The thing is, we've had 100 DDR tournaments that are effectively capped at 10s. Thinking of the "Standard" bracket as the same difficulty level as another DDR tournament is not the intention here. We all want a real ITG tournament, that is, the ITG players do, but the dozen or so players who can play 12s just not 98 them don't want to have to face those of us who've truly sold our souls to the dance floor and hence, the "standard" bracket.
     I believe we should have an Ironman or some other format of tournament, but this should be on a DDR machine or Narrows' or a personally owned ITG machine rather than Acme's. Our tournaments at Acme are few and far between and needs to finally be done right.
Also...
Or Tuan or Rudo or Amber KDDR Davyn MYKL were any of them to enter. 9 people of pretty comparable skill (certainly within a couple months' training worth) plus others not in that list. Hence why we have an expert division in the first place!

Agreed

Suko and Laura, if it puts your mind at ease, any of these players who would have to pick a 12 to beat you would lose on your pick of a 9, and as I said before, you've got about a 90% chance to random a 9 or 10 as the third song, which you'll probably win, so I wouldn't worry. The 12 thing is mostly for these guys to duke it out with each other on somewhat hard songs they do regularly play. And believe me, when Keby or Tuan pick a 14 on me I'll be equally miffed. But I'll fight valiantly to the death!

Sorry for a random tangent, but I'm pretty sure none of these guys play ITG seriously anymore. If at all

In addition... I believe Davyn still isn't in WA right now, and Amber is frequently travelling out of state for her job.

I couldn't agree more with Gerrak's last few posts. (my post earlier today did not work at the university internet). The beauty is that we can't exactly predict a winner because of the two division bracket system. In all honesty, I cannot predict what will/could happen in the expert OR standard bracket, other than that it'll be fun to be in and awesome to watch also.

That is a good tactic, though I must say I like Bambee too, but most likely not everyone does!  P.s. your idea of team tournaments is a creative thought, I always thought of there being teams even if there wasn't a tournament! For some reason i always thought of 3 person teams.

We all have ample time for practice (be it playing ITG or doing accuracy/stamina training regiments at the gym). I'd be more than happy to practice/ run sets with anyone, as I'd post in the location section almost each time i do so. If a freestyle/out of the box style tourney comes later on, i'll do that too, but it feels like its been long overdue we've had a legitimate tournament (which i hope always happens at least 3-4 times each year wherever they may be).

Do we have a consensus or idea when exactly this tournament will take place? I feel like since KevinDDR's first post, we've come a good way in consensus of tournament format (the idea of two divisions) and rules (number of songs per match, seeds, caps, etc.).

Oh BTW, I just saw Suko's comment about Great Attack... I would SO host a Great Attack or Good Attack tournament at Narrows or on someone's private machine or something.  As a big fan of both of those, I'd love to mix it up a little.

Really the point was to counter the "Itll either be Keby Gerrak or 5Dai" because Rudo and NSX could easily take the expert tournament as well, and we 5 will make up most of the expert bracket in the first place. I was just listing other people who could win *if* they practiced for a couple months to get back into competitive shape. Not saying they would, just saying it's certainly not just a tossup between the 3 Suko listed.

Regarding a team tournament: I agree. F Canada!

Maybe I'm not understanding this thing correctly. Are we talking about one tournament running two parallel standard and expert divisions? If so, I am arguing that having 12s in the STANDARD tournament is ridiculous. Anyone who can pass 12s regularly above a 90% should probably be in the EXPERT division. This is my main argument.

If you're going to have 12s in standard division, then why even have a standard division at all? Just do a regular tournament were everyone is competing directly in the same division.

Yes, we're talking about a tournament running two parallel divisions. If it's of any consolation I cannot pass 12s regularly above 90%. I can nearly bet my life everyone who can do that will be placed in the expert division. The ones who will get 90+ regularly on 12s will be those in the expert division. The expert division will be doing 13s+ most likely, which some of the "12 passers" can't do with nearly the score/finesse as those who will be in the expert division.

People that get 75-90s on 12s don't always pose such a threat for reasons Gerrak and others have stated many times:
These players on every non12 have scores similar to everyone else placed in such a standard division.

The standard division won't be a tourney full of 12s I can almost guarantee that and they won't be used as often as you may assume. But this also won't be a DDR tournament.

Well, I guess it's like Laura said, if this is what the "community" wants, than so be it. I just wanted to point out what I saw as some problems.

Carry On.

