The play off system as it is doesnt suit wigan because our away form is better than our home form. Last season we beat saints, catalan and leeds away but lost to them at home, thus it is pointless us finishing top (unless you factor in the week off you get and the clubcall which havent helped us in previous years). Making the DW a fortress should be a top priority and would certainly help us in the playoffs.

So, if you are talking comparatively, you accept then that the final position is still relevant. And if the final position is still relevant, why wouldn't you try throughout the year to end up in the best position possible?

As for the size of the playoffs, I would rather we stuck with the top 8 as it gives more clubs something to play for towards the business end of the season. If those team "aren't good enough" then don't worry, they'll get beaten. However, by being involved they will gain experience and in ten years time, who knows, perhaps we'll have a competition good enough for the team that finishes 8th to win it.

If you're going to stick with a top 8, at least make it fair (particularly to those who finished 3rd and 4th).

Play the 1v8, 2v7. 3v6, etc. system, instead of making 3rd and 4th go away to the 2 best teams, while 5th get a much easier tie at home to 8th.

I can't stand the play-off system, but if we truly MUST have 1, then my vote would be for the old top 5 or 6, as it rewarded 1st (or 1st + 2nd) far more highly than this cock-eyed mess that we currently have, does.

My playoff would be 1st straight through to GF
2nd play 5th
3rd play 4th
on a straight knock out basis winners of the above matches play each other to determine who plays in the GF .

The disadvantage (From the clubs point of view) with your top 8 is that there are less rounds played.

With the current set up, although 3rd & 4th must play the top 2 teams they are rewarded by receiving a second chance, "a much easier tie at home".

the problem with the current system is 1st and 2nd get no 2nd chance if they win in week 1 where as 3rd and 4th get a 2nd chance for losing..

That is statistically not the case. For one thing your sample is too small to draw any conclusions based on what has actually happened. We just have not had this format in operation long enough to decide. You can though do some statistics that compete the chances of winning it from whatever position a team finishes in.

Statistically if all teams are considered equally capable of winning it then 1st and 2nd have an equal chance of winning it under this system which is wrong in itself (club call makes no difference to the stats).

They are both slightly more likely to win it than 3 or 4 and a bit more likely still to win it then the other sides.

However the point is, statistically, there is virtually nothing in it and the current play off is almost identical to a knock-out competition meaning there is very little reward for finishing top in terms of how much advantage you get by doing so. The old top 5 system meant the 1st placed side had a 37.5% chance of winning it. It drops to 18.75% with the old Ausie top 8 system (still better than ours) so IMO that is just not enough of an advantage for finishing top.

The best way would be a top 3 play-off system. 1st goes straight to the final and has a week off. 2nd & 3rd play-off in a semi-final to decide who joins then. That gives 1st a 50% chance of winning the competition.

Thats a fair point. But at least the highest placed winner gets to choose who to play!

Now I'm confused, you start your post with a statement that there's not enough of a sample to be of statistical significance and then go on to make some statements about the statistics seemingly based on an assumption that all teams are equal and so the club call means nothing. And describe that 3th/4th have the same chance to win, however without the weight of capability (8th not as capable as 1st for example) your analyses is pointless. Maybe some kind of weighting based on the league points would help?

I would argue that the sample, while low does have significance. Indeed we can clearly see that over the entire of the GF formats it's only the last two years that 5th even gets into a final.

Just because you have failed to understand it doesn't mean it is pointless.



You are confusing statistics and probability so perhaps I should have been clearer myself to differentiate the two.

Statistics are what you analyse and probability is how you calculate the chances of some outcome or other. There isn't enough data to analyse to say things like "our system makes it most likely 1st or 5th will win it". Calculating probabilities is much more straightforward which is what I am on about.

Capability could be some sort of weighting that would affect probability[i in a small way[/i but you have to be able to apply it sensibly. For example when 1st and 2nd are determined by a single league point "capability" would be virtually zero and make no odds. Crucially even if you did apply a weighting factor based on capability that wouldn't change the relative merits of the differing play off systems.

