Overall rankings

[Walddk]

I woke up in the middle of the night (it's too hot in London at the moment) and was unable to fall asleep again, so I thought I would provide some useless information.

 

How did the various nations fare overall? Ideally, you score 3 points (first in all three categories), so for a change we have "the lower the better". I have only included countries that participated in all categories and where the open team qualified for the final stage.

 

Digits (in bracket) denote rankings in the open, women and seniors respectively.

 

01. Poland ........ 9 (2-6-1)

02. Italy........... 11 (1-7-3)

03. France ....... 16 (11-1-4)

04. Germany.... 18 (9-4-5)

05. Netherlands20 (6-2-12)

06. Sweden...... 21 (5-3-13)

07. Israel......... 22 (3-12-7)

08. Denmark.... 26 (13-11-2)

09. Bulgaria..... 29 (7-16-6)

10. England..... 31 (12-5-14)

11. Norway...... 40 (14-9-17)

11. Turkey....... 40 (10-14-16)

13. Switzerland 64 (15-26-23)

 

As the Top 6 + the Netherlands qualify for the Bermuda Bowl, Venice Cup and Seniors Bowl, only Poland, Italy and NL (hosts) will have teams in all three. Seventh is enough for Italy in the women's because NL finished second.

 

Roland

[mrdct]

Has anyone worked out if the results against the non-qualifying nations would change the placings if they were counted (be that in full or even some sort of partial carryover)?

[mich-b]

01. Poland ........ 9 (2-6-1)

02. Italy........... 11 (1-7-3)

03. France ....... 16 (11-1-4)

04. Germany.... 18 (9-4-5)

05. Netherlands20 (6-2-12)

06. Sweden...... 21 (5-3-13)

07. Denmark.... 26 (13-11-2)

08. Israel......... 27 (3-12-12)

09. Bulgaria..... 29 (7-16-6)

10. England..... 31 (12-5-14)

11. Norway...... 40 (14-9-17)

11. Turkey....... 40 (10-14-16)

13. Switzerland 64 (15-26-23)

Israel should be

 

Israel......... 22 (3-12-7)

[mich-b]

Has anyone worked out if the results against the non-qualifying nations would change the placings if they were counted (be that in full or even some sort of partial carryover)?

Hypothetical results with full carryover (I hope I did not make mistakes..)

 

1. Poland 542

2. Israel 524.5

3. Italy 516

4. Iceland 500

5. Sweden 494

6. Bulgaria 476.5

7-8 Netherlands & Turkey 473

9. Germany 472.5

10. Russia 467

11. France 451.5

12. England 440

13. Norway 431

14. Denmark 428

etc...

 

Personally though , I do not think full carryover would be a good idea.

I think the 2 groups were not even strength (especially looking at the bottom half of each group) which would be very crtitical factor if full carryover was used.

Also , in the later rounds of the group stage , some teams that lost the chance to qualify, seemed to have lost interested with their performance affected accordingly.

[paulg]

Has anyone worked out if the results against the non-qualifying nations would change the placings if they were counted (be that in full or even some sort of partial carryover)?

Team        Total    Rank    100% NQ    Rank    50% NQ    Rank
ITALY       314       1      516         3      415        2
POLAND      308       2      542         1      425        1
ISRAEL      304.5     3      524.5       2      414.5      3
ICELAND     289       4      500         4      394.5      4
SWEDEN      274       5      494         5      384        5
NETHERLANDS 271       6      474         7      372.5      6
BULGARIA    265       7      476         6      370.5      7
RUSSIA      263       8      467        10      365        8
GERMANY     253.5     9      472.5       8      363        9
TURKEY      251      10      471         9      361       10
FRANCE      248.5    11      451.5      11      350       11
ENGLAND     247      12      440        12      343.5     12
DENMARK     232      13      428        14      330       13
NORWAY      229      14      429        13      329       14
ESTONIA     204      15      425        15      314.5     15
SWITZERLAND 204      15      406        16      305       16
LATVIA      201      17      395        17      298       17
PORTUGAL    192      18      382        18      287       18

The table shows the score and ranking in the final round robin, then the ranking if all scores were counted, and then if 50% of the non-qualifiers' score was carried forward.

 

Done quickly, so hopefully no mistakes!

 

Update: I see Michael and I have the same result, so at least consistent with the mistakes (if any).

