When Running a Seeded Tournament, the Best Players Should be Playing the Worst Players

I agree with your definitions for fairness. However, I disagree with you in your main paragraph. You have to remember that to rank these teams, the teams go through a large number of games within the season, which requires effort and determination. At the beginning of the season, all of the teams have an equal chance of winning; their actions during the season are what determine the seeding. What the Best Plays Worst system does is reward this determination with an advantage over the other teams. If winning games in the season wasn't rewarded at the end, then the teams wouldn't put in as much effort, and we'd even see corruption and sabotage. In the Pairing method, you have the top two teams playing each other. This results in one of these two teams not making it to the finals. Naturally, the top two teams should be the ones fighting for either first or second. Furthermore, why would a team try to be number one? This would only mean that they have to face team number two, and they'd have a less likely chance of moving on. Why win all your games and be put in the difficult position of number one, when you can put forth no effort in any of your games and land in seed 16, at the very bottom? At the bottom, you only play the worst teams, and have a higher chance of advancing. Teams should be rewarded for their efforts, not punished. In the Split in Half method, the difference between team 8 and team 9 is tremendous. Team 8 has an easy ride playing team 16, but team 9 is likely to be destroyed playing team 1. The minor difference between 8 and 9 results in a huge difference between 1 and 16. Furthermore, team 2 has the advantage over team 1, because team 1 always plays better teams than team 2, until the two teams reach the finals. This would mean that a team would try to win and lose the correct amount of games to be team 2 rather than team 1. If two teams played each other at the end of the season, and the winner would be team 1 in the tournament while the loser would be team 2, both teams would try to lose. If you've ever seen a game where neither team is trying to win, it becomes very pathetic and boring to watch. In the Best Plays Worst, the best teams get rewarded for their hard work by playing the worst teams. Every team would try to be #1, because #1 gets to play the worse teams. Additionally, teams are motivated not to be at the bottom, because whichever team ends up #16 is almost certainly destroyed in the first round. Keep in mind that it was completely fair at the beginning; their poor performance in the season is what sealed their fate. This incentive is what makes teams want to win. Now, take this scenario: In a season, you have nine teams that are very good (labeled 1337) and seven teams that completely fail at the sport (labeled n00b). At the end, the 1337s are on top, and the n00bs are on the bottom: 1-9: 1337 10-16: n00b If we were to use the Pairing method, five 1337s would advance, and 3 n00bs would advance. This isn't right. The 1337s are the ones who deserve to move on to the next round. The n00bs should have all been eliminated. If they are Split in Half, the 1337s that came in 2nd through 8th all have a free ride, because they got to beat n00bs. 1337 #1 and 1337 #9, however, have to fight to move on to the next round. Why should #1 be the only one in the top 8 to not have a free ride? He proved to be the best, and now he has an unfairly higher chance of being eliminated. If the Best Plays Worst method is used, the top 7 1337s would all advance. The 1337 #8 and the 1337 #9 would be the only ones who actually have to fight to get to the top 8; rightfully so, because they are the weakest of the 1337s. You can try this with any number of 1337s and any number of n00bs, but they results are always the same: Best Plays Worst always has the better players rewarded rather than punished. CONCLUSION: When running a seeded tournament, the best players should be playing the worst players. This system rewards effort, skill, and determination, and the best teams are rewarded. Other methods give advantages to the teams that don't try as hard, and encourage failure.