So, we've made a few changes to the 1v1 Circuit for this year, based on community feedback and our own judgement on how things worked.
Previously, our 2020 Circuit was based on the UU Circuit, which gave points to only the Top 16 and above. We were somewhat inexperienced with how Circuits worked, and from an outsider's perspective the UU circuit seemed the simplest to use for our own. However, after gaining more experience with not only the overall tours scene, but also the implications of the UU system, we quickly determined that a more inclusive approach was necessary.
The 2021 system is now modeled after the OU system. This approach is slightly more complicated, but ends up not only rewarding more players but also rebalances the weight each tournament has.
To show what I mean, here is a picture of the point structures for each tournament, which can be found in the
2021 Tour Circuit Spreadsheet.
With the previous 2020 system, in the case of the 1v1 Seasonals, a player would not earn points until they reached the Top 16, which would only be after 7-9 rounds. This effectively made the previous number of wins any player who did not make it up to this point meaningless.
In this new system, players earn points effectively based on the number of wins they get, with points increasing as they go up through the rounds, as they're now fighting better players. This makes sure that any player, as long as they win once, will be able to earn at least
some points.
Secondly, this system will go a very, very long way in preventing tiebreakers. The previous 2020 Tour Circuit had the potential to give 4, 5, or even 6 way tiebreaks for the 16th Seed of Championships, which adds extra rounds for Championships and generally wastes time. Because points are now added effectively for each win earned, getting a tie is much more difficult.
This new system also separates tournaments into different Rankings, or Types. This puts different importance on different tours, which is reflected in the amount of points possible to earn. Their rankings in these positions is largely due to how accurately they reflect the skill of the players, and how much outside factors can determine winners. Each Type A tour has a maximum point value of 1000, each Type B tour has a maximum point value of 750, and the Type C tour has a maximum point value of 500.
Moving on to the actual tournaments, we have two new tournaments scheduled for the 2021 Circuit, as well as the departure of one.
1v1 Classic has been moved out of the 1v1 Circuit. There
still will be a Classic Tournament, which still earns a trophy, but this will no longer count towards Circuit points.
This decision was made after opening the
1v1 Tournament Policy thread and asking the community for their thoughts. In summary, since Classic only has Old Gens, they should not play a part of a Circuit with Championships of only Current Gen.
We also made the decision to have only
two Seasonals, Winter and Summer, instead of three. Three is simply way too many Seasonals. Talk about burnout.
To replace 1v1 Classic and Spring Seasonal, we have added...
1v1 Majors! This tournament involves being grouped against a small group of players in a Round Robin format, with the best two players of this grouping qualifying for the single elimination playoffs. This is a Type B tournament.
and 1v1 Live! This tournament takes place in real time, with signups for each section only lasting 5 minutes before the tournament starts. The tournament lasts 6 weeks, with the goal being to get the highest placement possible during a 3 day period in each week (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). There will be multiple generations involved in the tournament (SS SM and ORAS) with each generation getting 2 weeks of time.
For the purposes of the 1v1 Circuit, only the weeks with SS will count towards the 2021 Circuit, but you'll need to do well in as many weeks as possible for each Generation if you want to make the single elimination playoffs and win the 1v1 Live trophy. The 2 weeks of SS will be ranked as Type C.
Anyway, that should be everything. We are super excited with this, as not having annoying ties and rewarding players for winning sets no matter what is super awesome.
