1. I don't really like replacements in a tournament, so I prefer a system that will make dropouts irrelevant.
2. I don't care which variant is used, as long as an even number are played. If we use duo it could be only a single game, and allow for more round robin rounds. (I would vote for duo also)
3. I don't really understand the swiss system, but your basic description sounds interesting.
a. Would the ranking be based on win/draw/lose only, or SC's? If SC's are used, then only 1 map should be used. If win/draw/lose is the only ranking criteria, will that create a lot of tie's in the rankings?
b. Do all games have to complete, before going to the next round? That could cause delays if a game starts late and/or goes long.
4. Sounds good to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament

Say you had 8 players, ABCDEFGH.
First round is a random matchup, A-E 3-1 B-F 4-0, C-G 3-1, D-H 2-2
So the leaderboards is B 4, A 3, C 3, D 2, H 2, E 1, G 1, F 0.
Next round, 1st plays 2nd, 2nd plays 3rd, etc. with the exception that players who played each other player may not be paired again. so B-A, C-D, H-E, G-F, and the match is played in this fashion until the determined number of games is finished.

*i mean 3rd plays 4th, not 2nd plays 3rd

The original Swiss system is designed for games where you can either win, lose or draw; in our tournament we can either do it by win/lose/draw or we can have 4-0, 3-1 and 2-2.

Gobble, I love you.
I was thinking mostly the same. Swiss (or Danish. Actually, in Italy we consider Swiss a variant of Danish, but the (awful) international-Wikipedia's article says it's the contrary. Whatever.) would be the solution of many issues we had in the first edition of the VDip Cup. Starting from dropouts.
Further, for the same reason it can handle dropouts, it can handle any number of players who want to sign up for the Cup: no need to have an exact particular number (as 16 in the last) to make round robin groups. No sign-up requests rejected.

Now, what you said made me have a hundred ideas. But I'd start...from the start! :)
The 2 main things are: 1) The Tournament Formula 2) what a Match should be.

1) The Tournament Formula.
I'd like to have a pure Danish. No playoffs. The reason why Danish has been invented was to have an accurate Final Standings as close as possible to the one Round Robin provides, WITHOUT playing all the Matches a Round Robin (RR) requires. Let's stay on 16 competitors for examples, but they could be many more! A RR requires that each competitor plays 15 Matches, one against each other competitor. A Danish can give you a reliable Final Standings in only 7 Rounds (Matches). The accuracy of this Standings in relation of the number of Matches played (half) looks a miracle!
Another reason is that, unlike knock-out Tournaments, no-one is eliminated. So everyone is fighting until the end for a better placement. There are no unuseful matches in a pure Danish or Swiss. In the current Tour's RRs we had dropouts in the last turns mainly because it makes no sense, for an already eliminated player, to play his last 2-3 Matches when the first 4 went so bad: being eliminated as 5th or 8th of the group, where's the difference? you don't play.
Danish instead gives to each player, who has been unlucky in the first rounds, the chance to recover if they play well their last turns. And this is a REAL chance because, as you know, if you did bad in the first rounds you surely won't meet champions in the subsequent 1-2 or 3 rounds (depending on how bad you did first and how well you did then).
Now, the goals of Swiss/danish would be lost if we introduce playoffs at some point. Because:
a) No accurate standings. Only the winner. So the Champion could have eliminated the 2nd in Quarterfinals and the 3rd in Semifinals, winning the final against the 4th who qualified in the other bracket. Also, somebody may want to know whether he ended 20th, 15th or 9th: "Next tournament I'll do better!!", "Well..I'm 9th. Not a Master but above average anyway...". And not simply "Eliminated soon" or "Eliminated in the Quarters".
b) Who did bad in the first turns will give up. He knows he can't recover and qualify in the last 1-2 rounds. (Never seen a Danish/Swiss of only 5 rounds. And I've played hundreds of them, at Bridge). The problem wouldn't be solved increasing the number of rounds because players in last positions don't have a reason to play last 1-2 Rounds anyway. The problem is that they will be eliminated because of playoffs. So the goal of having motivated players all-Tournament-long is lost for sure.
Danish is already a middle-way between Round Robin and Knock-out. To dirty it with a knock-out phase would waste its beauty, IMHO.
So full Danish. (Not Swiss. In Swiss players who played already once may not be paired again. Although it may be boring (or not. and it doesn't happen that often anyway) the pairing-rules may be so loooooong. Unuseful complication, IMHO)
Can anyone provide arguments in favor of playoffs? Please don't say "The Final Match is exciting!". Being all the other competitors eliminated, the only people who follow the Final are the Finalists. They would be the only 2 people excited. And a Swiss' last round could be even more exciting, if the top players are balanced you could have up to 4-5 people involved in the battle for the Title of Champion. And I would be excited if before last Round I'm 7th and I can see the Bronze Medal only a good win (and a little luck) away.

