How national team is selected in your country

[NickRW]

It went like that :

 

Around 20-30 pairs play 5 weekends (about one a month) of pre-trials, each includes 7 matches of 14 boards.

Those are normally played in groups of 8 pairs , A,B, C with promotions and relegations between the groups after every weekend. So every weekend is a full round robin within the group. Pairs that played in groups A (strongest) and B , get some bonus points for playing in a tougher group.

After those 5 weekends the 8 pairs with the most total VPs from the 5 weekends qualify to the Pairs Trials themselves. Those consist of 28 matches of 14 or 16 boards , 4 matches against every other pair scored in VP. This normally would take about 2 weeks of bridge played almost every day (full days in the weekend , plus evenings during the week). Top 3 pairs would make up the team , in some editions the 4th pair having some "rights" as well.

Slightly tongue in cheek comment - 5 weekends + 2 weeks = ya gotta be keen, dead keen.

 

Nick

[Roupoil]

I was wrong in my previous post concerning the french Women trials : our world champions are participating, and the trials are just here to select a team to compete against them to represent France in the European Championships.

[Fluffy]

At the ladies it doesn't matter much if its a team or 3 pairs, whatever happens they will come back talking badly of their team mates and probably their partner as well.

At least this is happening with the Spanish team.

 

Its not like any team from there would ever be in contention or even impact the results measurably...

 

[For the record, this should be interpreted as a comment regarding Fluffy's post, and not any kind of slam against any of the team from Spain]

I am sorry richard, this time I don't even understand what this personal attack means, so can't counter :(

[Vampyr]

At the ladies it doesn't matter much if its a team or 3 pairs, whatever happens they will come back talking badly of their team mates and probably their partner as well.

At least this is happening with the Spanish team.

 

Its not like any team from there would ever be in contention or even impact the results measurably...

 

[For the record, this should be interpreted as a comment regarding Fluffy's post, and not any kind of slam against any of the team from Spain]

I am sorry richard, this time I don't even understand what this personal attack means, so can't counter :P

I think it should be obvious from your offensive and gratuitous comments.

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to block a person's posts? I am not interested in anything more that Fluffy has to say.

[helene_t]

If its a women's issue, or an spanish women's issue I don't know.

Hmmm .... it does sound familiar but what surprises me is that a Spanish man would be familiar with Spanish women's culture. I mean, the way it normally works is that we will be mean to each other in female-only company but as soon as a man enters the room we start behaving very lady-like. I would say that women cause less problems than men at mixed bridge events but OTOH woman-only F2F events are real madhouses. There seems to be some evolutionary basis for this as the same is observed in some non-human species. For example, it is advised that chicken farmers place a rooster in each group even if not for breeding purposes.

 

In China there used to be a woman-only language, presumable invented so that Chinese women could continue taking bad about other women even if men were present. Unfortunately it has died out. Oh well, Asia is becoming more and more Western.

 

Maybe men are more likely to yell at their partners and women more likely to talk behind their partners' backs.

 

All this said, I think gender stereotypes are often exaggerated.

[Fluffy]

Depends on each case, some would speak badly privatelly to me, but there is also the case of some who score -0.80 in the butler but in the club start telling their friends & aprentices that it was all the other's fault and tell them some hands they missplayed.

 

In Sao Paulo I was one of the few men who did follow the venice cup more than the bermuda, and I kept sending support SMS to the members, but in the end I realiced that it was more important to me what the team did than to some of the players there O_o.

 

 

Sorry to hear so Vampyr, people often missunderstand my online posts, so it should be no big news to me, I guess I should refrain from speaking frankly but I cannot :/.

[Codo]

I am sorry richard, this time I don't even understand what this personal attack means, so can't counter :(

I think it should be obvious from your offensive and gratuitous comments.

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to block a person's posts? I am not interested in anything more that Fluffy has to say.

Gonzalo would be the last on the list of persons to block, but maybe this is because english isn't my motherlanguage either, so I felt to see the insult in his post.

 

I am not Spainish, nor had I been to Sao Paulo, but even I got to know some of the things which happened in the Spanish Women Team. I would be ashamed if this had happened in a Team which represents my country, so I understand any strong comment about this.

[YesHoney]

VENEZUELA: Rather small bridge community and I will talk only Open and Ladies Teams.

 

As many other countries out there we have tried several methods. No matter how it is done it is always a problem, fights, ironic talk, insults, etc.

 

Pairs (IMPs) competition has been used for several years now, except last year for Open Team but that's dirtydirty laundry... For the Ladies, last year we took a vote among the players that were going to participate and pairs was decided, again.