[Walddk]

01. Poland ........ 9 (2-6-1)

02. Italy........... 11 (1-7-3)

03. France ....... 16 (11-1-4)

04. Germany.... 18 (9-4-5)

05. Netherlands20 (6-2-12)

06. Sweden...... 21 (5-3-13)

07. Denmark.... 26 (13-11-2)

08. Israel......... 27 (3-12-12)

09. Bulgaria..... 29 (7-16-6)

10. England..... 31 (12-5-14)

11. Norway...... 40 (14-9-17)

11. Turkey....... 40 (10-14-16)

13. Switzerland 64 (15-26-23)

Israel should be

 

Israel......... 22 (3-12-7)

Indeed it should. Corrected now. I did say it was written in the middle of the night ;)

[paulg]

Personally though , I do not think full carryover would be a good idea.

I think the 2 groups were not even strength (especially looking at the bottom half of each group) which would be very crtitical factor if full carryover was used.

Also , in the later rounds of the group stage , some teams that lost the chance to qualify, seemed to have lost interested with their performance affected accordingly.

Additionally, in the second half of the round robin the top teams did not take matches seriously as they knew the result was immaterial.

 

The bottom halves of the groups are effectively random as the quality of the teams from these countries vary considerably from championship to championship. It is also these teams that will not feature professionals and they will play a lot worse in the latter stages due to fatigue.

 

Personally I thought the format was reasonable and as fair as it can be.

 

Paul

[Walddk]

It is also these teams that will not feature professionals and they will play a lot worse in the latter stages due to fatigue.

How many teams have a full squad of professionals? I mean players who only deal with bridge. Italy and ..... ? I don't have the answer, but my guess is very few. Professionalism in Europe is rare whereas most top teams in USA have full-time pros.

 

It is no coincidence that Italy and USA almost always compete for the laurels. We have exceptions (Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Poland) but they are few and far between. If you don't have to think about anything but bridge 24/7, you have an edge.

 

Roland

[paulg]

It is also these teams that will not feature professionals and they will play a lot worse in the latter stages due to fatigue.

How many teams have a full squad of professionals? I mean players who only deal with bridge. Italy and ..... ? I don't have the answer, but my guess is very few. Professionalism in Europe is rare whereas most top teams in USA have full-time pros.

 

It is no coincidence that Italy and USA almost always compete for the laurels. We have exceptions (Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Poland) but they are few and far between. If you don't have to think about anything but bridge 24/7, you have an edge.

 

Roland

I'd have said that the top fourteen teams look pretty professional to me (although I know least about Denmark and Turkey). Certainly they may not be full-time professionals in the US sense, and perhaps not all three pairs, but these teams feature players and pairs that do travel the world playing in the top tournaments.

 

They are certainly professional compared to most of the rest.

[Walddk]

It is also these teams that will not feature professionals and they will play a lot worse in the latter stages due to fatigue.

How many teams have a full squad of professionals? I mean players who only deal with bridge. Italy and ..... ? I don't have the answer, but my guess is very few. Professionalism in Europe is rare whereas most top teams in USA have full-time pros.

 

It is no coincidence that Italy and USA almost always compete for the laurels. We have exceptions (Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Poland) but they are few and far between. If you don't have to think about anything but bridge 24/7, you have an edge.

 

Roland

I'd have said that the top fourteen teams look pretty professional to me (although I know least about Denmark and Turkey). Certainly they may not be full-time professionals in the US sense, and perhaps not all three pairs, but these teams feature players and pairs that do travel the world playing in the top tournaments.

 

They are certainly professional compared to most of the rest.

Then we interpret the word "professional" differently. My interpretation is a person who lives on bridge, or at least has his main income from bridge. Just like Kobe Bryant lives on basketball, and Christiano Ronaldo on football (soccer).

 

Roland

[marcinpu]

Maybe it was already discussed sometime somewhere, but... What is the reason not to have KO in European Championships?

 

Round Robin should be treated as the most "fair" method of seeding teams for KO stage. If Champion is selected based on RR results there is always "noise" in the results (e.g. worse performing teams not fighting for their result in the end). Also there is a lot of luck factor - for example if Croatia qualified instead of Latvia to the final stage, Italy wouldn't win...

 

M.

[mich-b]

Maybe it was already discussed sometime somewhere, but... What is the reason not to have KO in European Championships?

 

Round Robin should be treated as the most "fair" method of seeding teams for KO stage. If Champion is selected based on RR results there is always "noise" in the results (e.g. worse performing teams not fighting for their result in the end). Also there is a lot of luck factor - for example if Croatia qualified instead of Latvia to the final stage, Italy wouldn't win...

 

M.

One reason why RR is used in the Europeans , is that this championship also determines 6 qualifiers to the Bermuda Bowl. A KO format would have problems to do that fairly.

