Big Take Aways in the Elite Season Part 1

Written by Bill Fischer, Edited by Zeena Rivera, Spencer Dellis, Oliver Lieu, Drew Lodarek, and Tyler Greer

One of the biggest changes to Elite this season was the shift from best of three double elimination to best-of-seven single elimination. This change didn’t just have an impact on the way the playoffs were structured but had deeper implications to the foundations of the event including the round robin, season standings, and how we talk about the results of each round. It was only after the Tribune Tournament and Round 1, along with the conversations I had with players during the event and following it, that I saw just how much impact the change had.

Best-of-seven matches come with the change that the better team is more likely to come out of a match with a win. You can’t rely on that miracle double out, or strange bounce off your player that ends up with a teammate making a catch to get you halfway to victory. But what about everything else that comes with a bracket match?

Going deep into a best-of-seven match means that teams will have to be consistent, able to adapt when they’re behind, and recognize when they’ve had a bad break and shouldn’t change their plan. Deep matches are a test of your endurance not only within the current match but across multiple matches. The teams that can win a best-of-seven may very well be a different type of team than those that did well in a best-of-three.

Looking at West Round 1 results in Open 8.5 and West Women’s No Sting, teams that won a match 4–3 lost their next match 4 out of 5 times. The one time that team won in the next match, they faced another team that also just went to seven games (Fortune vs Headhunters).

On the other side of match results, sweeping comes with a different set of impacts. Winning in four allows a team to maintain their endurance, scout for their next match if it hasn’t finished, grab food, water, tape their fingers — all the little things that will make the rest of their run in the bracket that much more maintainable. Looking at every matchup in the Open 8.5 bracket and Women’s No Sting Bracket in the West, you’ll see that going 4–0 or 4–1 in a match would give you a 61% (11–18) chance to win the following match. Going 4–2 or 4–3 gives you only an 18% (3–17) chance to win.

With the changes to the bracket being much less forgiving, the round robin has a much more important role in a team’s success. The larger the seed advantage you have over the other team, the more likely you’ll come out of that match with a victory, and considering some of the statistics from the previous section, the ease of each subsequent match. The only way to increase this disparity is to perform better in the round robin. While wanting a higher seed isn’t new, its importance has increased with the shift to single elimination to delay close, or disadvantaged matches for as long as possible to get the best standing.

Every game you play now matters. One win may help you avoid a “Crysis” for that much longer, come bracket play. Mistakes that cost you a game can now have deep implications. I don’t think I’ve been to a West round where Fortune hasn’t tied at least one team in the standings after round robin that had to be dealt with through rock paper scissors. A few deviations in seed and you’re making your life in the bracket that much harder. If you’re targeting a Top 4 finish, you need to be even more diligent to play your best all day.

Teams don’t have the luxury to find their grooves on the court anymore. Warmup time has become precious, sparse, and making sure you and your team are using it to prep for the day ahead is vital. Knowing how to warm up quickly and get off on the right foot is going to become a part of every top team’s playbook. I assume Rise wrote some chapters on the topic well before I even set foot in a rec league.

Interesting fact — did you know there’s one less point up for grabs in total this season in each round, 61 compared to last seasons 62? But those points aren’t distributed the same way.

I did a rough recalculation of last years West Open 8.5 rounds to see who would take top four if it was single elimination with the new point allocations: Doom (36), Rise (30), Heat (~14), ToThe (~13) compared to last years Doom, Rise, Titan and Fortune. Titan and Fortune both had deeper lower bracket runs that helped them seal a top-four finish. I fully expect the West to be much more in flux this season with about eight teams that have a reasonable shot at taking a top-four finish this season. I don’t think you’re going to have much luck if you don’t finish in the top-four at least once during the season with the new top heavy and flat bottom distribution of points.

This distribution of points makes me that much more concerned about teams from other divisions making an appearance. Let’s say we have a repeat of West Round 3 last year. Anarchy attends a West round again, takes first seed and places second. If every team that loses to them gets bumped up one round in the standings, they essentially get more points for losing in the same respective round. Since there’s less of a smooth transition from Top 16 points awarded (1), to Top 8 (4), to Top 4 (7), these effective bye games become very valuable. Let’s say it’s the Round of 8, Anarchy plays the eighth seed and wins 4–0. At the end of the day, that eighth seed will still get the points for fourth place going by last years precedent. Meanwhile, the 6th seed that loses to the third seed 4–2 and needed just a few more points to clinch a top 4 is going to be bitter that the lower seed got an effective bye game while having the same effective result.

Though I believe Elite is right in its mission to determine who the best teams are, there are still stories that the bracket alone can’t tell. There wouldn’t be a regular season in sports if the only entertainment was the playoffs. Those stories that used to get told in the lower bracket aren’t gone but have shifted to the round robin, especially with its increased importance. I believe it’s crucial from storytelling, entertainment, and hype perspectives that Elite publishes the round robin results. This is especially true for lower seeded teams. Their hype and recognition will come from either major upsets in the bracket or the games they took off top talent in the Round Robin.

There are also so many stories to be told that don’t get the spotlight. Did you know Fortune never lost a match to Titan last year? That Gridlock has a winning record over Fortune? How about that Roybots have continued to seed better every round they’ve played? That Misfits took games off some top teams at their first event as a team? It’s not obvious that a bunch of teams tied but that their head to head made someone go from a potential 4th seed to 8th seed because of a giant 5-way tie. Those stories all have immense value. As we look to grow the sport those are the stories we’re going to want to tell. The bracket doesn’t have the same impact without the context of what came before.

Finally, in my opinion, best-of-seven is just that much more entertaining to watch. You actually get the time as a spectator to get a feel for the action and the dynamics of the game. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing that player who’s been hit by the same player three games in a row finally adjust and make a catch on that fourth attempt. A perfect example of this was Cody Foley making the catch against Malaysia (from the WDBF Championship) who had been connecting on every throw off the rush. Best of three just didn’t give you enough time to get invested.

Overall, a lot has come from this single change and I’m personally a fan of the new approach, though I’m probably biased. Teams will have to play at a high level all day and can’t use the round robin as a warmup. The bracket is going to showcase a deeper set of a team’s skills than in the past. The points are harder to come by, but a deeper run now has a higher reward. Playoff matches now have a lot more substance to them and it makes telling a story that much easier, but the bracket will tell the story of fewer teams. I think we’ll continue to see this change play out fully over the course of the season especially to the metagame and I expect the 2020 season to be when we finally have a solid grasp of what a championship roster needs.

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