EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Multi-Tier Tournaments: Matching and Scoring Players

Steven J. Brams and Mehmet S. Ismail

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We introduce a novel system of matching and scoring players in tournaments, called Multi-Tier Tournaments, illustrated by chess and based on the following rules: 1. Players are divided into skill-based tiers, based on their Elo ratings. 2. Starting with one or more mini-tournaments of the least skilled players (Tier 1), the winner or winners -- after playing multiple opponents -- move to the next-higher tier. 3. The winners progress to a final tier of the best-performing players from lower tiers as well as players with the highest Elo ratings. 4. Performance in each tier is given by a player's Tournament Score (TS), which depends on his/her wins, losses, and draws (not on his/her Elo rating). Whereas a player's Elo rating determines in which mini-tournament he/she starts play, TS and its associated tie-breaking rules determine whether a player moves up to higher tiers and, in the final mini-tournament, wins the tournament. This combination of players' past Elo ratings and current TS's provides a fair and accurate measure of a player's standing among the players in the tournament. We apply a variation of Multi-Tier Tournaments to the top 20 active chess players in the world (as of February 2024). Using a dataset of 1209 head-to-head games, we illustrate the viability of giving lower-rated players the opportunity to progress and challenge higher-rated players. We also briefly discuss the application of Multi-Tier Tournaments to baseball, soccer, and other sports that emphasize physical rather than mental skills.

Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des and nep-spo
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.13845 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2407.13845

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2407.13845