7 ms·

I assume badminton is a sport like tennis where skill isn’t measured along a single simple axis, e.g. some combinations of play styles and skills can be more ef

by danso 4y ago

I assume badminton is a sport like tennis where skill isn’t measured along a single simple axis, e.g. some combinations of play styles and skills can be more effective against certain players and situations. The article does quote the Danish player who faced off against China in the finals: "I saw how the Chinese were playing rather strangely in many matches and for many years, so the new information doesn't shock me. Already back then we were upset. But if you ignore the deeply unethical way of doing things, China was actually acting rather wisely. I could never beat Gong Zhichao, and I much preferred playing against Ye Zhaoying. There's no doubt that the Chinese knew this, and that they had a much better chance of winning gold by getting Gong Zhichao into the final."

noobermin 4y ago
If people's skills can vary so much for a given sport such that it's hard or impossible to rank players by skill, then it seems like a tournament bracket is the wrong fit for such a sport. A bracket specifically means there is "one path" to victory and it is specifically structured for producing one winner and it works based on the assumption of the underlying distribution of skill being one where it can be strictly ordered. A fairer system that would match such a distribution of skill would be something like just matches between all players (or many matches at least) and the person with the most wins would get gold, second most silver, and so on. Online video games do this already, tourneys only work in some situations, but player rankings are better for, well ranking because you don't have a situation where the mere structure of a competition causes the winner to not actually be the best player.
- glenngillen 4y ago
  This dynamic already exists in almost every competitive sport. Certainly the ones where you go head-to-head with an opponent in a match format vs a race. Which is why most sports have a variety of formats or phases to address that. The most typical being a regulation season where there is a winner at the culmination. Sometimes those then feed into the more bracket-like format. The idea that any one of these methods is the path objectively measures the one true best player/team is a fallacy. That any particular award within the same sport is deemed more prestigious than another is largely down to marketing.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    I would agree with your last two statements except for the fact that this is the Olympics we are talking about, which literally is the highest competition for sport in the world. Picking out the best is the point of it. Of course likely no one structure can be the best, but choosing a better structure seems wise for a competition which purports to do just that. I don't really care to attack the structure too, but if the structure is so important that it should be kept, then there still is a good argument that really, arguments about statistics is really not relevant (which is half of what people are arguing with me about). However, a flat structure of just games is specifically the right place to make statistical arguments and judgements because it is naturally ergodic.
    - eru 4y ago
      > Olympics [...] literally is the highest competition for sport in the world. Says who? This is strictly down to prestige. Btw, association football is played at the Summer Olympics. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's the highest competition for football. By prestige, that's the FIFA World Cup. By skill, it's perhaps the UEFA Champions League. [0] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_Summer_Olympics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_Summer_Olympic... [0] I don't know enough about football to say for sure that the Champions League has the highest skill on display. But even the Champions League has way more prestige than the Summer Olympics for football.
      - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
        I don't watch football at all, but fifa world cup and champions league are the ones everybody around me watches, from friends to random people, to our cities being half-empty (except the bars with TVs) during final matches. Olympics are more "meh" and not something people really cared about.
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        I think this is the case for most of the well-known team sports. The professional teams pull players from around the world, and have lots of experience playing together. Plus the professional teams are have intentionally developed rosters. In the Olympics, if it turns out that Canada has produced the two best goalies this year, then the world's second best goalie will be benched unless there's an injury.
- irjustin 4y ago
  > it seems like a tournament bracket is the wrong fit for such a sport Realistically, round robin would take way too long.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    Hold many in parallel? It certainly would be harder to spectate but it would alleviate these issues.
    - eru 4y ago
      Spectation is the ultimate priority for all these events. Almost everything else is a means to an end.
    - boomboomsubban 4y ago
      This would drastically increase the amount of matches played, making it more of an endurance sport than anything else. There's no perfect solution in the time frame given, all sports tournaments are all well aware of this yet they're still the most popular format.
  - whateveracct 4y ago
    That + kingmaking potential
- eru 4y ago
  Tournament brackets are not used to determine an objective best in a fair way. They are used because they are entertaining.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kuboble 4y ago
    No. They are used because you can decide Best of N players in N-1 games. They are used in sports where the games are long, exhausting (a single player can play only a few of them in short time) and needs a non-trivial infrastructure (think tennis court vs chess board)
    - eru 4y ago
      You can declare someone to be best of 'Best of N players', but that only really applies strictly if player skill can be ordered linearly and outcome of games is basically a deterministic comparison of skill. However you are right in general that player exhaustion and logistics play a part as well.
      - kuboble 4y ago
        I was not precise. I didn't mean that it can determine the best player according to any reasonable metric but that it can determine a tournament winner at all.
        eru 4y ago
        Oh, yes, definitely. I agree. We just need to keep in mind that the 'tournament winner' is mostly there for entertainment (both of the audience and of the participants), and doesn't necessarily correlate all that well with 'absolute best player overall'.
        kuboble 4y ago
        I think it's a bit more than just entertainment. By creating a big prize (either money or prestige) you create incentive to win and the new definition of best shows up (the one most likely to win this title). And even in the same sport you can have conflicting goals. E.g. should one try to maximize chance of winning a single prestigious event or get equally good results through the whole season? At the same time I like analyzing the tournaments from the perspective if the best team (according to a criterion that either players or spectators care about) has the highest chance to win. Knockout tournaments have this property usually.
- nl 4y ago
  Badminton (at least at the 2020 Olympics) uses a round robin format[1] followed by QF/SF/Final. This seems a decent compromise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_singles#Competition_format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2020_Summer_O...
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    Draws of three make luck a major component. If you're disadvantaged against 1/3rd of the field you could end up in a pod with two people you're bad against and ruin your entire Olympics.
    - nl 4y ago
      Sure. Hence why it's a compromise.
hackerlight 4y ago
Also, the outcome of a single match is quite random and upsets by legitimately worse players can happen.

