CDZ CUP 5 Final Ranking and Post-Discussions

[Kemal]

Ah, time passes quickly when you are having fun, already we have left behind us what has been the 5th installment of the prestigious CDZ Cup, in which once again no team found the answer to solving FC Suca's ongoing domination of this event, however the level of competition once again seems to have risen compared to previous editions, and several teams look ready to seriously challenge ciuly in his quest to add yet another trophee for his cabinet in edition 6!

I thought it might be wise to start a new topic to discuss the tournament so far, since not only is everyone's view on his own achievements in the cup a nice and fun thing to read, it also creates a seperate thread to discuss how perhaps things can be improved and done even better next time around.

First things first though, so lets first take a look at the Final Ranking of the 20 teams that took part this season:


CUP WINNER:

1. FC SUCA

2. Toffee's United
3. Dynamo Morpork
4. Acorazado Fuerte
5. Yellow Boots
6. Chemists
7. Meli's Manglers
8. Crvena Zvevda Strijp
9. Spartak Wageningen
10. FC De Snaken
11. PP SV
12. Shabba FC
13. Codrutul Doiciesti
14. Swingstars
15. Aristocats
16. Dom Ducks
17. Grasshoppers Elm
18. Wartham United
19. Black Marlins.
20. Chimica Tarnaveni

Congrats to Cup winner FC Suca!

With the tournament finished, and hopefully a 6th version being played in the near future, time though perhaps too to look back and see what might be done better next time. Hopefully everyone could take the time to give his/her own views on this matter and what could be done to make the CDZ Cup even more enjoyable, please all voice your thoughts here. :)

One important issue before the game started was the actual format of the tournament, especially whether the traditional "old style" cup format was to be used, or a radical new "Swiss style" setup where teams would be mostly playing teams of the same strength.
Personally, while I was initially very much against a change of format, I have to admit that, having had 3 CDZ tournies under my belt now, I do think some changes might not be a bad thing per se.. this especially involves the compatibility of the current format with one important goal the CDZ Cup also sets for itself, that being that it should be a tournament with an international character.

Already when the draw took place, problems arose with regard to this as for the lower seeded teams, their faith was pretty much decided on how the higher ranked teams had been drawn into different groups. Since we do not have that big of a spread of users with different nationalities, this will mean that using a league system where teams should play as much international friendlies as possible will both hamper the diversity of the draw and thus the played matches, since you will end up playing some teams a lot more often than others, as well as having an impact on the balance of each group with regard to team strength, since we actively try to avoid groups of (for example)4-5 Dutch teams, even if they would have been the best draw with regard to the actual strength of the respective teams.

I think that under the current format these goals are not being met. When I look at my own team's matches played this edition, I noticed I have only played two teams I had not played before, which was new participant Crvena Zvevda Strijp, and Dom Ducks in the knockout stages, and ended up playing only 4 out of 11 games as an international friendly. I do think there is room for improvement on this.

Back to the topic of tournament's format, I think that in itself a long league stage followed by a short cup rules stage works very well considering the actual strength of the teams. The league stage ensures that teams will get to play one really strong/weaker team as well at least once per edition, and the fact that goal difference matters also makes these matches at least somewhat important. (Almost) everyone loses to FC Suca, but the one who loses with the smalles goal difference essentially gets a bonus point in a league system.
Also, I think that a slightly longer league stage will, in the case of a good inital seeding of the teams, allow the cup stages to take place between teams of relative equal strength, meaning that those games will be closer and thus more interesting to follow.
Finally, a longer league stage slightly decreases the risk of injuries to your trainees, as it means a general decrease of overtime played in the cup. :)

To conclude, unfortunately there have been quite a few walkovers in this edition as well.. most had their reasons I suppose, as has been explained in the 5th edition thread, but still it seems so easy to get one simple friendly match arranged. Hopefully it has been just a coincidence this season, and next season will see all matches played again.. perhaps we should ask yndy to start his ht-mail/PM offensive again for teams that have not arranged their matches at saturday yet, since it seems that this has been the first season that he has not done so. Seems to be a connection then, I guess.. ;)

[hmm], quite a long read unfortunately, I see, my apologies... hopefully people will feel free to give their own opinions as well, whether on the 5th edition in particular, or the CDZ cup format in general.

[Shabbaman]

The cup was okay, but I'd rather have played more different teams instead of the same teams twice. One issue I had with the roster is that I couldn't easily make out who I had to play the next week.

Oh, and somehow my midfielders got sent off disproportionally often. Fix that please.

[Kingreno]

hmm...interesting read Kemal!

I too have been thinking about how to make this cup more interesting and the way to do that is to increase the number of knock-out matches! As it is now only 3 matches are played KO, being the final, the SF and the QF. These also take place in the last weeks of the season meaning the top teams (toffee/suca/Morpork) get to use their best squads. In the weeks before that their teams are likely a bit less good due to various reasons, but can afford a loss because the top 2 teams advance in every group. If we want to make it more exiting, add more KO rounds, that way there is a far bigger chance a small team reaches the last 4.

