MCM Cup

The  was an MCM-sanctioned simulation of a Minecraft duel tournament between Tournytimers. A web applications was to simulate specific duels, and all coverage of the tournament was to be kept here.

The tournament ran from July 4 to September 5, 2016. It consisted of a group stage qualification process, followed by a main tournament group stage and a final knockout stage. Digger won the final duel and was crowned champion, Padawan coming second.

Format
The Tournament was centered around duels. In a duel, players were simulated to be given equal gear in an enclosed, normal-terrain environment of size enough to run, but not too far. This consisted of an iron sword, iron armor, a bow and infinite arrows.

A duel lasted 15 minutes, and when players are killed, the duel is reset with full health and gear. When the 15 minutes is up, the duel ends, and the player with the most kills wins.

Any number of players could've taken a place in the tournament. Based on that number, all would participate in qualifying, a number would be knocked out and the remainder would go on to the main tournament which consisted of two parts: The group stage, which eliminated a set number of participants, then the knockout stage, which crowned a victor.

For both the qualifying and the tournament group stages, players were put in to pots according to some metric so that the perceived strongest went in pot 1, then the weakest went in the last pot. Players were then seeded (randomly) in to groups, one from each pot.

The following criteria were used to rank the participants:
 * 1) Higher amount of points. Players are given 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw, and 0 for a loss.
 * 2) Higher amount of wins.
 * 3) Higher amount of kill-death difference.
 * 4) Higher amount of kills.
 * 5) If there was a tie, the previous criteria was used, but between only the players in question.

Host selection
Players put in "bids" to become the host, which guaranteed them a place in group A of the main tournament, without having to qualify. Voting for the host consisted of two rounds. In both rounds, everyone voted for anyone of their choice, but may not have voted for themselves. In the first round, participants were given an amount of votes proportional to their best result in previous tournaments (MCTTT 1 and MCTTT 2). Winners were given 10, runner-ups 9, semi-finalists 7, quarter-finalists 5, 3 for those eliminated in the group stage, 2 for qualifying, and debutantes were given 1 vote. The top two (or if the second place was tied, all those who tie for second) then proceeded to round two, where all players voted again but all represented only a single vote. If no winner could be determined, the first round's results were to be taken, or a random draw was to take place if that didn't work.

Qualifying format
For qualifying, groups were to be between 4 and 6 players in size, the majority the same, but a small number may have been of different size to ensure all players participated. Group participants were all to play each other in a double round-robin format, so that each player was set to play everyone of their group rivals two times.

The following methods, listed in order of preference, were to be used to determine which participants qualify for the main tournament:
 * 1) A set number of participants from each group qualify for the tournament.
 * 2) A set number of participants were to be eliminated and would not participate in the tournament.
 * 3) The previous two methods, but with a set number of participants from each group participating in play-offs.

In case number three, the play-offs could have been in several different formats, in the following order of preference. The potential play-off participants could have been reduced in number to satisfy a below method, if deemed necessary. Their qualifying group stage statistics would be aggregated and the normal ranking system would be used to determine which ones to eliminate.
 * 1) If there was only to be one player to proceed, a knockout stage would have taken place to determine the qualifier. The knockout must have had 2 x (2, 4, 8 etc) participants.
 * 2) As long as there were no ties in the aggregate rankings, participants would have been placed in to two pots according to their ranks, and would participate in two-leg play-off duels to decide who was to proceed.
 * 3) If there were to be ties in the aggregate rankings, the participants were all to be put in a single play-off group and participate in a round-robin. If the group was to be up to 5 players, the round-robin would be two leg, otherwise it'd be one.

The host and the winner of the previous tournament were not to take part in qualifying – they were to be automatically granted a place in the main tournament.

Tournament format
For the group stage of the tournament there were always to be four pots, and therefore groups were always to be four players in size. A single round-robin format was to be used so that all players play each other once. To rank the participants, the qualifying group stage criteria was to be used. The top two from each group would qualify for the knockout stage. If the knockout stage would consist of 16 players, the four best third-ranked participants proceeded, and the two worst-ranked were to be eliminated. The fourth-placed participants were always eliminated.

