How national team is selected in your country

[awm]

Why is this a good idea at all? It seems like this takes a long time (adding to logistic costs and making everyone more tired) with no compelling positive reasons to me, other than making some people happy who think they are so unlucky that they are constantly not good enough to get on the best teams.

Since no one is forced to play in both trials, the only effective cost to the winners is one additional (longish) match. This is not a very big deal. On the other hand, having the additional trials probably makes more money for the relevant organization to use in subsidizing the eventual team.

 

In the US current team-based system, there are a few potential problems. For one, virtually all the best teams have playing sponsors. Being paid for one's time is a big deal, obviously. But this has a number of downsides. Some examples: we see pretty much the same top teams in the trials each year; it is very possible that better teams exist but are never formed due to long-standing sponsorship arrangements. Virtually all the teams with a real shot at winning the trials have a playing sponsor, which potentially makes them weaker than they would otherwise be. Good but less-established pairs have the choice of playing for a weaker sponsor (and getting paid, but having virtually no chance to win the trials) or trying to pair with other comparable less established pairs (and footing their own expenses, while still having an only slightly better chance at winning the trials) -- certainly these pairs might like to have an alternative "pairs format" route to qualifying.

 

Simply switching to a pairs format creates many alternative issues which are arguably a whole lot worse than the current system. But having a pairs event in this style could lead to the "discovery" of a very strong less-established pair which ends up improving the national team, or forming a sponsor-less national team in the event that the sponsorship issues are really having substantial impact on the team quality.

 

If the winners of the team trials really are the best squad we can field, forcing them to play one more longish match is hardly going to change anything.

[JanM]

One suggestion that was made for a way to choose the second US team for the Bermuda Bowl (in the one year out of four when two teams are chosen in one year) was to have the regular team trials and also have a pairs trials and then the team that had lost in the team trials finals would play the pairs trials team (which might have been the top 3 pairs or the top 2 and their choice from some subset of the remaining pairs).

 

I think the main reason that suggestion failed was because of the logistics - either you run the two trials at the same time, in which case there are issues about dealing with "drop ins" to the pairs trials from the team trials, or you have to hold them separately and then have the playoff match either at a third time or at the end of the pairs trials, giving the teams trials runner-up an advantage because they aren't tired.

 

Nick's point that having all of the competitors in one city makes life easier is a good one. With our players spread over a large country, the costs to the players as well as the organizers of two separate trials is very large. Of course, a way to achieve the same thing would be to hold trials online, but although we're trying to do that in some cases, the participants in the Open, Women's and Senior trials aren't yet ready to have those events online.

[mich-b]

Around here , the federation had avoided teams trials for many years , one of the main arguments being that teams trials will allow sponsors to "buy their way" into the national team.

But in reality , when teams trials were finally held , none of the entered teams had a sponsor. I think the main reason for this is that the best players want to play with each other to have a realistic chance to do well in internatonal competition.

This may be different in the USA , where teams believe (and were proven right many times during the years) that they can win abroad with their sponsor. But in smaller countries, where the sponsors do not often play very well, I think authorities can "risk" having teams trials without fearing that an "unworthy" sponsor sneaks in. At least this is what the (limited) experience here shows.

[MFA]

In Denmark we have a selection committee, which is probably the only practical way to do it here. There is not one single full time bridge professional in Denmark (unless we count bridge teachers who earn all their money not from playing bridge but from teaching weekly classes in bridge centers), and even though our bridge federation pays all immediate expenses for the chosen teams, there are other sacrifices for the players, and it's only natural that some of our strong pairs can't or don't want to play in the international events from time to time.

 

So, often the strong teams in Denmark have perhaps only one or two pairs competing for a spot on the national team. Actually of the team that won the Danish Teams Championships this weekend none of the pairs were available for the national team that was picked yesterday. One pair has retired from the national team, two players have kids to look after etc. So just wanting to have the winners of that tournament to represent Denmark would be pointless.

 

To get as strong a team as possible under these circumstances I think the only solution is to have a selection committee picking three pairs, even though in principle I favour team trials. Denmark is a small country and all strong players know eachother well, so there will rarely be social problems with forming a 'dream team' (:unsure:) for each separate event.

[paulg]

Denmark Scotland is a small country and all strong players know each other well, so there will rarely always be social problems with forming a 'dream team' for each separate event.

