Address review findings in LLWS simulator

Four fixes from code review of the previous commit.

1. Preserve the futures board's dispersion (llws-simulator.ts).
   convertFuturesToElo finishes by rescaling any field onto a fixed
   1250-1750 Elo span, discarding how spread out the board actually is: a
   board with a 22%-priced favorite and one with a 6%-priced favorite both
   came out 500 Elo wide. On a tight board that inflated the favorite from
   6% to 13% -- worse than the raw-futures model it replaced (RMSE 0.025 vs
   0.005), so the previous commit was a regression in that regime.

   buildLLWSElos now maps decompressed strengths by their log-ratio to the
   field's geometric mean, so Elo span tracks real dispersion. Re-swept the
   parity factor across three board shapes rather than one: 550 minimizes
   total error. Simulated vs priced favorite, with RMSE:
     wide       21.8% -> 20.7%  (0.0055), elo span 1355-1682
     top-heavy  28.2% -> 25.6%  (0.0085), elo span 1354-1733
     tight       6.0% ->  5.8%  (0.0026), elo span 1484-1518

2. Rate an unpriced team at the field's median, not 1500.
   DEFAULT_ELO is the midpoint of the Elo output range, not of the field;
   on a typical board it ranked an unpriced team ~6th of 20, so blanking a
   team's odds promoted it. buildLLWSElos now returns the priced field's
   median alongside the ratings (ranks 11th of 20 on the same board).

3. Pick the bracket event deterministically.
   scoringEvents.findFirst with no ordering returned an arbitrary row when a
   season had more than one llws_20 playoff event; landing on a stale one
   silently reverted to a randomized draw that ignored all recorded results.
   Now takes the most recent, matching world-cup-simulator.ts.

4. Fail on a partially seeded bracket instead of discarding it.
   readBracketSlots returned null on any single missing participant, throwing
   away the draw and every completed result with no warning. Since
   playoff_matches participant columns are ON DELETE SET NULL, removing and
   re-adding one participant mid-tournament was enough to put eliminated
   teams back in contention. It now distinguishes "generated but not seeded"
   (0 slots filled -> randomized draw) from "partially seeded" (throws).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X5vQZMPeokzfMqHQjq1RDZ

app/services/simulations/__tests__/llws-simulator.test.ts

@@ -157,7 +157,7 @@ describe("LLWSSimulator", () => {
   let mockDb: {
     select: MockInstance;
     query: {
-      scoringEvents: { findFirst: MockInstance };
+      scoringEvents: { findMany: MockInstance };
       playoffMatches: { findMany: MockInstance };
     };
   };
@@ -169,7 +169,7 @@ describe("LLWSSimulator", () => {
     mockDb = {
       select: vi.fn(),
       query: {
-        scoringEvents: { findFirst: vi.fn().mockResolvedValue(undefined) },
+        scoringEvents: { findMany: vi.fn().mockResolvedValue([]) },
         playoffMatches: { findMany: vi.fn().mockResolvedValue([]) },
       },
     };
@@ -189,7 +189,9 @@ describe("LLWSSimulator", () => {
     });
 
     if (bracketMatches) {
-      mockDb.query.scoringEvents.findFirst.mockResolvedValue({ id: "event-1" });
+      mockDb.query.scoringEvents.findMany.mockResolvedValue([
+        { id: "event-1", createdAt: new Date("2026-08-01") },
+      ]);
       mockDb.query.playoffMatches.findMany.mockResolvedValue(
         bracketMatches.map((m) => ({ ...EMPTY_MATCH, ...m }))
       );
@@ -501,6 +503,63 @@ describe("LLWSSimulator", () => {
       expect(rmse).toBeLessThan(0.02);
     });
 
