How seeding works in knock out draws

There are 5 types of KO draws in MMM as follows:

• A: With no plate and no byes
• B: With plate and no byes
• C: With no plate and byes
• D: With plate and byes
• E: With multiple plates (MONRAD)

Types A & B ("no byes") are simply a condensed visualisation of types C & D. "No byes" refers to the fact that the visualisation of the draw is such that only the played matches are shown and any byes (that are always necessary if the number of participants is not a multiple of 2) are not made explicit.

Types C, D & E always shows the full set of 1st round matches even if they include byes. This is the more traditional way of presenting a KO draw.

Note that there is no requirement for any of these draws to engineer the number of joiners to be a power of 2 - all of them cater for any number of joiners from 2 upward.

A KO draw is seeded simply by ordering the joiners prior to building the draw. But there is a subtle difference in how the seedings are interpreted between types A & B and types C, D & E (those with implicit byes vs those with explicit byes):

• For types A & B, the seeding is simply the order of the joiners from 1 to the number of joiners
• For types C, D & E the seeding is in blocks of power of 2. Within each block the order is arbitrary. So the seeding looks more like this:
  
  • Seed 1 - 1st player
  • Seed 2 - 2nd player
  • Seeds 3/4 - 3rd and 4th player in random order
  • Seeds 5/8 - 5th to 8th player in random order ... and so on
  • Joiners beyond the half way point are deemed as unseeded and their order is also arbitrary

This difference is reflected when reviewing the joiners for a particular draw in the Draw selection and refinement tab of Manage Draws. For types A & B, all joiners are listed uncoloured and the shuffle button will randomise the draw from top to bottom. For types C, D & E joiners are coloured according to their seeded group and the shuffle button will randomise the draw only within each seed group. For example the 4 players seeded 5/8 will be in a random order.

Where a draw does not involve a plate (types A & C) the 1st round takes the form of players being paired from opposite ends of the seeded list - for example in an 8 player draw we would have:

• Player 1 vs Player 8
• Player 2 vs Player 7
• Player 3 vs Player 6
• Player 4 vs Player 5

However, it should be noted that for type C, due to the unordered nature of the joiners 5-8, the actual opponents of the seeded players (5 ,6, 7 & 8) could be any of them.

Where a draw does involve a plate (types B ,D & E) then the the 1st round takes the form of players being paired by equal ability distance of ordering - taking the example above we would have:

• Player 1 vs Player 5
• Player 2 vs Player 6
• Player 3 vs Player 7
• Player 4 vs Player 8

Some organisers may raise an eyebrow for this method of pairing, but the reason for doing this is that it makes for a better "seeded" plate round and clearer visualisation. It also ensures that all 1st round matches have relatively equal expectations of results assuming the order is non randomised. Whereas the first pairing method potentially matches the worst player against the best player (making the result a foregone conclusion) as well as a potentially very close match between the 4th and 5th player. But again, for types D & E, the difference is moot as the non seeded players are randomly ordered.