Edit:
One last suggestion. Make the lower division a "HARD" division and limit it to the Hard charts for all available songs and the "EXPERT" division is open to all Expert charts. You still would have a spread of easy to difficult stepcharts, but this keeps things simple, easy, understandable, and relatively fair IMO.

I think calling them the "Standard" and "Expert" divisions was a mistake. We should really change it to "Expert" and "WTF" divisions, respectively. This would be closer to the intention here. Believe me, we'll fill up a 16man Expert (that is, "Standard") bracket  with good competitors, most of which can pass 12s should one of them decide to use one, the remaining of which can bank on timing to do well. Again, anyone who picks a 12 on someone who can't pass it should wear the ass-hat the rest of the tournament, or else consider picking an 11 they'll probably outscore the other person at anyway. Conversely, as already stated So I wouldn't worry about it too much, I still think the venerable timing-players have a very good chance of winning the Expert (that is, "Standard") division. But of course, the beauty of this tournament style we're developing here is that ultimately no one has any good idea as to who will win either bracket.

So train up, it could be YOU   

The problem is, no one knows any Hard charts, and half of them were hastily written and hence have poor charts anyway. Again, this would be equivalent to just another DDR tournament, which I'm all for, but should be kept separate from this particular ITG event.

Anyway, good discussion all! I think we need to look at getting an actual specific tournament date figured out, I think end of March/beginning of April would be good, as we kind of established, so that we can get a couple months notice and hopefully land around Spring Break for people (though the tourney would likely be on a Sat as they typically are). KDDR, you've been quiet since your first post. Any thoughts? Progress on tournament date or anything?

I wold love to have a "hard charts only" tournament - I actually think that the vast majority of hard charts are quite good, at least in the "official" game.  Rebirth's hard charts are all pretty stupid.  But I also acknowledge that that would be extremely unfair for all of the people who have never seen them, at least at this juncture.

I propose an idea for the not-too-distant future.  How would you guys feel about a hard-only Great Attack tournament?  It would just be a fun, gimmicky challenge. :3

As for the ITG tournament, I'm getting excited! 8D

Edit: Regarding date, I have spring break the third? week in March, so that would work really well for me.  Sakuracon is at the end of April and I'll probably be too busy with that stuff for most of that month.  So there's my preference!

Regarding a lot of the concern around the 11/12 limit for the lower bracket, if we work off of the assumptions that

• Players who are consistently good at 12+ charts are in the upper bracket
• Players in the lower bracket may be able to pass anywhere between zero and every 12, with potentially varying consistency

and if we add these two anti-douche rules

• You pick it, you pass it
• If you pass, but they fail, we still determine winner by machine score

Then picking a 12 in a given round becomes a calculated risk rather than something that I would expect to see frequently, since these are the risks you have to calculate:

• If you pick something you aren't great at, hoping to win by crapshoot... well, that's a common and very risky strategy, so you should already be thinking about this regardless of what you pick.
• If your opponent knows they can't pass a given 12, they can bow out and let you tire yourself, because you must pass it regardless.
• If a stamina player with poor timing picks a 12 against a timing player with poor stamina, and the timing player holds on for most of the song before failing, they can still win.

Sakuracon '06's DDR tournament had the last part happen, somebody picked HVAM against DMN to take advantage of his injured knee, but had such horrific PA (~80% greats), that DMN stepping off the machine halfway through with almost all perfects up to that point let him win in the end (the machine was in terrible condition, so scoring has perfects + freezes, so greats and misses were equal).

Personally, my failure mode in stamina intensive situations is very sudden - a few years ago, on more than one occasion, I comboed Summer to 70-80% with only one or two greats before my body gave out, so I only broke combo because I stopped playing (I still do this - a few months ago, I had a gold combo to around 900 steps on Treme Vook of the War [long 14] on Pro 2 before I completely blacked out), and I've heard similar descriptions from other timing players, so it's not unlikely for them to have very strong scores if they can hold out, the issue is the amount of damage done by failing, even in the last few measures.

If we amended the anti-douche rule so that, if the second player keeps going after failing, they can choose to recalc their score as if they hadn't failed, then things should be further balanced against trying to cheap shot a timing player with note spam - you have to be objectively better in timing and stamina at a given song to be considered the winner.  It seems to be generally accepted that a random tiebreaker would go on to advantage whoever is better at the game in general, so the issue we're resolving is just the ability of players to abuse the way scores are calculated when you fail.

