Spring Fours 2008

[Ant590]

This year's seedings are:

 

1 Alexander Allfrey, David Bakhshi, Peter Crouch, Tony Forrester, Glyn Liggins & Andrew Robson

2 Boye Brogeland, Simon Gillis, Tom Hanlon, Espen Lindqvist, Hugh McGann & Odin Svendsen

3 Catherine Draper, Ben Green, Duncan Happer, Martin Jones, Neil Rosen & Andrew Woodcock

4 David Burn, Jason Hackett, Justin Hackett, Artur Malinowski, Nick Sandqvist & Janet de Botton

5 Stephen Green, Rob Helle, Egbert Henstra, Ed Hoogenkamp & Simon de Wijs

6 John Armstrong, Paul Hackett, John Holland & Tony Waterlow

7 Gary Hyett, Valio Isporski, Vladi Kovachev & Geoffrey Wolfarth

8 John Carroll, Tommy Garvey, David Mossop, David Price, Colin Simpson & Gojko Zivkovic

9 Espen Erichsen, Glenn Groetheim, Nick Irens, Norman Selway & Ulf Tundal

10 Chris Jagger, Filip Kurbalija, Ian Pagan & Tim Rees

11 Jeffrey Allerton, Jon Cooke, Martin Garvey, Frances Hinden & Graham Osborne

12 Keith Bennett, Heather Dhondy, Jeremy Dhondy & Liz McGowan

13 Sarah Dunn, David Ewart, David Gold, Gunnar Hallberg, Andrew McIntosh & Tom Townsend

14 Michelle Brunner, Peter Czerniewski, Chris Dixon, John Hassett, Bill Hirst & Nicola Smith

15 Mike Ash, John Murdoch, Derek Sanders & Brian Spears

16 Paul Denning, Peter Goodman, Gay Keaveney , Patrick Shields & Adrian Thomas

17 Steve Auchterlonie, Alan Nelson, Kath Nelson & Jeff Smith

18 Catherine Curtis, Paul Fegarty, Cath Jagger & Jonathan Mestel

19 Nick Boss, Brian Callaghan, Dom Goodwin & Richard Johnson

20 Richard Bowdery, Simon Cope, Richard Davey & Richard Palmer

21 Tony McNiff, Sarah Teshome, Bill Townsend & Richard Winter

22 Alex Gipson, Paul Gipson, Finlay Marshall & Harry Smith

23 David Jones, Patrick Jourdain, Tony Ratcliff, John Salisbury & Mike Tedd

24 Willie Coyle, John Matheson, Wasim Naqvi, Victor Silverstone & Bernard Teltscher

25 Kalin Karalvanov , Sandra Penfold, Nevena Senior & Rumen Trendafilov

26 Mary Gordon-Smith, Guy Hart, Fiona Hutchison & Brian Senior

27 John Atthey, Richard Butland, Irving Gordon & Keith Stanley

28 Ben Handley-Pritchard, Richard Probst, Sandra Probst & Lara Ruso

29 Tonje Brogeland, Fiona Brown, Barbara Hackett & Susan Stockdale

30 Jette Bailey , Alan Bailey, Louise Solomon & Warner Solomon

31 Michael Clark, Stephen Hurst, Luke Porter & Bryony Youngs

32 Dave Franklin, John Frosztega, Ian Lancaster & Gerry Stanford

 

[rest are randomly allocated]