2) The Match.
Gobble, you won't believe it, but when, in the other thread, I was trying to set up a "perfect Match", I was thinking about a Danish Match.
Not a Knock-Out Match: in a KOM you don't care what maps are played because the only thing you care is who is the stronger, so who's qualified and who's eliminated. You don't need to compare the result of the Match with another Match.
In Danish (and in RR) the matter is different. Results have to be compared because they will be put on the same Standings Board. The Result must say NOT ONLY who's the stronger (if any: draws are allowed), but ALSO HOW MUCH the stronger is stronger. So results must be comparable, how do we get this?
First thing is Matches must be equal. As you can't let 2 basketball (or baseball) teams choose the dimensions of the field or the weight of the ball, same way you can't let the players choose the maps (so no default maps. wow! No discussions and, mainly, no all tournament played on the same map: boring!).
Second thing is that the maps must be meaningful, they must express the real difference (if any) between the players. Gobble, I didn't get how many games you want a Match be of. Say we make it 5 games, here's an extreme example, to make the concept clearer.
What if 2 players with a little slighty difference in their skill choose all Duos? a Match of 5 Duos could end 10-0 only because of that little difference.
What if 2 players with a considerable difference in their skill choose 2 GvR and a Duo? Russia will win all games and the Match will end 6-4 (basically a draw) because of the better player winning the Duo.
Now if the first 2 players had a skill level between the last 2 players, the situation would be this:
The Best player = 6 pts
The 2nd player = 10
The 3rd player = 0
The worst player = 4
A Danish (or a RR) doesn't work this way. So I propose this Standard Match:
- a couple of GvI that detects considerable skills' differences.
- a couple of FvA that detects lighter skills' differences.
- a Duo that detects any lightest skills' difference (if any).
The previous example would be put in the right way, with the best winning 10-0 or 8-2 depending on HOW MUCH he's better. The nearly-equal players doing their 6-4. And the worst player having his 3, 2, 1... points depending on HOW MUCH he was worse.
Now, you can look at a Match as 3-phases trial, increasing difficulties from phase to phase, where the players are tested.
A Standard Match's Result is always comparable with other results.
A Match on 3 different maps is not boring. - You make happy all GvI, FvA and Duo supporters. Or at least you don't do wrong to anyone. - The current tournament looked a "GvI cup" and, if I'm not wrong, your proposal looks like a "Duo cup". Instead, with 3 different mandatory maps, you can call it "1v1 CUP".

So, in the end, I propose a 7 Rounds Danish with that Standard Match.

There are many more issues, Devonian said some. But I'd start from here.

OMG! How long did I type? Only 2 issues...

so many wordsssss
just sign me up and lemme no whose arse i have to kick

Can I reclaim ownership of the brand?

I like it being multiple maps. So it should be a 5 map round playing 2 IvG, 2 FvA and 1 duo.

Our choices are either the Danish system Guarzo mentioned or a knockout. I think the prelim round robin would take to long with 5 games.

@Guaroz,

1. I don't know the difference between Danish and Swiss rules. But, as you say (in a few more words), it does seem like playoffs might be worked out already in both of these systems, making playoffs unnecessary.
2. It does seem like every round must be the same map for each player. I was thinking that already, even before reading your comments. It would be more enjoyable if it wasn't all the same map for each round. But, we would probably have to have more than 1 round with each map, and maybe add frankland v juggernaut. (2 games per round)
i.e.
1 round Frankland v Juggernaut
1 round Germany v Italy
2 rounds France v Austria
2 rounds duo
(The numbers are inserted as examples, we can add or subtract rounds as needed.)

I was thinking 2 IvG, 2 FvA and 1 duo.

