USBF U21 Teams for 2010 WJC

[brianshark]

I prefer teams trials to imp pairs trials, because I'd much rather compare against team mates than "the field". Imp pairs is theoretically superior in finding the best 3 pairs, but in reality, playing on a team where you know you can trust your team mates plays a big part. It shouldn't, but it does.

[kfay]

Jan-

 

Hypothetically, if I were to be on two 6-handed teams (one in the GNTs one in the trials) would it be possible to play in both events at the same time?

 

Since one event is USBF and the other is ACBL i don't see an immediate reason why this couldn't happen. Maybe my teammates from both events would be pretty upset or maybe the times wouldn't sync up enough for me to play half and half, but I'm just wondering about some possibilites at this point.

[jdonn]

The first thing that I would do is move away from a format of selecting teams and towards a format where you selected pairs[.....]

There was a time I agreed with this. Then when I played on the team, and we won despite being underdogs, I realized how wrong I was. Team unity is gigantic [....]

This surprises me. OK, I can think of many examples to support this theory. Last year we lost a match basically because two of our players (in different partnerships) hated each other and focused more on assigning the blame than on winning the match. But I would expect most players to able to avoid such things, and it should be possible to weed out the rare cases who have zip social skills.

 

Then again, people with much more knowledge than I have keep emphasizing team building so maybe I am missing something.

I don't think it's something that is easy to logically explain or justify. It's simply something that results continuously prove. Probably based on some sort of flaw or weakness in human nature, but there you have it.

 

Jan-

 

Hypothetically, if I were to be on two 6-handed teams (one in the GNTs one in the trials) would it be possible to play in both events at the same time? 

 

Since one event is USBF and the other is ACBL i don't see an immediate reason why this couldn't happen.  Maybe my teammates from both events would be pretty upset or maybe the times wouldn't sync up enough for me to play half and half, but I'm just wondering about some possibilites at this point.

Kevin for goodness sake, you will get to play in about 75 more GNTs before you die. Your teammates on that will have to get over it, they can find someone else. Just tell them you didn't know about this.

[kfay]

Kevin for goodness sake, you will get to play in about 75 more GNTs before you die. Your teammates on that will have to get over it, they can find someone else. Just tell them you didn't know about this.

Yeah this is basically what I figured I had to do last night when I found out about this. I just thought I'd take a day or two to mull my options.

[Phil]

Flay I can see going to DC to represent for the superflight, but if you are in GNT A, B or , ahem, C, then your teammates should be understanding.

[orlam]

The first thing that I would do is move away from a format of selecting teams and towards a format where you selected pairs[.....]

There was a time I agreed with this. Then when I played on the team, and we won despite being underdogs, I realized how wrong I was. Team unity is gigantic [....]

This surprises me. OK, I can think of many examples to support this theory. Last year we lost a match basically because two of our players (in different partnerships) hated each other and focused more on assigning the blame than on winning the match. But I would expect most players to able to avoid such things, and it should be possible to weed out the rare cases who have zip social skills.

 

Then again, people with much more knowledge than I have keep emphasizing team building so maybe I am missing something.

My guess is that the difference between a top player playing at his best, or the same top player playing so-so is pretty big. Sometimes you see mistakes on vuegraph by BB semifinalist that they certainly wouldn't make on a good day.

[JLOL]

Re team spirit etc,

 

Helene I think the only thing wrong with your thought process is that you don't account for the fact that humans are emotional and never behave perfectly rationally. This is true even for the top players. I have gone on about this many times but I will just reiterate that I think it's very important.

 

As far as the trials always being during the summer nationals I have always had mixed feelings. I really think that overall it is the right decision logistically and practically and caters to the most possible people which is good.

 

With that said I really have trouble missing a national event for the trials given that I am a bridge pro. This might sound selfish, but nationals are where pros make both the most money and get the most name recognition by far. We have been lucky to be exempt the last few times, but now I guess it's just me who is in that particular boat heh. Anyways I know that the trials aren't supposed to cater to me and I think that the right decision is being made.

[Phil]

JLOL is an autopick for any junior team. I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to make a living in a game during qualification.

 

I also this he's being magnanimous here saying he would forgo income in something like the GNTs, (or even club games if he stayed at home before the NABC schedule really starts).

 

Personally I would support the idea that someone that wins a title gets exempted to the team. Some judgment would be required when there are multiple teams, or how to deal with the U26 winners, etc..

