LogFAQs > #915247189

Match 68: Donkey Kong vs. Leon Kennedy

DK 15859
Leon 12629

Wonderful. Now this is exactly what the grumpy old folks of Board 8 are looking for! This was an upset, plain and simple, and there was nothing fishy about it. It wasn't some newcomer doing unexpected things; it was an established veteran beating another established veteran when we all expected otherwise.

Just 5.625% of Gurus picked Donkey Kong to win this match, though to be fair, only 32.5% even picked him to beat Tidus. Yes, we get nice round percentages for this, because the total number of Gurus was 160, a number with 2 and 5 as its only prime factors. Since we work in base 10, these are the only prime numbers that will result in a terminating decimal. I suppose when you look at it that way, the Gurus were giving DK a better chance against Leon than they were giving Tidus, as despite having over twice as many picks to reach Round 2 he had not even 1.5 times as many picks to reach Round 3 (Leon was a unanimous choice to reach Round 2, so I don't even need to go deeper to know that this is solely based on the potential matchup with Leon). So this was definitely an lolGurus moment.

"But wait!" you say. "The casuals were held under 50% on this one, too!" Yes, they were, and it's certainly possible that Leon was the favorite there, too, but it's quite unlikely.

DK's Round 1 prediction percentage: 66.99%
Leon's Round 1 prediction percentage: 72.69%

DK's Round 2 prediction percentage: 38.06%

This means roughly 56.82% of brackets that took DK to Round 2 continued to take him to Round 3. Not a heavy favorite, but a favorite nonetheless. If you assume little to no correlation between DK > Tidus pickers and Leon > Dragonborn pickers, you'd expect only about 48.7% of brackets to even have both of those correct. If you further assume that the 56.82% ratio is also applicable specifically to DK-Leon pickers, you're left with just over 21% of brackets specifically picking Leon > DK. Leaving Leon in need of over 18% of brackets to have Leon > Tidus, when as per our previous numbers, DK being a bit over a 2-1 favorite over Tidus means that under 24.5% of brackets even have Leon-Tidus.

Now this does make a lot of assumptions. If there is in fact a surprisingly strong correlation, it's quite possible that an inordinate amount of DK picks were actually DK > Dragonborn, and that both Leon > Tidus and Leon > DK were more common picks than Tidus > Leon and DK > Leon. After all, it is at least mathematically possible that fewer than 40% of brackets had the correct matchup (in the event that no brackets got both matches wrong.) But chances are, DK was the slight favorite here. Given that Vivi had been the casuals' underdog in each of his first two matches with DK (conclusively confirmable because they were both Round 1 matches), fans of low prediction percentages were eagerly awaiting Round 3.

(Final numbers note: Just 8.96% of Oracle pickers sided with DK here, so it's not like we saw this coming by match time and adjusted accordingly. This was an upset through and through.)
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Also known as Cyberchao X.