33 Michael Letts, Andrew Urbanski, Mike Wenble & Alan Williams

34 Frank Burghout, Kenneth Edvardsdal, Gitte Hecht-Johansen & Torkel Viken

35 Helen Carroll, Ena Cleary, Jeannie Fitzgerald, Emer Joyce, Joan Kenny & Jill Kulchycky

36 Chris Chambers, Peter Gemmell, Richard Hillman, Paula Leslie, Solvi Remen & Michael Wilkinson

37 Chris Cooper, Andrew Murphy, Nick Smith & Alan Wilson

38 Ian Bruce, Antony Edwards, James Hall & Mick Mahoney

39 Michael Byrne, Ed Jones, Rob Myers, Ben Paske & Tom Paske

40 Tim Gauld, Brian McGuire, Steve Popham, Dimitre Stoev & John Wilmott

41 Peter Cairns, Shirish Chotai, Bob Finlayson & Leslie Verth

42 Liz Commins, Jean Hand, Peter Hand & Sheila Shea

43 Peter Baxter, Maureen Hiron, Martin Hoffman, Sue Maxwell, Helen Schapiro & Kitty Teltscher

44 David Barnes, Nigel Dent, Nigel Guthrie & Mike Ribbins

45 Robert Procter, Michael Robinson, John Slater & Nelson Stephens

46 Mike Bell, Ed Levy, Roger Mapp & Michael Ranis

47 Roger Bryant, Dave Cropper, David Jones, David Kenward & Gary Watson

48 Berry Hedley, Graham Hedley, Robert Miller & Trevor Thrower

50 Peter Lindon, David Muller, Malcolm Pryor, Roger Sweet & Trevor Ward

52 Adam Hickman, Daniel McIntosh, James Paul & Graeme Robertson

53 Phil Jones, Christine Kempton, John Miller & Karen Pryor

57 Steve Johnston, David Owen, Stephen Peterkin & Samantha Punch

58 Ken Barnett, Liz Clery, Chris Cook & Ryan Stephenson

59 Paul Gagne, Diana Harris, Alan Screen & Liam Sheridan

60 Nick Doe, Simon Husband, Stuart Nelson & Alan Shillitoe

63 John Clarke, Peter Collins, Richard Cumming-Bruce, Nicholas Davidson & Emma Hyde

64 Tony Gordon, Tony Hill, Roger Jackson & Alan Wearmouth

 

And the draw can be found at http://www.ebu.co.uk/newresults/?eventid=3&round=1

 

Good luck everyone :P

 

[edit: corrected number of random teams]

[Finch]

Teams from 33 upwards are random, not 37

 

I think I have spotted one wildly incorrect seeding (not counting the very strange omission of our top seeding, of course), along with the usual few where I would have put them in a slightly different order.

 

Still we shall see...

[Ant590]

Thanks, I have corrected the number of random teams now.

[paulg]

As always the seeding is a little strange. Clearly the panel was impressed by our exit after two rounds last year and moved us up at least 11 places.

 

Alan (#60) will wonder if they actually need to win the event to get a seeding, as they always seem to get to Round 5.

 

Still we shall see...

Yep, quite quickly as we meet in the first round :)

 

Paul

[Echognome]

I'm sure I'm biased just by knowing so many people, but:

 

Byrne (#39) all have junior international experience right?

 

Bryant (#47) have a mix of very good players with a lot of experience.

 

Those are my two darkhouses from the unseeded group. (No offense to anyone else of course!)

[mike777]

Hanlon and McGann have been hot lately.

I am so happy to read, read anything, with the name Forrester in it. It seems he has dropped off the radar in bridge magazines.

 

Best wishes to Frances and all the other forum posters.

 

btw who is allowed to play in this event?

[Guest Jlall]

Ben Green is #3? That must be an error (jk ben is my friend hehe).

 

Anyways, gl to frances/cardsharp/other forumers.

[sheepman]

Yep, apart from Byrne is not actually there till sunday evening, not sure why he's on my team. As usual the EBU have managed a bunch of random seedings, my favourite being the recent winners of the open trials who are now 2/3rds of the team for the european championships in 6th?

[ewj]

Ben Green was pretty surprised to be drawn that high, which I suppose says something, while it genuinely astounds me to see some seeded above others. Can't say I'm unhappy about my draw...

 

 

Poor Shillitoe, was he seeded last year? He did well then and not seeded this time out despite some poorer teams being so, he doesn't have a great first round draw, although I see a potential rematch with Team Cooper for him if results go to plan.....

[matmat]

why is it called the spring fours, when most teams have more than four players?

[Echognome]

why is it called the spring fours, when most teams have more than four players?

Obviously it's being used to describe the table legs.

[paulg]

Shillitoe was not seeded last year and probably never will be while he remains an English team. His team does not play many national events and so have few gold points, which I believe is the criteria for seeding beyond the first dozen teams or so.

