Tournament Formatting that Minimizes Result Tampering

By kpmccoy22, in 1. AGoT General Discussion

In Robb's excellent Tournament Report thread, he included this link http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/print.asp?ID=2828 . Not sure how many of you bothered to read it, but he gave an interesting and feasible solution for minimizing collusion or inaccurate game reporting.

Rather than cutting to the top 4, 8, 16, etc for Single Elimination Round, just play Swiss Rounds all the way through and award prizes based on top record at the end of Swiss. He mentions that the cut was originally introduced for television coverage, a problem most AGOT tournaments need not concern themselves with.

What say you the community about switching the format to all Swiss?

I've always preferred this method of scoring. I've run tournaments for 9 years, 6 of them as the highest level of TO for magic. However, there are fair arguements on the Pros and Cons list:

Pros
Every game matters, the only excuse if you lose is "Play better" (more to be said about this later),
Better chance for a less experienced player to win (if a newer player outplays someone, odds are they will remember how that happened)
Less collusion (can still happen but will happen less)

Cons
Bad matchups (if you run into a deck you can't beat you don't have a chance to be in the championships)
Less games played
Less fun to play when you lose the first round but then win the next four (not even a shot at playing for 1st place)

More times then not the same tournament run the two different ways will still see the same handful of people near the top. They are a combination of being good players, read the meta correctly, and have play tested their deck to near exhaustion (otherwise known as experience). After you get to a tournament the only thing you have going for you is luck of match ups.