 

In my view, since there are so few good pairs, no matter how it is done locally, the teams end up being conformed by the 2 sure pairs and the 3rd position is almost anyone's land.

 

Our NBO charges a little (really not much) to play the trials. And helps a lot with the travelling expenses including the entry fees for both teams.

 

I think that covers the main subject of this thread.

 

That being said, gotta add this thread doesn't lack lots of humour.

 

------------

 

FLUFFY: You "look" young and yet you do know about ladies teams... your description is funny but accurate :( Your comment made me laugh.

 

HELENE: Love your comment too. What I've seen in my group is that ladies team members won't stop being "mean" (not the word I would really use) to each other when a man is around because it is sooooo important to tell the whole world that they played great but the others gave away 100000000 IMPs. The more listeners the better.

 

I've been in both, Open and Ladies... Gotta say the only true lady in the ladies team was my partner! Still, would be happy to be a part of it any time.

[jjbrr]

I think it should be obvious from your offensive and gratuitous comments.

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to block a person's posts? I am not interested in anything more that Fluffy has to say.

Not to be a troll or anything, but has the fact that two women have said there is some grain of truth in Fluffy's statement made you reconsider? Perhaps you're being way too sensitive?

 

I'm positive Fluffy wasn't trying to offend anyone.

[pooltuna]

I think it should be obvious from your offensive and gratuitous comments.

 

Does anyone know if there is a way to block a person's posts? I am not interested in anything more that Fluffy has to say.

Not to be a troll or anything, but has the fact that two women have said there is some grain of truth in Fluffy's statement made you reconsider? Perhaps you're being way too sensitive?

 

I'm positive Fluffy wasn't trying to offend anyone.

Vampyr was probably just being a WIKI LOC

[Hanoi5]

Does anyone know if there is a way to block a person's posts? I am not interested in anything more that Fluffy has to say.

 

I've always thought this is silly: you can learn something from any poster, even if it is not doing something.

 

I agree with Fluffy's take on the women's team and for a moment thought it could be a cultural thing (I'm from Venezuela, 200 years ago a Spanish colony) but then I realized most women in our national team were not born in Venezuela, although you could argue that they picked up those ways.

 

HOWEVER, I do have to disagree a little in the sense that the open teams are also talking about each other's performance and blaming everyone except themselves. I've always thought it is just a 'bridge' way of being.

[debrose]

I've been playing regularly on U.S. Women's Teams since 2002, and to my knowledge I have not played on any teams in which players have been publicly critical of their partners/teammates on a regular basis. A couple have behaved this way on occasion, and maybe more often privately, but overall my female teammates have been a supportive bunch. Certainly I have not observed more "bad-mouthing" amongst my women's teams than what I've encountered amongst male players, which is plenty of public criticism of both partners and teammates. Of course not all men do it, just as not all women do it (the latter being the main point I want to make).

[Fluffy]

thx debbie, and thx to all people who supported me, I am sorry if I offended anyone. I'd like poeple to go back to the topic here wich is, how is your national team selected?.

 

Most countries do this by team trials, some have tried (not very succesfully I think) to do these by pairs tournament. I have also been selected for junior championships just hand-picked by the coach. The latter seems to be the method used in the netherlands, wich some ammount of success.

 

 

IMO the worst of all is pairs tournament: You have a great chance that very serious pairs won't have the willingness to participate if they might have to play in a team of unknowns, XIMPs have one of the biggest random factors of all scoring methods (score a couple of lucky +1400 against not regular pairs, and make a grand with a suit falling 3-3 and you can fail every partscore and still qualify), and you will find a lot more sponsor-proffesional pairs in a pairs event than a team's event where they have to pay 4-5 pros.

[blackshoe]

Sounds like we're discussing democracy: "it's a terrible system, but it's better than anything else we've got". Or something like that. :)

[jallerton]

Scotland is an NBO with a relatively small talent pool. There are no professional players (all those play for England or USA) and there are probably four or five top pairs. Then there are another six pairs who think that they are one of the top 4 or 5

It sounds as though Scotland is quite similar to most other countries then!

[mrdct]

I'd like to talk about the way in which the Victorian open team is selected which, imho, is a really good method. Victoria is one of eight states and territories in Australia which contests the annual Australian National Championships which is one of the oldest bridge events in the world which has been played every year since 1933 except for a break during World War II. Victoria has about 7,000 registered bridge players of which 95% of the potential representative players reside in the capital city, Melbourne.

 

Generally, there are two streams that lead to an eventual head-to-head play-off between the Butler Team and the Pennant Team.

