"Sportsmanship scoring methods?" Topic

Our events have always used a simple voting system, each player chooses their 1st and 2nd most sporting players from their opponenets during the day. We count the 1st place votes, and if there's no winner, count the 2nd places.

It doesn't work. Year after year we have draws, so the organisers end up making the final decision. Not transparent and could lead to arguments.

We need something different. Something which will give a clear decision whilst being simple for players to understand.

Any suggestions?

"…Not transparent and could lead to arguments".

That is funny.

If there is no clear winner, take a group photo of the candidates and post it to your website/blog with a brief text as to why they were chosen. I think the recognition would be reward enough for them and it would serve as an example for those inclined to demonstrate less than sportsman-like behavior.

Cheers,

Nice idea, but hard to split the (small) prize, which I should have mentioned.

Two points for a first and one for a second. Then go to your tie breaker. You could even increase it to three votes.

The more factors, the less chance of a tie.

Trouble is, with only four rounds, we don't get enough to split people. One year we asked players to list all their opponents and rank them. Still tied.

At one large event I run players are asked to rank all their opponents on a scale of 1-100 with 50 being clearly stated as average. With 200+ players this generates a huge volume of data entry and even then we normally have a tie for first place between several players on 600 out of 600.

There is no perfect way to do it IMO.

At ASL tournaments we used to have a sportsmanship award named in honor of a friend and gamer who had passed away at a comparatively young age. We had the players in the tournament nominate the winner each year with the stipulation that you could not win it more than once, so previous winners could not be nominated. Worked out well and the no repeat rule meant that the award got spread around rather than just going to the top players year after year. We typically had 90 to 110 players and 8 to 10 rounds (I forget exactly how many).

I stopped playing in tournaments years ago… too much nepotism involved. The guy who won the 'sportsmanship' award was always a buddy of the tournament organizer.

I think a more appropriate award would be an honorable mention winner. Prizes are typically awarded to the top three players. If you want to give an additional award, give the guy who placed fourth a small prize as an honorable mention. Take sportsmanship out of the equation altogether.

Players are usually pretty even headed… it's the jerks who make the tournaments unenjoyable. If you play a round against a jerk then the fun is taken out of the event. I once had a guy yell at me and slam his hands down on the table during a DBA Big Battle tournament because I was able to win the last two rolls during a bound, resulting in a tie for the round. He was furious because now neither one of us could win the tournament (the best he could do was go 3-0-1), so he threw a temper tantrum in the middle of the game room. At that point, I was done with 'friendly tournaments'… too many buttheads who take things far too seriouly.

Have the guys that tie for the award, vote to break the tie.

Give it to the guy that looses, cause he was the better sport for voting for the other guy to win.