by danso 4y ago

noobermin 4y ago

If people's skills can vary so much for a given sport such that it's hard or impossible to rank players by skill, then it seems like a tournament bracket is the wrong fit for such a sport. A bracket specifically means there is "one path" to victory and it is specifically structured for producing one winner and it works based on the assumption of the underlying distribution of skill being one where it can be strictly ordered. A fairer system that would match such a distribution of skill would be something like just matches between all players (or many matches at least) and the person with the most wins would get gold, second most silver, and so on. Online video games do this already, tourneys only work in some situations, but player rankings are better for, well ranking because you don't have a situation where the mere structure of a competition causes the winner to not actually be the best player.

glenngillen 4y ago
This dynamic already exists in almost every competitive sport. Certainly the ones where you go head-to-head with an opponent in a match format vs a race. Which is why most sports have a variety of formats or phases to address that. The most typical being a regulation season where there is a winner at the culmination. Sometimes those then feed into the more bracket-like format. The idea that any one of these methods is the path objectively measures the one true best player/team is a fallacy. That any particular award within the same sport is deemed more prestigious than another is largely down to marketing.
- noobermin 4y ago
  I would agree with your last two statements except for the fact that this is the Olympics we are talking about, which literally is the highest competition for sport in the world. Picking out the best is the point of it. Of course likely no one structure can be the best, but choosing a better structure seems wise for a competition which purports to do just that. I don't really care to attack the structure too, but if the structure is so important that it should be kept, then there still is a good argument that really, arguments about statistics is really not relevant (which is half of what people are arguing with me about). However, a flat structure of just games is specifically the right place to make statistical arguments and judgements because it is naturally ergodic.
  - eru 4y ago
    > Olympics [...] literally is the highest competition for sport in the world. Says who? This is strictly down to prestige. Btw, association football is played at the Summer Olympics. But you'd be hard pressed to argue that it's the highest competition for football. By prestige, that's the FIFA World Cup. By skill, it's perhaps the UEFA Champions League. [0] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_Summer_Olympics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_at_the_Summer_Olympic... [0] I don't know enough about football to say for sure that the Champions League has the highest skill on display. But even the Champions League has way more prestige than the Summer Olympics for football.
    - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
      I don't watch football at all, but fifa world cup and champions league are the ones everybody around me watches, from friends to random people, to our cities being half-empty (except the bars with TVs) during final matches. Olympics are more "meh" and not something people really cared about.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      I think this is the case for most of the well-known team sports. The professional teams pull players from around the world, and have lots of experience playing together. Plus the professional teams are have intentionally developed rosters. In the Olympics, if it turns out that Canada has produced the two best goalies this year, then the world's second best goalie will be benched unless there's an injury.
irjustin 4y ago
> it seems like a tournament bracket is the wrong fit for such a sport Realistically, round robin would take way too long.
- noobermin 4y ago
  Hold many in parallel? It certainly would be harder to spectate but it would alleviate these issues.
  - eru 4y ago
    Spectation is the ultimate priority for all these events. Almost everything else is a means to an end.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    This would drastically increase the amount of matches played, making it more of an endurance sport than anything else. There's no perfect solution in the time frame given, all sports tournaments are all well aware of this yet they're still the most popular format.
- whateveracct 4y ago
  That + kingmaking potential
eru 4y ago
Tournament brackets are not used to determine an objective best in a fair way. They are used because they are entertaining.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kuboble 4y ago
  No. They are used because you can decide Best of N players in N-1 games. They are used in sports where the games are long, exhausting (a single player can play only a few of them in short time) and needs a non-trivial infrastructure (think tennis court vs chess board)
  - eru 4y ago
    You can declare someone to be best of 'Best of N players', but that only really applies strictly if player skill can be ordered linearly and outcome of games is basically a deterministic comparison of skill. However you are right in general that player exhaustion and logistics play a part as well.
    - kuboble 4y ago
      I was not precise. I didn't mean that it can determine the best player according to any reasonable metric but that it can determine a tournament winner at all.
      - eru 4y ago
        Oh, yes, definitely. I agree. We just need to keep in mind that the 'tournament winner' is mostly there for entertainment (both of the audience and of the participants), and doesn't necessarily correlate all that well with 'absolute best player overall'.
        kuboble 4y ago
        I think it's a bit more than just entertainment. By creating a big prize (either money or prestige) you create incentive to win and the new definition of best shows up (the one most likely to win this title). And even in the same sport you can have conflicting goals. E.g. should one try to maximize chance of winning a single prestigious event or get equally good results through the whole season? At the same time I like analyzing the tournaments from the perspective if the best team (according to a criterion that either players or spectators care about) has the highest chance to win. Knockout tournaments have this property usually.
nl 4y ago
Badminton (at least at the 2020 Olympics) uses a round robin format[1] followed by QF/SF/Final. This seems a decent compromise. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2020_Summer_Olympics_%E2%80%93_Women%27s_singles#Competition_format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badminton_at_the_2020_Summer_O...
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  Draws of three make luck a major component. If you're disadvantaged against 1/3rd of the field you could end up in a pod with two people you're bad against and ruin your entire Olympics.
  - nl 4y ago
    Sure. Hence why it's a compromise.

hackerlight 4y ago

Also, the outcome of a single match is quite random and upsets by legitimately worse players can happen.