What's the ideal lottery system?

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#1

With a new season starting, new tournaments get planned, and unfortunately sometimes there are more people interested in joining a tournament than available spots. Therefore there needs to be a fair way of selecting which teams/players will participate in the tournament or not. How do you think this should be done?

In Berlin, for example, we have given some advantage in recent years to teams with more FLINTA players. Other tournaments have implemented measures trying to prioritize BIPOC participation, and even though it’s all well intended, I’ve heard concerns about tokenization (and looking back I think I might even be guilty of it) or critiques on “why this group gets extra lives and not that other group”.

We also had privileged participation rules for players from Berlin, as we are the ones actually building the tournament, and there are also invitational tournaments in different formats.

There are also players who might come from very very far and spent a lot of money to be there, or people which might not possess the financial means to participate, even though their presence would maybe be a good thing for the sport, for instance.

Let’s say, for example :eyes: , that you are organizing a 3-court mixed mandatory tournament where 50 local players want to participate and also around 70 teams might register for only 48 spots. How do you decide who is allowed to play? How should priorities and privileges be distributed?

Help me think.

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#2

i just had another benji moment with the epiphany lotery.

sealed team vs 2/3 (or 3/4 ) system

the 2/3 system is mostly used but also abused, first it was to allow more flexibility in case one player was missing but its reality is that it gives more chance to top tier ( or best players) to be drafted.

in reality , once the the teams are signed up, a secondary “secret drafting” happens to fill up the missing 1/3 of some teams , so if you are top tier player you have a real high percentage of being drafted, because who can pass on a good “free agent” ?

if you give priority to teams with 3/3 “sealed” line up , you give a more fair chance to lower level players to compete.but you also make logistic harder because if someone drops out of the team , the next 3/3 team will take their spot. but then it actually gives a real meaning to the waiting list.

once all 3/3 teams are in you could allow 2/3 teams to have a draft night. but basically i find it very hard for a beginner or non popular player to have the same chance to participate to a tournament than a popular player.

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#3

yeah, in general i think there is quite a loophole in the „no TBAs“ thing too, as some people will give up post lottery and the teams that are in will basically shop the best in the waiting list…

#4

Yeah Benji you’re right. And we hope no one will drop their place. But we talked about it with RBP and there are disagreements :
One side is ok to validate a sub from the WL only
The other is ok to disqualify the whole team.
Still discussing about it.

Imo, loosing a spot because one teammate can’t make it is hard, I’ve been let down too often and I’m happy I was able to call someone else. If the rule would have been to unregister the team, I would have quit Bikepolo a long time ago since I would have missed many tournament because some people can’t organize themselves.

One other thing : yes it’s easier for top tier players to be drafted and that makes some sense. I mean they worked for it, to be the best. Who can blame them ? For the Epiphanie, many newbie asked to have a team for the tournament. They usually play 7 games : 5 on the first day, two on the second. And I can guarantee you, the only two Sunday games are hard on them. What’s the goal for most people ? Just playing or having at least a chance to win/play as many games as they can ? I guess the most popular answer will be the second one and that explains why people will ask a top tier player to sub.

I think this thread is interesting but the question can’t be answered : not lottery will ever be ideal.

  • lottery : if you just have no luck, you lose every registrations. I use myself as proof, I lost every lotteries except one in two years. The only “chance” I had was being drafted to sub these tournaments. The problem was that trains were at the time wat more expensive, lost a lot of money because of this.
  • click race : I mean… I find it funny but we all know that’s not ideal. That’s not even the goal for us in Rouen, we just use this because we do it since the beginning and the tournament starts at this very moment. We changed the form without telling though, it created a difference: previous players weren’t able to fill it before the new ones. it looks like it worked cause I see changes in the registered teams. Nevertheless, our goal is not to be ideal, just to have a weird/fun/sometime hard tournament.
  • bonuses for non white straight male : mmh… even though it helps/helped, we know how it can derive.

But the real question is : what is ideal ? It depends on the people. Some find something more important than other and that’s the issue here. Nothing can be ideal for everyone.

#5

My personal take:

For a (purely hypothetical) already mandatory mixed tournament, the only spots I see a need to reserve are for the host city. I feel like it’s perfectly reasonable for the host city to reserve some spots for themselves. That said, I’d recommend not reserving too many—otherwise, you might as well just have a local tournament. Maybe a fifth of the total spots?

For a situation like you described, with 48 spots for teams of 3, with 50 interested local people and 70 registered teams overall, the numbers work out pretty nicely statistically. I’d even argue that then no spots need to be reserved for locals at all.

So, a uniformly random draft of the registered teams, with no TBAs allowed, feels like the most ideal scenario to me personally. It’s also the easiest to do.

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#6

you are right , Max.
there is not a single , super fair system. you always indirectly give privilege to one or another , but my take on the epiphany was just to break the habits and point out that , for exemple, someone not even on the waiting list have more chance to play than the actual waiting list.

and i also agree that if every tournament were sealed format it would be hard to find a spot , but maybe the most important / popular ones should be sealed …

also here is another take : how about taking in account a player season participation in the data ? give priority to a player , like max , that didnt got lucky and only played a low amount of percentage , VS a top tier player that get drafted to pretty much 90% of the popular tournaments.

its a bit like in pick up : do you always mega shuffle or you take in account that someone might have not played yet that night and you chuck him in the next game for sure ?

#7

good point, benji. it crossed my mind already that it might be fair to give a chance to play to people who haven’t had a chance to play. the organizational overhead scares me though…

#8

and what about a individual shuffle, and whoever is in can invite two players to play with them? so everybody is a TBA and everybody is feeding from the waiting list. if two or more selected players wanna play together, waiting list starts moving quick. also a bit of an orga nightmare, but makes the loophole official.

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#9

Just don’t be fair to anyone .
Open registration in a random time in a random day and see what happens .

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#10

you guys would try everything but giving the waiting list its true purpose :joy:

#11

what is the waiting list’s true purpose?

#12

To me its purpose is :

  • if one teammate from a registered team is out, then the team should sub from the WL.
  • if a team drops, then the first team in the WL gets their place.
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