[marcinpu]

Never thought about this... However, this doesn't sound like a problem that cannot be solved. For example 8 teams qualify for KO, the four that qualify to semifinal got place in BB, from the remaining four teams, the two that had highest place after RR qualify to BB.

 

M.

[Walddk]

Never thought about this... However, this doesn't sound like a problem that cannot be solved. For example 8 teams qualify for KO, the four that qualify to semifinal got place in BB, from the remaining four teams, the two that had highest place after RR qualify to BB.

 

M.

I am sure the EBL has been through all kinds of formats. Nothing is ideal with close to 40 countries taking part in the open series; at least not when they only have 11 days to their disposal.

 

And then we are back to professionalism. If one wants to make the event last longer, it will be a big problem for the vast majority. Most of them take time off (vacation) from their jobs in order to play in the championships. They can't stay away forever.

 

On top of this, the expenses for the federations will be more than painful (they are already for many). Having 18 players and a few NPCs and coaches in a foreign country for say three weeks costs a fortune.

 

I am with Paul here; the current format is reasonable.

 

Roland

[3for3]

Knockouts are much better for picking the one best team. Since the goal is to pick the 6 best teams, RR is much fairer.

 

Even if one were picking 8 teams, or some other power of 2, RR is better.

[Walddk]

Better late than never: congratulations to Michael Barel on winning the bronze medal as a member of the Israel team. It was no surprise that Israel qualified for the Bermuda Bowl, more so that Iceland did.

 

They had a great tournament and were in contention for medals all the way through. However, it will be a tough task for the icemen to keep their 100% record. They qualified for the BB once before and won it (Yokohama 1991).

 

Two of the players will be there again 20 years on, Jón Baldursson and Þorlákur Jónsson.

 

Roland

[Fluffy]

what I don't like of the format, is the big weight that had that Latvia qualified with Croatia 1 VP behind and others, that made a huge difference in the points carried for group B, partial carry over for 10-12 ranked teams would had been more fair IMO

[paulg]

what I don't like of the format, is the big weight that had that Latvia qualified with Croatia 1 VP behind and others, that made a huge difference in the points carried for group B, partial carry over for 10-12 ranked teams would had been more fair IMO

I think that there is a huge advantage in having a format that is open, transparent and easily understandable.

 

The 'final' of the event is a complete round-robin. Scores from matches against teams that are not in the final are not counted. This sounds very fair.

 

Of course there will be anomalies in who qualifies. Latvia qualified in 9th place from Group A on a split tie. In fact Latvia, Hungary and Wales all had poor records against the top eight teams and whoever qualified would not have significantly altered the final result. But just behind them, on 1VP, was Croatia. Croatia would have had the sixth highest carryover from Group A (19 VPs better than Latvia), but missed the qualification as it did far poorer against the weaker teams. Interestingly Finland, 20 VPs behind qualification, would have had the seventh best carryover in Group A. But selecting the qualifiers on the basis of performance against the qualifiers is an iterative process that is not easily understood or marketed. We all understand a simple league table.

 

Everyone seems to feel that Poland or Israel would have won if Croatia had qualified. But this ignores the fact that both these teams beat Latvia well (25 and 24 VPs respectively). It is far from certain that they would have achieved this against Croatia, who had this much better record against top teams.

 

So I still think the format is reasonable and fair.

[TimG]

Knockouts are much better for picking the one best team.

This has probably been discussed (a lot) in the past, but is this true? I would guess that the chances that the best team loses a single KO match are greater than the chances they fail to finish first in a round robin. Of course, length of matches and seeding would be important factors.

[MFA]

what I don't like of the format, is the big weight that had that Latvia qualified with Croatia 1 VP behind and others, that made a huge difference in the points carried for group B, partial carry over for 10-12 ranked teams would had been more fair IMO

I have the same reservations. It's a pretty big luck factor, what results the teams can "erase".

 

In our group Portugal and Austria were very close (2 VPs) 9th and 10th.

 

Had Austria qualified instead of Portugal then Israel would have won silver. They would have had 9 VPs more whilst Poland would only have had 1 VP more. Easily enough to overcome the 3,5 VP gap between the two teams in the final standings.

 

Another example.

We (Denmark) ended up 15 VP behind England. But if Austria had qualified instead of Portugal, we would have been 15 VP ahead of England in the final standings. Huge, huge difference - all luck. (Not that this mattered so much since both England and we were out of contention.)

 

The carry forward system is a bit like in handball or icehockey. But I'm not so sure that it is ideal for bridge. Shortish round robin matches don't always produce "acurate" results relative to playing strengths. In some of these matches a team will get more VPs than it "deserves" - in some matches less. Having only 8 out of 18 matches from the qualification to count introduces a big luck factor.

