The following is a guest post from Eric Wainright. He discusses and critiques the way FFG calculated Strength of Schedule, a measure used as a tie breaker when players have the same win loss record, at Star Wars Destiny Worlds 2018.



After wondering how Strength of Schedule(SoS) was calculated for day 2 of Worlds this year (2018). I went on a little hunt that turned into the following google sheet. I’m going to get into crunchy numbers in the 2nd half of the article discussing a bit of a gaffe with the way FFG calculated SoS this year – fortunately it did not affect top 16 or top 32 this year. But first I’d just like to talk about some findings from this data. If I misspelled your name I apologize. I entered this data by hand off of blurry photos taken by The Chance Cube and Knights of Ren.

Can a 4-2 player make top 16?

One thing a lot of people were discussing during the week was could someone who was 4-2 sneak into the top 16. This year it did not happen. Brian Lindberg got closest with a 20th place finish. Assuming no pair ups, the best records Brian’s opponents could have was 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 His opponents won 2 of the 3 games they could have after playing him, so he had a 5-4, 6-3, and 6-3. This year even if he had gotten the 6-3,6-3, 6-3, he would have jumped two spots and would have had the same first tiebreaker as Gilbert and Jonathan, but I doubt that a 4-2 player would have a day 1 SoS above Gilbert’s 0.61111. However, the numbers are getting close enough that you could imagine one 4-2 sneaking into 16th place. If Gilbert had a similar day 1 SoS to Johnathan, and everything fell Brian’s way, there is a non-zero chance that he could’ve made it.

On the other side of the equation the worst SoS that a 5-1 can have is if they L,W,W, their opponents could have 6-3, 5-4, 6-3 (again assuming no pair downs). This is what happened to Sean Agular and Matteo Natalini. The room for 4-2s passing 5-1s is slim but if a disproportionate number of 5-1s lose two games and more 4-2s win out, that would satisfy the overall number of X-2s and remove some of the 5-1s from the field, I think it’s the most likely case for a 4-2 getting in. We just don’t have 16 players that are 7-2 or more and started the day with 5+ wins. With the large number of games played, that kind of result would be unlikely. Possible pair ups add a fraction of a percentage to the likelihood, although it would require the 4-2 that got the pair up to win out. Above are the paths I see for a 4-2 sneaking in, but I’d bet against a 4-2 making top 16. If FFG kept the same format and number of players we might see it happen every 5 years.

Which day was it better to play on?

I’m not talking about which day gives you a better chance to advance to day 2. You can try and outsmart the crowd and figure out what day the “weakest” players come to play. But once you make day 2, does any day have a distinct advantage? The theory going in was day 1C could evaluate the meta, and tech against decks that had already earned day 2 honors (or even switch decks to combat those decks). Day 1A had 31 players qualify, Day 1B had 34, and Day 1C had 37. Statistically we need to do a bit of leveling to see which day had the most success. There are a number of ways to do this but I chose to tally the total number of points earned for each flight, and divided it by the number of points that each had going into the day:

1A: 183/136 = 1.35

1B: 204/149 = 1.37

1C: 210/162 = 1.30

I hesitate to use top 16 as a cutoff (even though that is the goal for most) because it is arbitrary cut off. I’m happy to count up the number of players ending with a 7-2 record or better (top 27).

1A: 8

1B: 12

1C: 7

The numbers above don’t seem to prove out the theory that waiting helps you out. The only numbers that seem to suggest waiting is better are those for players going 8-1 or better.

1A: 1

1B: 3

1C: 3

I guess a case can be made that the best of the best utilized the extra data to bring the right tech (or the right deck). And I bet there are few people who might attribute some of their success to that extra information. But if you want to believe that then you also have to believe yourself to be one the best of the best to properly utilize that information, because on balance the Saturday flight had no statistical advantage over the field.

Should there have been an extra round added to the tournament?

