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Guide: The Swiss System

Fragster Fundamentals are your entry into the world of esports! With beginner-friendly guides and tips for advanced learners, we... Fabio | 6. August 2021

Fragster Fundamentals are your entry into the world of esports! With beginner-friendly guides and tips for advanced learners, we will help you better understand competitive gaming and your favorite titles.

In 2017, Valve first brought the Swiss System into the CS:GO scene. Since then, every Major tournament has made use of it. The format has gone over to lots of esports titles as well and is now a part of Dota 2, Hearthstone, FIFA, Overwatch, and many more. In this Fragster Fundamentals edition, we’ll explain how the format works and why it is so incredibly useful!

Our feature on the GSL format already has a detailed explanation on the ESL One Cologne 2016 disaster. In short: ESL messed up the seeding of their groups so much that the three best teams in the world all ended up in one group. This uncovered one of the biggest weaknesses of the GSL format, which only really works with proper seeding and doesn’t result in an accurate team ranking anyways. We don’t know whether Valve implemented Swiss as a direct response to this incident or if they just felt that it was time to change. But the next Major tournament took place without GSL and with the Swiss System.

HOW DOES THE SWISS SYSTEM WORK?

The format has a simple underlying principle: Teams with the same track record play against each other. In the first round, there are obviously no winners and losers, so everyone is in the same pool. But in Round 2, these 16 teams are split into eight losers and eight winners. The teams with a 1-0 score are going up against each other, just like the ones with a 0-1 track record. In Round 3, there are three pools: 2-0, 1-1, and 0-2. This is where good and bad split.

swiss format

The Swiss System at the Faceit Major London 2018 (via Reddit)

 

No team gets more than three wins or losses. So with a 3-0 score, you’re off to the next event stage, with an 0-3 score, you’re eliminated. Four teams will already be going home in that round. This means that there are only two pools left in Round 4: 2-1 and 1-2. An additional three teams will make their way to the next stage, three take the flight home. The very last round features three more matches, which decides on the remaining winners and losers. This way, every team gets three chances to qualify and not lose. The best part is: No two opponents will ever meet twice!

WHY SWISS IS SO USEFUL

There are obvious benefits: With GSL, teams exit after two losses, so there is an additional lifeline here. The Swiss System naturally creates a seeding and ranking order for better or worse participants. Strong contenders can qualify after three wins and in the worst case, a squad might have to play out five matches. Even though this means more games than with GSL, this format still requires considerably less play-time than Round Robin.

And unlike Round Robin, where every match is just “a group match” first and foremost, every encounter in the Swiss Bracket features a clear storyline. The ‘2-1’ or ‘1-2’ labels give them a clear role that every viewer with a mild understanding of the format can pick up on. No one has to calculate what happens if Team A wins, Team B loses, Team C ties…

This might arguably be Round Robin’s biggest weakness, aside from the obviously higher amount of matches required. But even though the Swiss System has a natural seeding built-in with hits rounds and pools, the teams still shouldn’t be thrown into the bracket at random.

THE SWISS SYSTEM’S WEAKNESSES

Unfortunately, it happens all too often that bad seeding ruins at least the first round. If favorites have to square up against each other, one of the teams inadvertently has to drop down to the 0-1 pool. A frontrunner will probably make it out of that situation alive, but it might become an issue for the rest of the teams within that pool. The ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 is a great example and worth studying:

swiss boston2018

Rounds 1 and 5 of the New Challengers Stage in Boston (via Liquipedia)

The Challengers Stage there already let some favorites loose on each other. FaZe and Liquid had to fight for the victory, while G2 got gifted a win over Flash Gaming. Later in Round 5, ELEAGUE drew the remaining matches randomly. This led to a ridiculous bracket, one where mouz was allowed to win over Renegades and Quantum Bellator Fire advanced over Avangar, but Liquid had to fight Natus Vincere. The latter two would have both deserved to make it through. Instead, Liquid bombed out against NaVi and failed to make the Major’s Top 16.

So just like GSL, the Swiss System requires proper seeding to work. It would be even better to re-seed after every round and not draw matches at random. Another issue is the use of Best-of-One matches. Even though teams have an extra lifeline compared to GSL, these single maps still aren’t a great measurement for a team’s strength. That’s why StarLadder conducted their Swiss Stages with Best-of-Three series from start to finish. There are hardly any chances for upsets and the teams can bring their best to the server!

We’ll be back with more Fragster Fundamentals soon. We’re not even remotely done with the topic of tournament formats. There’s so much more to discover and explain in esports. So if you’re interested in that sort of thing, you should bookmark Fragster and stick around for more!