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AIST S3 pairings

The AIST S3 pairings are out. Normally that would not be worth a post, it’s only first-round pairings. But it immediately struck me that there are 3 mirror matchups out of 4 pairings. It’s the maximum possible; there are 3 terrans and 3 protoss, so not all can be paired with the same race. If that happened to me I would have to step away from the computer, I would be tempted to rerun the pairings to get something “more random”—there’s an irrational reaction!

PurpleWave BananaBrain
McRave zerg Microwave
WillyT Locutus
Dragon LetaBot

How unlikely is it? Doing the combinatorics, I get 8! / (24 * 4!) = 105 possible pairings, of which 9 have the maximum-mirror property—3 ways to choose the protoss player, 3 ways to choose the terran, and after that choice everything else is fixed. That’s about 8.6%, not all that rare. It seemed more surprising than it should have.

Starting with mostly mirrors doesn’t affect the tournament much. We should have slightly fewer than average mirrors in the next round in both the winner’s and loser’s bracket; it will even out over the tournament.

I judge that BananaBrain, McRave, and WillyT have little chance to upset their stronger opponents. I’m excited to see skilled defender LetaBot play against the dangerous harasser Dragon. Is this LetaBot version much improved?

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Comments

Paul Goodman on :

Another way of assessing the odds that makes it seem a little more intuitive: once the two Zerg get paired (1/7 chance) the triple mirror is guaranteed unless every Terran and Protoss draws an opponent of the opposite race.

MarcoDBAA on :

GL @everyone

Letabot would need to be extremely revamped or found a cheese strat to have a chance there. But this might be the case of course.

MicroDK on :

Don't expect too much from Microwave. I am using the current binary for Microwave that is playing in SSCIT. I had an learning bug I did not have time to fix before deadline. :(
Also, from what I hear, McRave(Z) has been rewritten and will be a new top Zerg contender. ;)

Bryan S Weber on :

Sad to lose out on a Z right away though!

Jay Scott on :

Well, it’s double elimination. I expect that McRave zerg will lose immediately in the loser’s bracket too, though.

MicroDK on :

I hate being a top zerg... everyone expect Microwave to do good... ;). At least ZvZ is its best matchup, so we will see.

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