For the knockout stage, duels were to remain the same for the first 15 minutes. If the duel ended in a draw however, an additional 10 minutes were to be added to the time. If after those 10 minutes there was still a draw, players were to be reduced to minimum health and must've ran at each other lancer-style with no inventory except their sword, and the one who kills was to be proceed to the next round.

Participants
Of the 38 invited, 36 elected to participate. Result indicates the highest point the player achieved of a given tournament.

Clone and Raccoon chose not to participate. Wolf participated on the condition he could not be seeded with Vat, Strew or Lrand, as did Creed with Blax.

Qualifying
There were 36 participants in the whole tournament, of which 2 automatically proceeded to the main tournament, leaving 34 to compete for the 22 remaining spots. Qualifying was split in to seven groups, six of five players and one of four. The top three from all groups advanced (21), and the rest were considered for a knockout-format play-off.

The group stage took place between July 4 and 27, 2016 over 132 duels. July 28 was reserved for the seeding of the play-off, and the 3 days following (July 29–31) were set aside for the knockout play-off.

Group stage

 * For the stage of things as of the half-way point, see here

The group stage consisted of a double round-robin. The schedule was arranged in such a way that, at a specific time on Sunday, July 17, 2016, everyone had played each other once and the group stage would be half-complete, allowing for analysis of performance before everyone was to play each other again.

As per all group stages, participants were placed in pots from highest-ranked to lowest-ranked, and seeded out randomly in to the groups so that each group has approximately the same amount of skill distribution.

Wolf was ranked #2, but automatically qualified due to his winning of the previous tournament. Onyx was ranked #11, but is the host and so also automatically qualified. Clone and Raccoon were ranks 18 and 28 respectively, but chose not to participate.

The nine debutants could not be ranked, so a random draw had to take place to decide which three were to be put in Pot 4 with ranked participants. The remainder were placed in Pot 5.

Summary
Seeding took place on June 26, 2016.

Strictly speaking, Group A had the lowest average rank (and therefore supposedly the highest average skill level) with 12, and Group B has the highest average rank with 17.5. However reliable statistics were made difficult by the fact that there were a different amount of debutants in each group.

Play-off
The play-off was used to determine the final participant to qualify for the main tournament. It consisted of an eight player knockout stage which will ended with the winner, Kit Fisto, advancing to the main tournament and all others being eliminated.

All fourth-placed players from the group stage participated, as well as the best-ranked fifth player, Tourny. Players were be put in to two pots according to aggregate rankings (the best in pot 1) and seeded in to a knockout table, with the first duels having one participant from each pot.

The seeding took place on July 28, just before any play-off game.

Tournament
The main tournament was split in to two stages: The group stage, which saw 24 reduced to 16, and the knockout stage, which crowned a victor.

The group stage began on Monday August 1 and ended on Sunday, August 21. It was contested between six groups of four participants. The top two from each group (12) proceeded to the knockout stage, the fourth-placed players were all be eliminated, and the third-placed players had their rankings aggregated, the top four of which advanced and the remaining two were eliminated.

The knockout stage began on Tuesday August 23, with two duels being played per day during the Round of 16, then one duel per day for the Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals and Final, which crowned a victor on Monday, September 5.

Group stage
The Official Rankings were slightly altered following the results of qualifying. These were then be used to determine in which order participants are assigned to pots (with the lowest ranks being assigned to Pot 1), which were then be seeded in to six groups of four. Like the qualifying group stage, this was in an attempt to make groups equal in overall skill.

This rank alteration and scoring system was announced on July 15, just before the mid-way point of group stage qualifying.

Onyx's score was 7.875 and his rank was 10. Being the host, he was assigned to position A1 and so was not assigned to a pot.

Third-ranked players
The ranks of the third-placed players were aggregated and compared with each other. At the end of the group stage, the top four in those aggregate rankings advanced to the knockout stage, whereas the bottom two were eliminated.

Knockout stage
Similar to the qualifying stage's play-off, ranks for all knockout players were aggregated and assigned to two pots, then seeded so that each player from Pot 1 was set to have their first duel against a player from Pot 2.

Onyx was still assigned to a pot (Pot 2), but come seeding on August 22 he was automatically placed in to duel 1 as he was the host.

On Wednesday 25, an alteration to the schedule was made, introducing a three-day break on Friday–Sunday, 26–28th of August. The day-long breaks between stages were sacrificed instead.