Whats the three strikes format?

We held an annual tournament last week with the three strike format (Strawberry Hill Strike Out) and it went pretty smoothly. We had 16 participants on five machines, the first three rounds took a little longer than I expected (there were some long ball times on a couple of the machines) but everyone seemed to be pleased and enjoy themselves.

For our local monthly and weekly tournaments we do a randomly seeded head to head (best two out of three) double elimination bracket. We are turning the weekly one into a league starting in May and will continue the current format while assigning point values: 1st 10, 2nd 7, 3rd 5, 4th 4, 5th 3, 7th 2, 9th 1, >9th 0. This will be accumulated for 26 weeks and participants will be seeded in foursomes (1-4, 5-8, 9-12, etc) by their weekly totals to play a four player game on each of the six machines present with point values of 4-2-1-0 for each game. Totals from those groupings will be used to determine the final position of each player.

Both leagues I play in utilize either a single or double elimination bracket tournament for the season finals. People are seeded based off of their performance throughout the season (so in a 16 man bracket the first round is seeded 1st vs. 16th, 2nd vs. 15th, 3rd vs. 14th, etc.). Double elimination if we have all day, single if we meet at normal league time (which gives us only 3-ish hours to wrap things up). One league adds points to your season total depending on how you do in the final tournament. So winning the finals tournament does not necessarily mean you win the season (but if definitely helps!). The other league, finals tournament winner wins the entire season. There's pros and cons to both philosophies, of which my ears have heard hours worth of debate over.

Strikes is a good format (I use it for Royale), but I don't like it for league finals. I like league final formats to be reflective in some way of how players have been doing (hence the seeding). There needs to be some sort of pay off for being consistent throughout the season. Random drawing of matches tosses the accomplishments of the regular season out the window.

It's otherwise a *mostly* great format (no format is perfect), primarily because it keeps the entire active pool playing. At least, outside of the odd bye player out. Bracket format inevitably forces players to wait around for a round or two, which just adds to the moaning and complaining tournament directors have to listen to. Also, everyone gets more game time than in brackets. Even the player with the worst result (3 and out) gets 1 extra match they wouldn't get in double elimination.

The con? Random draw. It's inevitable that you will draw the same exact match at least twice. I pulled the same exact match + machine twice in the first two rounds of Royale. I played another strikes format where I played the same guy 3 times in a row early in the event.

One more thing, there is one thing I tend to alter in the traditional Strikes format: I allow players to choose games. Some people don't dig that, but I like giving an incentive to players willing to think strategically and study their opponents (which game do they seem strong at, which game do I think I have an advantage on, etc.). First game is randomly drawn by me, players rock/paper/scissor (or coin flip or whatever). The player who wins rock/paper/scissor can either A) choose second game, giving the loser of RPS position choice of first AND second game or B) choose position of first game (and ultimately second game), giving the loser of RPS choice of second game. Third game, if it comes to that, is chosen by the player that has not chosen a game yet. Obviously, they can't play the same game twice in a match.