On other matters. It is a cup. That means [u]randomness</u>. I would realy like us to stop arranging matches too much. If the draw puts 5 Dutch clubs in one group so be it, same goes for seeding. It is so Dutch to try and get all the top teams to the final! Do it the old fashioned way: 20 teams, random groups! More fun, more great matches!

Walk-overs: this sucks bigtime. I will talk to Stephko (Cvazda Zvrena Strijp, he seemed to be difficult to get challenged) and will make sure no-one has to fear him not accepting a challenge again, for other teams who failed to obey, please don't.

[Dell19]

I'm going to be in the BDFNC again this season most likely.

I would kind of like to see a shorter cup since this season I arranged 2 friendlies through my own choice and thats after going out in the first round of the actual cup.

[yndy]

Nice read Kemal, thanks for your help, it is true that I have stopped my ht-mail offensive and it may have very well been the reason for the larger number of walkovers, luckily there was no lost training in the end (or was it?). On the other hand I left the tourney organization on your hand and you were there to make sure everything went smoothly, again thanks for that.

I have liked this format with more league games and only 3 KO stages, I think that teams which proved themselves worthy managed to get in the finals and then 3 KO allowed some lucky ones to climb higher than expected. Although I'm happy with this set-up, I don't have strong views against Swiss type or more KO phases.

I agree with you that the draw can be improved from the set-up of the groups to the initial seeding. You have seen and I warned you from the beginning that my team was not competitive enough to be a challenge to other teams yet it was seeded pretty high. One ideea that comes to me at this time is to have only 2 groups with 10 teams (completely random) each, playing one game against each other, than the KO phase. That's 12 games already (9+3) maybe too much but i think that we avoid having unbalanced groups (hopefully), get more international (anyone will play with at least 10 different teams) and keep the lenght of the Cup and the league part. Also helps with the schedule, it will be set up for most of the Cup from day 1.

I'd love to hear other people's ideas though and would also like to ask you to estimate when can we start the cup, I believe FC Suca, Toffee's and Dynamo Morpork will play at least 4 rounds, me I will be lucky to ge tto Round 3.

[Kemal]

Thanks for the input here people, seems like we have some totally opposite views posed here so far, both with regard to cup format (KO or not) as well as length.

As said, my own view is, like yndy, actually leaning towards more league stage games rather than KO games as well, simply because I think the differences between teams participating in the Cup is too big for the KO stages to be of any real excitement early on. I still do very much think that no matter how well you perform as manager, some teams can never be beaten by other teams (again, fc suca vs 80% of the CDZ-HT population comes to mind) making KO stages early on for those teams more or less pointless, since they will lose anyway and it does not influence their ranking on how well they try to perform in such a specific match, while under the league system it does (mainly due to goal difference).

Also, arranging matches for all teams with a very large KO stage can be difficult, and make the setting up of matches a bit non-transparent (I do agree with shabba's complaint about this) when your next opponent would more or less be drawn randomly each week, or at least be dependant of other matches as well. To add icing to the cake, we will have less chances on injuries as well.

Of course, final stages of the cup should remain KO games so that the winner won't be known until the very last game has been played. :)

About randomizing pools, I'm not really sure. On the one hand getting a chance to play any team associated with CDZ and hattrick is a good thing, however there is a distinct possibility that we will end up with one group being significantly stronger than the other, while still only the best teams per group slug it out for 1st place in the final KO stages. That would mean teams that perform better would miss out on the finals simply because they were competiting with very strong players in the league stages, whereas the final round could become a joke because the other group's winners would be much weaker in strength than the teams finishing first in the strong league group.
Of course, this would also be the situation when lots of weak teams would be allocated to one specific group, except that it wouldn't be the 1st place at stake then.

In short, I think such a completely random system will heavily skewer the final rankings, possibly to a point that they do no longer reflect the performance of each team in the cup that season at all anymore. Some seeding would I think be prudent, though I'm still very much in the dark as to what the exact seeding criterias would need to be... perhaps something with average stars scored in the previous edition of the cup?

@yndy: not sure when the cup could start, but certainly not before week 4 I think.. and if we want to start as early as week 5, we should have some way of getting teams to join in in the first few weeks after the cup started without penalizing them too much, I feel.

[Kingreno]

I do not agree on the part that fixing the groups is better at all! So what if Morpork, Suca and toffees are drawn in a group and several weak teams are in another?
First, it would make the group matches even remotely important; as it is now, the teams that will progress are virtually predetermined! Looking at this years groups there were no real suprises now were there?
Second, for smaller teams it would greatly increase the chance of reaching the next round; I bet Thrawn would love to fight for something else then 16th place (with all respect!). The problem that a weak team then may reach the KO-stage is also not entirely valid as he may just train stamina that week and play his first team[crazyeye].
All in all I seriosuly do not like the seeding. I hate it in the Dutch KNVB-beker and I hate it here. sorry if that offends anyone. :D

[Kemal]

Well, I guess it depends on how you look at the cup. For me, the Cup is a nice way to try and see how well you perform compared to other teams playing HT, i.e. to get an idea how my team('s reserves) stand against fellow CDZ-ers. Therefore, I'd like the ranking to be at least trying to be accurate a bit.