I do feel that setting the cap at 11 is more appropriate given the general characteristics of each difficulty level and the intentions behind the lower bracket, but that's my assessment of the game and the players; this is, however, a highly subjective point, so I would think that the general opinion of players likely to be in the lower bracket should prevail.  I have to agree that a reasonable slice of the hard charts are poorly written, but I think just as many expert charts are poorly written, so I can't lend much credit to the quality argument; given the general tendencies of current players, though, I have to agree that hard-only wouldn't be all that fair and may deter a decent number of people from entering.

I do think that the bracket-splitting qualifier will be a risky format, unfortunately.  The intention is admirable, but I would personally be very frustrated seeding in the lowest spot of the upper bracket over the highest post in the lower bracket, since I'm likely to be knocked out quickly as a low seed rather than a high seed and would likely get reasonable exciting rounds either way - the lower bracket is simply preferable in terms of my own enjoyment, should I be a player right on that line.  I need to take a little time to work out the exact design before posting it for consideration, but I would suggest a three tier system, where the middle tier immediately plays (either a round or two of matches or a second qualifier) to separate it into the upper or lower brackets, and then those two brackets could start; nobody will be thrown into a weird place just because of one step or an unfamiliar qualifier - the highest and lowest spots should not be subject to such significant variance that we need further proof of what bracket to seed them into, but the middle should get to sort itself some more.  As I said, there are some details to sort out with this (for example, mid-tier players could still sandbag into the lower bracket easily; we'd also need to make sure that it doesn't add too much to the tournament length), but I'm putting the abstract concept out here for now.

As far as a date goes, later march seems reasonable to me.  To preempt the question, Sakuracon is April 22-24 this year; I would recommend against mid-late April and the first weekend in June to spread things out fairly.  Also, I'd recommend against June or later for a variety of reasons.

I also really like Suko's suggestion and concur with Laura, being in favor of a Hard-only for the "standard" division. Not that I'm any more familiar with the hard charts than the average player.

It would be much easier for distributing the difficulty, being that the hardest you'd potentially see is the 11-footer Pandemonium. Not all the songs which get from a Random selection even have an Expert chart, so we all should be practicing up on the hard charts regardless. I never really had a strong opinion in this conversation before, but this really does seem like the simplest solution, and I think if it came down to a vote among all the "standard" participants, we would at least have 3 more in favor of the hard charts from my friends entering, being that they can't pass 11s presently.
[edit for Nimm's post]

Regardless... I would hope everyone would try to put in the training and preparation effort so that they'd be able to pass Delirium (12) or Energizer (12) on Expert if they had to. There's still presently at least one ITG 11 and one 12 that I have never passed :/

Being in the newly deemed "WTF" division, would more likely than not, be in a round robin format, so players in that group would not be easily knocked out as such.

To ansicks' points, I would echo his concern for tournament length as a concern, as we wouldn't want things to go for 12 hours XD. Personally, I would be very proud of myself if landing even the lowest seed in such an upper bracket! And I'd definitely see validity in calculating machine score in case someone fails a difficult song but does not quit. Again, I can see why we might not want 12's until the final rounds, but 11's are plenty appropriate(from my perspective) for either division. I can definitely respect a cap of 11 (at least for the first so and so rounds).


Pertaining to that point my friend Dr.Z, my friends are interested in coming and actually are in favor of the expert charts (being that they've only played one hard chart each, and expert is solely what they play). But i think you and I can bring in a few additional players for the tournament either way. To constrict it to hard charts alone would, in effect, make it alot more like a DDR tournament, in the intensity and complexity of the charts. Speaking for my 3 friends and myself only, we would come to an ITG tournament or a DDR tournament. but not a hard-chart-only ITG tournament.

Like Gerrak, I have no problem with such ideas (hard chart only, great attack, DDR) for another occasion/event, but it should be kept separate from this event.

But we are all at the end of the day, given the opporitunity to practice our weaknesses (stamina strict players doing timing. Timing players doing stamina. etc). I'd imagine the winner of the tournament in either division, to be able to fare nicely in both an intense song and timing related song. Overcoming weakness is what all of us tournament participants exemplify. No one is expected to be perfect/insane pro by any means, but it would be fair to say we are reasonably expected to put in some sort of practice or thought (be it on our strengths, precision, speed, strategy, weaknesses, etc.) To lower the cap too low, and especially step down difficulty of the charts altogether (e.g. hard only) tips the cards of the deck in one direction to cater to one type of player. It would become a precision style like ddr tournament. Laura brought the attention to the point we must be careful not to make such a tip happen in order to prevent handicap in the larger bracket.

