posted by Abelle,
Fnatic were playing in the PGL Open: Bucharest Southeast Asian qualifiers this morning. The format was two groups of four teams playing round robin to determine the top two teams from each group for a short single elimination playoff bracket. After winning their second match of the day, it became clear that they were already out of the running, prompting EE's above tweet.
The reason was that the qualifiers were using the time rating system to break ties in the round robin stage. Mineski and Happy Feet had both already won two games, and Fnatic had a chance to tie their 2-1 records with a final game against Clutch Gamers, but it wouldn't be enough. Time rating means the teams with the shorter matches "win" in the case of a tie, and both Mineski and Happy Feet's wins were sub-40 minute games while Fnatic's first win was over 60 minutes long and the second was just over 50 minutes.
in full transparency, PGL did tell us about the timerating beforehand. doesnt change the fact that it is a bad way to settle a tie— Eric Khor (ReiNNNN) (@ReiNNNN) September 11, 2017
Fnatic's manager Eric "ReiNNNN" Khor took to Twitter to clarify that Fnatic had been informed of this rule before the start of the qualifier, but expressed his disapproval of the system.
PGL themselves have been the subject of discussion today, more specifically why they chose to use this system in the first place.
"We used that rule in order to reduce the chance of tiebreakers because the schedule is impossible, too many qualifiers taking place in the same time," a representative of PGL told joinDOTA. "All teams knew about the rules before the qualifiers and they agreed to them."
PGL explained that the teams had specifically asked for the qualifiers to be short because there are so many going on at the same time, but teams wanted to be able to participate in as many as possible. "When we scheduled the whole thing and set the rules, there were multiple other qualifiers from other upcoming events and we had to make a decision to make sure our qualifiers will end in time," they said.
PGL now say that they will remove the rule for the remaining regional qualifiers in order to avoid a similar situation. However, they also expressed their concern that tournament organizers will likely need to use similar time-saving measures in order to fit their events into the packed schedule this year.
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