I suggested 2 duo mainly because of Guaroz's arguements of it being useful for fine tuning, which, hopefully in the last 2 rounds, that's exactly what has to be done. This is particulary important, given how un-balanced FvA is. :)

@ Devonian and all.
1. The principle of a Danish tournament is that each player will be pitted against other players who have done as well (or poorly) as him or herself, like Swiss Tournaments.
Say we got 23 players who signed up for the tourney. The Danish will be made by 12 "Boards" of 2 players, called from "A" to "L"
For the first round, we could put players into the "Boards" by VDip ranking (or any other method, by lot for instance)
For subsequent rounds, players are sorted according to their cumulative scores and players are assigned opponents that have a similar score to that point. So best players are (or should be) in "Boards" (Matches) A B C, worst in Boards H I L. And therefore, unlike the Swiss, same players can oppose twice in a row or even more.
Only one Match per Round will be played. At the end of the match each player gets a score and the final score is the number of points the player accumulated for each round. I think 7 is a good number of Rounds, but we could decide 6 or 8 or 9 depending on how long we decide a match must be (how many games make a Match between 2 players). It shouln't be shorter than 6 Rounds.
When all the games of the Round are ended, a new Standings is made and the Boards of the next Round are made up looking at the standings, this way:
- Top 2 players meet in Board "A" of next Round
- players 3rd and 4th meet in Board "B" of next Round
- players 5th and 6th meet in Board "C" of next Round.....
- ... players 21st and 22nd meet in Board "I" of next Round
- player 23rd is put in the (maimed) Board L and will get a "bye" (arbitrary score, usually 60% of full score)
After the end of the 7th Round, the Final Standings is made and the player who got most points is the winner.

THE DIFFERENCE is that Swiss is a variant with some more pairing-rules to avoid that same 2 players meet more than once during the tournament.
-The advantage is that playing 2 times with the same opponent could be boring, so avoid it is good.
-The disvantage is that you would be pitted against someone who's not your natural opponent. This could be important in last 2 Rounds when you need not only to score points, but also to avoid that your direct opponents scores. If you're the 2nd you want to meet the 1st to beat him and outrank him! In Swiss, if you (2nd) already met the 1st, he will be paired with the 3rd and you with the 4th. So you beating the 4th could not be enough to win the Tour because the 1st could beat the 3rd and keep leadership.
For me, these are both minor issues. The main issue is adding unnecessary rules to a formula that is new for this site. Once people learnt we could add the pairing rules in the 3rd Cup, if we still deem it necessary.

2. Mmmm.
a) a Match made of only 2 games would be too short, you'd need at least a dozen Rounds to have a meaningful Standings. Further the possibilities are only 4-0, 2-2 and (rare) 3-1. So in the first Rounds there would be plenty of ties and it would be a nightmare making the pairings (although I have a good & simple tiebreaking rule in mind).
b) Making different maps for different Rounds makes the Matches inequal and therefore uncomparable. Someone could say "hey, you beated player 'x' 4-0 in 2 Duos in Round#6, while he stopped me 2-2 in a FGvRT of Round#1! I think I'm stronger than 'x', but not enough to win as RT. If I had the possibility of meeting him in Duos, I'd also have a 4-0 now!"
Same sport, same field, same ball, same Standard Match.
I propose 5 games per Match: 2 GvI, 2 FvA, 1 Duo. 7 rounds. So during the Tour you will play 7 times Germany, 7 Austria, 7 Italy, 7 France and 7 Duo. Alternatively. It can't be boring!
Also, 5 games per Round makes the possibilities 10-0, 8-2, 6-4 with some rare 9-1, 7-3, 5-5. After the first round the Standings will be fluid, with a few ties.

Finally, 5 games x 7 Rounds makes it 35 games long. Perfect. The current Tournament is 37.

That does sound like a good idea, notwithstanding the wall of text...
A playoff stage at the end of the Swiss rounds serves to make the end more interesting for the finalists. I suppose that is not necessary for the Danish, for the winners are paired anyways.

Besides in Bridge tournaments (yes I play bridge too) the last round of a Swiss match is usually converted into Danish format and players who have fought before are allowed to rematch.

Im more of a tunnel fan

What the point Guaroz is making is, Say we get 20 people to sign up. To do a round robin this would take ~26 weeks using our old system.

However using our new system it would only take ~10. It cuts the time of the tournament down and makes it more balanced then a knockout.

A Double Elimination would also be fun in the playoffs if any...

