Experiment - How would a Swiss tournament play out?
Explaining the new RR16 format
Welcome to 2025! The sixth year of Roulette Rivals promises new ideas and more excitement, starting with a brand-new tournament structure. Following extensive testing and surveying, and thanks to the positive feedback, Frote7’s Speedrun Community can announce that the first tournament of 2025 will feature a Swiss Stage as its primary format, followed by a single-elimination knockout stage.
But what is Swiss, how do you play it, and what are the main things to look out for? Today’s article showcases the likely way RR16 will be hosted in February, from the sign-up phase to the Grand Final. Alongside the introduction of the format, a tournament will be simulated along the way, using a simple formula where the Elo difference between two players will determine the chance to win a given map.1
What is Swiss?
According to Wikipedia, a Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format with a fixed number of rounds of competition. Competitors meet one-on-one in each round and are paired using rules to ensure that each competitor plays opponents with a similar running score but does not play the same opponent more than once.
In Roulette Rivals terms, this means a stage of six rounds, meaning players who sign up will be guaranteed to play six different opponents, as close in score as possible. For example, everyone receives an opponent to play in Round 1; when that is done, the second-round opponent will depend on whether a player won or lost their first round. For this reason, a Swiss tournament is segmented into Rounds, and the tournament has to wait until everyone finishes a given round. RR16’s Swiss stage will last 31 days and be split into six rounds, with a pairing draw held roughly every five days.
Perhaps the most daunting part of playing Swiss is finding time to perform every five days. Luckily, unlike a group stage’s one hard deadline or an elimination bracket’s several soft deadlines, it’s possible to miss a round and come back to play. The Swiss system is flexible and allows players to forfeit a round against a given opponent or (preferably) pre-emptively opt out of the next round if the schedule looks tight for the next week.
To show the flexibility of the Swiss system, throughout this experiment, players will randomly fail to play their given round, and matches may be missed due to both players’ negligence. Some competitors choose to skip one match, while some retire from the competition midway through. As a disclaimer here, most forfeits and admin wins were randomly generated.
Sign-up Phase: January 20th to 29th
Sign-ups for the first tournament of Roulette Rivals’ sixth year will likely begin on Monday, January 20th, and will last for the usual ten days. For this experiment, we’ll assume a player count of 56, manually selected from active players who are reasonably likely to sign up for RR16.
After the sign-ups close on Wednesday, everyone awaits the start of the tournament on Friday. This is when the first novelty will be observed: instead of a group stage draw or a full bracket draw, only the first-round pairings will be drawn or generated on Thursday. Unlike in the other formats, the importance of the Swiss Stage draw is divided across the six rounds, so there is less need for special live streams.
Roulette Rivals brackets have been drawn randomly and without seeding for a long time2, a tradition that would likely stay for RR16. Below is one potential Round 1 draw to get our experiment started:
Two numbers can be seen next to each player. The first number refers to a player’s Elo rating, which is mostly helpful for visualization and calculating the results. The second number represents a player’s Score, their number of wins throughout this Swiss stage. Players will face opponents with the same Score whenever possible, making every round close and exciting.
Swiss Stage: January 31st to March 2nd
54 days after Scruffy won the RRWC 2024 title, a new year and a new dawn will begin. The 2025 year of Roulette Rivals will start on Friday, January 31st, with the first matches of RR16’s Swiss Round 1. Will the new format bring a new pecking order, or will the same champions and finalists make it through RR’s first Swiss stage in the best shape?
Another change in RR can be found with the match length. Matches in the Swiss Stage will last a maximum of five maps, also known as a Best-of-5 format. Scoring six points will end the game with a winner, but it’ll also be possible to share the win if things end 5-5 after the five maps.
Round 1
Friday, January 31st to Tuesday, February 4th
Players will find out about their first opponent on Thursday, January 30th, so roulette action begins Friday afternoon with these 28 randomly generated pairings. To everyone’s surprise, Scruffy and Phanium find each other in Round 1, so one of them will already be off to a rough start. Frote7 vs. The Rieper 47 and lukedotpng vs. Dein Nomos look just as enticing, while the winner of TK47 vs. Pac and Fly4u vs. Crazy4Daisy will be happy to be tied in first place after one round. Swiss tournaments may start out random, but through several rounds, the matchups will start to look fairer for everyone.
Some notable results include Channel Reindeer tying Ducker, Falcon beating graory, and Phanium beating Scruffy in five maps. As mentioned above, “zRune LL Moo” is the first instance of a match not being played by the deadline; this time, it is ruled to be both players’ fault.
Matches with W or L results are forfeit wins to the first or second player, respectively. The winner receives one point, but the match doesn’t count toward official statistics3 or tiebreakers.