To everyone and especially KevinDDR: I'm real good for the entire month of march (end of school/spring break). I hope to hear soon about a tentative or exact date of the tournament, as well as registration cost, and how many players can participate in each bracket.

Even though this is getting slightly off topic, I feel like I need to address this:


The reason I feel so strongly about 12s is that I feel like, for some people, training and effort aren't enough, especially on the scale of months.  I know that for me, it took me three years of fairly regular play to go from 10s to passing the three 11s I'm capable of.  Granted, I have asthma, but the point remains that for me, "preparation effort" for passing 12s isn't anywhere near the same as many of you.

Additionally, assuming I trained to the point that I could pass those songs if I had to... I could pass those songs. If I had to. And then I'd have to go use my inhaler and take 20 minutes to recover, which would probably force me out of the tournament.

A lot of the rules we've discussed (requiring the person who picks the song to pass it, but not necessarily requiring the person it's been picked against to play it) even that playing field out a lot, so I'm okay with the structure of the tournament. I just think it's a huge misconception that the only reason the timing players can't do the stamina stuff is that they just don't try hard enough or something.

Agreed. It's as ridiculous as me telling someone who has never AAA'd to get better by practicing a month before a DDR tournament. It's just not going to make much of a difference in that amount of time.

For that matter, I'd even argue that stamina players needing to learn timing is different than timing players needing to learn stamina.  ITG's upper level songs (Properly rated 11s and up) require you to do things with your body that the lower level charts don't.  The level of stress the "upper level" charts put on a person's body makes a huge difference to someone with knee problems, foot problems, asthma, and various other ailments, to the point that these players have serious health ramifications as a result of playing those charts. In other words, for some of the players in this community, passing them is dangerous.  To some extent, this is why the timing/stamina dichotomy even exists - in my experience, timing players choose to play for timing so that they can play at all.

Stamina players trying to time may become frustrated, but they're not going to hurt themselves, since they've already proven they can hold up against the strain of the upper level charts.

I completely understand that stacking the rules towards timing players and then expecting stamina players to be happy with that is absurd, and with "no asshole" rules it can be made to work, but I just want to, again, explain why the concerns that timing players have are different in nature than the concerns of stamina players.

Or we could always remove the bars and see what charts everyone end up playing.

Just to add in on this, as a guy who's run dozens of itg/ddr touneys in the past, the biggest problem with having an 'Expert' and 'Standard' divison is the thin line between the cutoff.  There is ALWAYS that player that is seemingly too good for standard, and WILL win such a division being able to out FA/Stamina an average player, but would be cannon fodder for an upper level player.  Said player will end up winning the Standard division without much difficulty, and people will think he should have been in the 'Expert' division.

...So okay, next tourney you ban the winner of the last standard tourney to enter it again, but then the next guy/girl in that categorization does the exact same thing.  It's a lose/lose for a tournament organizer, as the actual cutoff of what would be considered 'non expert' varies depending on the whims of the organizers/community, people in attendance, and location.  I've seen top 8s where everyone can ***12s in their sleep and top 8s where the finals comes down to who can get further in Energizer Ex.


The method I had at getting around this?  Give the people that aren't stamina whores / PA Gods equal chance. 

-  Allow Hard songs to be picked at any time.  One of my tourney threats here in Korea could never beat me in a staminafest or normal Ex song FA, but damn did I look stupid with him picking crap like Vertex or Clockwork Genesis on hard....things that would be sightreads for me as I look at the machine high score on it with him at a 99.xx.
-  Switch up the round rules.  Round A - anything goes.  Round B - No Bar.  Round C - All picks on shuffle.  Round D - All random picks.  etcetcetc.  A well rounded player should be ready for anything, right?
-  Don't NCAA seed.  1vs16 in a 16 man tourney is a pretty rough thing for the 16th seed to deal with, and basically a bye/warm up round for the 1 seed.  16 man Bracket?  Give the first 4-8 byes, seed the others, and make it interesting for the get-go.  Tournamento's bracket system is an amazing program for auto-creating any type of bracket you can dream up.


....Either way, i'll be down for whatever comes up and attending SakuraCon.   If anyone wants help running a tourney when/wherever, let me know.

This would make me so haps 
Suko too probably. But somehow I doubt that it will fly.


..I totally get where Laura's coming from with the factor of physical limitations. Didn't mean to say everyone should risk their health upon coming up to their peak of comfort =x

F*CK YEAH!