How about begin with preliminary rounds of swiss, consisting of one game matches of duo? Then take the top 4, 8, or 16 and have a seeded knockoff format that could incorporate the different games/more games in a single "match" that some seem to desire.

Or a world cup style tournament where the initial rounds are single game duo matches and the second stage incorporates the different games/more games per match?

-Same sport, same field, same ball, same rules, same Standard Match.
-Using only one map is boring and makes the Tourny a " 'that map' Cup" not a "1v1 Cup".
-A Standard Match of only 2 games is too short for Danish
-A Standard Match of 2 IvG, 2 FvA and 1 duo is funny, fair, and works perfectly with Danish

-Knockout doesn't provide a Final Standings
-Knockout isn't even fair because the 2nd best could be eliminated in the Quarterfinals. And if you cut the Danish too soon the quarterfinalists could be not the best 8.
-Knockout makes the interest in the Cup decrease as the number of eliminated increases - This is not World Cup guys! No Press, no TVs!
-Pure Danish provides an accurate Final Standings and is perfectly fair.
-Pure Danish does not eliminate anyone. Anyone can step up his ranking until the end.
-Pure Danish, Round after Round better, puts each player against another who is supposed to be equal/similar strenght. So ALL last Rounds' games are meaningful, balanced and exciting!

-Remember the Quarters of the current Cup: 1st of a group against the 4th of the other group. 8-0 and 8-0. Even no need to play last 3 games. Where's the meaning of this? I guess it wasn't funny neither for the losers nor that funny for the winners.

So I see no need to stop the Danish just before its climax, cutting out the funniest rounds, eliminating most of players, to turn it into a rather predictable, boring, unfair, unfollowed and quite meaningless Knockout.

I say, to all those who haven't tried a Danish before:
-Try Pure Danish! You won't repent!

One problem with the Danish, there's not really much point for the 2nd to play on if the 1st is leading by miles already. So, what about this?
The last round will be played in Danish fashion, except whoever wins the top-board match wins the tourney irrespective of previous round results. That final-match could be lengthened.

Good point, Gobble. But if there's only one player so much stronger than all the others, then it would be a problem any system you use. Forcing him to play a Final would only make the Final predictable and boring. Forcing him to play playoffs would only make all playoffs an endless wait for a predictable Final, and it wouldn't even provide a believable Final Standings.
So: he's the strongest? Amen. There's nothing you can do about it.

Pure Danish, instead, would have at least an interesting and believable battle for Silver and Bronze Medals. When a single player dominates a Danish that way, the other 2nd, 3rd...maybe up to the 6th positions would be VERY CLOSE. Little differences in their total score. Think what a battle could be the last Round!

So the point for the 2nd would be to score as many points as possible against the 1st, to keep his 2nd place and to gain that all-desired Silver Medal. Which is the best prize you could aim when such a incredible Champion was in the Tournament, any system you used.

So: there's not really much point for the FIRST to play on if the 1st is leading by miles already. The second has still to fight, or he may drop down out of the Medal-Zone...

Which is why, if we turn the top-board match into a final-match where the winner of the board is the winner of the match irrespective of previous results, the last game matters for the first and the second equally.

@gobbles: What if going into the final round 3rd place is 4 out of first and wins his match 10-0, which as a result gives him the victory...

That couldn't happen in your 'final' system, but would make for a shocking and surprising turn of events.

@Gobble
Say a 20 players Tourney. After the 6th Round, before last Round, these are the top
standings:
Rank..Name..Pts
1.........aaaa.....54
2.........bbbb.....43
3.........cccc......42
3.........dddd.....42
5.........eeee.....40
6.........ffff..........38
In a Pure Danish the pairing for last Round would be
Board A: aaaa-bbbb
Board B: cccc-dddd
Board C: eeee-ffff
And, as you said, the top board Match would be unuseful for the Win of the Tourney. Right. Even if bbbb wins last match 10-0 he wouldn't reach aaaa, because aaaa has 11 more points.
I have just already explained why the presence of such player would screw any system.

Now what you are proposing is turning last Board A into a Final Game, right? Well:

1- UNFAIR FOR AAAA. He has won the Tourney playing by the same rules everyone else played for 6 Rounds long. He did so much better than the others and he deserves the Win. Why his leadership should be put in discussion in a single Match now? If bbbb wins the Final, we'd have a winner who is not the one who made more points? Is it fair? Really, tell me. I don't understand the rationale of your rule.