+    // Regression: the previous mapping rescaled every field onto a fixed 1250–1750
+    // Elo span, which discarded how spread out the board actually was and pulled a
+    // nearly flat field apart into contenders and no-hopers the market never implied.
+    const TIGHT_BOARD = Array.from({ length: 20 }, (_, i) => 1500 + i * 35);
+
+    it("does not inflate the favorite on a tightly priced board", async () => {
+      setupMockDb(
+        defaultParticipants(),
+        ALL_IDS.map((participantId, i) => ({ participantId, sourceOdds: TIGHT_BOARD[i] }))
+      );
+      const results = await new LLWSSimulator(20_000).simulate("season-1");
+
+      const market = marketProbabilities(TIGHT_BOARD);
+      const simulated = probsFor(results, "us-1").probFirst;
+
+      // The favorite prices near 6%. A fixed-span mapping simulated it around 13%,
+      // so the band is wide enough for Monte Carlo noise but nowhere near that.
+      expect(Math.abs(simulated - market[0])).toBeLessThan(0.015);
+    });
+
+    it("keeps a tightly priced field tight", async () => {
+      setupMockDb(
+        defaultParticipants(),
+        ALL_IDS.map((participantId, i) => ({ participantId, sourceOdds: TIGHT_BOARD[i] }))
+      );
+      const results = await new LLWSSimulator(20_000).simulate("season-1");
+      const probs = ALL_IDS.map((id) => probsFor(results, id).probFirst);
+
+      // Every team prices between roughly 4% and 6%, so nobody should run away with
+      // it and nobody should be written off.
+      expect(Math.max(...probs)).toBeLessThan(0.09);
+      expect(Math.min(...probs)).toBeGreaterThan(0.02);
+    });
+
+    it("rates a team with no odds entered around the middle of the field", async () => {
+      // us-5 is priced mid-board; blanking its odds should not move it far. The old
+      // 1500 fallback was the centre of the Elo scale rather than of the field, which
+      // promoted an unpriced team to roughly 6th of 20.
+      const priced = ALL_IDS.map((participantId, i) => ({ participantId, sourceOdds: BOARD[i] }));
+      setupMockDb(defaultParticipants(), priced);
+      const withOdds = probsFor(
+        await new LLWSSimulator(20_000).simulate("season-1"), "us-5"
+      ).probFirst;
+
+      const blanked = priced.map((row) =>
+        row.participantId === "us-5" ? { ...row, sourceOdds: null } : row
+      );
+      setupMockDb(defaultParticipants(), blanked);
+      const withoutOdds = probsFor(
+        await new LLWSSimulator(20_000).simulate("season-1"), "us-5"
+      ).probFirst;
+
+      // Priced 5th of 20, so the median rating should land it in the same territory.
+      expect(withoutOdds).toBeGreaterThan(withOdds / 2);
+      expect(withoutOdds).toBeLessThan(withOdds * 2);
+    });
+
     it("does not starve longshots of championship probability", async () => {
       setupMockDb(defaultParticipants(), boardEvRows());
       const results = await new LLWSSimulator(20_000).simulate("season-1");
@@ -549,6 +608,38 @@ describe("LLWSSimulator", () => {
       expect(results.reduce((s, r) => s + r.probabilities.probFirst, 0)).toBeCloseTo(1.0, 1);
     });
 