Matches with LL results are forfeit losses to both players; these matches are considered lost by both players, with neither receiving one Score.
It’ll be important to establish precisely when each round ends. Will it be 21cet or sometime later? Perhaps as late as 23:59cet or going off the famous Anywhere on Earth timezone? For the rest of this experiment, let’s assume that rounds end at 21cet and draws signal the start of the next round at 22cet to minimize players sleeping through the draw and missing out on some quick scheduling.
In other words, players find out about their first opponent on Thursday evening, and they have until Tuesday 21cet to schedule their match. At 22cet, or possibly even an hour earlier, the second round is generated based on the results of the first round, with no rematches allowed.
Round 2
Wednesday, February 5th to Sunday, February 9th
With the first round over, Round 2 is expected to feature even closer matches. Those who won R1 will play someone else who won R1, and the same will be true for the R1 losers. The match-tying Serbians, Ducker, and Channel Reindeer, will also face different opponents this time, and the same goes for zRune and Moo.
Not all 56 players will receive a second opponent, however. RR16 will likely last 6.5 weeks, and it wouldn’t be fair if someone had to skip the tournament just because they’re unavailable for a single 5-day round. Players will have the option to opt out of a future round, either as a one-time measure (a holiday is coming up) or for the rest of the tournament (no more motivation to play).
With In4Fun being the only player opting out from Round 2, leaving 55 players, one person will not have an opponent. In rounds with odd players, a “bye” will be given to a player who’s tied with the lowest score, giving them a free win but ideally not messing with the top half of the tournament too much. A player will be entitled to a maximum of one “bye” win per tournament.
Only thirteen players remain perfect after two rounds, ranging from tournament favorites Phanium and Music Inc to overachievers Crazy4Daisy and SovietDubov. Cabben and Nezuko Chan claim forfeit victories after their opponents didn’t show up, as both Serbians remain on 0.5 points after two matches. Of the 13 winless players, Alph and Parapluie are the most high-profile, though their standing is explainable as they both lost to champions in Round 2.
Two rounds down, and nothing is remotely close to being decided…
Round 3
Monday, February 10th to Saturday, February 15th
For simplicity, the draws and the results will be posted in the same picture from now on. Round 3 is the first where avoiding rematches becomes a non-trivial task, with plenty of win-lose players being matched against lose-win players. In other news, with the Swiss stage lasting 31 days (and not an even 30), Round 3 became the round with the extra day, seeing that it would have had five weekdays otherwise.
After Round 3, only seven perfect players remain; they are all knocking on the door of the Knockout Stage already. aphro scores a massive upset against IlikeHitman, scoring her second win along with TK47 and Falcon. Parapluie scores his first win, like mikulers, Peter Dutton MP, and Redfox. Due to their match not being played in time, Ashton00122 and Alph’s situation becomes dire: even three wins in three rounds will likely not be enough to advance.
Round 4
Sunday, February 16th to Thursday, February 20th
The seven players on 3/3 points eagerly anticipated their fourth-round match, knowing a win would all but guarantee their spot in the Knockout Stage. Two players opted out of R4 due to scheduling conflicts: even if that makes the rest of the tournament more difficult for them, sometimes it’s the sensible thing to do.
Only three players remain perfect through Round 4: Phanium beats ChrisX3, Dein Nomos narrowly defeats Music Inc, and linux_penguin repeats his upset against Jokerj from RR13. Scruffy hasn’t lost a map since losing Round 1 to Phanium; he’s well on his way toward a Top 4 seed. OhShitMan and Falcon take important third wins each, while the clash of In4Fun vs. Yannini ends in a typical 5-5 tie.
People scoring their second wins in Round 4, including Frote7, Fly4u, lukedotpng, and Parapluie, still have a chance of finishing in the top 16. However, as 18 players have at least 2.5 points, those with zero wins have officially been eliminated.
Round 5
Friday, February 21st to Tuesday, February 25th
The final aspect of the new format we haven’t discussed is whether players will stick with Swiss for the entire six rounds. There’s no way to stay after being eliminated in single or double-elimination tournaments, and the Elimination Swiss format would have continued this tradition. Still, with the regular Swiss tournament, players can play out the full six rounds, even if they no longer have a mathematical chance to advance.
In this experiment, some players randomly decide not to stick around for the final few rounds, slightly changing the match count for Rounds 5 and 6.
In the pinnacle matches of Round 5, Phanium and Dein Nomos triumph, securing a match against each other for the final round for the top seed. Alongside the names everyone would expect, zRune wins his fourth match in five rounds, and that is after he started his tournament with an admin loss.
Pigiero, quatilyti, and lukedotpng each score vital third wins, but they may need to play each other for a fourth win and a spot in the final sixteen. After Round 5, nine players are on 4+ points, and a whopping twenty-five are on three or above. Scoring that fourth point will be of utmost importance for everyone involved.
