British Quidditch Cup 2018 Tournament Format and Structure
FORMAT AND STRUCTURE
The tournament will follow a fixed bracket structure following on from last year’s BQC format, but with a slightly altered structure to encourage more competitive games in the latter stages of the tournament.
BQC 2017’s fixed bracket structure was very well received in comparison to the QPD/min ranking format used at this season’s Northern and Southern Cups. However, feedback indicated that a significant number of attendees felt the latter stages of the tournament were not as competitive as they could have been, and that the structure did not result in the best teams contesting the final.
Following up on this, it has been opted to use fixed seeds for pool play. This means that the pools are largely determined by rankings from regionals. This has helped allow for better planning of the fixed upper and lower brackets so as to prevent excessive rematches from regionals and ensure that the final games of the tournament are contested by the strongest teams in attendance.
There have also been some changes to the ranking system. BQC will revert to the ranking system used at last season’s event but with a few amendments. The alterations have been made to criteria that have previously encouraged ‘blowouts’ or excessively long games, and in some cases they have been fully removed. This is in keeping with the aims of QUK regarding gameplay moving forward.
POOL PLAY AND DRAW
Pools are fixed based on seedings from regional tournaments, with the exceptions of the 4th and therefore lowest ranked team in each group. Each group has a mix of Northern and Southern seeds and the lowest ranked teams will be drawn at random from two regional pots. Pot 1 will consist of the teams ranked 13th to 16th at Northern Cup 2017 (Nottingham Nightmares, Liverpuddly Cannons, Holyrood Hippogriffs Seconds, Sheffield Steelfins). Pot 2 will consist of the teams ranked 13th to 15th at Southern Cup and the team ranked 17th at Northern Cup (Swansea Swans, Cambridge Quidditch Club, Bournemouth Banshees, Durhamstrang).
BRACKET PLAY
As with the pools, the brackets are designed so the highest ranked teams going into BQC should not meet each other until the latter stages of the tournament (barring major upsets). They are also structured to hopefully prevent the recurrence of too many repeat match-ups from regionals, although this is to an extent unavoidable.
The Championship and Consolation brackets:
And to demonstrate how the matchups are likely to progress, here is how it will go assuming the higher seed always wins:
RANKING CRITERIA
The ranking criteria for BQC 2018 will use the QuidditchUK Ranking Criteria with a few amendments:
1) The point differential is now capped at 90 QPD, down from 150 PD. This serves two functions:
Reducing the cap helps avoid extending games and playing to high win margins to achieve a greater final ranking, or rank within a group.
Ranking by QPD instead of PD avoids giving too much importance to snitch catches since they are already used as tiebreakers.
2) SWIM catches are no longer ranked above regular snitch catches in the ranking system, as this punishes teams for winning out of range. Instead, these criteria have been combined as ‘winning catches’.
3) ‘Quaffle points scored’ as a ranking criterion separate to point differential has been removed. Again, this is to discourage intentional blowouts.
These are the amended tiebreakers in effect to determine teams’ rankings at BQC 2018:
1. Select as appropriate:
1a. For Ranking Intra-Group: Number of Wins
1b. For Ranking Inter-Group: Group Position
1c. For Final Rankings: Stage of Elimination
2. Highest Quaffle Point Differential (QPD), with a maximum of 90 QPD able to be accumulated from any single game
3. Head to Head (where applicable)
4. Number of Winning Snitch Catches
5. Lowest Total Regulation Time Played
6. Fewest Red Cards
7. Fewest Yellow Cards
8. Fewest Blue Cards
9. Coin toss
When a tiebreaker is applied it should take into account all preceding stages of a tournament. I.e when a tiebreaker is used to calculate seedings for bracket play it should take into account all group play games, and when a tiebreaker is used to calculate final standings it should take into account all group play and all bracket games.
The tiebreakers will be used as the ranking criteria to determine seedings after group play and final standings once a tournament has completed. In the event a ranking leads to a rematch in bracket play, this will not be changed.
Note 28/02/18 21:50: This article was originally published with Leicester Thestrals, Chester Centurions, Manchester Manticores, Sheffield Squids errorneously in Groups A through D respectively, this has been rectified as so that it is Sheffield Squids, Leicester Thestrals, Manchester Manticores and Chester Centurions in Groups A through D respectively.
Note 28/02/18 22:15: The full groups have now been drawn and can be seen on the BQC event page.
