The Warcraft III competition in Wuhan, China is one of the biggest single-player tournament for 2007. Several top professional players flew in to attend this prestigious event. Players such as Moon, Sky, Grubby, ToD and ReMinD all came to claim the title as the new WSVG Warcraft III champion.

However, there was one big oversight that occurred while building the brackets. In double elimination, it’s standard practice to “flip” the players when they move down to the lower brackets. This removes or minimizes the possibility that players will play the same opponents twice, to maintain the element of surprise.

A player meeting an opponent twice at the same tournament poses disadvantages for the players. For example, the winning player might have a special strategy to go against his opponent, which might not be effective anymore during the rematch.

Due to this error, the brackets resulted in three repeated matchups—suhO vs Grubby, SoJu vs ToD and Fly100% vs FoV. Grubby, ToD and FoV were eliminated by their opponents during the earlier brackets and were pushed down to the lower brackets. SoJu, suhO and Fly100% lost their subsequent games on the upper bracket, where they again faced their previous nemesis.

In the end, Grubby and ToD were able to win their matchups after their initial loss; while Fly100% still maintained his dominance against FoV.

“It sucks,” FoV mentions. “They shouldn’t make it like this, but I think in China its how they do double elimination. I think it was in another WSVG event in China that they did it like this.”

Professional gaming is a young sport, and is continuously trying to improve itself and maintain certain standards. The main strength of a double elimination system is giving the players multiple chances by playing many different players as possible. This gives them the best chance of progression, especially on the lower brackets.

The WSVG has been running a superb event so far. The delays are minimal, and the best matches are being broadcasted on stage. Despite the crazy crowds that totally mauled people during the first few days, they quickly wisened up and now has better crowd control.

This dilemma might be seen as minor to some, but it could have been easily avoided if the organizers were able to study the intricacies of a double elimination bracket. Nevertheless, kudos to the whole event and the WSVG organizers—they have ran a superb tournament with impressive turnout.