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. It's a fact 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, it 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. A top five system will always 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%.