Hi Dave, I participated in the Salt Lake City regional final today, and after speaking with you shortly after the swiss rounds, I would like to ask you some questions. My name is Jackson, and I finished "5th" in the Senior division. When you spoke with my dad and me, you said that your math and the swiss rounds system is not perfect. I feel the way that the top cutting final four was decided was not fair. The overall purpose of the tournament is to determine the best players. The swiss approach (or any approach) is the means to an end. Today, that system did not seem to be fair. It was obvious that the top two players were in the right spot, as they played the best rounds. This is also fairly true for the third place finisher, as he only lost to the one who was undefeated. However, the four and five spots in my opinion were not fair. After speaking with you, I understand that the reason he was put ahead of me was that the person I played in the first round performed very poorly throughout the rest of the tournament. The main problem I have with this is, since the way my opponents did is how my score is determined, that I have absolutely no opportunity to prove that I outplayed the player above me, and vice versa. Regardless of how well our opponents did, we both won every game except for one. In this situation, the player who beat me finished much higher and performed much better than the player who beat him. The biggest question I have with this system is, if a situation like this happens, what opportunity am I given to prove I am better than the player I am competing for a spot with? It seems the only reason he had to be above me, was the luck of who he was assigned to play. It may seem that I never proved that I could beat who he had beat in the tournament, but I actually beat the only player who gave the 4 spot his loss. I think, in a situation like this, where your math is sub-optimizing the tournament, sound reasoning and human judgement is needed, in the future you should give your people the ability to use it. In this specific situation, we won the same amount of games, but my lone loss was to a much better player. I feel like I missed out on the benefits of coming top four(beng able to travel to nationals) because of a reason that was completely beyond my control. I would love to hear your opinion on this.
Jackson
Jackson