As reported before, the initial World’s format had some serious flaws. Most notably, there were only four teams into the bracket play (power pools went straight to semis) but the #4 team never had to play the #5 team.

This, obviously, makes seeding hugely important. The #5 team must beat someone ranked in the top three to advance, while the #4 team never has to beat anyone better than seed #6.

Seeding is another matter altogether; WFDF has a history of using only information from their own play (which is usually simply the previous World’s…in this case, Finland ‘04). They have a pretty strong argument for this as well, since the previous World’s tournament is the only time at which countries have put together their National teams at full strength (this isn’t an issue for the US, which does not use a selection process to take the ‘best 20′, but it is a big issue for most other countries). We may look at 4-year old results and cry irrelevance, but this is an objective (and therefore fair) method of seeding. It’s better than subjective methods, at least. As long as it is stated in advance, then this is fine by me.

Just this past weekend, though, WFDF came out with a new format for the Open division. This format is significantly better, and has an expanded bracket. WFDF, and most of all the tournament directors, should be commended for their willingness to listen to reasonable arguments and their flexibility. Directing a tournament is not easy…and having to remake the schedule must have been a nightmare.

Kudos to Brian Gisel and the rest of the crew in Vancouver. Also, thanks to Adam Tarr, one of the UPA’s scheduling experts, who took his own time to reach out and present some alternatives to the involved parties. The UPA has put some serious resources into developing a uniquely useful tournament format manual, and Adam did WFDF a huge favor by bringing that expertise to bear on this year’s World tournament.

The new format is available at the Worlds site: www.wugc2008.com

UPDATE: Florian Pfender, of the a UPA Formats Committee and a WFDF Format Advisor, sheds some light onto the process these past few days and weeks:

So, at one point, there were 18 teams registered for the open division and we spent some time on formats, discussing several potential candidates. In the end it was decided to use the same format as 2004: 3 pools of 6, two top pools of 6, quarters, etc…

Then, two more teams registered and we (mostly Brian) made a 20-team format, then after one team dopped out again, a 19-team format. At this stage, all the schedules were written. Then, sort of last minute, another team dropped and we were back to 18. But, the old 18-team format didn’t fit on the fields, so Brian put in this provisional format without the quarters, and called it pre-approved or something the like (albeit, the seeds were not adjusted for not having quarters). It had some flaws in it. The flaw that you are talking about would have surely been fixed by a different seed distribution.

At the same time, Brian internally suggested an alternative format, which we then used as a basis for the now final format. I think he also solicited input from the US and Canadian teams. Even before Adam came in, this was our preferred format (still some flaws: if 2 and 3 are the two best teams, they will meet in semis and not in finals if you assume consistent play). Then Adam Tarr came into the discussion only with the published info and suggested a completely different, in my opinion a superior, format out of 4 pools more like UPA nationals. But I guess this was stylewise too far away from traditional WFDF formats, and the time was too short to properly discuss it.

So, with Adam’s help, we polished the alternative format up to what it is now. Everything was done in a big rush with quite some chaos and incomplete information, thanks to the late drop outs, but the current/final format is a good format.