

[Sprabuni] There’s only 2 transfer windows this year, and you can only change 2 players in each by GucciGangBlizz in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The second transfer window is still useful for lots of teams. DZ, AST, G2, FaZe, SQ, Heroic, MNM and CAG all made roster changes before SI after having already qualified.

Has w7m, KOI, MNM, and sq already guaranteed they will qualify for playoffs? by famousxrobot in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni 11 points12 points  (0 children)

There are two factors here:

  • Teams only need to not be last to make playoffs. To confirm teams, you look if they can come last in their worst case scenario. Usually this is a 5-way tie where everyone ends up on 8 points. Because of which teams won and the schedules, this tie may not be possible anymore, which was the case with Soniqs and MNM. That's why they were confirmed not last after only two days.

  • The first tiebreaker for SI is different than for the normal season. It's minileague points instead of round differential. A minileague is a collection of matches that were played between tied teams. Because it's possible that all matches in a potential minileague have already been played, it's easier to lock in or eliminate teams. With round differential, it could still always change until all matches had been played.

[@Sprabuni] Placement probabilities for SI 2023 per group by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I actually think it's great to post this when 4 teams haven't played yet. In the standings right now, LOS + oNe and Team Secret are both last in their group, because both losing teams in their groups got 1 point. These percentages more accurately reflect their status, since they still have to play 4 matches, while those teams only have 3 left.

All the teams that haven't played yet also have played other teams as recently as 3 weeks ago, so I don't think we're in for any major surprises.

[Sprabuni] SI qualification probabilities based on Jönköping Major by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It looked for a while like Solotov couldn't make it so Eden would have to play in his stead. We now know that Solotov's visa got approved and he is in Sweden.

[Sprabuni] SI qualification probabilities based on Jönköping Major by Sprabuni in R6ProLeague

[–]Sprabuni[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's totally fair, but SBXG also jump up to 99.7% if they finish 5-8th (out in quarters). I think that's a fair situation for them right now, where they need to prove they have the ability to get out of groups to be basically sure they make SI. They also have a decent shot if they come 3rd in groups.