So that doesn't alter the fact you can apply basic probability calculations to the play off system and when you do you get the relative chances of a side winning it and you can compare the different play off systems on this basis. [uIt's a fact[/u that a top 5 system makes it more likely the team finishing first will win it compared to a top 8 system. Nothing you can say is going to change than and in any. Therefore a top 5 system rewards the league performance more.

Most people accept it does anyway just by looking at way the fixtures work in each but its actually a Mathematical fact as well. For some idiotic reason we ended up with a play off system that rewards the top sides the least of any of the alternatives.

Oh, don't worry I understand it. Having an analyses of the system with the basic premise that all teams are equal is a fallacy. It builds a facile model for your reasoning that doesn't work, do you really think that Wakefield and Wigan are of equal capability come playoff time?

...it would be nice if they were!

Ha! It would make the playoffs more entertaining at least.

Assuming all are equally capable then any club earning a week off has a considerably higher probability of winning the GF than any club playing in every round.
Make of that what you will.

At least one of the top 2 should be guaranteed a GF spot, the top 8 system doesn't allow that (see 2011). The old 1st v 2nd GF qualifiers in week 2 of the playoffs produced some memorable matches, as intense as the final itself. And the week off before the final was a good reward for the winners.

I think if that reward was reinstated, it would focus teams efforts on finishing in the top 2. For me it has to be 14 teams & top 6 or 12 teams & top 5.

No, you don't understand it at all. Even if you take this into account "the basic premise that all teams are equal is a fallacy" by weighting the calculations in some way to further reduce the probability of teams who finish lower in the league winning it, [uit will not alter the fact there will still be a difference in between the various play off systems in terms of the probability of success based on where you finish[/u. A top five system will [ualways[/u be more likely to deliver success for the team that finished 1st than 5th than a top 8 system. If you can't see that you are a bit thick!

The whole idea behind playoff systems compared to basic knock out competitions is they increase the probability of winning more-so the higher up you finish. That is what they are designed to do, they would be totally pointless if they didn't and the different systems make it more or less likely that will happen depending on which one you choose. The top 8 makes the competition far more even than a top 5.

Not as I understand it. If we had a top three system as I mentioned before the top team would have a 50% chance of winning the whole thing as they play one game and you have a 50/50 chance of winning it (if both teams are equal).

If you wanted to weight that in some way due to the week off you would add some sort of constant to the equation to try and reflect that. You could add another to cater for the teams not being equal as well if you liked. I doubt any reasonable attempt at coming up with such a formula would give you a result that showed the club with a week off was at a [iconsiderable[/i advantage. Even if it did though did though all that would dhow shows is by how much more that club was rewarded for finishing top and so getting the week off as opposed to the basic 50% chance they get due to only playing one game.

This is a point that most on here don't get, or at least gloss over if they do.

Other things being equal it is MORE likely, that the teams that finish higher in the table will progress to the GF.

Generally this holds true.

However, under the current system of the top 8 is is LESS likely that the above holds true.

It's true that GENERALLY teams that finish in 1st and 2nd will go on and do at least "ok" in the playoffs, but the advantages that a top 2 finish conveys do not outweigh the advantages of reaching the playoffs with form, a healthy squad and experience.

It does but that likelihood varies between different play off systems.



It is still more probable but a lot less probable than under say a top 5 system.



That means you are increasing the probability of a particular teams chances of winning a game i.e. all things are not equal. So the question is, does that outweigh the inherent advantage of finishing higher in the league? That will also depend on the playoff system involved. If the playoff system doesn't statistically reward the top team much then there is higher chance of what you say being true.

You can see the effect of "form" top 5 system. 5th has to win four in a row so, all things equal, the probability of that is a mere 6.25%. 1st has a 37.5% chance of winnings its games (2 out of 3 worst case). If you decided the 5th placed team was on form, etc and so that meant it was 70% likely to win each game (as opposed to 50%) its chances of winning the whole thing by winning four in a row would go up to 24%.

