Experiment - What if RRs were single-elimination?

A roulette world without a Losers' Bracket

Posts with the Experiment tag are various playful projects, presenting different scenarios, new rules, and things that could have played out differently. Don’t take things too seriously in here, but do enjoy the alternate realities emerging!

Roulette Rivals is a roulette tournament held every three months, in a double-elimination bracket format. But what if its most important feature was different, what if there was no lower bracket to fall to, what if there were no second chances?

As rumours emerge that the 2024 Roulette Rivals World Championship could feature a single-elimination knockout stage, let’s look at how every past tournament shaped out, pretending they were single-elimination brackets. In this thought experiment, the winner of the Winners Bracket is crowned the champion, the loser of the WB Final becomes runner-up, and the players they last defeat become third-place finishers.

The writer of this post only argues that RRWCs should have a single-elimination knockout stage, the regular RRs are best kept in a double-elimination format, or in anything else that guarantees multiple matches for each participant.

Year One: 2020

It’s the start of Roulette Rivals and Frote7 is off to a dominant start to take the PC title in the game primarily hosted by him. He defeats Some Random Person in the final, denying MrMike a Grand Final from our reality. Mike does make one RR1 final, just on the PS4 side instead, losing to David Strong 4-0. The PlayStation winner in our world, Ibbe retires after one match, without a single medal to his name.

David Strong still retires after RR2, though not after a PS4 title, but a runner-up finish instead. Ducker wins the first two Xbox championships with ease, but Frote can’t defend his title after a Semi-Final loss to GuLe.

In the now combined console bracket, 420 breaks through to win his only title ahead of Yannini. The German still makes two Grand Finals in the same tournament, but it’s the PC bracket he wins against Frote7. Surprise one-time medalists in 2020 include mendietinha, SupremeCommanderIke, Foppr and Adoria.

In this reality, Yannini loses to T_Nort23 in the first round of the World Championship, leaving In4Fun to win the first cross-platform title with a 4-0 win against JohnnyAxXx.

Year Two: 2021

Roulette Rivals 4 is the first event held in Hitman 3 and on its five new maps. Players who easily adapt to change do well here, with MrMike and Ducker winning titles after also succeeding in RR1. RR5 sees a shock early exit from Ducker, with Speedster earning his second title and emerging as the second-best console player of his time.

Speaking of two-time champions, defending world champion In4Fun wins his second gold in RR5, defeating JohnnyAxXx again, who eventually becomes the most successful player never to win a title. Alongside rookie Georgikens, Yannini earns bronze in the PC bracket, surprisingly, the final medal for one of the best.

When RR6 rolls around, Ducker dominates the console bracket to win his fourth and final title, a record to this date. After several close calls, Frote7 finally goes all the way and wins his second title, ahead of In4Fun and unlikely bronze medalists Fuzk and KOats. Instead of his RR6 campaign and runner-up finish, ChrisX3 is remembered for the equally impressive RR4 run, finishing second as a rookie.

After In4Fun is eliminated in the first round of RRWC 2021, the world championship title goes to Asia with Japanese k-kaneta sweeping Ducker 6-0 in the final, and two Dutchmen, Pigiero and Frote7 earning the bronze.

Year Three: 2022

2022 begins with In4Fun winning a record third PC title ahead of Blithe and defending world champion k-kaneta, while the console side welcomes a new champion in The_Buff_Guy, who wins the very first final he enters. Another two new champions are crowned in RR8, with Papierfresse defeating Frote7 in the PC bracket and Jokerj winning the title as a rookie against The_Buff_Guy on Console. The two 2022 one-time champions from our reality don’t get to celebrate in this world, but Blithe and Pigiero still earn some medals in this thought experiment.

After a close call in RR8, DaniButa finally wins a title in the RR9 PC bracket, while The_Buff_Guy avenges his loss in the previous tournament and triumphs over Jokerj. Fresh off his RR9 win, DaniButa narrowly defeats TheTimeCube to become the new world champion, ahead of rookies Meekah and GKPunk. This would be Punk’s only medal of his career, the same goes for Mando, CodenameKenny and zRune.

Years Four and Five: 2023 and 2024

Since RR10 every bracket is cross-platform so there are even fewer WB Finals to talk about. Phanium comes back against Moo and finally wins his first title in RR10, two years after his previous final. He successfully defends his title in RR11, this time against Scruffy.

The bronze medalists of RR11 are the two best players who never made it to a Grand Final in this reality. Meekah collects their third and final bronze, while The Rieper 47 scores his first of four 3rd place finishes, achieved over a year.

RR12 is remembered for a rookie Dein Nomos dominating the competition, losing just a single map the entire tournament. After two failed finals, Scruffy finally becomes a (world) champion, with a 6-4 win over Phanium at the end of RRWC 2023.

2024 begins with more of the same: Scruffy defeats Phanium in the RR13 final, this time with a score of 7-3. The Irishman breaks records with a third title in a row, but finally not against Phanium as In4Fun defeats him on his way to an RR14 runner-up finish.

Overall Results

In this thought experiment, discarding every Losers’ Bracket and Grand Final result, Ducker is still the most successful player of all time, though with four titles instead of six. His closest competitors, four-time champions Phanium and Frote7 lose half their titles, they are partially redistributed to In4Fun and Scruffy, gaining one each.

Several one-time finalists turn their shot into a title, ranging from RR2’s davidredsox to RR12’s Dein Nomos, as well as k-kaneta, now the 2021 world champion. This alternate history is certainly kindest to The_Buff_Guy and Speedster, winning two titles each instead of losing all their finals.

This experiment is harsh on the LB heroes, most notably Yannini. Instead of going 3-2 in finals, he only makes it to two WB Finals and wins only once in RR3. Ibbe, Blithe, Pigiero and TheTimeCube’s only titles came from an impressive LB run so they are underrated on this table too.

Last but not least, consistently good performers earn more acknowledgement here, including JohnnyAxXx and T_Nort23 who finally make it to a final, and Meekah scoring not just one, but three bronze medals.

Records and Rivalries

The experiment also changes most of the major statistics slightly. Here Frote is the most experienced player with 80 matches in total, with Yannini slipping to fourth place on 70. In4Fun is the player with the most matches won, Yannini drops again to fourth, understandably so: the German has played an astonishing 57 LB matches, winning 43 of them in total.

The winrate leaderboard is also slightly different: Ibbe has a record¹ 86% winrate, but he’s quite literally winless in the Winners’ Bracket, his only title run started in LB Round 1. As a result, everyone moves up one place, and strong WB players are rewarded with more positions or, in the case of Scruffy, an outstanding 89% winrate. JohnnyAxXx has only won one of his five LB matches so discounting those puts him way up the leaderboard.

Without the most exciting LB and Grand Finals, which matches are remembered as classics? Yannini still plays two finals in two brackets during RR3, and Frote7 still pulls off an impressive display in RR6, before a bunch of intense 6-4 finals. The best matches coming down to the final map include The_Buff_Guy vs Ducker in RR7, DaniButa vs In4Fun in RR9, as well as the RRWC 2022 and RRWC 2023 WB Finals.

How did you find this experiment? What would you like to read about next? Let me know in the comments!

1. Including players with at least five matches played.