Ties in a round-robin heads-up

[Dr. Neau]

We ran our annual round-robin triple-elimination heads-up tournament last weekend with a different twist.

Rather than targeting 30 minutes per match and having at least 1 match each round go 10 minutes long, we introduced the concept of ties.

If your match isn't done when the schedule ends after 30 minutes, it's a tie.

Introduces quite a new type of strategy, that's for sure.  And I think I like it rather than having 30 minutes of good poker followed by 5-10 minutes of forced coin flipping.

"Oh crap" move of the night:  Match 1.  Me against Dave C.
I have a 1,400 to 600 chip advantage.  20 seconds left in the match.  I don't even look at my cards and say "I'm all in."   He CALLS!!!!!  I win the hand and the match.   (Right after he called, he kicked himself in the face....there was no upside to him calling since he didn't have enough time to win)

[Martini]

Very interesting. How did it end up working out overall? Were you satisfied with the results? Did the players like it? How did it work points-wise?

[Dr. Neau]

I liked it a lot...but maybe that's because I won?

Format
As a refresher, the way we run this is like this:
- At the beginning of each round, take all active players and assign them "randomly" to heads-up matches.
- Log results of each match.
- Anyone with less than X losses continues onto next round.
- The winner is the one person remaining with less than X losses.
- If there are an odd number of players in a round, then the person with the lowest number of byes gets a bye (pick randomly from those with the lowest number).
- Players are ranked by overall winning percentage to determine final results.  League points are then just assigned by your finish as they are in a standard tournament.

Origins
I came up with this format when I was unsuccessfully searching for a triple-elimination heads-up bracket.  And even though I've now figured out and algorithm for generating a triple-elimination bracket (coming in a 1H 2009 release of DrNTM), I like this better because no single player gets an advantage when you don't have a "power of 2" number of players...whereas a bracket forces you to give some players an advantage by skipping the first round.

Ties
Now...ties.  The thing I quickly learned (someone actually pointed this out to me in advance)....when you have ties, stalling to think is a way to avoid losing.  So, I made sure to set the guideline in advance of "please don't think about your hand for more than 20 seconds because....".  Everyone was very good about that.

One player made a comment that rather than have ties, the person with the chip lead after 30 minutes should win.  I like that even less, because someone could get a massive chip lead and then sit on it.  When I explained that, he liked ties better.  Still, some would prefer playing until there's a winner....but that means you either let them play longer (which I didn't want to do), or you get into that coin-flipping scenario (I don't like that either).

So, I personally never played for a tie.  I played 8 matches and tied once (won the other seven)...and in that one I had a massive lead at the end...just couldn't get him to call.  At no point did I feel like the schedule was rushed (the blinds were 8 minutes of 5/10, 8 minutes of 10/25, 8 minutes of 25/50 and 6 minutes of 50/100).  I know some felt like they were playing someone who was settling for a tie...but if that's the case then you plan for that in advance.  For instance, I wanted the edge by the time we hit 50/100 so that I could push them into losing.

[Martini]

The "having the lead" idea popped into my mind immediately as well then I dismissed it for the same reason you cited. How about awarding points proportional to stack sizes instead? Winning gives you 100% of the points at stake, losing gets you 0%, and not finishing by the end of the round is somewhere in between. So if you have a 90/10 advantage and the 10 percent chip stack is just trying to milk the clock then it really won't do him much good since the difference between 10% and 0% isn't that great as opposed to trying to wait out the clock and getting 50%.

[Dr. Neau]

Interesting.  Interesting.

[exterminatorx]

At no point did I feel like the schedule was rushed (the blinds were 8 minutes of 5/10, 8 minutes of 10/25, 8 minutes of 25/50 and 6 minutes of 50/100).  I know some felt like they were playing someone who was settling for a tie...but if that's the case then you plan for that in advance.

Was this is a T1000 chip stack?

[William]

Was this is a T1000 chip stack?

I have a 1,400 to 600 chip advantage.

Yep.