+    it("uses the most recent bracket event when several exist", async () => {
+      // A stale event's matches would carry no draw, silently reverting to a
+      // randomized one and discarding every recorded result.
+      setupMockDb(defaultParticipants(), makeEvRows(ALL_IDS), seededBracket());
+      mockDb.query.scoringEvents.findMany.mockResolvedValue([
+        { id: "stale-event", createdAt: new Date("2026-07-01") },
+        { id: "event-1", createdAt: new Date("2026-08-01") },
+      ]);
+
+      const results = await new LLWSSimulator(20_000).simulate("season-1");
+
+      // Bracket mode is in force, so the fixed bye slots still show their advantage.
+      expect(probsFor(results, "us-9").probFirst).toBeGreaterThan(
+        probsFor(results, "us-1").probFirst
+      );
+    });
+
+    it("throws when the bracket is only partially seeded", async () => {
+      // participant1Id/participant2Id are ON DELETE SET NULL, so removing and
+      // re-adding one participant mid-tournament empties a single slot. Falling back
+      // to a randomized draw there would put eliminated teams back in contention.
+      const holed = seededBracket().map((m) =>
+        m.round === "Opening Round" && m.matchNumber === 3
+          ? { ...m, participant2Id: null }
+          : m
+      );
+      setupMockDb(defaultParticipants(), makeEvRows(ALL_IDS), holed);
+      await expect(new LLWSSimulator(100).simulate("season-1")).rejects.toThrow(
+        /partially seeded \(19 of 20/
+      );
+    });
+
     it("throws when the bracket seeds the same team into two slots", async () => {
       const duplicated = seededBracket().map((m) =>
         m.round === "Opening Round" && m.matchNumber === 2

app/services/simulations/llws-simulator.ts

@@ -39,11 +39,12 @@
  *   A championship future already bakes in the ~6 wins needed to lift the trophy, so
  *   using it directly as a single-game strength (p1 / (p1 + p2)) makes every
  *   individual game as lopsided as the whole tournament and compounds the favorite's
- *   edge over and over. convertFuturesToElo undoes that compression first (the
+ *   edge over and over. buildLLWSElos undoes that compression first (the empirically
- *   empirically calibrated cube-root step in decompressProbability) before mapping to
+ *   calibrated cube-root step in decompressProbability) before mapping to an Elo
- *   an Elo scale, which is how the other bracket simulators on the platform consume
+ *   scale, and LLWS_PARITY_FACTOR then widens the Elo curve to reflect how much
- *   futures. LLWS_PARITY_FACTOR then widens the Elo curve to reflect how much
+ *   single-game variance there is in six-inning Little League baseball. Unlike the
- *   single-game variance there is in six-inning Little League baseball.
+ *   shared convertFuturesToElo helper, the mapping preserves how spread out the board
+ *   actually is — see buildLLWSElos for why that matters.
  *
  * Side assignment (externalId): "US" or "Intl". The legacy pool suffixes
  * ("US:A", "US:B", "Intl:A", "Intl:B") are still accepted and read as the side
@@ -74,7 +75,8 @@ import { database } from "~/database/context";
 import { and, eq } from "drizzle-orm";
 import * as schema from "~/database/schema";
 import {
-  convertFuturesToElo,
+  convertAmericanOddsToProbability,
+  decompressProbability,
   eloWinProbabilityWithParity,
 } from "~/services/probability-engine";
 import { llwsMatchNumber } from "~/lib/bracket-templates";
@@ -92,20 +94,36 @@ const LLWS_TEMPLATE_ID = "llws_20";
 /**
  * Elo scaling for a single LLWS game.
  *
- * Much higher than the 400-point standard because a six-inning Little League game
+ * Higher than the 400-point standard because a six-inning Little League game between
- * between 12-year-olds is far closer to a coin flip than a pro game: one pitcher, one
+ * 12-year-olds is far closer to a coin flip than a pro game: one pitcher, one big
- * big inning, and the mercy rule all compress the gap.
+ * inning, and the mercy rule all compress the gap.
  *
  * Calibrated by sweeping this value until a randomized-draw simulation reproduces the
- * championship futures it was fed. Against a representative 20-team futures board,
+ * championship futures it was fed, across boards of different shape (see
- * simulated championship probability vs. the market it came from:
+ * LLWS_ELO_SPREAD for why the shape matters). Total RMSE over a wide board, a
- *   parity  400 → favorite 21.8% priced, 51.5% simulated  (RMSE 0.075)
+ * top-heavy board, and a nearly flat one:
- *   parity  700 → favorite 21.8% priced, 31.5% simulated  (RMSE 0.026)
+ *   parity  450 → 0.028
- *   parity 1000 → favorite 21.8% priced, 21.8% simulated  (RMSE 0.003)  ← chosen
+ *   parity  550 → 0.016  ← chosen
- *   parity 1200 → favorite 21.8% priced, 18.3% simulated  (RMSE 0.010)
+ *   parity  750 → 0.040
+ *   parity 1000 → 0.061
  * Overridable per season via the `parityFactor` simulator config.
  */
-const LLWS_PARITY_FACTOR = 1_000;
+const LLWS_PARITY_FACTOR = 550;
+
+/**
+ * Elo points per natural-log unit of relative team strength.
+ *
+ * Only the ratio LLWS_ELO_SPREAD / parityFactor affects the simulation, so this fixes
+ * the readable scale of the ratings and LLWS_PARITY_FACTOR does the calibrating. 300
+ * puts a typical 20-team board in the familiar ~1350–1700 range.
+ */
+const LLWS_ELO_SPREAD = 300;
+
+/**
+ * Power transform undoing the compounding baked into a championship future.
+ * Matches DEFAULT_CALIBRATION.exponent in the probability engine.
+ */
+const LLWS_DECOMPRESSION_EXPONENT = 0.33;
 