 

I think the junior qualifying is a much different situation that any of the other USBF trials because you have a pool of maybe 20 eligible (much less qualified) players.

 

I can see a pairs qualifier to round out the six, if only two spots where open. If four spots were open, perhaps take JLOL + pard and augment them to a winning team. I dunno, there's a lot of combinations.

[awm]

I generally support the idea of having a trials.

 

Requiring a trials is like requiring a time commitment. For Justin, getting on the team should be pretty automatic if he takes the trials seriously and plays his best. If he's too busy with pro commitments to make time for the trials, maybe he will be too busy for the partnership and/or team-building activities necessary to build a winning team for the event.

 

The same argument that favors a team trials (i.e. team spirit is important, a team of random "good pairs" or "good individuals" won't do as well, etc) also indicates that automatically putting someone on the team just because he is the best available player is not necessarily the right approach...

 

And this assumes that we know who the best available players are, an idea which is fraught with judgment calls and brings a lot of "who you know" into the equation. This is especially true for the younger players where skill level can change pretty rapidly and some expert coach's opinion based on playing with or against the youngster a year or two ago may be woefully out of date.

[jdonn]

Requiring a trials is like requiring a time commitment. For Justin, getting on the team should be pretty automatic if he takes the trials seriously and plays his best. If he's too busy with pro commitments to make time for the trials, maybe he will be too busy for the partnership and/or team-building activities necessary to build a winning team for the event.

Maybe someone else is busy 51 weeks a year and free only during the trials, and Justin is free 51 weeks a year and busy during the trials. And maybe if I had become a professional bridge player I would make a lot of money by now. And maybe if I were a nicer person I would have married a pretty girl this year. And maybe if Khazakstan focused more of their agriculture on oranges they would have gotten in a war with Florida recently.

 

Playing the "maybe" game is completely useless. Look, the trials occur one time only, and it's (for logistical reasons) during other major bridge events. Teams can practice, over the course of the nearly FULL YEAR between the trials and the event, whenever they want! This concern of yours is nothing more than completely random unjustified speculation.

 

By the way, I believe the three recent times the US won the junior teams, 4/6, 5/6, and 6/6 of the players were bridge pros. And each of the three cases with a non bridge pro, that person partnered a bridge pro, yet ample time was still devoted to practicing and developing the partnership.

 

The same argument that favors a team trials (i.e. team spirit is important, a team of random "good pairs" or "good individuals" won't do as well, etc) also indicates that automatically putting someone on the team just because he is the best available player is not necessarily the right approach...

That I agree with. Other factors should be considered as well. I am also in favor of including input from players who qualified.

 

And this assumes that we know who the best available players are, an idea which is fraught with judgment calls and brings a lot of "who you know" into the equation. This is especially true for the younger players where skill level can change pretty rapidly and some expert coach's opinion based on playing with or against the youngster a year or two ago may be woefully out of date.

Yes it does assume we know who the best available player(s) is(are), but at least in the singular, we do, so who cares? Find me a single person with any basis to make a judgment who disagrees with that. Tell me with a straight face not even that you disagree with it, but merely that you think there is essentially any chance at all that it's wrong in this case.

[awm]

Yes it does assume we know who the best available player(s) is(are), but at least in the singular, we do, so who cares? Find me a single person with any basis to make a judgment who disagrees with that. Tell me with a straight face not even that you disagree with it, but merely that you think there is essentially any chance at all that it's wrong in this case.

Well I don't know exactly who's still eligible and who isn't. But among:

 

Justin Lall

Josh Donn

Gavin Wolpert

Jenny Wolpert

 

I think it is very far from obvious who the best player is, and suspect I could make an excellent case (with a straight face) for any of the four over the others.

 

Then again, it could easily be that Justin is the only one from that crowd who is still eligible.

 

To be honest, for the U21 team I have a lot of trouble even thinking of appropriate players. Besides the folks who were on the U21 team last year (several of whom are now too old) I'm having trouble thinking of more than one or two strong candidates.

[jdonn]

Actually I must confess I might have had the wrong idea about who is eligible myself. Anyway I am neither eligible nor would I be playing even if I could. As for Justin Gavin and Jenny I think it's moot since they would be happy to work it out among themselves, I bet.

