Richard Miles' Love Pods

Richard Miles posed a cool question with events running in social pods of 6, so an 18 player event would be 3 pods.

How do you rank them at the end of the event?

So it got me a pondering, 

And I Ponder
I pah-pah-pah-pah-ponder
Why
Why, why, why, why, why how to set it.

First up is the Grouping

As its reduced to 3 pods of 6, this means full random can result is some hefty baby seal clubbing, so rule that out.

So Seeded groups, but which way?

My suggestion is to first look at the KoWMasters ranking for each player, as this will give you a seeding rank

First an example pulled out of my ass

This can then be used to split the players into two types of groups.

Titans/Others/Gutters

This keeps the best players playing each other, the "worst" playing each other.

Big con for this is merging the groups for overall ranking, as top of group 1 does not equal top of group 3.

Split Seeded Groups

This seeds going down the KowMasters ranking and assigning to Group A, B C, this way each group is made up of a mix from the rankings, so there may be 1 or 2 heavy hitters, but equally more low ranked players, so result when merged is more comparable.

Would also then seed the initial pairings rather than random, as with a small pool of people in each pod, a seal club is very significant.

Round 1 pairing using seeding to avoid initial seal clubbing

The Merge

I feel the in tournament Strength of Schedule is important here

Simplified Strength of Schedule is taken after the final round and add the in pod rank of the opponents together to find the SoS - lowest number is better

So you now have the ranking for each Pod, the SoS for each position in each pod, so now its just compare the groups.

So then compare between groups, any ties the lowest SoS wins, if still tie highest TP wins, if still tie then lowest rank (ie lowest KoWMasters position) wins.

I think in this shitty time, that may be the best of the bad situation, while still keeping it relatively fair.