Should we draft with an odd number of players?
I heard the latest episode of the podcast from Lucky Paper Radio today. First, the episode was, as always, great and I agree with most points. What I found really interesting was the comment from Andy at the end, namely "playing with an odd number of people is better than with an even number". And whereas some people might find this to be heretical, I sort of agree on initial thought. Namely, we draft very often with odd numbers and it always felt much more dynamical. So why should an odd number of players be better? Namely, as soon as two people are finished with their game, another match can immediately start, whereas in an even numbered pod, you usually wait until everybody is finished and you enforce a timeout. So, from a pure mathematical point of view, what is the better option? In the end, we will see that it is rather a question of feelings than pure math. Right away, computing the total time of a person not playing a match is rather trivial in the odd nu...