You seem to be going off topic, this isn't a comparison of the various playoff systems it's about the Warrington game being "meaningless" in the light of the current system. Clearly you are the one that's "a bit thick" and lacking in reading ability?

I agree with what you are saying here about the various systems, but you have jumped into a different topic.

Which doesn't make the game on friday meaningless, the point of this topic.

You were the the one to say this:

"Looking at the protagonists for the history of the eight team system would suggest that entry to the GF is best when in 2nd place, then first and fifth. Winning the GF is a tie between the first place team and the fifth place team, oh and the first placed team get the LLS which is somewhat devalued but worth more than not getting it.

So, on the whole from what the results and rewards are a placement of first in the league has an equal change of a GF win as fifth but also carries the additional prize of the LLS."

Which is where I came in. I pointed out that mathematically what you say above isn't correct. The chances of winning are related to mathematical probabilities and while you can adjust those for things like home advantage etc the differences between the different play off systems will remain.



The Mathematics dictates what the rewards are for where you finish and given that under a top 8 system the rewards are less than the top 5 system it makes the league games less meaningful. That is the link between what I am saying and the topic.

My conclusion as to how where you finish matters (which dictates how meaningful the league games are) is 1-4 it makes no difference at all. 5th? Well if you assume that home advantage guarantees a win in round 1 that puts your chances up to 12.5% but then that will apply to 6th as well. There is just not a great deal of difference mathematically to make it worth busting a gut over winning the league if advantage in the playoffs is what you are after (as opposed to winning the league as an end in itself). So I would say finish in the top 6 is the aim and you can do that at still lose 10 games (based on 2012).

The interesting question still remains does finishing 5th give you a better chance than 4th. That hinges on whether 4 playing away in round 1 makes them less likely to win the next game and 5th playing at home more likely (that 5th wins it). I think a lot people's gut feeling is it does and if you set the chances of the outcomes accordingly in a probability calculation that would agree with that but I think the only way this will be confirmed as the most probable outcome is if it keeps happening.

I dispute the meaningless statement and given the evidence we have where the top 8 system has been in place then the placement of the team is significant and you agree, that even without teams capability a top 6 placement is significant. This has been more significant in past structures (although as you point our in a pervious comment, there are not enough data point for any statistics for this, or by extension any of the play off regimes which the SL have had, just an assumptive mathematical model).

So at the weekend, we just either gained or lost 1 point, which is 10% of the points to help stay in the top 6 based on your views.

And so the game is not meaningless, which is the entire point of the thread.

Given there are 10 games to be lost to get you from 1st down to 6th I think that casts doubt on how meaningful the league is. There is a difference between 6th being a good position and what you have to do to get it as to how meaningful the league games therefore are.



Different playoff systems like the top 5 have been used for years in other competitions such as in RL in Australia. The only one with little data is our top 8 system as it is unique. So what you say above does not follow.



Based on 2012 it's 1/32 of what we need to get 6th not 10%. We'd only need another 9 points to qualify in 6th if what you said were true!

Given we could afford to lose it and nine other games then yes it could be classed as meaningless. In fact you could argue we could lose all the games to our main rivals (Wire, Leeds, Saints and Les Cats based on 2012) and still get a top 6 finish. The fact teams don't play the percentages is something to be thankful for as a paying fan but that game just wasn't statistically important in terms of increasing our chances of winning the GF. We didn't need to win it to get the required position on the ladder. There is plenty of leeway in the system we have where you can still qualify in a good spot for the finals.

Its meaningless though as if warrington get to the cup final again. They will more than likley throw the game the week before like they have previously done.
Not saying i blame them, but it begs the question of the importance of one game over the bigger picture does it not?

What is even more frustrating is that we now have enough good teams 5 to do away completly with the playoffs amd go back to anfirst past the post system.

The ultimate irony is that the playoffs where to stop a one team domination. Its hard to argue thqt it has done this.

And dont come with the level playing field crap. It was a level playing field and always has been. Just some teams decided they couldnt be bothered to play at that level.