A minor thing, but why not bring it up, I stumbled over that several times and there might be some people who might want to hear it:
When you have in a tournament first map or civ bans and then picks, it doesn't make sense to start with the common AB-BA-AB-... pattern right away.
It is a misconception that bans work like picks where it's an advantage to ban first. When you pick first, you take away your opponent's opportunity to pick the same, leaving him on disadvantage. Bans are for both players, so when player A bans the same that B wanted to ban, B is happy and effectively gets handed an additional ban. (He can have the map/civ banned he didn't want to play, and then another one he also doesn't like.)
Being the second player to ban a civ or map is therefore an advantage.
If you do the pattern A bans, B bans, B picks, A picks, then you give player B a double advantage. Order should be AB-AB-BA-... then.
Oh and it's the same with map-picks. If you have map-pick then civ-pick, it should also be AB-AB. (In this case you might argue for a slight psychological advantage to have your first favorite map as a home map to fall back to if you lose, instead of your second favorite map, but that should not outweigh the opportunity to have both your favorite maps played instead of just one of them.)
When you have in a tournament first map or civ bans and then picks, it doesn't make sense to start with the common AB-BA-AB-... pattern right away.
It is a misconception that bans work like picks where it's an advantage to ban first. When you pick first, you take away your opponent's opportunity to pick the same, leaving him on disadvantage. Bans are for both players, so when player A bans the same that B wanted to ban, B is happy and effectively gets handed an additional ban. (He can have the map/civ banned he didn't want to play, and then another one he also doesn't like.)
Being the second player to ban a civ or map is therefore an advantage.
If you do the pattern A bans, B bans, B picks, A picks, then you give player B a double advantage. Order should be AB-AB-BA-... then.
Oh and it's the same with map-picks. If you have map-pick then civ-pick, it should also be AB-AB. (In this case you might argue for a slight psychological advantage to have your first favorite map as a home map to fall back to if you lose, instead of your second favorite map, but that should not outweigh the opportunity to have both your favorite maps played instead of just one of them.)
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