Does the draw decide more than we admit?

[Arc4dia]

Coaches talk about a "good draw" or a "bad draw" like it's weather, but I've never seen anyone put numbers on it. In a 32-athlete WT category, how much of the medal outcome is seeding and bracket position versus what actually happens on the mat?
A couple of things I've never found a clear answer to:
Do byes distort the paths enough to matter, or does it even out across the bracket?
Is being unseeded next to a seeded block worse in R16 than the seeding rules imply?
For those of you who corner at tournaments: do you actually prepare differently once the draw is out, or is the preparation the same regardless?

 

[skribs127 148]

I don't have much experience specifically with TKD matches (I did a few tournaments 12 years ago), but I have done quite a few BJJ tournaments recently, and I think the same general rules apply.

1. A bye is an absolute advantage, as long as you don't squander it. There is a thing to be said about going into a fight warm vs. cold. As long as you go into your fight properly warmed up, the difference then becomes if you've already spent a round of energy or not. While this math makes a lot of assumptions, if you need 4 fights instead of 5, and figure a 50% chance of winning or losing each fight (using "lottery math" that you can either win or lose, so each is 50%), then you have a 6.25% chance to win if you are in the Ro16, and a 3.125% chance to win if you are in the Ro32.
2. Rock/paper/scissors matters. If you get drawn against someone whose playstyle generally beats yours, you can lose early. But they may get knocked out by someone who is the rock to their scissors, and then you can be the paper to that rock in another round.
3. Do medals matter to this question? If there's one fighter that you know is going to win gold, then when you face him determines whether you get silver (faced him in the finals), bronze (faced him in the quarterfinals), or did-not-medal (faced him in the Ro16 or Ro32).
4. Momentum matters. A friend of mine recently got his black belt in BJJ and went into a 3-man bracket. The #2 seed was also relatively new to this level of competition, but the #1 seed had been heavy in the competition circuit at black belt for a couple of years. We knew my friend could win. And if the #2 seed had shown up, and my friend had the opportunity to get that win under his belt, then he would have had the confidence going forward. But the #2 seed didn't show up, and he went first into a round he had no confidence in, and he beat himself.

I realize that points 1 and 4 somewhat contradict each other. There's something to be said about being fresh, but also about momentum. Seeding matters to the folks getting the bye during that round. But it can also affect your momentum if you're the #9 seed in the Ro16 and face the #8 seed, vs. if you're the #15 seed and face the #2 seed.

This post does remind me of a funny story. My BJJ Professor is really good friends with Ricardo Evangelista. Evangelista has won Worlds, and he habitually wins the Age 30+ worlds competition. He's been a black belt for over a decade, and has been competing every other week that entire time. We were watching him compete, a big group of folks from our gym, and one guy we didn't know. That guy was there to watch his opponent. A few seconds into the match, that guy says, "This is such a bad draw. He got his black belt last month."

It was only a 4-man bracket, but that draw pretty much guaranteed he had no chance at silver.

 

[skribs127 148]

I will say...with all that I said in the previous post...I don't think it really changes the preparation. You prepare for the fight. If you're at a low-level competition, you prepare your game the best you can. If you're at a high-level competition, you scout the opponent and get some ideas. But that's based more on the opponent than on their seeding.

For example, if my opponent in a TKD match is a counter-striker and the #2 seed, I'm going to prepare based on him being a counter-striker, not on him being the #2 seed.

 

[Arc4dia]

Yeah, the bye thing is what got me started on this in the first place.
Your 6.25 vs 3.125 makes sense as far as it goes, but what gets me about WT is that the byes aren't handed out randomly. The seeded athletes go into fixed spots and the byes end up sitting right next to the top seeds, so whoever already has the best ranking also gets one less fight. It's the ranking counting twice, basically. Not saying that's wrong, it's probably the whole point, but nobody ever says it out loud.
Your point about when you meet the favourite is the one I think about most. My son fights kyorugi, and honestly the whole day is decided by whether he lands in the same quarter as the one kid everybody already knows is winning it. Other half of the bracket and he comes home with a bronze. Same kid, same shape, same everything. That's a strange thing to make peace with as a parent.
The bit about the guy saying "this is such a bad draw" made me laugh, because I've heard that exact sentence in Italian more times than I can count. Always from the fighters themselves, never the coaches, and always about ten seconds after the brackets go up on the wall.
On your second post, fair enough, and it's probably the healthier way to look at it. Although the same kids who tell you the draw means nothing are the ones shoving to the front to read it.
Does anyone in BJJ actually sit and study the bracket when it comes out, or is that just something I imagine coaches doing?

 

[skribs127 148]

Your 6.25 vs 3.125 makes sense as far as it goes, but what gets me about WT is that the byes aren't handed out randomly. The seeded athletes go into fixed spots and the byes end up sitting right next to the top seeds, so whoever already has the best ranking also gets one less fight. It's the ranking counting twice, basically. Not saying that's wrong, it's probably the whole point, but nobody ever says it out loud.

Plenty of people say it out loud, and this is how seeding works in just about any sport with rankings going into a bracket. You seed the highest players with the easiest path to victory. That gives incentive for the players to get seeded the highest.

Does anyone in BJJ actually sit and study the bracket when it comes out, or is that just something I imagine coaches doing?

Depends if you're talking kids or adults. Adults usually manage their own gameplan, although coaches may help them. At a very high level, there's probably a scout team involved.

Another funny story: at one BJJ match, my Professor scouted what he thought was the opponent of one of our kids. Then he waited until that kid went into the bullpen. But it was the wrong kid. We had the wrong scouting information, prepared for the wrong gameplan. And our Professor never made it ringside, because he thought the opponent hadn't even checked in.

 

[isshinryuronin18 18]

Before rankings and organization run tournaments (and measuring the length of your sleeves, pants and belt as done by some orgs. No one then could even imagine such a thing would come to pass!) matches were made this way: Divide into light, middle and heavy weights (sometimes just light and heavy if not many fighters). Then, line up according to height and get paired up for the first round of fights.

A little jostling by some, trying to get next to a guy that didn't look too tough. Might you initially get paired with the guy that ended up in 1st or 2nd place? Yes, and for me it happened more than once. Those usually turned out to be the most fun and exciting bouts, except for the losing part. I didn't train much for competition, the sport aspect being just a part of the art for me. It was just another kind of practice.

 

[Arc4dia]

Fair enough, that's a better way of putting it than mine. If the easy path is the reward for the ranking, then it's doing its job.
Where it stops working, at least at the level I watch, is when someone turns up with no ranking at all. At European events you get a kid from another federation, Russian more often than not, and there's no number next to his name because he's never fought this circuit. But nobody travels across a continent to go out in the first round. So he goes in as a nobody and my son can draw him at nine in the morning. The ranking isn't wrong there, it just doesn't know he exists.
Our national federation is worse, honestly. No ranking at all, the draw is pure random. Sounds fair until you watch the four kids who are actually going to fight for the title meet each other in the first two rounds, and two of them are on the train home by lunchtime. Nothing gets rewarded there except being a bit luckier than the next one.
The scouting story is great though. Wrong kid, wrong gameplan, and the coach standing in the wrong place the entire time. That's a competition day in one paragraph.
isshinryuronin, the part that got me is people shuffling along the line to end up next to someone who didn't look too tough. That's the same instinct that has everyone crowding round the bracket the second it gets published, except back then you could actually do something about it.