Well, it’s been 3 years of us experiencing Best of 1, and I thought this might be a good time to revisit whether popular opinion still stands as it did when it first came out, with 88% of people preferring Bo3, as shown in this survey:
I was wondering whether this opinion still stands and why?
I don’t think it’s as basic of a situation as bo3 vs bo1. I think there are situations where bo3 is preferred because of the high stakes nature of the match, but that there are other circumstances where bo1 is preferred as a way to allow more teams to compete in eliminations in the same time frame.
you might want to consider having multiple polls for the different levels of tournaments, as most people probably are not of the opinion that it should be one or the other for all situations.
I’m of the personal opinion that bo1 is fine for regional tournaments that way the highest number of teams can make eliminations at the basic level of tournament in order to spread the eliminations experience to as many teams possible. For world qualifying events I think bo3 would be the preferred format, and I believe this is already the case for semifinals and finals, but I wouldn’t mind seeing that get extended to quarters and possibly ro16 as well.
also just a pre-emptive word of warning for future posters in this topic, lets try not to start a heated debate. It’s evident that this is just to collect information and see people’s current opinion, not as a place to try and debate.
Some data from Change Up: there were 57 BO3 Tournaments (thanks Covid) this season. Of those, 17 went to 3 matches (~30%). Of the 17, 9 of the third match were won by the winner of the second match (~53%).
Thus, the winner of the first match goes on to win the BO3 tournament (won first 2 matches (57-17=40) times, win first and last match (17-9=8) times) 48 out of 57 tournaments (~84%).
By contrast, Red (typically the higher seed) wins ~67% of Finals; one could infer that the winner of the first match is a better predictor than seeding for BO3 Finals matches.
Who cares what the stats are. BO3 is more fun and exciting for the competitors.
the gun in russian roulette does not fire 83.33333pct of the time
For those interested, here are the Event IDs of the 15% where the tournament winner took the second and third BO3:
RE-VRC-20-2143
RE-VRC-20-2293
RE-VRC-20-2493
RE-VRC-20-2654
RE-VRC-20-3101
RE-VRC-20-3200
RE-VRC-21-3607
RE-VRC-21-3906
I’m trying to simply present the data, without editorializing.
That said, I do see on this forum “BO3 prevents acts of RNGesus causing the ‘better’ team to lose Tournament Championships”, and the presentation of this data is meant to show how often that could plausibly happen.
Whether one thinks BO1, BO3 or BO5 is more “fun” is entirely subjective, and entirely reasonable reason to vote for one over the others.
Of the 9 tournaments you sent, it looks like 7 were State Championships, HUGELY important tournaments, that may have gone to the “worse” team without Bo3
Possibly; I know at least 2 of those tournaments are available on YouTube - members here can certainly watch and decide for themselves (and argue) whether BO3 “saved” the better team. I know in both of these particular tournaments that Worlds spots were awarded to all four participants in the Finals.
Every competitor I’ve ever talked to with VRC participation spanning BO3 and BO1 times say they enjoyed 3 team alliances & BO3 a whole lot more. Those who’ve only experienced BO1 will never know I guess and statistics can be used to tell them everything is fine not to question it.
Every competitor and mentor I talked to at In The Zone worlds was unhappy with the switch to BO1 right before the championship.
Appreciate what you’re attempting to do demonstrating how those 1 or 2 extra matches didn’t make a difference in the end however the journey is important too.
B01 has become such a way of life that most of the Roboteers don’t remember it. Many are hard pressed to remember last years game 
Agreed. I do think bo3 is a valuable aspect to high level WQ competition. I was not pleased to hear that my state finals would be bo1. Thankfully we did manage to win as the first seed, but I’d much rather know that I won’t lose a state championship title because of a whitescreen
Does this follow Qualifying Criteria? That would be an oopsie if they did Bo1 for finals when the criteria for such events is Bo3.
I believe they were limited by the nature of lrt. My understanding was that finals should be bo3
Our GA States Championship Finals was bo1 due to the limitations of LRT software (it wouldn’t let them run bo3 without making big changes to the schedule). Kind of a shame given the final score was 143-145, but it is what it is.
LRT has exemption of doing Bo3 for finals in the Qualifying Criteria and addendums?
This may be. Doesn’t change the fact that
Does RECF RSM agree and Dan Mantz who pointed out it was almost an error at an event he was present at?
After event has happened, not so much you can do. But prior, notify EP and RECF RSM to correct it before matches are played.
Event partner was aware, and RSM was made aware afaik, but software did not allow changes. The EP couldn’t get the software to allow bo3
Boi. Since when has “just run it as a practice match” ever not worked?