 // ─── Types ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 
@@ -362,21 +380,58 @@ function inferExternalIdFromName(name: string): string {
 /**
  * Map participants to single-game Elo ratings from their championship futures.
  *
- * Teams with no odds entered sit at DEFAULT_ELO, which is also where every team lands
+ * Deliberately NOT convertFuturesToElo. That helper finishes by rescaling the field
- * when the season has no odds at all — so an unconfigured season still simulates as a
+ * onto a fixed 1250–1750 span (mapToElo), which throws away how spread out the board
- * field of coin flips rather than throwing.
+ * actually is: a board whose favorite is priced at 22% and one whose favorite is
+ * priced at 6% both come out 500 Elo wide, so the tight board's field gets pulled
+ * apart into contenders and no-hopers that the market never implied. On such a board
+ * that inflated the favorite from 6% to 13%.
+ *
+ * Instead the decompressed strengths are mapped by their log-ratio to the field's
+ * geometric mean, which preserves dispersion: a tight board yields a narrow Elo span
+ * and a top-heavy one a wide span, both centred on DEFAULT_ELO.
+ *
+ * Returns the ratings alongside the rating to use for a team with no odds entered —
+ * the median of the priced field, so leaving odds blank neither promotes nor buries a
+ * team. (DEFAULT_ELO is the centre of the scale, but futures fields are skewed, so on
+ * a typical board it would rank a team around 6th of 20.)
  */
 export function buildLLWSElos(
   evRows: Array<{ participantId: string; sourceOdds: number | null }>
-): Map<string, number> {
+): { elos: Map<string, number>; unpricedElo: number } {
-  const oddsInput = evRows
+  const priced = evRows.filter((row) => row.sourceOdds !== null);
-    .filter((row) => row.sourceOdds !== null)
-    .map((row) => ({ participantId: row.participantId, odds: row.sourceOdds ?? 0 }));
 