Also, isn't there always a next round? That's one of the main pros of the cup, I think: everyone gets to play rounds until the end! And however you decide to draw, there simply is just no way possible that teams that are new to hattrick will be able to go for the top places, and I seriously would wonder if those newer teams will enjoy getting trounced each week by far superior opponents instead of having a more balanced cup run, playing some strong and some weak opponents (thus also resulting in a more balanced end-result).

Btw, about the surprises this year... I'd classify Crvena Zvevda Strijp and Chemists as surprising QF participants, would have expected the Aristocats there, really... ;)

edit: this is not meant to disqualify the idea of not seeding per se, just my view on the matter, and why I think we should continue to pursue balanced groups. :)

[Thrawn]

quote:Originally posted by Kingreno

I bet Thrawn would love to fight for something else then 16th place

You bet I would. :D

[Håkon]

Just a heads-up that I won't be playing in the CDZ Cup this season - I've already committed myself to another late-season cup with some other HT friends. It's been fun, though :)

[Kemal]

Okay people, as you can see registration for the 6th editon of the cup has now opened. After discussion with yndy it seemed that a league/KO setup seems still to be the most preferred option, so that is what the current rulesset is going to work with, at least for now.

However, it now still shows an incomplete rulesset awaiting agreement on (at least) two important issues:

1. When do we want to start the cup? Currently it will be starting at week 7 of the current HT season.
2. Will we totally randomize the teams, or use (a limited form of) seeding.

Please speak your mind on these issues if you want to join in, and please register your team in the signup thread to confirm participation.

My personal opinion has always been to use seeding as I think balanced groups are a fair way to see who has the best (reserve) team of CDZ, however as the previous incarnations have shown, it is difficult to create a system where the seeding truly reflect team skill.

To counter this, I'd like to suggest for everyone to take a look at the average star rating you managed in the previous edition of the cup, and base our ranking on that, with equal amounts being decided on join date.
This should lead to a fairly equal division of teams per group, I hope, while avoiding having, for example, Toffee's, Suca and Morpork all in one group with Black Marlins, which would not be much fun I suppose.

Furthermore, as has been rightly pointed out here already by some, I now too strongly support letting go of the balancing for int. friendlies rule... since there are quite a lot of teams that have origins in the same country, the draw really becomes a farce (as I experienced when making the draw the previous editon) when coming up to the last final teams, where this rule predestines where a team will end up way before it is actually drawn into a group. To add diversity, I think we should therefore just accept that some will have to play national friendlies a bit more often than others.

So, registration is now open then (hopefully we can surpass the amount of teams participating once again [cool]), and the organization is eager to hear what other people think about the ideas posted here. The sooner we hear your opinions, the faster we can finalize the format and rulesset, thus starting of another cup year!

[Dell19]

Stars are evil. A much better rating system is hatstats and it would probably be fairer to look at all friendly and league performances over the last 16 weeks to actually rank teams accurately rather than ranking one team abnormally high because last season they had WOs in the league so played their first team in friendlies.

[Kemal]

Agreed on hatstats, but using all 16 friendlies could unbalance things a bit... I supposed seedings should reflect cup performances, not your average friendly team performance. If people prioritize the cup, they should be rewarded for it I think, and with 11 games one better team will not change the overall average that much I suppose..

[Kingreno]

[sad]

We tried seeding for several seasons now, why not do it random this time and let us judge it in the end of the tourney!

[smirk]

[Dell19]

The idea is that if you use all 32(ish) games then the accuracy increases as you take into account that a team's friendly side could be very bad whilst also taking into account what the team is capable of and finally making sure no one gets an easy ranking from happening to play a much better squad in league games or friendlies.

[yndy]

I was thinking we should take into account only games within the last CDZ Cup, it also shows how committed are some managers to use their best players in the CDZ Cup. Hatstats should work for me, remember that if it's hard for you to find out, I can find it for you, Mozilla Firefoz + foxtrick rule in this respect.

[socralynnek]

Another possibility could be to have two league stages, so that the first league stage can be done without seeding. And then afterwards a KO stage.
And don't forget the possibility for matches on neutral ground, so dutch teams could also play here in Germany...

[Dell19]

quote:Originally posted by yndy

I was thinking we should take into account only games within the last CDZ Cup, it also shows how committed are some managers to use their best players in the CDZ Cup. Hatstats should work for me, remember that if it's hard for you to find out, I can find it for you, Mozilla Firefoz + foxtrick rule in this respect.


Foxtrick is pretty amazing considering all the added functionality. I like the recent addition of lineup side switching so that you turn your lineup around automatically. Especially useful when playing 3-4-3 with only 1 winger.

database.xray is useful since the backdraft function will display hatstats ratings for the last 16 games on the same page however my trial period is currently expired for the next 25 days.