 

Perhaps time to move :unsure:

[whereagles]

Portugal. Selection goes as follows:

 

1. Four-session matchpointed pairs. Some of the best pairs are exempt from this stage. 24 pairs qualify.

 

2. Two 12 players poules. Imp pairs with VP conversion (Datum = mean). 12 pairs (6 from each poule) qualify.

 

3. One 12 players poule. Imp pairs with VP conversion. 8 pairs qualify.

 

4. One 8 players poule. Imp pairs with VP conversion and carry-over from stage 3.

 

1st and 2nd pairs qualify for the national team. Winner chooses 3rd pair from pairs qualified in 3rd, 4th or 5th place. This way to choose 3rd pair is highly controversial but so far winners have used the common sense solution of always picking pair in 3rd place.

[NickRW]

Denmark Scotland is a small country and all strong players know each other well, so there will rarely always be social problems with forming a 'dream team' for each separate event.

 

Perhaps time to move :)

Yes. Well. I had the (mostly) good fortune to spend a couple of years of my life in Scotland. I noticed that, when the opponents are the English, a tremendous social cohesion breaks out among the Scots based on the general agreement of "lets beat the sassenachs to pulp".

 

Unfortunately, the warrior like tendencies disperse when there isn't a common enemy.

 

Nick

[mycroft]

The system in Canada (where I used to play) is different - it is similar in nature to the ACBL's Grand National Teams (teams qualify to represent their districts and then play a round robin to qualify for a knockout). For Canada, this is a sensible way to do things IMO, but historically the Canadian system has not done as good a job as the USA system in terms of qualifying what most would consider to be "the best teams that entered".

You will be pleased to know not care at all that Step 2 has been removed for the CNTC as of last year - it's still a club qualifier, but then it's "make your teams, register byt 24 March, show up in Markham." No Zone qualifier, no zonal quotas, no team location restrictions. Still full RR->KO, though.

[Gerben42]

On this occasion another 2 cents.... I wonder a bit, why the acting world champions have to qualify for the next BB. In my opinion they earned with this great achivement the right to defend this title automatically. Would it be not fair?

 

The USBF could of course add a regulation that in case a US team wins the BB, that they will automatically be USA1 next time if the same 6 play and have a bye to the qualifying final if 5 out of 6 play. That's up to them. A similar solution might be taken by the EBL of course.

[Fluffy]

given that they lose money doing so, it seems pretty impossible for USBF.

 

About the EBL... do they award the qualify to teams or to countries? I think to countries, so no point either if the team that won BB is not gonna play the next BB but some others from the same country.

[Aberlour10]

The USBF could of course add a regulation that in case a US team wins the BB, that they will automatically be USA1 next time if the same 6 play.

That was my primary thought

[Fluffy]

The qualifiers for the open in the european bridge championships will be held this weekend.

 

So far a strong team of 4 "top" players have signed up, we had been talking long ago to play with 2 of them or maybe the others or all together, but what has happened is that a sponsor has hired them and they quickly left us alone.

 

The other decent players are with another sponsor, and now dad and me are left with nobody lol. Maybe we go and play witha couple of juniors and see if we can ***** up with all of them.

[Gerben42]

Sorry to hear that, that's their loss and your bad luck...

[mrdct]

I do think the Victoria method (teams competition, then pairs competition which the members of winning team cannot compete in, then top three pairs play against winner of teams competition) is quite good. This seems to avoid the problems inherent in both teams and pairs trials. The well-known issues with pairs trials include: (1) teams that know/trust/like each other usually do better than teams composed of unrelated good pairs (2) some players may not want to play on teams with particular others (3) captaincy/sit-out issues on teams composed of pairs (4) imp pairs is particularly random format and may lead to at least one "weak" pair in the top three. However there are also a number of problems inherent in teams trials such as: (1) the best pairs may not end up on the same team due to social and/or sponsorship issues (2) a very strong pair may have trouble "breaking in" to the team if people don't know about them and/or they are not full-time professional players, since they have issues getting good teammates (3) teams competition often favors professional teams since a weak sponsor can hire five strong players and make the national team, even though the team would clearly be stronger if the sponsor were replaced with a stronger player.

Why is this a good idea at all? It seems like this takes a long time (adding to logistic costs and making everyone more tired) with no compelling positive reasons to me, other than making some people happy who think they are so unlucky that they are constantly not good enough to get on the best teams.

The original poster was from Belarus and I suspect the vast majority of its top bridge players live in or near it main city, Minsk, so I thought the Victorian example would be of interest.

 

I haven't fully analysed it, but my general observation is that the self-formed Pennant team wins the open team play-off about 80-90% of the time and generally performs much better than Butler teams in the target event. Also, the years in which a "surprise" team has won the Pennant generally coincides with the years in which the Butler team wins the play-off so it is a good safety measure.