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I completely agree with you that this point system is simply dumb.Well that's the thing, nobody seems to know what the ruleset was.
Both Groth and Harimoto thought that only the points won/loss in *their match* mattered. As why would points against someone else matter? So they both played their matches with that assumption. This is why Groth didn't celebrate when announcers thought he had gotten through, and why Harimoto celebrated when he won.
So is it unfair to Groth when both players played under the "most points in the match not the group scenario?" Why is it fair that a random point or two more than a different player should determine which of the two should advance? Also, if both players had the wrong idea about what the rules were for advancing, then either both are dumb or the ITTF did a terrible job of conveying the rules to the players.
Either way the system is dumb to begin with.
I didn't realize that they were under the assumption that only the points in the direct match would count. I was thinking automatically that the general points win/loss was the criteria of choice, simply because it is what the ITTF was publishing on their website...
That said, I do think that in a format like this the overall win/loss is a better proxy for performance than simply counting points scored (which get inflated by deuces, as you correctly poited out).