 

I would prefer a format like in Pau where all teams start from scratch in the final round, playing a new, complete round robin. It would be fine for me if there were some VP-bonus for finishing in the top of the qualification, or some small VP-carry over based on all qualification results.

[paulg]

I would prefer a format like in Pau where all teams start from scratch in the final round, playing a new, complete round robin. It would be fine for me if there were some VP-bonus for finishing in the top of the qualification, or some small VP-carry over based on all qualification results.

I don't understand what difference a fresh round robin would make.

 

You discard the result of a 20-board match against a team and replace it with the result of a 20-board match against the same team.

[MFA]

I would prefer a format like in Pau where all teams start from scratch in the final round, playing a new, complete round robin. It would be fine for me if there were some VP-bonus for finishing in the top of the qualification, or some small VP-carry over based on all qualification results.

I don't understand what difference a fresh round robin would make.

 

You discard the result of a 20-board match against a team and replace it with the result of a 20-board match against the same team.

Yes I would be discarding 18/18 results from the qualification round instead of discarding just 10/18 of the results since the latter will inevitably contain a big amount of luck in what results are discarded and what results that are not.

 

Alternatively a bonus carry-forward that reflects the results of all the 18 matches, but still we should be playing a complete round robin in the finals. The final round is a whole new stage of the championships, with new goals, and I think the scoring should reflect this.

 

While the actual format is certainly not terrible, it does seem to me to be a less than ideal compromise.

[jeremy69]

One change as a result of the arrangement in Ostend compared to Pau is that the championship is 3 days shorter. Given prices in Ostend that is not such a bad thing! A fresh round robin would sentence us all to an extra few hundred euros (and that is only for the appetisers)

[3for3]

This has probably been discussed (a lot) in the past, but is this true? I would guess that the chances that the best team loses a single KO match are greater than the chances they fail to finish first in a round robin. Of course, length of matches and seeding would be important factors.

 

Given the 11.5 days they had for the event, one could play 120 board matches. That would be far better for picking the winner of an event like this.

 

It would be far worse for picking 6/7 teams they needed to select.

[jallerton]

I would prefer a format like in Pau where all teams start from scratch in the final round, playing a new, complete round robin. It would be fine for me if there were some VP-bonus for finishing in the top of the qualification, or some small VP-carry over based on all qualification results.

I don't understand what difference a fresh round robin would make.

 

You discard the result of a 20-board match against a team and replace it with the result of a 20-board match against the same team.

Yes I would be discarding 18/18 results from the qualification round instead of discarding just 10/18 of the results since the latter will inevitably contain a big amount of luck in what results are discarded and what results that are not.

 

Alternatively a bonus carry-forward that reflects the results of all the 18 matches, but still we should be playing a complete round robin in the finals. The final round is a whole new stage of the championships, with new goals, and I think the scoring should reflect this.

 

While the actual format is certainly not terrible, it does seem to me to be a less than ideal compromise.

It would be even better if we did not have to discard any of the results from the first stage. However, carrying forward all of the results from the first stage in its current format would be potentially unfair if the non-qualifiers from one group are materially weaker than the non-qualifiers from the other group.

 

Reverting to one big round robin might be fairer, although it has been suggested on another thread that:

 

The main problem with so many teams exists for the weaker teams from the smaller NBOs. They had to stay with nothing to win and the accommodation costs were very (too) high for them.

Nowadays they "only" have to pay for one week and can go home then, if they do not finish within the upper half of their group.

 

and

 

The overall standard of the Europeans has risen immensely over the last few years and there are very few weak teams playing nowadays.

 

However the non-professional teams, typically from the smaller NBOs, do tend to tire a lot more during the championships. So there would be a big advantage in playing these teams near the end of the event if it was just, say, a full round robin.

 

To address all of these concerns, I propose:

 

Stage 1: all 38 teams play a round robin of 37 (say) 10-board matches. Each match is converted to VPs with half of the normal number of VPs available (e.g. 7.5 each for a draw, maximum of 12.5) using an appropriate VP scale for 10-board matches.

 

Stage 2: the top (say) 16 teams qualify for stage 2. They carry forward 100% of the VPs from Stage 1 and play a round robin of 15 20-board matches. These matches use the current VP scale (15 each for a draw, maximum of 25).

 

Note that under this proposal:

 

All results in Stage 1 count and there is little incentive for "sportsman-like dumping".

 

In the final ranking, there are 3 times as many VPs available from matches against fellow-qualifiers than those against non-qualifiers.