Barnstormers 2020 - expanded Semi-Finals now with Prizes

Damn right! We need some new blood. Some of these guys are old. I mean really really old.

The Barnstormers Tour is supposed to be a test of skill which must be balanced against keeping players from dropping out if they are not faring well.

Here is my proposal.

The top 10 finishers during the regular tour seasons get their ticket punched straight to the finals.

Then you have three quarter finals events of 24 teams each and the 6 managers who advance to the finals of those events make it into the semifinals.

They then play a 12-team semi final with the managers seeded 11-16 in the regular season standings joining the six finalists from the quarterfinals. The finalists of the semi's then advance to the BS Finals.

This approach gives everyone a shot at the finals but weights the odds of getting a finals berth in favor of those who did well throughout the tour. Should keep interest in the tour going as 72 managers get to play in the quarters but also rewards the skill of the players who performed well throughout the tour.

Anyone who has played the game for a while knows that playoffs are a crapshoot. This approach allows the dice to be rolled while still placing a premium on managerial skill. The way it is now the manager who finishes 10th in the regular season tour has the same chance of making the finals as the manager who squeaks into the semi's by finishing 81st. Again, if it skill that the tour attempts to measure, my proposal gets the job done.

The top 10 finishers during the regular season get their ticket punched straight to the finals.

Then you have three quarter finals events of 24 teams each and the 6 managers who advance to the finals of those events make it into the semifinals.

They then play a 12-team semi final with the managers seeded 11-16 in the regular season standings joining the six finalists from the quarterfinals. The finalists of the semi's then advance to the BS Finals.

Best paradigm heard yet. Strikes the balance. And in a less important way, satisfies my preference at least for symmetric logic.

The top 10 finishers during the regular season get their ticket punched straight to the finals.

Then you have three quarter finals events of 24 teams each and the 6 managers who advance to the finals of those events make it into the semifinals.

They then play a 12-team semi final with the managers seeded 11-16 in the regular season standings joining the six finalists from the quarterfinals. The finalists of the semi's then advance to the BS Finals.

Best paradigm heard yet. Strikes the balance. And in a less important way, satisfies my preference at least for symmetric logic.

This is the best idea I've heard yet. Fair, and and as the Quark-Meister said , balanced.

Thanks for all the great suggestions. Our tour is already set in stone for 2020 but the board and I will be giving a hard look at everything posted here for the 2021 tour.

I think since the barnstormers is a 12 team league tournament, the semi-finals should also be a contested in 12 team leagues. I say the top 9 make the finals, and then there are 3 semi-final 12 team leagues. I think it should be difficult to make to the semi-finals and finals, or to put it another way, I don't think the team that finishes 80th in the standings should have a chance to win the tournament.

Thanks 1Can1 but I guess you didn't read this whole thread through completely. The reason for the change to 24 team leagues for the semi-finals was to keep interest up for a tour that has now ballooned from 150 to 230+ players. Otherwise 80% of the players see that they cannot get anywhere near the "Top 57" and bail out. Now you're proposing cutting those advancing back down to 45. - Your suggestion makes things worse, not better.

Please don't make assumptions, I have read the entire thread. If your goal is simply to increase the number of people playing in the semi-finals, why not just open them up to everyone? You can open it up to the top 288 by playing 12 - 24 team semi-finals. You could rank everyone based on their records and assign them to leagues. If participation is increasing, why do you assume people are going to lose interest because the tournament is difficult? Perhaps that is the reason they decided to participate in the first place.

Hi 1Can1, that is a valid point theoretically. But the tour has run for quite a while, and it is data, not blind presumption, that does indeed show participation wanes toward the latter part of the tour from the bottom third or so of the standings.
It isn't everyone--many of us would continue playing if we had no mathematical chance simply for good competition, as you alluded.

But it isn't a singular objective of keeping interest or maintaining fairness to top finishers--it is all of it.This year is set, but every year there are incremental improvements made based on the data. As you can see from having read the thread, there are many competing interests and ideas, including yours.

All in all, the playoffs, as Druid said, are a crapshoot. Getting there consistently is most attributable to skill constructing teams. But winning championships requires a lot of things to go right that are related to skill, but not as directly over a short series.

Either way, I know I'm confident the tour will continue to adapt. It is also a very positive thing to have as leverage, of sorts, when lobbying SOM to address certain things.

The Barnstormers Board stood by and watched over a multi-week period while the number of participants passed 175, passed 200, passed 225, until the number of participants reached a level about 40% higher than last year. There was no outreach to the Barnstormers community about how the Semi-finals and Finals should be organized. There was just an unilateral announcement that there would be three 24-team Semi Finals leagues providing finishers #10 and #81 with the same chance to reach the Finals.

Its very strange to me that the activists on this Site were able to marshal torches and pitchforks against the Game Company about selecting the appropriate ATG9 radio button which required minimal level of understanding and moving the cursor a few inches. In contrast, there have been few complaints about the unilateral decision on how the Barnstormers tournament will be conducted.