I liked what NekoSempai said, though it's kind of what I suggested at the beginning, an Iron Man style tournament, or something that'll test players across the board, not just on PA or Stamina.

I love these threads, because they really do generate some interesting discussion. I think it really shows the different point of view you can have from one player to the next. Even if we don't end up having a tournament, I'm glad we're able to discuss this stuff!

     It seems we're getting severely destracted here still arguing over the 12s. This is not a "Standard level" tournament, so stop thinking of it this way please. We WILL fill up AT LEAST a 16man bracket with people who can ALL pass some 12s. I know because I play at Acme 5-7 times per week and I know everyone who plays there and what they can and do play. If you don't play ITG well enough to either 99 some 9s, or pass some 12s, you do not posess the skill level to compete in even the "Standard" level tournament, it's as simple as that. To think that it's a lower level endeavor than that is a misconception. There are a ton of players who can play at this level, and this is shouldn't be another DDR tournament where we're all just going to see who can stomp the fuck out of 7s and see who gets the fewest greats. This will be an awesome reasonably competitive tournament for the rising number of players who really want a good NOT ANOTHER DDR competition, with the best few (which wont be particularly contestable, as previous posts suggest. The "expert" bracket people will high 99 all the seeds. So if you're not doing that, don't expect to seed up there.

Something irked me:
I'm sorry to say, but if you have knee/foot/breathing problems, you should stick to DDR tournaments or learn to face off against people who can do hard stuff. No one who ever ran a sports tournament ever made special arrangements just because someone has a knee problem. The person with said problem simply sits it out because they can't do it. I had Asthma my whole life, and I went from absolutely unable to pass 10s to 99ing some 13s and lost 65 lbs on this because I worked my tits off, playing 5-6 times per week for 2-3 hours each time, and got to that point eventually. I don't complain that Keby's going to stomp me on stamina even though he plays half as much as me and can do way harder stuff. I'll simply figure out a strategy to use, figure out what I'm good at, and stop whining about being out of shape of having my joints hurt. I don't mean to be a hard ass, but we can't hold tournaments that cator to the injured. We're trying to have a tournament that caters to the other 95% of the community.

Sorry I'm outta time, I'll elaborate more later but some of these tangents have to stop. A hard or no bar or purely timing tournament should happen on DDR, and should be discussed when someone decides to run said event.

Not to be a dick, but who the hell put you in charge? Last I knew, we were discussing when the best time would be to have this tournament and what we would like this tournament to be. I don't think anyone gave the final word that your first proposal is the final one.

Get off your elite high horse. You are one person in this entire community. I understand that you play at Acme frequently and your opinions are being considered. However, this entire time you have refused to budge on your original suggestion for the tournament format and that is what I have a problem with. We are all trying to be democratic here, but you keep insisting to have it YOUR WAY. Isn't that what the Expert level division is for? People who play at that level? Instead of compromising, you are simply ignoring the voices of at least half a dozen people on this thread. If you're friends at Acme are so die-hard to play 12's in a STANDARD tournament, then have them get their asses on here and start discussing it. Until then, you're really the ONLY one on here who is insisting that 12's be in the standard division and you probably won't even be in that division! Everyone else seems willing to settle for a compromise.

Honestly, I'm feeling pretty adamant about not changing the original proposed format as well.
But I am willing to play lower level songs if the higher ones are also included at some point.

I am personally really tired of not being able to compete in tournaments. It's either DDR, where it's not about stamina, or ITG where it's all about stamina (in a high level tournament). So I just want something in the middle ground where I can play everything that I'm able against others who I might have a chance against. I just figure there are lots of people out there like me who want the same thing and I want it to happen. My aims are to give people what they want as much as possible and provide a fun, competitive outlet for as many people as possible.

Also, knowing that I may have to face a 12 really motivates me to play more, which is even more valuable than the tournament itself.

I really enjoy the concept of simply having the good sportsmanship to not devastate someone on a hard song that you know they can't pass. I want my 12 matches to be close and with both of us able to pass.
I know I was pretty miffed when Flaire picked Utopia against me because I felt like I didn't come off as a really stamina expert player and he was overdoing it. I picked a 9 for my song and he still beat me, so with Utopia following I figured he was just being a jerk.

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid in an ITG tournament with two divisions.
If I pick something stamina intensive, I will only get satisfaction in a tournament if the other player can hold their own on it as well.