Round 6
Wednesday, February 26th to Sunday, March 2nd
Though this is not a world championship, the final days of RR16’s Swiss Stage will likely be the busiest and most exciting time of the year. The tournament format ensures that not only one or two but up to ten matches will have profound seeding implications, ranging from the top to the midtable.
Judging by the Round 5 results, only a fourth win will guarantee a player a spot in the Round of 16; even 3.5 points might not be enough. For obvious reasons, this final round will have the highest number of players opting out, five. There’s uncertainty whether the actual number will be higher or lower, given that at least a dozen players would be only playing for pride in Round 6.
Coming from a slight Elo disadvantage, Dein Nomos pulls off an upset to beat Phanium and win RR16’s Swiss Stage undefeated. Phanium ends on five wins, tied with linux_penguin, Jokerj, and The Rieper 47, all looking to be favorites in their first-round match. Speaking of Rieper, his 6-0 win over In4Fun will be enough to eliminate the Hungarian, as seventeen players reach 4 points or more.
With impressive wins, Max Masters, Cabben, and Channel Reindeer end their tournament on a high note, while Harmaa scores an unlikely 5-5 tie against IlikeHitman. Finally, though it comes down to a bye, every full-time player leaves the tournament with at least one win, a promising sign before the actual tournament in a month.
Unlike a small group stage or a bracket, there’s no simple way to display a Swiss Stage's final results without hiding vital information. At the end of six rounds, on the evening of Sunday, March 2nd, the final results of the Swiss Stage are set. Players will be ordered by the following three criteria:
Amount of wins, including 5-5 draws worth half a win.
Buchholz score: the average of wins of a player’s opponents.
For example, Dein Nomos played lukedotpng (3 wins), Dynaso (1), Pigiero (3), Music Inc (4.5), Moo (4), and Phanium (5). The average of these numbers is 3.42.
Point differential: points scored minus points scored by the opponents, averaged.
For example, Phanium’s results were 6-4, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0 and 0-6, respectively. Altogether, he scored 30-10, for a total of +20, or +3.33 per match.
It’s important to note that although forfeit wins count as real wins, they don’t count toward tiebreakers. That is why these values are averaged, so players who need to skip a round aren’t disincentivized further. The list is not final; more tiebreakers may be added before the start of the tournament.
Of the 16 players with the highest Elo this tournament, 11 advanced to the knockout stage. In4Fun (#3) and ThatObserver (#10) were the biggest names failing to advance, with linux_penguin (#23), zRune (#24), and OhShitMan (#28) pulling off the biggest upsets to make it through. It’s difficult to say how much In4Fun was hindered by voluntarily missing Round 2, but despite the format’s best intentions, players must show up all six times if they want fate fully in their own hands.
Knockout Stage: March 3rd to March 16th
After the first stage, everything resets to a small single-elimination bracket. No, it’s not RRWC 2024 being described this way, but RR16 this time. Sixteen players will be whittled down to one in two weeks, determined by a quick second stage of First-to-8 matches and a First-to-10 Grand Final.
Unlike in RRWC, however, there will be no need for a second draw. Once the final match ends on the evening of Sunday, March 2nd, the knockout stage will take full shape. The sixteen surviving players will take their place in an evenly seeded bracket and can think about scheduling their matches right away.
Number one seeded Dein Nomos will face #16 quatilyti in the first round, but things won’t get easier for him with a potential Scruffy match in the Quarter-finals. The Rieper 47, Music Inc, and Phanium all look favorites in their quarters, but in a single First-to-8, many things can happen!
It’s not worth over-analyzing the second stage of this tournament; they were generated without any special circumstances. BigMachete13 and Yannini pull off narrow upsets in the first round, while Music Inc defeats better-rated Phanium in the Semi-Finals, but otherwise, things don’t seem out of the ordinary.
There’s little stopping Scruffy from taking the RR16 title in this experiment: after losing the first Swiss round to Phanium, he scored 4.5 points to secure a decent seed, then only lost three maps in the entire Knockout Stage.
This has been a report on how Roulette Rivals 16 will look under the Swiss system, where everyone has more to play for, with closer, fairer matches and no one having to leave after two quick losses. Hopefully, everyone will enjoy RR16 and its unique format starting January 31st! Until then, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them here or in the Frote7’s Speedrun Community Discord.
For example, a 1200-rated player has a 75.97% chance of winning a map against their 1000-rated opponent, with a fixed 1% chance of a tie.
Not to be confused with the Roulette Rivals World Championships, which have always been seeded.
In other words, forfeits won’t appear on RRstats unless at least one map has been played.