Thank you very much to JD, Lagavulin, and Brian for organising this tournament very well.(posted 8971 days ago)Thank you to everyone for their kind words.
Congratulations to Sampras on a great tournament. I am still impressed by your "perfect" against the twin mice. Until I saw you do it, I thought it was impossible.
Congratulations to everyone else who had great performances during this tournament.
I know I have said a lot of what I am going to say now on IRC already, but here goes:
I have not had as much fun in a tournament since T2, and I am not saying that because I happened to win both. Of course, the fact that I had a lot of fun, made me put more effort in. Because I thought K2/MC2 (what should I call it?) was fun well before the final few rounds.
The seedings worked out a lot better than I had expected. Of the 8 seeds, the top 4 seeds advanced to the semis, and the top 2 seeds advanced to the finals. I guess the seedings were ALMOST perfect. ;-)
I was surprised the seedings worked out so well, because, unlike seedings in tennis, for example, the game changes every round. It's almost like seeding people according to their tennis rankings and then make them play each other on other sports.
Of course, there's always the chance that the number 8 seed plays against the number 1 seed on a game on which the former one is an expert and the latter sucks. Well, of course, there's always luck involved. Based on the fact that each of the top 4 seeds won at least one round, it looks like by simply shuffling the games in a different order, any of the top 4 would have won. There is no way I would have beaten Sampras on Goal! Goal! Goal!, or Phil on Anteater, or BBH on U.N. Squadron.
Although the one-on-one rounds are fun, I do not think they should be extended to the final 16. It gets more frustrating sooner, then. Get a game you're not good at, or oppose an expert, and you're out. At least until the one-on-one rounds start, you can wing it. I liked the one-on-one rounds, but starting them at the final 16 already seems a bit too early to me. The seedings probably would be less accurate too, then. The seedings in K2 were based on 5 rounds. If one-on-one had started at the final 16, then they would have been based on only 4 rounds.
I don't think the tournament was too long. I don't think rounds should be less than 10 days per game. Some people learn games faster than others, and at least 10-day-rounds don't automatically eliminate anyone who happens to be gone for a few days. The tournament could be made SLIGHTLY shorter by not waiting one day in between rounds. I'd've preferred that. The only problem is that not all the submissions may have been verified as soon as the round ends. Either way, I think the next game could be announced immediately after the previous round has ended. And within the next few hours hopefully, or one day at most, after the end of that previous round, everything should be official.
Eliminating half of the competitors in the early rounds is not much fun, I think, for the 75% who are out after having played just one or two games. So I liked the "relaxed elimination" in the early rounds.
OK. I think that concludes my remarks, except for something slightly related to this: T6. There are some issues that need to be resolved first. I hope to make an announcement regarding T6 soon.
Cheers, Ben Jos.