-  // convertFuturesToElo needs a spread to normalise against; a single priced team
+  // A single priced team carries no information about the rest of the field, so
-  // carries no information about the rest of the field.
+  // there is nothing to normalise against — treat the season as unpriced.
-  if (oddsInput.length < 2) return new Map();
+  if (priced.length < 2) return { elos: new Map(), unpricedElo: DEFAULT_ELO };
-  return convertFuturesToElo(oddsInput);
+
+  const rawProbs = priced.map((row) => convertAmericanOddsToProbability(row.sourceOdds ?? 0));
+  const rawSum = rawProbs.reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0);
+  if (rawSum <= 0) return { elos: new Map(), unpricedElo: DEFAULT_ELO };
+
+  // Vig-removed championship probability → single-game strength.
+  const logStrengths = rawProbs.map((prob) =>
+    Math.log(
+      Math.max(decompressProbability(prob / rawSum, LLWS_DECOMPRESSION_EXPONENT), Number.MIN_VALUE)
+    )
+  );
+  const meanLog = logStrengths.reduce((a, b) => a + b, 0) / logStrengths.length;
+
+  const elos = new Map<string, number>(
+    priced.map((row, i) => [
+      row.participantId,
+      DEFAULT_ELO + LLWS_ELO_SPREAD * (logStrengths[i] - meanLog),
+    ])
+  );
+
+  return { elos, unpricedElo: median([...elos.values()]) };
+}
+
+function median(values: number[]): number {
+  if (values.length === 0) return DEFAULT_ELO;
+  const sorted = values.toSorted((a, b) => a - b);
+  const mid = Math.floor(sorted.length / 2);
+  return sorted.length % 2 === 0 ? (sorted[mid - 1] + sorted[mid]) / 2 : sorted[mid];
 }
 
 // ─── Bracket loading ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
@@ -384,10 +439,16 @@ export function buildLLWSElos(
 /**
  * Read the seeded llws_20 bracket for this season, if there is one.
  *
- * Returns null when no bracket exists yet or its opening slots have not been filled
+ * Returns null only when the bracket carries no draw at all — no matches, or a
- * in — in that case the caller falls back to a randomized draw. Throws when the
+ * freshly generated bracket with every slot still empty — in which case the caller
- * bracket is seeded with participants that don't belong to the season, which is a
+ * falls back to a randomized draw.
- * misconfiguration worth surfacing rather than silently ignoring.
+ *
+ * A *partially* seeded bracket is an error rather than a fallback. Silently falling
+ * back there would throw away the real draw and every recorded result along with it,
+ * putting eliminated teams back in contention; and it is reachable in practice,
+ * because playoff_matches.participant1Id/participant2Id are ON DELETE SET NULL, so
+ * removing and re-adding a single participant mid-tournament empties a slot.
+ * Likewise, a bracket seeded with unknown or duplicated participants fails loudly.
  */
 export function readBracketSlots(
   matches: BracketMatch[],
@@ -396,39 +457,59 @@ export function readBracketSlots(
   if (matches.length === 0) return null;
 
   const byKey = new Map(matches.map((m) => [matchKey(m.round, m.matchNumber), m]));
-  const slots: Record<Side, Team[]> = { US: [], Intl: [] };
+
-  const seen = new Set<string>();
+  // Collect both sides' draws before deciding, so "nothing seeded" is judged over the
+  // whole bracket rather than one side at a time.
+  const draw: Record<Side, (string | null)[]> = { US: [], Intl: [] };
 
   for (const side of ["US", "Intl"] as const) {
     const sideIndex = SIDE_INDEX[side];
-    const ids: (string | null)[] = [];
 
     for (let local = 1; local <= 4; local++) {
       const match = byKey.get(
         matchKey("Opening Round", llwsMatchNumber("Opening Round", sideIndex, local))
       );
-      ids.push(match?.participant1Id ?? null, match?.participant2Id ?? null);
+      draw[side].push(match?.participant1Id ?? null, match?.participant2Id ?? null);
     }
     for (let local = 1; local <= 2; local++) {
       const match = byKey.get(
         matchKey("Winners Round 2", llwsMatchNumber("Winners Round 2", sideIndex, local))
       );
-      ids.push(match?.participant1Id ?? null);
+      draw[side].push(match?.participant1Id ?? null);
     }
+  }
 
-    // An unseeded (or partially seeded) bracket carries no draw information.
+  const allSlots = [...draw.US, ...draw.Intl];
-    if (ids.some((id) => id === null)) return null;
+  const seededCount = allSlots.filter((id) => id !== null).length;
 
