[Phil]

The Palm Springs regional has become the 2nd largest in the US behind Gatlinberg.

This year, the calendar included a 2 day "Super Swiss" on the final weekend. While the level of play was very strong, only 19 teams entered and 12 teams made the Sunday final.

As I mentioned in my other post, all of the top teams played themselves early and were matched based on the previous day's carry-over. As a result, in order to get in 7 matches, the top teams end up playing teams that have little chance of placing.

It seems like a better format would be to ignore the carryover from Day 1. Frankly, in a 7 match final, I can even see either randomizing the first three matches, and then matching on totals, at least in a small field.

How do other NBO's handle this dilemma?

[gnasher]

With such a small field relative to the number of rounds, I think they should have allowed rematches, or had an all-play-all final.

In the the longest Swiss Teams event in England, there's a 14-round Swiss, then on the final day the top 8 go into a round-robin, the next 8 go into a secondary final, and everyone else continues in the Swiss.

In the WBF's Swiss events, they have a Swiss followed by a knockout for the top n.

This post has been edited by gnasher: 2012-December-17, 10:18

[JLOGIC]

You can't have no carryover in a Swiss, it is just asking for easy dumping spots

[MickyB]

Round-robin or swiss with longer matches [4 matches per day] imo.

[wyman]

JLOGIC, on 2012-December-17, 10:18, said:

You can't have no carryover in a Swiss, it is just asking for easy dumping spots

I think he just meant to not include the carryover when doing pairings for the next morning. I.e., you keep the carryover, but you play d2 just as you did d1 -- a new swiss -- and then add the carryover at the end.

But I don't want to put words in his mouth.

[billw55]

For a multi-session swiss with qualifying, I would prefer to see a full round robin final. If that means limiting to eight qualifiers, so be it.

In such a case, qualifying position would not matter, so maybe carryover from day one could be omitted.

[WellSpyder]

JLOGIC, on 2012-December-17, 10:18, said:

You can't have no carryover in a Swiss, it is just asking for easy dumping spots

In the English event referred to, there is indeed no carry over from the first 10 rounds of Swiss to the 8-team all-play-all A and B finals. There is little scope for dumping, though, since the margins for qualifying in the top 8 or 16 in a field of, say, 150-200 teams are so tight. Half a match can easily make the difference between qualifying for the A final and not qualifying for either final.

[mycroft]

Unless the CoC demanded it, I would look at 19 entries and say that there are going to be 10 qualifiers, and we're playing 9 sixes tomorrow, and advertise it as such to the event at least by the end of the first session. Have carryover, sure, but if the final can be a RR, it should be. 19-to-8 seems like a drastic cut.

Having brought in 12, you have the standard overswissing problem where as long as you survive the competitors (definitely allow playbacks from the qualifier!), it's a matter of how well you beat up the also-rans in rounds 5, 6, 7. Good for generating the top 6; not so good for generating the winners. *For the second day* I could go with "random matches first three rounds", or even seeded matches the first round - at least that would get the beat-em-ups in early rather than late; the last qualifiers would probably be okay with that (would probably enjoy it!) I would never do that for a "sunday swiss" that everyone knew would be overswissed, though; the also-rans understand the "we ran out of big players to put them against, sorry" (they don't like it, but they understand); they *won't* understand "why did we draw three big teams to start?"

Of course, out in Palm Beach they use the "W/L w/tie breaks for the TDs" 30-point scale, don't they? Maybe different then.

[Phil]

mycroft, on 2012-December-17, 11:56, said:

...at least that would get the beat-em-ups in early rather than late; the last qualifiers would probably be okay with that (would probably enjoy it!)

It was so pathetic. When the last round matchups were posted, there was a team that needed a big win to place in the overalls and they drew a top team. They were complaining (actually one member was crying) about how 'unfair' the process was. The director did a nice job explaining how the computer did the pairings.

[JLOGIC]

mycroft, on 2012-December-17, 11:56, said:

Unless the CoC demanded it, I would look at 19 entries and say that there are going to be 10 qualifiers, and we're playing 9 sixes tomorrow, and advertise it as such to the event at least by the end of the first session. Have carryover, sure, but if the final can be a RR, it should be. 19-to-8 seems like a drastic cut.

Having brought in 12, you have the standard overswissing problem where as long as you survive the competitors (definitely allow playbacks from the qualifier!), it's a matter of how well you beat up the also-rans in rounds 5, 6, 7. Good for generating the top 6; not so good for generating the winners. *For the second day* I could go with "random matches first three rounds", or even seeded matches the first round - at least that would get the beat-em-ups in early rather than late; the last qualifiers would probably be okay with that (would probably enjoy it!) I would never do that for a "sunday swiss" that everyone knew would be overswissed, though; the also-rans understand the "we ran out of big players to put them against, sorry" (they don't like it, but they understand); they *won't* understand "why did we draw three big teams to start?"

Of course, out in Palm Beach they use the "W/L w/tie breaks for the TDs" 30-point scale, don't they? Maybe different then.