 

I believe this was also the reason that we were not seeded last year. However I did point out that the fact that 3/4 of the team are Scottish might be a reason for lack of golds and they seem to have listened and come up with a random seed for us.

 

p

[Guest Jlall]

Is Gnasher on a team? Couldn't find him.

[Finch]

Is Gnasher on a team? Couldn't find him.

No.

 

You may remember my rant from last year about why we never play in it... it's all true this year except that our three non-office-working team-mates persuaded us to play after everyone else they asked wasn't free (including Gnasher).

[MickyB]

Mike - anyone can enter, and everyone should do IMO :rolleyes: It's easily the best event in England IMO, and it is held in a lovely town.

 

A few comments -

 

Green+co (seeded 3rd) being that high is shocking, but not because of their standard - I think that team deserves to be about 6th - but because I'd have expected the seeding panel to underrate them, not overrate them.

 

Shillitoe has done well the past two years, but two years ago he had different teammates and last year the team didn't have a terribly tough draw to reach round five.

 

I'd be disappointed if my team didn't batter some of the seeds, two of our players have recently moved to the country so I suspect the seeding committee didn't know who they were. We've got a bit of a group of death - a triangle over 64 boards against #14 and #19 - the latter look like the strongest of the second tier of seeds (17-32) and probably the strongest team in our group, anyone could win it though - at least I hope so, because I know that either of the other two teams can!

[brianshark]

Good luck guys. Hope you do well in it. I'm going to try and put a team together and enter next year's event.

[vuroth]

Good luck to all involved.

[Finch]

Mike - anyone can enter, and everyone should do IMO :) It's easily the best event in England IMO, and it is held in a lovely town.

I have seen that remark a few times before and I think it's a bit unfair. There are quite a few good foreign players there, which obviously puts the standard up and makes the event more fun to play in.

 

But I want to put in a word for Crockfords, the official English teams championship. The 8-team final is the weekend after Crockfords, and comes after 5 32/48-board KO rounds (3 rounds for the seeds).

 

To win the S4s you have to play 8 or 9 32-board matches, or 256/288 boards.

 

To win Crockfords you have to play 112/176 boards of KO followed by another 7x16 (if I remember right) in the round-robin final, totalling 224 or 288. Not a huge difference.

 

And as a bonus you get to play in Hinckley.

[MickyB]

Fair enough, but I was meaning more for anyone considering coming from abroad to play an event.

 

I still much prefer the Spring Fours, though. Maybe it's because it avoids the hassle of arranging matches. Maybe it's because I love the double-elimination format. Maybe it's just because I haven't reached the Crockford's Final yet :)

[mycroft]

Silly non EBU question - why the holes in the seeding? I was trying to figure out why there were any triangles at all with 64 teams, then I figured out there weren't 64 teams...

 

Is it just "seed the top 32, take the rest and enough blank slips to make 32 and slam them on the board and see how they fall?"

[MickyB]

Silly non EBU question - why the holes in the seeding? I was trying to figure out why there were any triangles at all with 64 teams, then I figured out there weren't 64 teams...

 

Is it just "seed the top 32, take the rest and enough blank slips to make 32 and slam them on the board and see how they fall?"

Yup, the idea is that 1v32, 2v31, 3v30 etc play each other on Saturday morning, having each played against a randomly determined non-seed the previous evening. Where there are gaps, the three teams play a triangle over 64 boards.

[jchiu]

If I recall correctly, Jones and Rosen were part of the defending Liggins team from last year. Among the favorites, the committee still doesn't see that Wolfarth manages to pull something out of his briefcase every year. I'll be rooting for them and the mostly Dutch five-seed.

[han]

Good luck to Frances, Paul, Mike, Ant, Ed and other forum posters that are playing (any others?). Hope to see some of you on BBO Vugraph!

[david_c]

Is it just "seed the top 32, take the rest and enough blank slips to make 32 and slam them on the board and see how they fall?"

Not quite - you only add the blanks after you've drawn numbers 33 to 48. (Because the format wouldn't work if numbers 33 and 64 were both blanks, for example.)

[Guest Jlall]

How many clients hire teams for this event? I see a couple in the top seeds but I don't know much about english bridge so just curious.