Tournology helps you coordinate and participate in any type of competition. Do you want to run a background check? Or, if you're feeling brave, take the plunge!

Refactoring the Presidential Tournament

by Matt | September 13th, 2008

With the Democratic and Republican national conventions over, the race for the presidency is in its final sprint. Senators Obama and McCain will be spending millions in advertising to get you to vote in smaller numbers than the American Idol competition.

As Tournologists, we look for competition elements wherever we can, and we didn’t have to look hard to see the similarities between the presidential election and a judged tournament, similar to Battle of the Bands.

But the current system for choosing a winner of this tournament leaves much to be desired. For starters:

  • Competition is limited to a few battleground states – Originally intended to allow elites to influence the election rather than the filthy masses, the Electoral College has given tremendous influence to a few key locations. If you aren’t in one of the ten or so swing states, you might as well abandon all hope, ye who live in Wyoming and want to see Obama in person.
  • The competitors are too similar – While they aren’t quite clones of each other (yet), but the policy differences between Republicans and Democrats are fairly trivial.  Political scientists call this phenomenon Duverger’s law, and it occurs with most first-past-the-post electoral systems.

Lots of smart people have thought of ways to refactor the contest.  One of our favorites is instant runoff voting, which encourages voters to rank their candidates in preference.  If no one candidate obtains a majority of first-ranked votes, the second choice of those who voted for the last place candidate gets aggregated in.  We refer to this as a conditional boiloff tournament.

And check out some of the other alternatives to the current electoral system. You might even get some ideas for your next (non-political) tournament.

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Paralympic Games: Blind Football

by Zach | September 13th, 2008

Here at Tournology, we enjoy all classifications of competition, but sometimes we run across a sport that is particularly interesting, challenging, and really highlights a true competitive spirit. We’re talking about Football 5-a-side, taking place in the Paralympic Games 2008 in Beijing, China.

Photograph on The Boston Globe’s Big Picture Blog: Brazil vs Spain 2008 Beijing Football 5-a-side

Similar to Futsal, Football 5-a-side is played on a field smaller than a full size football pitch, but surrounded by walls to prevent the ball from going out of play. Each team has 4 field players and the goalkeeper, but the difference is: each field player has a visual impairment. The ball has special compartments with ball bearings inside [1] that emit noise to allow the players to track it, and each team also has a coach that serves as a guide, positioned behind the opponents goal to help target shots on goal. There are two twenty-five minute halves, with a penalty kick tiebreaker.

As with all Paralympic Sports, the difficulty is keeping the level of competition fair, as some disabilities are more severe than others. To solve this problem, the Paralympic Games use the idea of Classifications, which they describe as being no different than a weight class in wrestling, but for an athlete’s disability level. Football 5-a-side classifications allow for a maximum visual acuity of 6/60 and visual field of 20 degrees. Anyone less impaired than these classifications is not allowed to compete, and approved participants wear blindfolds during the match for the fairest competition (and are penalized for even touching these blindfolds during the match). The Goalkeeper may have full visual faculties, but must not be a registered professional in the last five years.

For the true Tournologists out there, the tournament structure of the event is a single group 6-team round robin, which determines the seeding for a final playoff match: 1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4, and 5 vs. 6 to determine final rank and medals.

Check out the other amazing pictures from The Boston Globe’s Big Picture Blog: 2008 Summer Paralympic Games.

And here is a great video about the Chinese Paralympic Team:

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