Nine sizes is not possible on the last day of the tournament...even with no break starting at ten am no one would be able to get to the airport and get home. I was in Tampa instead of palm springs last week and probably only got home because they made it six eights instead of seven sevens. Playing three extra matches and 5 extra boards would make it an hour and a half longer

[JLOGIC]

WellSpyder, on 2012-December-17, 11:02, said:

In the English event referred to, there is indeed no carry over from the first 10 rounds of Swiss to the 8-team all-play-all A and B finals. There is little scope for dumping, though, since the margins for qualifying in the top 8 or 16 in a field of, say, 150-200 teams are so tight. Half a match can easily make the difference between qualifying for the A final and not qualifying for either final.

Lol yeah 150 teams is a lot different than 19 teams thanks.

[pigpenz]

almost could do a full round robin where everyone plays everyone else.
thats what would have been best in my mind

[JLOGIC]

MickyB, on 2012-December-17, 10:24, said:

Round-robin or swiss with longer matches [4 matches per day] imo.

Then you have teams who are completely out of the event playing on day two, not only can they dump to their friends since they're out of it, they simply won't try as hard if they are out of it since they're human. On top of that, it's a regional, if a team cannot win points since they are out of it theyd rather play a new event. This is not some major tournament.

Personally I think the event was a bad idea and that is why so few teams entered. I am glad regional organizers are trying new things though.

[Phil]

JLOGIC, on 2012-December-17, 12:29, said:

Personally I think the event was a bad idea and that is why so few teams entered. I am glad regional organizers are trying new things though.

The participants seemed to like it. The room was set up similar to the Reisinger final with the tables cordoned off with dividers to keep the noise down, although they didn't use the screens (they had some for the KO finals) .

Also, because the compacts and stratified swiss were used in the table counts, it paid 57 to the winners which is pretty high for a regional. This is almost as much as a Bracket I KO at Gatlinburg.

Just need to fix the format. I have faith

[wyman]

Phil, on 2012-December-17, 13:04, said:

The participants seemed to like it.

I liked it a lot, but part of that is that I usually don't get the opportunity to sit down against Levin-Weinstein, let alone twice in two days.

I think the final should have been an 8 team RR though so that r5-7 is not just the top guys trying to punish the little guys as much as possible when the little guys are already down-and-out.

[ArtK78]

The last time my unit ran a 2-day Swiss Sectional tournament it was a playthrough (not qualifying and final) with 6 9-board matches each day. Since this was a playthrough, all scores counted (or, to put it another way, there was full carryover from day 1 to day 2). Playbacks were permitted in the last 3 rounds.

Given that this was a regional, I suppose the play-through format is not ideal. However, whether there are 6, 7 or 8 matches in the finals, it would make sense to allow playbacks in the final 2 or 3 rounds.

Many years ago in the Summer Nationals (back when the tournament was called the Summer Nationals) there was a Regional 2-day win-loss swiss with 6 9-board matches each day. While it was a qualifying and final, all of the teams that qualified took full carryover into day 2. I don't remember if the non-qualifiers had a consolation swiss the next day. This was back in the days when there were not 40 events running simultaneously. I remember winning 5 of our 6 matches on the first day and only 1 on the second day to finish absolutely nowhere. Of course, overall awards didn't go nearly as many places back then as they do now. In a 100 team event (and this event had more than 100 teams) you had to finish in the top 8 or 9 to place.

I may go back and dig out an old Bridge Bulletin and look it up if I get a chance. These events were held in the 70s.

[mycroft]

JLOGIC, on 2012-December-17, 12:20, said:

Nine sizes is not possible on the last day of the tournament...even with no break starting at ten am no one would be able to get to the airport and get home. I was in Tampa instead of palm springs last week and probably only got home because they made it six eights instead of seven sevens. Playing three extra matches and 5 extra boards would make it an hour and a half longer

We always do 8 sevens in our swisses in D18. Nine sixes would be longer - but a round robin would be shorter, as there's no time wasted pairing. I don't think it would keep up to 7 sevens, but I think I could do nine sixes in the time it takes eight sevens with on-round pairing, especially if lunch was onsite and wafting in 30 minutes into the fifth round :-).

Soon, with Bridgemate scoring for swiss teams available, it would take even less time, as we wouldn't have to score, complain, not get up and confirm, wait while they finish complaining and get to the scoring, and so on...

[MickyB]

JLOGIC, on 2012-December-17, 12:29, said:

Then you have teams who are completely out of the event playing on day two

That wasn't what I intended to suggest, I still meant qualifier Saturday, final Sunday

[Vampyr]

Phil, on 2012-December-17, 13:04, said:

Also, because the compacts and stratified swiss were used in the table counts, it paid 57 to the winners which is pretty high for a regional. This is almost as much as a Bracket I KO at Gatlinburg.

$57, even if it were per person, is not enough money to cry about. (If by "paid" you meant awarded masterpoints, even more so).

[JLOGIC]

What is your point in hating on master points in every threads? We get it, USA sucks, acbl sucks, master points suck, convention cards rule. Many people love masterpoints and that's why they exist. You are clearly a better person than everyone else. To many people who play bridge tournaments like me 57 points is meaningful and a reason for them to play an event.

If what you care about is playing bridge events against great players then you should love this event. You get to play against levin weinstein hampson etc. and why do they play these events? Because their clients like winning 57 masterpoints. So even for an enlightened soul like yourself it might occur to you that masterpoints are good, and bridge in USA is not that bad.

But you know, no doubt england and the rest of Europe is far superior for bridge players.