 

The Pennant Team comes from the State Teams Championship ("the Pennant") which has swiss qualifying played over seven Wednesday nights (7 x 28-board matches with field of about 30 teams) from which the top six play a further round-robin on Saturday and then the top two contest a 64-board final on Sunday.

 

A couple of months later the Butler Trials are held, with Stage 1 being open to all-comers (although in a practical sense it is limited to residents of Melbourne) and played in a swiss-pairs format over four Wednesday nights (8 x 14-board matches) to reduce the initial field of about 60 pairs to 14 pairs to which 2 pairs from outside of Melbourne are added to form a field of 16 pairs to contest Stage 2. Stage 2 is played over two weekends as a complete round-robin after which the top 3 pairs become the Butler Team. Members of the Pennant Team are not allowed to play in Stage 2.

 

There is a further complication in years in which Victoria won the preceding ANC which allows that team, if it remains intact, to participate in a three-way play-off with the Pennant Team and the Butler Team. There is also provision that if a winning team at the ANC plays intact in the Pennant and wins it, they get a right to force an extra 32 boards if they are trailing the Butler Team after 64 boards of the play-off.

 

The good feature of this selection method is that you have a good safety measure to deal with either a weak team fluking a win in the Pennant or the Butler Trials throwing up a weak team. It is also a good money-spinner for the Victoria Bridge Association filling up 11 nights of the calendar.

[glen]

One thing to keep in mind is the objective of the national team selection. Is it:

 

- to select the best team at beating good teams from the same nation

- to select the best team at beating the best teams from other nations

 

Most national selections naturally go for the first, but that is often not the actual objective.

[paulg]

One thing to keep in mind is the objective of the national team selection.  Is it:

 

- to select the best team at beating good teams from the same nation

- to select the best team at beating the best teams from other nations

 

Most national selections naturally go for the first, but that is often not the actual objective.

It is pretty difficult to have a selection process to find the best team to beat other international teams, unless (i) your players regularly play in tournaments outside their home country or (ii) you select rather than have trials.

 

So we (Scotland) settle for the former, even though it is not what is required.

 

England has gone for selection without trials for the European Team Championships. I don't expect that their selectors actually found this any easier, given the players and personalities involved.

[Vampyr]

England has gone for selection without trials for the European Team Championships. I don't expect that their selectors actually found this any easier, given the players and personalities involved.

If the selectors didn't prefer it this way, they would hold a trials. Perhaps a topic for another thread could be English selection horror stories. There are dozens.

[Aberlour10]

England has gone for selection without trials for the European Team Championships.

Same in Poland. ( after many years with trials ) The PBU will try to get the BB spot back in Ostend with B-Z and our ex-juniors.

 

..but there are trials for The Rosenblum Cup...

 

Robert

[paulg]

England has gone for selection without trials for the European Team Championships.

Same in Poland. ( after many years with trials ) The PBU will try to get the BB spot back in Ostend with B-Z and our ex-juniors.

 

..but there are trials for The Rosenblum Cup...

 

Robert

As the Rosenblum is open, presumably the trials are more to get funding rather than the title of Poland I, Poland II, etc?

[Aberlour10]

As the Rosenblum is open, presumably the trials are more to get funding rather than the title of Poland I, Poland II, etc?

Yes. All expenses will be paid by the PBU.

[jjbrr]

One thing to keep in mind is the objective of the national team selection. Is it:

 

- to select the best team at beating good teams from the same nation

- to select the best team at beating the best teams from other nations

 

Most national selections naturally go for the first, but that is often not the actual objective.

This seems like splitting hairs. Perhaps in a theoretical world this is a possible distinction that the selection process can account for, but in practice I think everyone is satisfied with sending a team that is most likely to achieve whatever expected success the country aims for.

[paulg]

... Perhaps in a theoretical world this is a possible distinction that the selection process can account for, but in practice I think everyone is satisfied with sending a team that is most likely to achieve whatever expected success the country aims for.

In real life:

• Everyone is NEVER satisfied
  
• A team NEVER reaches the level of success that the country expects (you hope to reach a level that is tolerated)
  
• Sending a TEAM is sometimes the most you can hope for!
  

;)

[jjbrr]

... Perhaps in a theoretical world this is a possible distinction that the selection process can account for, but in practice I think everyone is satisfied with sending a team that is most likely to achieve whatever expected success the country aims for.

In real life:

• Everyone is NEVER satisfied
  
• A team NEVER reaches the level of success that the country expects (you hope to reach a level that is tolerated)
  
• Sending a TEAM is sometimes the most you can hope for!
  

;)

Well, if your list is true, then this entire discussion is completely irrelevant.

 

It should be noted, though, that I'm American. Point two in your list is a problem, do you see why?