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BB sets the draw at a power of 2 less than the total number of teams in a country. The Czech Republic had 3 divisions and 336 teams, so the first round of the cup has 256 teams. I'm not sure what criteria is used to determine which teams are chosen, but but it may be last season's record - based either on finish which would exclude some teams that finish 6th, 7th, or 8th; or wins, which would probably make the cutoff around 10 wins in D.III.

What BB should do is have a preliminary round which would reduce the field to 256 teams. This could be played on the first Thursday of the season. So in the Czech Republic you would have 160 teams playing 80 games, with the winners joining the other 176 teams in the first round proper. They could use the previous season record and bot-ness to determine which teams have to play the preliminary round, so this would include all the bots, and lower finishing D.III teams. The game matchups could still be random, and upper division teams would still start on the 2nd Thursday like they always have.

Under the current system, about 1/4 of all teams are kept out of the cup. In most countries these teams are bots, but in the Czech Republic which was almost full, there are a lot of active teams being excluded.

Since a 4th division was added to the Czech Republic this season, the cup draw really should be expanded to 1024. This would mean all of the existing teams could participate along with several hundred newly minted bots. Since the cup is still more than one week away, this solution may be feasible for the Czech Republic and any other countries that have added divisions.

Awesome, thank you very much for your answer!

The thing is that some bots are playing tournament and some active managers don´t.. I think that managers could enjoy more than bots :)

I don't see the tournament as something that should be available to every single team in the championship. Look at it as a competition for the best X teams. Having it set up for the largest power of 2 that is smaller than the total number of teams in all leagues is perfectly fine.

As it is currently constituted, 75% of all teams in a country enter the cup, with 2/3 of those teams coming from the bottom division. It is hardly an elite field. Further siince new teams can be placed into the bottom division, your measurement of "bestness" is often who took over a bot with a better record the season before.

The preliminary round would involve only teams in the lowest division, and would determine the 2/3 of teams that come from the bottom division in the classic manner of advancing in a cup - winning in the previous round. You can't really believe that if Team B beats Team A, that Team A is the better team for entering the first round proper.

1) A preliminary round is not a patchwork solution. It is standard practice in almost any cup competition to use a preliminary round to reduce the field, rather than arbitrarily excluding teams.

2) It is a long-term solution. It is quite unlikely that BB will go away from its 1:4 or 1:2 pyramid, which means that the total number of teams will not be a power of 2.

The exclusion is not being done in an arbitrary way. The fact that it is being done when it not necessary, and there is a reasonable and rational alternative which is used in the real world (and now the BBB) makes it an arbitrary choice.

Let me give you an analogy. You have a table that seats 8, and plenty of food. You have 10 people to serve. One solution is to serve them in two sittings. But instead you decide to serve only 8. The fact that you chose the 2 excluded in a non-arbitrary way (eg the two who were most overweight), does not mean that your original solution was not an arbitrary one.

The fact that the percentage of excluded teams is fairly constant has nothing to do with a preliminary round being a patchwork solution. It sounds like you don't understand what "patchwork solution" means.

While the percentage of excluded teams does converge to 25%, it increases as the number of divisions increase. It is 20% in a 2-division country, and 23.8%, 24.7%, and and 24.9% in 3-, 4-, and 5-division countries respectively. (This has nothing to do with a patchwork solution of course).

The USA and other 5-division countries already have a field of 4096 teams and take the full season. The preliminary round consisting of 2720 teams from the 5th division would be played on the opening Thursday of the season.

The tournament would be enhanced by universal participation where advancement is determined only on the merit of winning your previous cup round - not your league record from the previous year. While, it would not matter much to teams in the upper divisions - who would simply face slightly more competitive teams, it would not harm them or be a wasted week.

It would be better to cut off the cup at a full five divisions, and have a separate cup for a 6th division.

That you are fine with tournament participate not being availabe to every single team is simply a matter of your personal opinion. It has little to do with the actual merits.

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