Not much else to say, just some ideas to potentially spice up the format of Counter-Strike tournaments which can occasionally feel stale.
GSL groups of 8 not 4
Ever get annoyed when you watch a GSL group stage and the decider match ends up being a repeat of the opening match? Assuming you have two groups of 4, have the winner of the losers’ match in A play the loser of the winners’ match in B and vice versa. Prevents repeat matchups while maintaining the advantages of the GSL format for organisers. This also scales nicely across 3 or 4 groups i.e. the standard format for most tournaments.
Play all 3 maps in a best of 3
A 2–0 is all well and good but how about we take a leaf from some other esports and play out the third map as well? A bonus point could be on offer for any team that manages to pull off a 3–0 while the third map makes things fairer in the event of a “last chance” qualifier as seen at Flashpoint and cs_summit 7. Would work best in round-robin but could work for GSL too.
Best of 2 round-robin groups
Alternatively, one of the complaints about using round-robin is the time commitment (it requires an extra series over GSL), so here is a compromise: play a best of 2 format, with each side choosing one map (I would use a ban-ban-pick veto). This should allow for more matches to be played as each individual match is shorter. Points can be awarded for a 2–0 win and for a draw. In the event of a tie between two teams after all matches are played, a best of 1 can be played on what would have been the “decider” map.
Best of 3 Grand Finals with Bracket Reset (for double elim)
Most esports tournaments with double-elimination brackets use a “bracket reset” in the grand final: the team coming from the lower bracket needs to win two matches. Counter-Strike has largely avoided this because matches are significantly longer than other esports. But given we already use best of 5 grand finals, would an extra map across the day make that much difference? Set aside the day and give the teams an hour off in the middle if needed. It would certainly be more in keeping with the spirit of double elimination than the 1–0 head start for the upper bracket team which, while a useful compromise, still causes debate.
ABBA Overtime
Nothing to do with the Swedish pop act. Instead of teams taking it in turns to play 3 rounds at a time, let’s use the tennis tie-breaker as a baseline: starting with team A and B as they were, switching after the first round, then switching every two rounds thereafter (i.e. ABBAABBAA) until a team reaches 4 rounds or leads by two clear points after the score reaches 3–3. This reduces the chance of a long string of overtimes. Starting money would be reduced from MR3 overtime, to ensure a balance between needing to save and punishing teams who over-buy in the first round.
Rotating Map Pool
Possibly one for Valve rather than tournament organisers but hypothetically, to keep the map pool fresh, let’s keep its size at seven but add in a rotation. Every two/three months (say, after each RMR event), the “active” map that has been in the pool the longest is dropped for one of the “inactive” maps, and the pool continues to rotate in this way until a change to the pool is made. It would need to be obvious which maps were in the rotation but as of right now there are a number of maps that could be used. Should Valve or a map creator want to rework a map more thoroughly (e.g. the Cache rework), it can be dropped entirely.
So there you are. Some ideas to freshen up the scene. What do you think? Got a good one? Think I’m barking mad? Let me know.
