ALPHA

ALPHA is a type of equTournament which gives a lot of freedom to tournament officials and players to schedule matches and decide who should play against whom. It is quite an opposite approach to the traditional scheduling systems which are bound by very strict rules.

For example, in a widely-used round-robin system, every participant must play against every other participant. So, if some team would like to play against their biggest rival more than one time, then they would have to play against all others one more time. But ALPHA has no such overload.

In ALPHA, the biggest rivals could play as many matches against each other as they wish, because, in ALPHA the results of those matches would be interpreted differently than in the case of a round-robin system where a victory, a tie and a loss are rewarded with a certain numbers of points. In ALPHA the results of those matches, in a way, represent only one result - the relation of the "strengths" of the opponents.

Scheduling deficiencies are a big part of another widely-used tournament system - the elimination system. In an elimination tournament, the competitor who loses to the champion at the quarterfinal or semifinal stage, has no chance to have a match against the runner-up, even if both players would like to play this match. This deficiency does not exist in the ALPHA system. For example, if at a certain stage of the tournament it seems like John should play against Peter, or they both would like to play against each other, then nothing should stop this from happening.

ALPHA opens doors for creativity in organizing tournaments. It can handle an unlimited number of scheduling schemes and rules, to the limit of your imagination. Moreover, it is capable of combining both singles and doubles matches (for sports where it is applicable) in one ranking. This is very convenient, for example, in tennis tournaments where certain participants would prefer to play more singles while others would like to play more doubles or only doubles.

ALPHA's ranking system consists of a main ranking and an introductory ranking. The participants from the main ranking can be regarded as "active" or "credible" participants, or be those who have played against a certain number of opponents. All others participants are those who have had a "nonactive" or "weak" participation in a tournament and are thus classified under an introductory ranking. For example, it can be someone who has played only two matches and then decided to quit.

The main ranking criterion is set by the ranking requirement parameter. For example, if the ranking requirement=0 then it means that all of the participants belong to the main ranking, and there is no introductory ranking. In the screenshot bellow all thirteen participants of a tennis tournament belong to the main ranking.

If the ranking requirement is not equal to zero, then for participants to get into the main ranking, they must play against the required number of opponents from the main ranking. Basically, the main ranking consists of competitors who played against the required number of opponents within this group. In the next screenshot we set the ranking requirement to 5, as a result, the main ranking group consists only of competitors who have played against at least 5 other competitors within this group. Now, the main ranking group consists of ten players, while the introductory ranking group consists of three players.

Among the competitors in the introduction ranking is Helen, who, as you can see from the screenshot below, has already played against 5 opponents:

Why is she in the introduction ranking? Because Trent - one of the opponents she has played, had only two matches, so he cannot possibly be in the main ranking group.

Therefore, simply playing against 5 opponents is not enough to get into the main ranking group.

The computation of the main ranking will use only the results of this group. If Khalid belongs to the main ranking and Helen to the introductory ranking, then the result of a match between them will have no effect on the main ranking, but will affect the introductory ranking. The main ranking will subsequently be affected as soon as Helen plays against a sufficient number of opponents from the main ranking to fulfill the ranking requirement criterion.

The computation of the introductory ranking is always made following the main ranking computation, and in relation to the main ranking. It might happen that the competitor who has the most points is from the introductory ranking. For example, Stephane arrived late for the tournament, and he was able to play only one match. He had a great score against Michael, which puts him in the first position with 10,000 points.

Though, his performance gives a hint of how good he possibly is, but it is not enough to consider him as an official leader of the tournament.

The bottom line is that the main ranking must consist only of active and commited participants. This rule goes beyond tournaments, and is especially important in the country- or province-wide ranking systems. For example, if the tennis association consists of 300 members, and the ranking is based on the whole year performance, then we would recommend to set a ranking requirement no less than 25. Generally, the ranking requirement should be set by tournament or association officials after taking into account all the specifics of the particular sport, tournament or league.

Equtar provides several tools which can help in managing the ALPHA system efficiently. Equtar's dialogs: Suggest Singles, Suggest Doubles, Suggest Matches and Info dialogs (software) contain almost all of the necessary statistics which can help you make the right scheduling choice.