A lot of this idea does rely on knowing the people in the community and the people knowing themselves and what they are capable of. I think we're small enough where we can really use this information effectively.

I know, though, that if the lower division ends up capped at too low a level where it feels like a DDR tournament, I'll take my chances and try like hell to be in the upper division.

First off:


To some extent I totally agree with you.  If you have these problems, you probably should stick to competing on lower-level stuff, as opposed to trying to get a tournament's rules changed just for you.  It's just that when a "standard" tournament was initially proposed, the rules weren't clear yet, so nobody knew who it would cater to.  I know you're not trying to be a hard ass, and I really respect your personal dedication to overcoming your own physical challenges - and maybe some of those other players with health issues will overcome theirs too, someday (me included) and you will be part of the inspiration for that.

That said, I think what confused me personally is that people have been telling me how much I totally need to enter this thing... and now I'm basically being told that I shouldn't.  It would be dumb to bend a tournament's rules for the three or so people that would enter if you did, especially if that pisses ten other players off.  At the same time, having two tournament divisions has traditionally served the explicit purpose of making sure  everyone gets a chance to participate, but that doesn't seem to be the case here, as noted by this:


To be honest, I have expressed my own personal preference for 11s and under, but at no point in this thread have I ever tried to make the point that if 95% of the second-tier players want to play 12s they should still be banned for the vocal minority of players with health concerns.  In case I didn't articulate properly the first time, my two points have been and remain to be:

1. A good tournament caters to the people entering it.  Most of the people entering this tournament want to play 12s, so the tournament should feature 12s.  A REALLY good tournament manages to be all-inclusive, so the ruleset should include things like the following so that the inclusion of 12s doesn't scare off/injure/make the tournament un-fun for timing players who can't begin to parse them OR bias the tournament towards timing players:

-NOT to be abused, but if you know you can't come close to passing a chart selected against you, you should have the right to forfeit the round, give the other player the point, and skip having to play the chart. I would even think it's fair to say this rule applies to 12s only, since they're what's so controversial.

-If you pick it, you pass it or else you lose by default. If someone forfeits your pick (as applicable,) you still need to pass the song yourself; essentially, this is the "no douche" rule, only instead of wearing the asshat, your punishment for picking a song way too hard for the other player is that you have to tire yourself out (and, of course, that the other player wins if you get cocky and overestimate your abilities, but that's not actually the primary function of this rule.)

I actually don't think it's appropriate to recalculate percentage as if a player who has failed their opponent's pick had passed (as Tony has suggested,) as that *does* bias the rules too much toward timing players, especially combined with the "you pick it, you pass it" rule.  Whereas the above two rules seem more like ways of writing "don't be a dick" into the tournament rules, allowing timing players to fail with no penalty is a flat-out handicap, and none of us want that.


2. Nothing I've said about players with physical problems was intended as a complaint about the tournament format or a plea that it be changed. Rather, I felt that this thread asked a question (what tournament rules would you like to see?) and we got a wide range of responses. At the end of the day, it boiled down to "timing players want lower level charts, stamina players want upper level charts," and while many posts focused on reconciling the two and were excellent, others basically dismissed timing players as potential stamina players who just don't try hard enough.  Essentially, the whole function of my rant about timing players frequently having physical problems was to dispel the myth that they are lazy or not as dedicated to the game as other players, not to say that they should get special privileges. 

It's perfectly okay to say "majority rules" to the minority of timing players and leave it at that, and I actually fully advocate that method here.  But telling certain types of players that this tournament was never meant to include them is going a little far, especially when the question that was posed at the beginning of the thread was just "do you guys want a tournament, and if so what format?" 


RE some stuff in Hollie's post:

I totally agree that I want to enter this because it's not just another DDR tournament.  For me, ITG 9s and 10s feel TOTALLY different from DDR 9s and 10s (because of the kinds of rhythm and patterns included in the charts as well as the addition of features like mines and hands.) We keep kicking this 11s/12s debate around, but it's pretty amazing to step back and think about how well even the absolute worst players do on these 9 and 10 foot charts that would have been beastly in the DDR days.

I agree about sportsmanship to an extent. It's a lot more satisfying to play with someone at your level and know it's going to be a close match than it is to obliterate them anyway. I do feel, though, that if somebody can **** everything 10 and under, picking a 12 against them is legit, even if they can't come close to passing it, since that's the only shot you have at winning.  I know I'd feel pretty shitty if someone went easy on me because they know I can't pass 12s and I ended up beating them on what they did pick and winning the match as a result.