So I just won my first 3 games on the Army of One event and I found a match for a player with 495 rating. I go check the top ranks and the highest is ~300.
I am confused, as if someone put a paper bag on my face and a “kick me” sign on my back. What is this?
brackets are only to tabulate your score, they have nothing to do whatsoever with who you play – that is a global pool.
Brackets are ‘first come, first serve’. As people complete their first match, they are placed into one and when it fills up (say 200 people) a new one will form.
That’s why it’s possible sometimes to be 200-300 points behind the leader after a few matches if you joined a bracket late.
Cool, I had no idea.
Is it correct to assume that a bracket size can be determined by the last places in the placement awards? So rank 401-500 would get 250 ISO-8. Is it fair to assume that the bracket size is 500 in this case? Or can u enter a tourney and get nothing at all (not even a participation medal)?
I don’t think there is any way to know(in-game). ICEIX frequently will mention what a tourney is bracketed for in his update posts.
I’ve seen it vary from 1000 to 500 to 200. 500 users seems to be the norm lately.
Looking at rewards is good enough.
What Nemek said. The top number is the bracket size. There’s pretty much always a participation medal (70 ISO). The few unbracketed events will have the last ranking tier be 10,000-1,000,000 or whatever.
Some times I see tournaments bracketed and there is occasionally an extra person on top of the bracket. For example in my bracket for thick as thieves it is 2000 main bracket but there is 2002 people in it, so in theory 2 people won’t get a prize.
That’s been explained by IceIX as being caused by cheaters being removed and then replaced by new players.