Not necessarily. I qualified among the last at the Worlds, thus placing towards the bottom of the Pro bracket, thus I was up against one of the top qualifiers. Do you think my intention was to win? No, my only intention was to do better than I did qualifying. At this race in particular, I knew I wouldn't improve my place due the system of using the Q time for final placings, but at least I wanted to achieve a better time. Timed races are great for that. If I would have done an excellent run (which I didn't do) let's say very close to taking out my opponent (thus showing that my Qual time wasn't accurately reflecting my level) it would have been nice if I would have compensated for the effort with a better placing.- Head to Head you run to win
In vert we used "loosers bracket" system a lot of times. With such a system the "loosers" would meet among them and the top "loosers" would be placed into the bracket again. It gave you a chance to come back, even if you would have one lousy round. It's a good system if it's a fun race and you've got plenty of time, but I think it's a confusing system and nothing that I would actually encourage.
/Jani