News:

English-language friendly kendama forum open for everyone worldwide. Welcome!

Main Menu

EKO 2018

Started by jakub.zahumensky, 04 March, 2018, 17:35:37

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

BKA


The Void

If you don't want to BUY MY BOOKS 😉, then why not ask your local library to order them in, and read them for free? That would help too. Cheers!

shalafi

Interesting, our Irish champ taking out Thorklid on first round. I don't know many of the players, but they must be good since they are taking out other ones I do know.

I think Paul and Yoris are the only ones I know on quarter finals.
Spanish Kendama Champion 2010, 2012, 2014-16
Depth Perception is Overrated.

The Void

3rd Round, not Quarters. Quarters are next. Coming up today, with the rest of it, I guess. Go @paulsayer !
If you don't want to BUY MY BOOKS 😉, then why not ask your local library to order them in, and read them for free? That would help too. Cheers!

Dimensions

The second half of the bracket on day 3:
https://challonge.com/EKO2018PROFINALS

There's something odd about this one, maybe it has something to do with adding in two extra people in the third round who didn't start from round one. I know some people had byes to fill the bracket but I always thought it was just a single round thing not two
Anyone got clarification on this?
Shameless Self-Promotion:
http://www.youtube.com/user/escapees6

The Void

#50
So Bonz and Nick got a free pass to Round 3? To me, that seems extremely unfair to everyone else.
I don't understand why that would have happened.

Congratulations to Terteleag Tiberiu, the new Europen Kendama Champion.
If you don't want to BUY MY BOOKS 😉, then why not ask your local library to order them in, and read them for free? That would help too. Cheers!

jakub.zahumensky

#51
Quote from: shalafi on 08 September, 2018, 17:03:04
Interesting, our Irish champ taking out Thorklid on first round. I don't know many of the players, but they must be good since they are taking out other ones I do know.

I think Paul and Yoris are the only ones I know on quarter finals.

Thorkild did not actually compete in the PRO division. There was a small misunderstanding at registration, but since the brackets had already been made before we found out he would not compete, Danny boy got a free pass, basically. Thorkild did compete in freestyle and was eliminated in the first round by Davide Leonardi from Italy.

Bonz and Nick were seeded higher up to get them out of the way. Imagine practicing really hard, being ready and all, flying 1500 km to Romania and then coming up against either of these two in round 1. This was not my idea and I was originally against it, but once it sank in a bit I saw the reasoning as valid. But of course, there are two ways to look at this. This being said, Bonz was obviously nervous and actually had it quite hard at points against some Romanian kids.Who knows what would have happened if we put them in from round 1.


Main division results:
[instagram width=350]


Gloken style cup results coming soon. If impatient, visit Depozitul Kendama IG.

jakub.zahumensky

Rolf basically killed himself after I failed him on a trick. He was not focusing after that at all. So the kid walked away with beating Rolf and 50 EUR to boot :)

shalafi

There's definitely 2 ways to look at that: Imagine you practice hard, fly to the EKO and get seeded against one of these... Yeah, I lost, but look who was I against!
That being said, I've travelled to EKOs a few times knowing for sure that I won't make it past round 1, and that being pretty much irrelevant. But I understand that not everyone thinks the same way I do.

Anyway, massive turnout by the looks of the brackets.
Spanish Kendama Champion 2010, 2012, 2014-16
Depth Perception is Overrated.

jakub.zahumensky

Quote from: shalafi on 12 September, 2018, 22:21:49
There's definitely 2 ways to look at that: Imagine you practice hard, fly to the EKO and get seeded against one of these... Yeah, I lost, but look who was I against!
That being saiErd, I've travelled to EKOs a few times knowing for sure that I won't make it past round 1, and that being pretty much irrelevant. But I understand that not everyone thinks the same way I do.

Anyway, massive turnout by the looks of the brackets.

I don't know the exact number, but around 120 participants. 61 in PRO, 103 in Gloken style cup, 49 in freestyle (limited to those in Pro). I believe beginners around 30 and both advanced and intermediate around 15. 20 Nationalities (counting Maico both as Philipino and English :D)

shalafi

Wow, I don't keep track of size of previous events, but I think the largest EKO to date was Denmark, and it was smaller that that.

Great job!
Spanish Kendama Champion 2010, 2012, 2014-16
Depth Perception is Overrated.