[mtvesuvius]

To be honest, for the U21 team I have a lot of trouble even thinking of appropriate players. Besides the folks who were on the U21 team last year (several of whom are now too old) I'm having trouble thinking of more than one or two strong candidates.

Owen Lien

Zach Brescoll

Adam Kaplan (Me)

Adam Grossack

Jesse Stern

Jourdain Patchett

 

and a few others...

 

Plus many others can be trained, and can improve :P.

[JLOL]

FWIW Gavin is not eligible (and Jdonn). John Kranyak also is not eligible. Jenny is eligible but is currently pregnant and is unlikely to be able to play.

[kfay]

FWIW Gavin is not eligible (and Jdonn). John Kranyak also is not eligible. Jenny is eligible but is currently pregnant and is unlikely to be able to play.

Wow! That's big news! Congratulations to her and Gavin :)

[orlam]

Yes it does assume we know who the best available player(s) is(are), but at least in the singular, we do, so who cares? Find me a single person with any basis to make a judgment who disagrees with that. Tell me with a straight face not even that you disagree with it, but merely that you think there is essentially any chance at all that it's wrong in this case.

Well I don't know exactly who's still eligible and who isn't. But among:

 

Justin Lall

Josh Donn

[...]

 

I think it is very far from obvious who the best player is, and suspect I could make an excellent case (with a straight face) for any of the four over the others.

Really?

[maggieb]

Let's not go there. In my opinion this place will become less pleasant if we start publically discussing the relative strengths of the different forum members. I am sure both of these guys can beat me with their eyes closed and that's enough for me. :huh:

[ggwhiz]

Patty Tucker was able to provide the following demographic details to me almost immediately.

 

Age Number of Members

8 2

9 3

10 27

11 31

12 54

13 60

14 70

15 49

16 43

17 51

18 67

19 49

 

These are only the ACBL members that admitted to their ages but I bet their e-mails etc. and the numbers up to 26 are available just as quickly. Not much of a pool to work with though.

[Apollo81]

Patty Tucker was able to provide the following demographic details to me almost immediately.

 

Age Number of Members

8 2

9 3

10 27

11 31

12 54

13 60

14 70

15 49

16 43

17 51

18 67

19 49

 

These are only the ACBL members that admitted to their ages but I bet their e-mails etc. and the numbers up to 26 are available just as quickly. Not much of a pool to work with though.

wow, i had no idea that many ACBL members under 20 existed

[awm]

My observation has been that a lot of bridge teachers like to work with really young kids (i.e. elementary or middle school) and that signing up kids in that age range for ACBL is really cheap. So the result might be that sometimes bridge is offered as an activity at a school (or summer class or whatever) and those kids get signed up for memberships. On the other hand, I rarely see anyone under 16 or so at any local tournament (and even the 16-30 age range is extremely sparse).

 

I'd be curious how many of these under-20 ACBL members have at least some very modest number of masterpoints (like say 5). Obviously a few do (heck a few of them probably have thousands) but I bet the vast majority do not, and likely some have never even played in a duplicate game.

[JLOL]

Also some of those are caddies who join so they can play the midnight games lol

[TimG]

I'm pretty sure there was once a program where youth could get $5 memberships for their first year of membership. Since ACBL allocates regionals based upon District membership, some districts could add a regional to their calendar by signing up 1000 grandchildren.

[mycroft]

As far as team chemistry is concerned, if you qualify 6 pairs to make 2 teams (wow, what a luxury. Okay, stop it Michael, Jan said not to go there), AND you then have concerted training sessions between then and the event, teams will form, and unless things are really unlucky (i.e. there's one pair of idiots nobody wants to be with), the chemistry will develop. That is a unique advantage over anybody else's trial procedure, and I see nothing wrong with going with it.

 

In open/women/seniors (and likely U26 - as Josh said, every pair on recent U.S. U26 teams had at least one full-time, pro player) this is different, as they all know each other already from frequent meetings at the table and around it. But for the U21s - many of whom rarely see anyone their age at the table (I'm guessing here, by the way) - the idea of training sessions/trials to pick pairs (which need not be pairs trials - "random teammates team" CoC could be set up)/training-teambuilding afterwards has distinct merit.

 

But I'm not U.S.ian. So YMMV.

[mtvesuvius]

Any news on when the U21 trials will be? or even hints/ideas?

[JanM]

Several possibilities have been discussed but nothing has been decided. How the 2010 U21 teams will be selected will probably be decided in Houston.