-    for (const id of ids) {
+  // Generated but not yet filled in — no draw to honor.
-      if (seen.has(id as string)) {
+  if (seededCount === 0) return null;
-        throw new Error(`LLWS bracket seeds participant ${id} into more than one slot.`);
+
+  if (seededCount < allSlots.length) {
+    throw new Error(
+      `LLWS bracket is only partially seeded (${seededCount} of ${allSlots.length} slots ` +
+      `filled). Re-seed the bracket in Admin → Bracket before simulating; simulating ` +
+      `around the gap would discard the draw and every recorded result.`
+    );
+  }
+
+  const slots: Record<Side, Team[]> = { US: [], Intl: [] };
+  const seen = new Set<string>();
+
+  for (const side of ["US", "Intl"] as const) {
+    for (const id of draw[side]) {
+      const participantId = id as string;
+      if (seen.has(participantId)) {
+        throw new Error(
+          `LLWS bracket seeds participant ${participantId} into more than one slot.`
+        );
       }
-      seen.add(id as string);
+      seen.add(participantId);
 
-      const team = teamsById.get(id as string);
+      const team = teamsById.get(participantId);
       if (!team) {
         throw new Error(
-          `LLWS bracket references participant ${id}, which is not in this sports season.`
+          `LLWS bracket references participant ${participantId}, which is not in this sports season.`
         );
       }
       // The bracket is authoritative about which side a team is on.
@@ -472,7 +553,7 @@ export class LLWSSimulator implements Simulator {
       .where(eq(schema.seasonParticipantExpectedValues.sportsSeasonId, sportsSeasonId));
 
     // 3. Decompress the futures into single-game Elo ratings.
-    const eloMap = buildLLWSElos(evRows);
+    const { elos, unpricedElo } = buildLLWSElos(evRows);
 
     // 4. Parse externalId for each participant to determine which side they're on.
     //    A seeded bracket overrides this below, but the field still has to be a legal
@@ -487,20 +568,26 @@ export class LLWSSimulator implements Simulator {
         // Provisional: a seeded bracket overwrites this below.
         participantId: p.id,
         side: parsed?.side ?? "Intl",
-        elo: eloMap.get(p.id) ?? DEFAULT_ELO,
+        elo: elos.get(p.id) ?? unpricedElo,
       });
     }
 
     const teamsById = new Map(teams.map((t) => [t.participantId, t]));
 
     // 5. Load the real bracket (draw + results so far), if one has been generated.
-    const bracketEvent = await db.query.scoringEvents.findFirst({
+    // If several llws_20 playoff events exist, take the most recent so a re-created
+    // event wins over a stale one — landing on the stale row would silently discard
+    // the real draw and every recorded result.
+    const playoffEvents = await db.query.scoringEvents.findMany({
       where: and(
         eq(schema.scoringEvents.sportsSeasonId, sportsSeasonId),
         eq(schema.scoringEvents.eventType, "playoff_game"),
         eq(schema.scoringEvents.bracketTemplateId, LLWS_TEMPLATE_ID)
       ),
     });
+    const bracketEvent = playoffEvents.toSorted(
+      (a, b) => (b.createdAt?.getTime() ?? 0) - (a.createdAt?.getTime() ?? 0)
+    )[0];
 
     const bracketMatches = bracketEvent
       ? await db.query.playoffMatches.findMany({

app/services/simulations/manifest.ts

@@ -183,7 +183,7 @@ const PROFILES: Record<SimulatorType, Omit<SimulatorManifestProfile, "simulatorT
     setupSections: ["participants", "eloRatings", "futuresOdds", "bracket"],
   },
   llws_bracket: {
-    defaultConfig: { ...BASE_CONFIG, parityFactor: 1_000, usTeamCount: 10, internationalTeamCount: 10 },
+    defaultConfig: { ...BASE_CONFIG, parityFactor: 550, usTeamCount: 10, internationalTeamCount: 10 },
     requiredInputs: ["sourceOdds"],
     optionalInputs: ["metadata"],
     // The bracket is optional — without one the draw is randomized — but once it