What happened to USA team?

[flytoox]

Didnt it surpirse you that USA teams have not won any gold medal in the bridge program at the 1st world mind sports game? What happened to them?

[Free]

Justin was on the team... :)

[han]

There were 6 USA teams, each with different expectations. Here is how each of the USA teams did:

 

U21: Lost the quarterfinals to France by a big margin.

 

U26: Lost the quarterfinals to Poland by a small margin.

 

U28: Did not qualify by 1 VP.

 

Open: Lost a close match in the round of 16 to Poland.

 

Women: Lost the semi-finals to China by a small margin.

 

Seniors: Lost the finals to Japan by 2 IMPs.

 

While some of these results are very disappointing (from a US viewpoint, obviously not from Free's viewpoint), others were quite good.

 

It doesn't make sense to me to find an explanation for these 6 "losses" all together, each team has its own story.

[3for3]

..

[han]

No indeed, let me correct my post.

[skjaeran]

The loss to China in the womens semifinal was a small surprise to me.

The loss to Japan in the seniors final was a huge surprise to me.

[awm]

The failure of the U28 team to qualify for the top eight was surprising, especially since many of the folks on this team were on the teams that won the last two U26 championships for the US. Certainly there are other quality teams in the U28 field but I think most would have picked the USA team to at least make the KO stages.

 

The open team losing to Poland is perhaps less of a surprise, since Poland is an elite team and this particular US team really has not been the same since the unfortunate loss of Paul Soloway. Nonetheless, the US has historically had very strong open teams -- it is rare not to see a US team in the open finals in fact. And this team includes five of six players from the successful Nickell team of the past decade.

[cherdano]

The loss to China in the womens semifinal was a small surprise to me.

Really? I may have a biased memory, but my impression has been that the Chinese women team has overall been clearly the most successful over the last couple of world championships.

I guess if you would make a vote among the French/German/US/English/... women teams which team they would really like to avoid until the final, most of them would pick the Chinese.

[rogerclee]

The failure of the U28 team to qualify was indeed surprising to most. Here are some possible explanations:

 

1) John Kranyak could not go at the last minute due to a family emergency. This caused a 6 man team with 3 distinct partnerships to become a 5 man team. This meant not only losing a 3 time winner of this event, but also causing USA to field some new partnerships. While the U28 team may have had some of the best individuals, partnerships are key in bridge obviously.

 

2) The U28 event was a swiss that cut 74 original teams to 8. This meant if you were at the top you had to play top teams all the time which would generally lower your score at that point and if you started out in the middle you often got to play very soft teams which would generally heighten your score at that point. The net result is that the last 3 matches usually determine everything, and cutting from 74 to 8 is a really large cut.

 

3) From what I understand they underperformed. This happens sometimes.

[NickRW]

2) The U28 event was a swiss that cut 74 original teams to 8. This meant if you were at the top you had to play top teams all the time which would generally lower your score at that point and if you started out in the middle you often got to play very soft teams which would generally heighten your score at that point. The net result is that the last 3 matches usually determine everything, and cutting from 74 to 8 is a really large cut.

I must admit that I was surprised to see it organised that way. You're right, 74 down to 8 is an enormous cut and I don't know really why they didn't make the cut at 16. On top of that Swiss events are good at finding a winner, but not so good at sorting out the field behind them, so quite possibly several teams that might have made the cut would not necessarily do so in that form of competition.

 

Nick

[jdeegan]

:wacko: I'll propose a couple of novel theories:

 

1. Jetlag - the time zone differential had our players starting their sessions at 11 or 12 pm, 1:40 and 2:40 am with the finals session starting at most people's lowest biorhythm time.

 

2. The financial meltdown - some of our players have serious interests in Wall Street - it may have been a distraction for them.

[fred]

1. Jetlag - the time zone differential had our players starting their sessions at 11 or 12 pm, 1:40 and 2:40 am with the finals session starting at most people's lowest biorhythm time.

This is actually a really good theory in general, but I doubt it explains much about how the USA performed in Beijing.

 

I can tell you from a lot of personal experience that jetlag often has a significantly adverse impact on my performance during the first few days of a faraway tournament.

 

However, for me at least, this only (and always) happens when I am travelling East (to Europe typically). In the many times I have travelled West from North America to China, Japan, and Indonesia for bridge, I have never had any problem at all adjusting to the time change. Coming home (Eastward) from the Orient is another story - it sometimes takes me up to a week to recover from the jetlag that results from such a trip (probably the fact that I tend to be worn out as a result of the bridge is a contributing factor).

