New Tournament Format for WSoM 2010

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Created on Saturday, 03 July 2010 08:25

Last Updated on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 18:00

Written by Staff

MACAO - World Series of Mahjong announces that a new tournament format will be adopted for its 2010 main event.  Under the new format, the event comprises a six-session (with sixteen hands in each session) preliminary round, spanning the first two days of the event, and two elimination rounds plus the grand final in the third and final day.

"We observed that the players were not entirely happy with our old format," explains Alan Kwan, the Rules Director of WSoM.  "It admittedly had many shortcomings because it was based on the tournament formats from games other than mahjong.  We designed the new format focusing on giving the players what mahjong players like."

"No one likes to go to a mahjong competition only to be eliminated after a few hours," Alan continus.  The new format allows every player to play the full length of the 96-hand preliminary round before eliminating anyone.

The 16 top-scoring players from the preliminary round will enter the final day rounds.  But instead of just adding up the raw scores, each players' score at the end of each 16-hand session is first converted into "match points" before being used to compute his results.  The conversion formula: apply a square root to the magnitude of the raw score (leaving its sign unchanged).  "This makes it more important to play skillfully for a positive score, and discourages playing foolhardily to hope to get a big score luckily," Alan explains.  In the final day, half of the players will be eliminated each round, just as in the old format.

Prize structure

Coupled with the above is a new prize structure.  WSoM this year is taking a major departure from the typical prize structure for sports and game competitions of awarding the prizes based on ranking.  Instead, prize money is awarded for one's mahjong score - which is the prevalent practice for casual mahjong.

The total prize pot, which comprises 100% of the HK$5000 entrance fee (in contrast to the US$5000 in previous years) collected from all players, is divided into four equal "prize pools", one pool for each round in the event. The player accumulates prize money as he advances from round to round.  For the preliminary round, the top 1/8 or 32 players (whichever is greater) are "in the money", and those players divide the pool in direct proportion to their score totals.  For the three rounds on the final day, everyone in the round is in the money; first 250 points are added to each player's score, and then they split the pool in direct proportion to their adjusted scores.

"We hope to bring a fun and exciting event with the new format," says Alan.

Example of overall scheme with 320 players (unit=HK$):

Round	Prize Pool	# of Winners	Average $/Winner	$ Value /Point
preliminary	400,000	40	10,000	?
final day R1	400,000	16	25,000	100
final day R2	400,000	8	50,000	200
grand final	400,000	4	100,000	400

 

Example of pool splitting for final day round 2:

Score	Prize (HK$)
+250	100,000
+170	84,000
+75	65,000
+30	56,000	^ advances
-35	43,000	v eliminated
-100	30,000
-190	12,000
-200	10,000
Total Pool	400,000