Pyramid tournament format suggestion

[JayC]

This is how the tournament is formatted on my AIM netgame, AIM Pyramid.

The contestants standings are based on points.  Whoever gets more points goes to the WC of course.  In the WC, for every one you get, you get an extra point.  At the end of the game, the person with the most points goes on to the finals.  That person plays the winner from the other game.  The WC  money values are untouched throughout the championship.  Whoever has the most combined points from their semifinal and final wins the $100,000.  Same celebrities thoughout the tournament.

Any thoughts?

[tommycharles]

It's an interesting thought, but you really just sucked whatever tension is left out of an already drained winners circle. Can you imagine Dick saying "For 6 points, here is your first subject..."? It just isn't the same. Plus, the reason that the original $100k show worked so well is that the winners circle was played for ....$100,000. In :60, someone could win it. That made for one minute of dang intense television. Deciding who wins the big money after all the wc's have been played gives me very little reason to watch the show.

www.46664.com

[JayC]

[quote name=\'tommycharles\' date=\'Dec 1 2003, 12:22 PM\'] It's an interesting thought, but you really just sucked whatever tension is left out of an already drained winners circle. Can you imagine Dick saying "For 6 points, here is your first subject..."? It just isn't the same. Plus, the reason that the original $100k show worked so well is that the winners circle was played for ....$100,000. In :60, someone could win it. That made for one minute of dang intense television. Deciding who wins the big money after all the wc's have been played gives me very little reason to watch the show.

www.46664.com [/quote]
 the contestant does win whatever WC money s/he gets.  This way does add a little bit of suspence to it.  I forgot one thing, in case of tie, a normal tiebreaker from the front game is played.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'JayC\' date=\'Dec 1 2003, 10:26 AM\'] This way does add a little bit of suspence to it. [/quote]
 Not nearly as much as Oh-My-God-This-Could-Be-Over-Inna-Minute, or the even more exciting Oh-My-God-They-Still-Have-A-Solid-20-Seconds-For-The-Final-Box...

[pyrfan]

One advantage the old "Pyramid" tournaments had over the new ones is that they could end on any day; it didn't have to all be over on Wednesday. Hell, as we've seen, the tournament sometimes ended halfway through the episode.

I think the producers are trying to find a way to have a tournament end on a specific day. However, when you have a game show whose end game is so integral to its success, like "Pyramid," it's really hard to force an ending to a tournament. Notice how the format of the lone "Super Password" tournament of champions didn't really work either, while "Password All-Stars" -- which wasn't as dependent on an end game -- worked better. Tournaments that end on pre-determined days tend to work much better on shows like "Jeopardy!"

From a ratings standpoint, the 3-day limit to the tournament probably hurts them, too, because if I'm a casual viewer and I know the tournament will end on Wednesday, why should I watch on Monday and Tuesday? With the old tournaments, every end game was played for $50,000 or $100,000, so it kept the viewers glued to their sets every day because they didn't want to miss the big win.

The only way I could see a 3-day tournament working (working better, anyway) is to have the elimination rounds on Monday and Tuesday and narrow it down to two contestants who will play on Wednesday. On Wednesday, only four subjects are played in the front round -- two with the celebs giving and two with the contestants giving. (The reason there should be no fifth and sixth categories in the front game is to allow more time for extra games.) After two rounds, whoever has the higher score goes to the winner's circle to try for $10,000. Whatever the contestant wins in the circle is added to his/her score for the day. They then switch partners and play four more categories, and the winning contestant tries to add to his score. This keeps going on for as many games as they can fit into their 20 or 21 minutes, until a "time's up" signal rings. At that point, whoever has the higher score wins the $100,000. The other contestant gets to keep whatever score money they accumulated that day. This way, they could have the tournament end on a specific day and still guarantee a $100,000 winner.


Brendan

[Jay Temple]

I'll just throw my 2 cents' worth in.

I don't disagree that the knowledge that the winner will be named on Wednesday makes the Monday and Tuesday games less important.  However, the knowledge that they might send all four players home with less than $100,000 even including their prior winnings makes all three games seem not very important.  I think it's more important to address that.

My proposal can accommodate as many as seven qualifiers, and it's similar to the Clark/Davidson tournament.*  Start by seeding the players somehow.  My preference would be the shortest time for the two WC wins goes first, with ties broken by some other means.

Game 1:  #1- and #2-seeded players.  Whoever wins goes for the $100,000.  If they don't get it, they face the #3 player and so on.  If all the players have played a main game and no one has won, they bring back the losers in order.  If there is no winner after six games, the person who (take your pick) won the most money in the WC or won the most games is declared the winner, and his total gets bumped up to $100,000.  (I wouldn't mind if a "declared" winner got $75,000 to make his total $100,000, while a person who actually won the bonus got $100,000 in addition to everything else he had accumulated.)

If the $100,000 is given away in the first game of one day, the next two players scheduled play a game whose winner goes to the WC for either $10,000, like the Clark/Davidson era, or $25,000.  (I'm partial to $25,000 only because that's what you have to win to get into the current Tournament.)

* IMHO, this is better than their system.  I always thought their system would be better if they had the third player sit out one game at a time instead of one day.

[bandit_bobby]

I would do the tourney like the first tourney they did before they changed it. Once again, winning the full $25K automatically qualifies you for the tourney. Any leftover spots not filled by the tourney are filled by the ones who won WC's in the faster times.