The Void

Quote from: jakub.zahumensky on 12 September, 2018, 21:41:15Bonz and Nick were seeded higher up to get them out of the way. Imagine practicing really hard, being ready and all, flying 1500 km to Romania and then coming up against either of these two in round 1. This was not my idea and I was originally against it, but once it sank in a bit I saw the reasoning as valid.
Well, you were completely right in the first place, and very wrong when you caved in. When there are "holes" in the first round (e.g. 59 players in a knockout round of 64), then and only then does it make sense to either seed (in this example) 5 players through to round 2, or give 5 random players a pass. But to let players skip 2 rounds? That's totally unfair. And it doesn't sound like the whole story is being told here: if you're seeding 2 people into round 3, then you need to make sure that *14* other players make it through, and not *16*, as it was at the end of day 1.

I'm really saddened to see the integrity of the competition that I founded ruined like this. If you want to win the EKO (or any other competition), then you should be prepared to enter on a level playing field, and to have to beat any other player. Plenty of players have previously been disappointed at being drawn against a strong opponent in round one. Tough, that's sport. Practice, get better.

And to clarify: None of what I've said here is directed personally against Bonz or Nick. Obviously, they're both great players. Quite possibly the result may have been the same if they'd entered Round 1,.... but we'll never know, will we?

Sorry to moan, but I hope this situation never happens again.

And to finish on a positive note, thanks @jakub.zahumensky (and all other organisers) for all your hard work that I know you've put in again this year. A good turn out, and hopefully everyone had a lot of fun, so well done.

Onwards, and I hope I'll be back at EKO again next year, wherever that turns out to be.
If you don't want to BUY MY BOOKS 😉, then why not ask your local library to order them in, and read them for free? That would help too. Cheers!

jakub.zahumensky

Even better would have been to do double elimination. But I bet you can imagine how time consuming that would be. On the first day we had to do 2 matches simultaneously and ended the day at 11 pm anyway. I believe in seeding some players into the brackets so that the players with (perceived) highest chances to win don't meet until quarter/semifinals (or at least not in the first couple of rounds). Rest random. We did this last year and 3 of the 4 we had picked were in the semifinals, validating our picks. Note that this is not something that we came up with randomly. Mirek and Feel had been studying how to best make the brackets quite extensively before MCSK 2017. They did not do this type of "hack" at the BKO this year and Rob, i.e. British champ 2017, got eliminated by Rolf, i.e. a non-British player, in the first round, which I perceive as not right. What I wanted to do this year was to take Nick, Bonz, Rolf (as the European champ 2017) and National champs and put each into a different "leg" of the spider, so that would not meet before quarterfinals (or at least not too soon). But the cookie crumbled a bit differently.

At the end of the day, seeing how Tiblex was the highest placed European player in both PRO and Gloken style cup (results below), and seeing the players compete, him taking the title was very well deserved.

We ended up with 16 players after day one because we were unable to tell Challonge to give us 14. Simple as that. Whole story told. This option is probably not even there, since we did something that is probably non-standard.

The biggest THANKS should definitely go to Depozitul Kendama as they did the most of the actual organizing.]

[instagram width=500]

shalafi

#58
I am not against seeding, all big tournaments do it. But they do it based on a ranking, not by "personal perception". There was an attempt to make a kendama player ranking, similar to the one for tennis, maybe one similar to chess would be easier to implement.
In the absence of a formal ranking system, seeding is "arbitrary". Still, arbitrary seeding is better than none. National champions, previous winner of the EKO, winners of other important events beeing seeded sounds like a good initial approach that is not just based on personal judgement.

However, I think the only way to get a "bye" should be on first round, and it is done to adjust the numbers to be a power of 2 and have an even bracket.

In Tennis, for example, once the tournament starts, all the players are seeded. There is however a set of classifier rounds where everyone that wants to join but does not have a ranking can compete and earn some slots. I see that as a necessary evil, but I can't imagine seeding Nadal, Ferrer and Djokovick just on the quarter final arguing that "they are going to be the ones getting there anyway", the pressure and how tired you get after playing is not to be dismissed. We should not dismiss the amount of pressure that playing a round of knock-off takes.

There is other competition that used to seed high profile players later in the game, it was Magic the Gathering GPs (GPs are opens, Pro Tours require you to win an invitation and have no "byes") but the structure of the tournament is radically different, every player gets to play all the rounds and gets points for winning, high profile players enter after round 1, 2 or 3 and enter with the equivalent points as if they had won all the matches. Up to today, I still find it unfair, specillay at the time I was given "byes" myself.

It is an interesting discussion point.
Spanish Kendama Champion 2010, 2012, 2014-16
Depth Perception is Overrated.

Dimensions

Quick side note, anyone else remember Matt Nix beating Bonz in the first round in 2016?
Shameless Self-Promotion:
http://www.youtube.com/user/escapees6