Now that a Wildcard winner's destination depends on both games, guarding
only the slot about to be written is not enough. Correcting a recorded
result placed the new winner in the other Elimination Final and left the
beaten team alive in the one it had been written to, and a bracket already
advanced under the old fixed crossover ended up with one team in both
Elimination Finals once the second result came in — the second write hit
"already filled", which every caller swallows.
Each result now reconciles both slots against the resolved pairings:
a Wildcard team sitting in the wrong slot is vacated, the right ones are
written, and a slot held by anyone outside the Wildcard Round still raises
"already filled" rather than being taken. Clearing and filling share one
transaction, so a half-applied re-seed cannot leave a team in both games,
and pairings that are already correct do no writes at all.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VDbHrCce1UhahbkwKkc7hK
The two Wildcard Round winners were crossed into the Elimination Finals by
which game they came out of — the 7v10 winner always met 6th and the 8v9
winner always met 5th. The AFL pairs those games by ladder position, as the
classic final eight pairs 5v8 and 6v7: the higher host draws the
lower-ranked survivor. So when 10th wins through, 5th should meet 10th, not
the 8v9 winner.
Placement now resolves both games together. A 7v10 winner is placed as soon
as it is decided (7th outranks either possible opponent, 10th is outranked
by both), while an 8v9 winner is held until the other game is decided rather
than being placed and later moved, so results can be entered in either
order.
The simulator paired the Elimination Finals the same fixed way, which biased
every projection that ran off an undecided Wildcard Round; it now re-seeds
too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VDbHrCce1UhahbkwKkc7hK