 

Not sure if everyone's body reacts the same way to Eastern versus Western travel as mine does, but I have spoken with some other bridge players who claim to have had similar experiences.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

[Cascade]

1. Jetlag - the time zone differential had our players starting their sessions at 11 or 12 pm, 1:40 and 2:40 am with the finals session starting at most people's lowest biorhythm time.

This is actually a really good theory in general, but I doubt it explains much about how the USA performed in Beijing.

 

I can tell you from a lot of personal experience that jetlag often has a significantly adverse impact on my performance during the first few days of a faraway tournament.

 

However, for me at least, this only (and always) happens when I am travelling East (to Europe typically). In the many times I have travelled West from North America to China, Japan, and Indonesia for bridge, I have never had any problem at all adjusting to the time change. Coming home (Eastward) from the Orient is another story - it sometimes takes me up to a week to recover from the jetlag that results from such a trip (probably the fact that I tend to be worn out as a result of the bridge is a contributing factor).

 

Not sure if everyone's body reacts the same way to Eastern versus Western travel as mine does, but I have spoken with some other bridge players who claim to have had similar experiences.

 

Fred Gitelman

Bridge Base Inc.

www.bridgebase.com

I concur that for me it is much easier to travel West than East. Travelling West for me is just like having a late night on the day of travel and thereafter I am pretty much functioning normally. Obviously there is some limit to this so that four hours west is worse than two hours west etc.

 

On the other hand even the two hour time difference back from Australia to New Zealand seems to take me days to recover from.

[han]

For the US players who live on the east coast there is a 12-hour time difference, not sure if there is any difference to the plane flying east or west. Surely this is about as far from Beiing as possible.

 

I think most of the international teams play with regular partnerships. The U28 team played with 5 people in many different partnships, and none of those were regular partnerships. I think this was a serious disadvantage.

 

I agree that the way the event was organized was very strange, but I don't think it was the reason the US U28 team lost. They weren't really in the top for the entire duration of the tournament. Clearly, as a team they just didn't play well enough.

 

Of course, losing by 1VP is incredibly unlucky, and had they made the cut then I wouldn't have been surprised if they had won the tournament.

[nickf]

I disagree that the cutoff was too low (8 teams out of 74). In fact the whole event was overswissed as it was - I dont know the exact formula but to fairly determine a winner in a Swiss the number of rounds you need is something like:

 

- the square root of the number of Teams plus 1

 

With 74 teams I suppose that means about 9 rounds is sufficient to fairly find a winner. I'd have thought that if the top 8 teams cant sort themselves out after twice that many rounds then they probably dont deserve to be in the top 8.

 

Either that or they were unlucky.

 

nickf

sydney

[helene_t]

For the US players who live on the east coast there is a 12-hour time difference, not sure if there is any difference to the plane flying east or west.

A direct plane from New York to Beijing goes via the North Pole, doesn't it?

[Gerben42]

I concur that for me it is much easier to travel West than East. Travelling West for me is just like having a late night on the day of travel and thereafter I am pretty much functioning normally. Obviously there is some limit to this so that four hours west is worse than two hours west etc.

 

This is because for a large majority of people, the regular time schedule forced upon them is "too early". This is why travelling westwards is so easy for me, I guess. East coast US time (6 hours difference) is just as far to my preferred rhythm as getting up for work every day.

 

On the other hand, I don't like the 1-hour shift in the wrong direction at the end of "daylight savings" a lot. In fact I really don't like it at all and think every time why we cannot just stay on daylight savings 12 months a year?

[Finch]

The English teams were playing at 4am, 7.20am and 10am their 'home' time. Compared to the hours most professional bridge players work, that's also pretty hard to cope with, so I don't think blaming jet lag is the answer.

 

The US Open team didn't do very well at the last Olympiad either, they lost to Italy in the round of 16 (who went on to win the event). I remember the BW articles writing this up called that match something like the 'real final' , as if once Italy had won that match, all later matches were irrelevant. That made me cross at the time, the real final was the one between Italy and the Netherlands.

 

The same is partially true this year. The semi-final match between Norway and Italy was anticipated to be the 'real final', but when it came to it Norway conceded nearly 100 imps down after 5 of the 6 sessions and about the closest match Italy had was the final.

