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Once they are charted then no changes are made.Any withdrawal are treated as a bye with the winning player advancing to the next round. In the unlikely case of them reaching the next round and still finding no opponent then he will advance another round. That is just his good luck
So is that what all the outage is about? It's just the timing of the replacement? So had the charts not already been drawn putting in a replacement would not have been a big deal to anyone?
For whatever reason, many people on this site are just too emotionally invested in this. Why that is, I have no idea. Is it because we all had such big hopes for this tournament? Or maybe it’s because we all want professional pool to thrive so badly. Is that it? Is it because we have all been looking forward to having all these top players compete in the U.S. for some time? I really don't know what the answer to that question is. But let me pose a different hypothetical question and one that very easily could have happened.
Let's say the Ko brothers each reached the semi-finals only to realize they both had to head home or risk missing their plane. Would everyone be as outraged if CSI chose to fill those two vacancies? I'm not so sure there would be as much outage. I think everyone would have been pleased to see Appleton and SVB get another shot. Or whoever else would have filled those spots, especially if it was Efren - who everybody loves. Honestly, would everybody be outraged if CSI filled those two spots? Or would everybody understand that there was a tournament to be run and the next two players would need to step up?
Would everyone say -- "WAIT A SECOND!!! The charts have already been drawn and they were drawn in ink so they can't be erased. We must move right ahead to the finals." What if a portion of the first name was only written down on the chart? I can't imagine where we would even begin to sort out that epic moral quandary.
But I guess a rule is a rule and if the point of no return is once the chart is drawn than so be it. So the outrage is that CSI chose to break a written (or unwritten) rule by redrawing a chart. I could see that being worthy of criticism, but certainly not worthy of the death penalty or its equivalent -- no longer supporting CSI events.
I lied. Maybe I do know what's going on here. I think there are three things at play. First, we have reached a SVB saturation level. We all know he is a great player and clearly the best in the U.S. but many have simply grown tired of seeing him play. Second, many people have been suspect of the move toward invitational tournaments and excluding certain U.S. professionals from the mix. And last but most importantly, I think most of us U.S. pool fans (and our Canadian brothers) are decent people and we want to be viewed this way from the international players when they come here. We don't want them to feel slighted in the least because this makes us all look bad in a sense.
Now when you throw these three things into a blender and mix them all up you get the type of outrage that we have seen on this forum. But if you don't mix these things together and you just look at what actually took place in this tournament I don't think you will be as outraged. Instead, you will just possibly conclude that CSI made a mistake by redrawing the brackets after the fact. They didn't set out to screw someone over since this is not something they have a history of doing, at least not without a good reason. They weren't trying to push Shane into the final because he's their poster boy because had this happened in Appleton's group, I'm certain they would have done the same thing.
So just look at what happened. Is the outrage here REALLY because they redrew a portion of the bracket after the fact or are other things at play here?
I for one -- think there are other things at play and CSI really deserves better than that.