2- A BORING FINAL. But actually, what will surely happen is that aaaa will win anyway. So this would frustrate any usefulness, if any has ever been, of this Final.

3- UNFAIR FOR OTHER TOP PLAYERS. Hypothesis: we let the Pure Danish go. These are the results of last Round:
Board A: aaaa-bbbb 10-0 (exciting Match: bbbb tried to score some points to win a Medal)
Board B: cccc-dddd 6-4
Board C: eeee-ffff 4-6
And this would be the Final Standings:
Rank..Name..Pts
1.........aaaa.....64
2.........cccc......48
3.........dddd.....46
4.........ffff..........44
4.........eeee.....44
6.........bbbb.....43
Now do you see the damage your rule would make? turning Board A into a Final Game could give the Silver Medal to the one who should be 6th. Your rule would also:
-Give cccc a Bronze instead of a Silver
-Give dddd the 4th instead of a Bronze
-Steal a position to ffff & eeee
The goal of having an accurate Final Standings has been screwed by turning only a single Standard Match into something different.

4- UNFAIR FOR ALL THE REST OF THE PLAYERS. With your Rule, a strong player's goal would not be scoring as many points as possible each Round. Would be being in the top 2 before last Round. This is quite different. There's no more difference in having 60, 55, 48 or 45 or whatever points if you're at least 2nd before last Round. So, are we still so sure that a strong player would do his best each game of each Match? A Danish doesn't work properly if players don't do their best. Being sure of his strenght, couldn't he give a game to a friend and make a little gift?
And before Round 6, if he's MATHEMATICALLY QUALIFIED for the Final, how would he play Match 6? there's not really much point for
"there's not really much point for ..."
Ooops!...
We're back to the start!
:P

Ok ok, I see your point. Just noting that some competitions (e.g. in Bridge) do make that final-match provision, and so it is an option worth considering.

And, another reason to play a Swiss system instead of a Danish: In Danish, the top two players could keep matching (and only getting say 6-4s and 5-5s) while the other players can trounce weaker opponents 10-0 and win. In a Swiss system, forcing the "strongest" players to continually match different people allows them to match more different people and so the relative strength of the numerous players could be determined by comparison.

1) Yours was a good point. Some problem actually exists. But the "turning last Board A into a Final Game" looked a solution worse than the problem, to me. So it's better leave the things as they are. Maybe luckily we won't have such a strong player in the Tour.

(Re-thinking about it and re-reading both "So: there's not really much point for the FIRST to play on if the 1st is leading by miles already. " and my point 4. of last message, you see that the problem could be that the already-Winner could throw last Match to the 2nd.
This way he could give to the 2nd the Silver Medal as a gift.
Now an unconventional solution could be this:
- If somebody has mathemathically won the Tourney before last Round, then:
a) He's the Winner
b) He won't play last Round
c) Last Round pairings will be; 2nd-3rd, 4th-5th...
I don't love it. But, if we want to keep in consideration that point, this looks the fairest simple solution. What do you think?)

2) Yeah, Swiss solves some problems. That's why they invented it and it's frequently used. As you already said, the best solution would be a Swiss turning into Danish last turn. I agree, in theory.
My points are:
a) As you can see, only YOU AND ME are left in this thread. I'm sure nobody is understanding a heck of what we're saying.
b) even Danish, that is the simplest solution, has not been understood.
c) Swiss needs some pairing-rules that would furtherly complicate things.
So I say:
Danish is easier to say and easiest to play. Let's make the 2nd Cup a Pure Danish. Then, when people will have learnt the simple mechanic of this kind of Tournaments, they will be able to discuss these pairing-rules or at least to understand them, or at least to understand why they are needed. Then we could make the 3rd Cup a Swiss turning into Danish last turn.

Is this acceptable?

I'm asking also to those who are following us, if any.

Actually it isn't hard to run a Swiss-Danish format, we only need 1 person who knows how. The other players can follow the schedule given to them.

For those who don't know what we are talking about:

The Swiss-Danish format ensures that all of you get to play until the very last match, no early dinners. You get matched against someone of similar results every time, so no insulting your intelligence trouncing a weak player or hopeless fights against King Guaroz or the likes. All your matchups will be organised by our professional Tournament Directors.