 

I think, to be blunt, that the USA open team did not play as well as the other teams. It happens, in the same way that the English team played above most people's expectations. To my mind, one of the most amazing things about the Italian team is how they never seem to have off days (they had an off team recently, that's a different matter).

[hotShot]

On the other hand, I don't like the 1-hour shift in the wrong direction at the end of "daylight savings" a lot. In fact I really don't like it at all and think every time why we cannot just stay on daylight savings 12 months a year?

I would have thought that you like the extra hour of sleep at the end of "daylight savings".

[Hanoi5]

The last match of the swiss saw the US losing the 8th spot by only one imp. Poland was playing Norway in that last match and didn't 'win' as much as they could have (they had blitzed almost all their opponents); Then, Poland lost the Finals against Norway, karma?...

[Cascade]

I disagree that the cutoff was too low (8 teams out of 74). In fact the whole event was overswissed as it was - I dont know the exact formula but to fairly determine a winner in a Swiss the number of rounds you need is something like:

 

- the square root of the number of Teams plus 1

 

With 74 teams I suppose that means about 9 rounds is sufficient to fairly find a winner. I'd have thought that if the top 8 teams cant sort themselves out after twice that many rounds then they probably dont deserve to be in the top 8.

 

Either that or they were unlucky.

 

nickf

sydney

I suspect any formula for a swiss is based on the win/loss and maybe draw that is used in chess tournaments and does not take into account the VP scale and the inherent randomness in VP results.

 

The simulations I have done on swiss suggest to me that there is no such thing as overswissed. The ultimate "overswissing" would be a round-robin and almost everyone thinks that would be a fair format - that is what happened with-in groups in all of the other events at this world championship. My simulations show this in that ever additional round added value to the final rankings (or probability of the best team winning).

 

Swiss is my least favourite form of event. It is really just a variant of the children's game musical chairs. If you happen to be sitting in the right seat when the music stops you are in. For this reason I would always argue that from a Swiss you need to qualify more teams if you have a choice.

 

When the Swiss has many fewer rounds than teams then if you win the last match chances are you will finish higher than you have performed in the remainder of the event. This is because after a win you expect to get tougher (higher placed) opponents who may knock you back. Conversely if you lose the last match you will finish below your expectation.

 

I have encountered both experiences - being in contention throughout an event only to be hammered in the last match and finish nowhere. And to race into contention with big wins in the last match(es) - as the US U28 team nearly did.

 

If your big win or more often your big loss is in an earlier round you have time to recover. Many times I have noticed in the SWPT in Canberra where we have beaten another team 25-something in VPs that two rounds later after they have enjoyed easier draws and we have endured tougher draws that they have caught or nearly caught us up. Whereas losses in the last round(s) can be fatal.

[nige1]

For a specified number of teams playing a competition over a specified number of boards, I'm sure that the Swiss format produces a ranking closest to "God's ranking".

 

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there are about 60 teams and there is time for each team to play about 120 boards. Among your options are:

• Round-robin of 2 board matches: A bit of a lottery.
  
• Knock-out of 20 board matches. Less of a lottery. But the 2nd best team can be eliminated in the 1st round. Stilll not a bad format with good seeding.
  
• Double-elimination. The format of the EBU Spring Fours. Like a knock-out but a team has to lose twice before it is eliminated. Better than a straight knock-out. But not as good as ...
  
• Swiss: 6 rounds of 20 board matches. A "self-seeding" compromise between a knock-out and a round-robin.
  

Other obvious points:

• The longer the match, the more likely the better team will win; but the luck factor in Bridge means that the better team may still lose even over a long match.
  
• A match against another contender is twice as significant as other matches.
  
• The last 3 formats tend to allow more boards overall because there is less time taken with the movement and system disclosure.
  
• The result of a Swiss competition can depend on when the music stops; but it still seems to produce the most accurate ranking.
  
• What about this case? Team A usually bets B. B usually beats C; C usually beats A. The Swiss format seems to cater well for such rare scenarios.
  

[the hog]

On the other hand even the two hour time difference back from Australia to New Zealand seems to take me days to recover from.

Well there is an obvious reason for that, Wayne! :lol:

[Cascade]

On the other hand even the two hour time difference back from Australia to New Zealand seems to take me days to recover from.

Well there is an obvious reason for that, Wayne! :lol:

Oh really?

 

what are you referring to?

[cherdano]

I don't believe Nickf's numbers either. 6 rounds to reliably determine a winner in a field of 25 teams?

Give me a break. And the length of the rounds doesn't matter, either?