I want to stress that the rules for worlds were completely fair. Everyone knew what was needed to make the cut well in advance. I am not trying to say that anything was improperly done this year. If you wanted to get in go 8-1, or win early and lose late to go 7-2, and cross your fingers. That said with the number of players that were at worlds the cut to 16 would have been much “cleaner” if a 10th round was added. The seven 8-1+ players would be in. Which leaves 9 spots for 20 7-2s. There would have been 1 pair up and 1 pair down, so we would have ended with 16, 17, or 18 7-2+ players if there was one more round. It seems like for an event like worlds one more round added to Day 1s would have been pretty easy to accommodate. Day 1s would have still finished before dinnertime and everyone that advanced to Day 2 would have had a real shot of making the top 16.

While we are on the subject, can I ask once again why we have to cut to exactly 16 players? Missing a cut on SoS feels awful. Why not cut to X-2 (or X-1 if you are so inclined). If you get 18 players, you get the bottom four to play one more round to make the top 16. A negative consequence of doing this would be that some 15th or 16th seed might not make the final 16, but they were only there because of “mostly random” SoS in the first place. If only 15 players make X-2. You give the X-3 in 16th spot the top 16 prize but they don’t get to try and knock off #1 seed. #1 seed earns a bye for all their work through Swiss. #16 can’t complain, they lost 3 games, and lucked into some cool swag. I think minimizing the role of SoS would be good for the game.

Strength of Schedule at World 2018

Alright time for some number crunching, you have been warned.

From Fantasy Flights regulation doc:

“Strength of Schedule: A player’s strength of schedule is calculated by dividing each opponent’s total tournament points by the number of rounds that opponent has played, adding the results of each opponent played, and then dividing that total by the number of opponents the player has played.”

FFG didn’t quite use this formula this year for worlds. If they had all the SoS numbers would range between 0 and 1. But everything we saw was well above 1. After some help from HonestlySarcastic and thegandork on Discord I was able to identify the equation they used to calculate strength of schedule.

They divided each opponent’s total tournament points by the number of rounds played on day 2 plus 1, and then dividing that total by the number of opponents the player has played.

FFG threw out the day one strength of schedule, so let’s drop an example to wrap our head around this:

Player X went 4-2 day one. On day two they didn’t face any pair ups or pair downs, and they went W, W, W to player A, player B, and player C respectively. They ended their day 7-2.

Player A ends at: 6-3

Player B ends at: 5-4

Player C ends at: 6-3

Under regulations this would be:

(6/9 + 5/9 + 6/9)/3 = .62963

Under worlds 2018 SoS:

(6/4 + 5/4 + 6/4)/3 = 1.41667 (see Brian Lindberg or the next 4 names under him 19th-23rd place)

Why does this matter you may ask. The numbers are different but it is just a different denominator. It is the same for everyone so everyone just gets an inflated SoS. Right? I thought so as well until I ran into some odd SoS numbers that didn’t fit that pattern. When players had opponents that dropped something screwy happened. It was actually better if an opponent dropped than if they stayed in and won out the rest of the matches. Let’s say Brian first opponent dropped and went 4-3 instead of 6-3:

(4/2 + 5/4 + 6/4) = 1.5833

The 4/2 ratio is significantly better than the 6/4 ratio (if the ratios were 4/7 and 6/9 there would be no issues).

If that had happened this worlds Brian would have jumped into 15th or 16th place. I’ve marked in red all the records that involved opponents dropping before the end. David Hausknect and Hunter Shelburne would still have been in the top 16 but their seeding would have been different. I myself should be dropped down 5 more spots. Fortunately nobody got shifted inside the top 16 or top 32.

FFG will need to clean this up before next year or we could see people begging others to drop after they defeat them.

The other data points I colored were just players that they themselves dropped. The adjusted SoS did not affect their placement, but I called them out to keep track of any possible idiosyncrasies I found.

As for the rest of the spreadsheet column Ab B, C, D, H, I, and J all came from the photos online. Column F, G, L, M, N, O, P, and Q are the places I messed around with calculations coming up with the above conclusions. If you want to dig into the data and have some questions feel free to hit me up on discord at @wiwwt.

I had a great time at worlds this year, thanks to everyone who came out and made it a blast.

-Eric Wainright

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