In the interest of transparency, I need to make a couple of public rulings. There are a bunch of rulings that have happened behind the scenes, most of which were simple "those are the rules, them's the breaks" but some of which had more finesse to them (allowing players who would otherwise have both been dropped to take a DD for one round then play each other in the next round being somewhat common). However, most have no bearing on the final playoffs. What I'm about to transparentize* does have bearing on the final 16. As I mentioned in another thread, some of this is certain to make some people mad, but hey, that's going to happen no matter what.
(1) Byes by Request. For this, I think the only fair ruling is to go by what's in the rules, notwithstanding a number of other errors in the rules (which still says, for instance, that the top 8 advance to playoffs rather than top 16). Essentially I'm trying to interpret and remember my original intent, which I believe was that the player was already being penalized on some level by being forced into a draw. Looking forward, I think next GokoDom will give defaults to byes by request, as I really don't want there to be incentive to skip a round; that's why the DD adds a default. I'm open to thoughts on this.
(2) Round 6: Marin vs. lespeutere. Anyone paying close attention to the top players might have noticed that this round 6 match never got played. The ruling on this was pretty agonizing; it's a reason that I was a bit late posting the Round 7 pairings. Essentially, both players were at least partially at fault for not getting the match together, but it was clear that Marin was more at fault. (I should become a car insurance adjuster or something.) There was no clear ruling; giving both players a DD, or giving lespeutere a WD and Marin an LD (without removing him from the tournament were both valid.
However, giving both of them a DD would have removed both from contention for the top 16; awarding the WD/LD left lespeutere with a chance at the playoffs. At the time, I told him that he would need a win (total 11) and not a draw (total 10) to advance, based on treating his prior BR as a default. Of course, my ruling above suddenly changes that--and of course, his final match ended in a draw. So I have to make an extra ruling.
Normally a WD does not carry a penalty; then again, normally a WD is because the other player has disappeared, not because I've ruled to award a player a WD despite him being, most definitely, partly at fault. I'm now going to rule that this special accommodation, which was made in the interest of fairness but also in the interest of having the best players in the playoffs, gives lespeutere a default as though he had earned a DD, but was worth 2 points as if it were a WD. This conforms to my previous advice to him that he would need a win to advance.
This ruling affects various players:
lespeutere moves to the bottom of the 10 point players, eliminating him from the playoffs.
soulnet and jsh357 do not move to the bottom of their respective score totals, though this technically doesn't affect jsh357 as he had 11 points total.
Lekkit and WalrusMcFishSr have low enough tiebreaker scores that they cannot finish higher than soulnet, who is 16th using the above rankings. I'd really like you to still finish your match though, as it could actually change the seeding in the playoffs!
The final list of qualifiers is therefore:
ragingduckd 12068050.2029
Monsieur X 12061054.2337
SheCantSayNo 12058050.288
michaeljb 12049048.2724
-Stef- 11061050.2651
Smartie 11052039.2586
jsh357 11049042.2648
JOG 10063044.2428
secret tunnel 10062041.2836
GeoLib 10059042.2222
Markowkette 10058050.105
DG 10058040.2025
AdamH 10056040.2483
faust 10056038.2717
Titandrake 10055039.1666
soulnet 10054042.1924
Note that this is not the final seeding order.
*It's a word now, OK?