[POOL] Playoffs

[John Valdes]

Playoffs start today, as was mentioned in the Call for Pool.
Unofficially, it looks like we tied for 6th with Nice Rack, which
means will play either the 3rd place team (Get More with Les) or the
2nd place team (Bass Ackward).

Playoff rules for the uninitiated:

1) Playoffs are 3 weeks.

2) Playoffs are single elimination, which means that if a team loses a
   night, that team is no longer eligible for the championship.
   Losing teams continue playing in subsequent weeks however, to vie
   for 3rd through 8th place.

3) The 4 teams that win the first week (tonight) advance to the
   winners bracket and are thus guaranteed a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th
   place finish in the playoffs.  So a team that wins the first week
   but loses the 2nd and 3rd week will finish in 4th, ahead of a team
   that loses the 1st week, but wins the 2nd and 3rd week, who will
   finish in 5th place.

   For the geeks among us, the breakdown can be figured as follows: if
   1 represents a win and 0 a loss, and if each week is a place for a
   binary digit (1st week at the left, 3rd week at the right), then
   the final standings after the playoffs will be represented as:

     1st: 111
     2nd: 110
     3rd: 101
     4th: 100
     5th: 011
     6th: 010
     7th: 001
     8th: 000

   So if we win tonight, we're guaranteed no worse that 4th place.

4) The winning team for a night is the first team to win 3 matches
   against its opposing team.  If a team wins the first 3 matches of
   the night, then they've won the round; no more matches are played.


John