I Need An Odds-Maker

Chicagoplayer

Chicagoplayer

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It seems to me that in all my years of tournament participation and watching players who are from the same country or even road partners, wind up playing each other far more often than not in the early rounds, when the odds would seem to favour a more random draw.

I’ve seen it happen often, and I’ve had it happen to me more often than pure chance would have it.

Have you ever seen a situation like this?
Example:
Bustamante & Efren enter a tournament and immediately, they’re playing against each other.

I just saw Appleton v’s Sanderson happen in the first round.

I just saw 2 Taiwanese ladies players, travel 9,500 miles to San Juan, Puerto Rico to end up playing each other in the first round.

I know that a lot hinges on the number of players competing, but what are the odds?
 
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Well it's exactly that, it ALL hinges on how many players are there, how many are from the countries and how good they are to go deeper with even more chance of playing each other and if there is seeding. I know I have had a few tournaments where I played my friends first round, even the guy I drove down with. First round is all random, after that, unless all the players are very equal, who plays who depends as much on skill as the draw.

Also keep in mind our brains tend to remember things that stand out, not the norm. I bet there are 10 tournaments for every one where two people that flew in or drove down together play each other first round. That is why pure math and statistics tend to get a lot of arguments from people that "feel" there is something wrong with the results. And you also need a large group of tournament data to work with, if you have say 3 events where two countrymen played in the first round, that is nothing for statistics, it's barely a blip and is lower than most random deviations. Now if you track 100, 200, 300 tournaments, that is a pretty good sample size. If we had say 10% total field of players from Taiwan enter in 100 events, and they played each other first round 30% of the time over those 100 events, that is something a bit odd.
 
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Chicagoplayer said:
It seems to me that in all my years of tournament participation and watching players who are from the same country or even road partners, wind up playing each other far more often than not in the early rounds, when the odds would seem to favour a more random draw.

I’ve seen it happen often, and I’ve had it happen to me more often than pure chance would have it.

Have you ever seen a situation like this?
Example:
Bustamante & Efren enter a tournament and immediately, they’re playing against each other.

I just saw Appleton v’s Sanderson happen in the first round.

I just saw 2 Taiwanese ladies players, travel 9,500 miles to San Juan, Puerto Rico to end up playing each other in the first round.

I know that a lot hinges on the number of players competing, but what are the odds?
Click to expand...

the odds are slim and none that all draws are random

UPDATE: slim got in the wind
 
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Hmmm...let's see. If there are 63 other people in the draw, then your chances of playing a specific player first round is...uhm...1/63, or 62:1 odds. Now, if it's a player like Efren or Bustamante, things are more complicated. According to the theory of electro-magnetism, which states that electric players are more readily attracted to scared players, then the chances you draw one of them approximately doubles to 2/63 or 30.5 :1 odds. Still, even at 30.5 : 1 odds it's clear that it's nearly impossible to draw a specific player first round, so if you happen to draw that player, then the draw was rigged. OKAY?!! Kari Lake.

Another way to look at it is: if you play 31 tournaments with the same players, you should expect to draw Bustamante one time in the first round (electro-magnetism at work). But, if you draw him twice in the first round, then the Milky Way will spin out of control, and it will crash into another universe because all electro-magnetic theories will implode and the imminent destruction of the heavens will begin. That's how probabilities work.
 
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Chicagoplayer said:
... I know that a lot hinges on the number of players competing, but what are the odds?
Click to expand...
In the case of Appleton/Sanderson the odds would have been doubled if one of them was seeded and the other was in the half of players that was not seeded. And if they were both seeded, they would not have been matched up in the first round.

The unfortunate matchups are the ones you notice. There will usually be at least one per tournament. I used to get eliminated by the same pair of brothers in double elimination tournaments -- Nick and Danny Cano -- one on the winners' side and one on the losers'. It seemed like every time, but of course it wasn't.
 
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It happens. Remember Emily drawing both UK teams for a 1st round match in the WCOP this year?
The Kos drew each other earlier this year too, iirc.
It's just bad luck and it's everywhere. I used to travel all over the state to play in tennis tournaments when I was a teen.
There was at least one event where my road partner and I had to play in the 1st round. It's worse in tennis due to it being single elimination.
Drive 6 hours together to have one guy sitting all day long while the other plays through to bracket.
 
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Bob Jewett said:
In the case of Appleton/Sanderson the odds would have been doubled if one of them was seeded and the other was in the half of players that was not seeded. And if they were both seeded, they would not have been matched up in the first round.

The unfortunate matchups are the ones you notice. There will usually be at least one per tournament. I used to get eliminated by the same pair of brothers in double elimination tournaments -- Nick and Danny Cano -- one on the winners' side and one on the losers'. It seemed like every time, but of course it wasn't.
Click to expand...
Thank you Bob.

Were there ever times that you noticed Nick & Danny matched up against each other?
 
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To answer the question directly....

If you are worried about two particular friends being matched up in the first round of a 64-player unseeded event, it is one in 63. If you have several pairs of friends you know, then the odds get a lot higher. If some of the groups of friends have three or more members, the odds climb more.
 
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