Again, the first WC win in a day is worth $25K, and two in the same show wins the tourney and $100,000. If no one accompolishes that, the one that won a WC faster wins the $100,000. In the event it is won before the final day, the remaining days will have WC's each worth $25,000.

[scully24]

I wonder if they'll change the format before this season is over?  If they went back to a guaranteed $100,000 winner this season, I'd feel bad for Mary Scott who missed out.

I think the current format was an accommodation for the fact that they only had four winners, and they wanted a three-day tournament with those four.

I think a good idea would be as follows:

Assuming there are four more winners for the end of season tournament, do another three-day tournament with the same rules as this last one.  Then have the winner of that tournament face off against Mary Scott for a guaranteed $100,000 payout--a grand champion for the whole season!  This could be a one-day finale or a multi-day, first-to-the-top-of-the-Pyramid finish.

In this way they would save face by not throwing away the new format entirely, but they would re-instate a guaranteed winner in a dramatic fashion, plus, by bringing back Mary Scott,  it would be fair to the players who participated in the recently concluded, non-guaranteed tournament.

[PyramidStephen]

Scully has a good idea. At this point there will probably only be 4 champions for a second tournament. I'm sure Mary Scott would love to return. The problem with a tournament that has no end is just that- impossible to program,especially within a sweeps period.

[SplitSecond]

Well, in the hopes that you make it to a third season, it might be worth changing your qualifying mechanism so that you can guarantee exactly four players (or however many make your ideal tournament format work).  Be it the people who scale one Pyramid in the shortest time or the people who win the $25K in the shortest combined time or something along those lines, guaranteeing a consistent number of players in each tournament will allow you to devise one good tournament format and stick with it, rather than changing the rules every sweeps period.

The downside of airing shows out of order is that Donny can't hype any sort of time to beat, but that can be resolved with some sort of post-produced full-screen leaderboard flashed briefly while Donny mentions that only the four fastest whateverers can make it to the tournament.

[Robert Hutchinson]

[quote name=\'PyramidStephen\' date=\'Dec 1 2003, 08:40 PM\']The problem with a tournament that has no end is just that- impossible to program,especially within a sweeps period.[/quote]
Are we to assume "in the year 2003" is part of that sentiment?

[Jay Temple]

[quote name=\'scully24\' date=\'Dec 1 2003, 04:21 PM\'] I wonder if they'll change the format before this season is over?  If they went back to a guaranteed $100,000 winner this season, I'd feel bad for Mary Scott who missed out.

I think the current format was an accommodation for the fact that they only had four winners, and they wanted a three-day tournament with those four.

I think a good idea would be as follows:

Assuming there are four more winners for the end of season tournament, do another three-day tournament with the same rules as this last one.  Then have the winner of that tournament face off against Mary Scott for a guaranteed $100,000 payout--a grand champion for the whole season!  This could be a one-day finale or a multi-day, first-to-the-top-of-the-Pyramid finish.

In this way they would save face by not throwing away the new format entirely, but they would re-instate a guaranteed winner in a dramatic fashion, plus, by bringing back Mary Scott,  it would be fair to the players who participated in the recently concluded, non-guaranteed tournament. [/quote]
 You have a good idea.  Let's build on it.  Assuming there are only four more $25,000 winners between now and May:

Days 1-3 played the same as the February 2003 and November 2003 tournaments.
Day 4 Mary Scott vs. the winner from the February 2003 tournament, who didn't win $100,000 during the tournament, but did reach that figure in total winnings.
Day 5:  The winners of Days 3 and 4 face each other with Day 3 values, and the person who wins more money that day is guaranteed $100,000 for the week.

[scully24]

I was under the impression that they only had one more tournament this season--the one to be broadcast during February sweeps--and then it was re-runs until next fall.  Did they have three separate tournaments last season?  I didn't even think of the possibility of a May tournament.

[Jay Temple]

If you know when their next tournament is scheduled, you know more than I do.  (That's entirely possible.)  I'm hoping that if they only have four more winners, they'll spread them out this time and have the tournament in May.

In the 2002-03 season, they had tournaments in November and February, and they did not have another $25,000 winner for the rest of the season.

ETA:  The closest I could imagine them coming to what you describe is to have special weeks during May and not have any $25,000 winners between February and August except those who win during the May events.

[scully24]

Yeah I may be wrong, but based on last season my impression is that February concludes the original shows for the season.  I'm sure the show would be happy to have more original episodes going into May, but I think that's just a function of how many shows the syndicator orders for the season.  I think with the current number of shows they have ordered, they have just enough to have mostly original shows from September through February (even then with some re-runs mixed in), and then I assume it's all re-runs from February to September.  Maybe they save some un-aired originals to broadcast in the spring, but if they did they would either be shows with no $25,000 winner, or else the $25,000 winner would be one who doesn't appear in the tournament, or else the winner would have their first show airing after the tournament.

Last season I believe they had more $25,000 winners than they had taking part in the tournaments, so they used "best times" as a qualifier.  This season, for some reason there are fewer winners, so it appears that everybody winning $25,000 is making it to a tournament.

The thing I'm curious about is if they have, say, nine $25,000 winners this season.  I assume that they would have a four-person tournament in February and one winner would not qualify based on having the worst time of the remaining five.  If however they had 10 overall winners this season, would they revert to a six-player format in February to include everybody?

So many ramifications...