With the number of rounds we will play, the spots #5 - #8 will be somewhat random. As a result, ending up #1 is exactly as good as #2 or #3. If you're safe for making top8, you might even willingly lose/draw the last round. I don't like systems that enable and/or encourage this kind of tricks at all. And for the players ending up #5-#8: It would also be very dissatisfying if you're kicked out of the tournament because you ended up #6, while #8 has an easy quarterfinal.
I get that problem. I would be ok if #1,#2, #3 could pick only from #5 to #8. I don't like that possibility of denying a choice for #2 or #3.
I think that
if I do this, there would be a requirement to pick from someone in 4-8... obviously #4 would not get a choice either way, the only picks will be by 1, 2, and 3.
At the same time, I'm unsure there's (1) any evidence that people are gaming the system and (2) any reason to believe you
can game the system. Intentionally drawing the last match is very likely to drop you from, say, the #1 spot to a #3/#4 spot, and at the opposite end from #5 to out of the top 8. Intentionally throwing the last match is likely to drop you out of the top 8 unless you're in the top 4 going into the last round, and doing so then moves you out of the area where you could pick into the area where you
can't pick, which would be the less desirable choice. And let's not even start with the problem where you can't predict whether #13 or #14 is going to be the winner of their match, so trying to get #8 instead of #7 may be a futile exercise.
OK, sure, there could be a ton of collusion by, say, the top 8 players (going into the last round) to all draw their matches with one another... but then if #9 or #10 from the previous round wins, #7 or #8 will lose their spots, which means they won't collude, which means the collusion just falls apart. We're talking about a prisoner's dilemma involving more than 2 people now, and I think that pretty much always gets "won" by a single defector, not to mention two or more.
Try to guess who will defect?
Now we're just playing Mafia. We have an entire forum for that.
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The more I write, the less I think this is actually needed. But I may conduct a test at the end of the next-to-last round, which would be this:
Before the final round begins, I'll ask everyone in, say, the top 16--those with a realistic chance of getting into the top 8--to look at the standings and decide: would they consider throwing or intentionally drawing a match in the belief that it would help them? I would do this by PM, and keep the results anonymous except for numbers--in fact, I'd be willing to ask someone not involved in the tournament at all to do the data collection and then present me nothing but numbers after the round was complete, for the sake of fairness. It would be an interesting social experiment!