Fast? Pairs

[Phil]

I had a chance to look at the recaps from the Fast Pairs yesterday. All of the evening recaps made it online, although the afternoon recaps didn't.

 

Some interesting tidbits:

 

- There were six sections in play of 14 tables each, so 6 x 28 = 198 pairs entered the event, which seems like a low table count to me. Four of the sections were twinned for a 25 top, and the other three sections were combined for a 38 top.

 

- In the evening, there were a total of 12 pairs penalized for slow play. The total penalties per pair ranged from -3.8 (on a 38 top - 1 10 of a board) to -9.5 (on a 25 top - about 3/8 of a board). If you assume one board accounts for about 4% of the available matchpoints, the maximum anyone was dinged was 1% of their score. In other words, of the 1,274 rounds (98 tables x 13 rounds) played in the evening, there were only about 6 or 7 instances of a director actually enforcing a penalty. I didn't see any cases of a pair that didn't Q because of a time penalty. When the carryover for the 2nd day is considered, any penalties for Day 1 amount to practically nothing.

 

- In eight of the penalties assessed, the penalties 'balanced' between NS and EW. for instance if an EW pair was assessed -6.3 (1/4 board on a 25 top), there was a NS pair that was assessed the same. In the other four instances, the penalties were not uniform between NS and EW. This leads me to believe that in just a few cases the directors assessed penalties against an offending pair, instead of just coming up to a late table and saying, you're late: penalty. I find this interesting, because in cases of late plays that there are generally one pair is creating the problem.

 

Here's what the conditions of contest say about penalties:

 

Fast Pairs C of C

 

Penalties for late finish are as follows:

 

0+ to 1 minute: warning

 

1+ to 3 minutes: 1/6 Board

 

3+ to 5 minutes: 1/4 Board

 

5+ to 7 minutes: ½ Board

 

7+ minutes: 3/4 Board plus referral to an appeals committee for possible additional penalty.

 

penalties to a pair culpable for more than one late finish are at the discretion of the monitor/director.

 

You can draw your own conclusions for this, but if I play in this event in Toronto, you can bet that on Day 1, but if I have a tough decision I will take my own sweet time and not worry about time penalties.

[ArtK78]

A note on the turnout in the Fast Pairs.

 

I see that the finals consists of 52 tables. When I played in this event in New York City several years back, the finals consisted of 39 tables.

 

So perhaps the turnout is not so bad after all.

[awm]

Seems like the fast pairs may actually be not-so-fast. No big surprise really, ACBL is pretty bad about penalizing slow play in general and there's no reason to think the fast pairs would be much better.

 

As for attendance, some of this is a function of what goes on in the Spingold. This year, with only 65 entrants, the Spingold cut down to 32 on the first day. This means there were only 8 teams left in the Spingold going into Thursday, and that the Spingold should finish on Saturday. In many previous years this was 16 left and finishing Sunday. That explains 8-12 more tables in the fast pairs by itself (presumably many of the people who are out of the Spingold enter the fast pairs). The 0-5K Mini-Spin also seems smaller than usual, which may account for a few more tables as well.

[wjc71]

There were only 2 penalties in the 1st session over all 7 sections.

[Phil]

There were only 2 penalties in the 1st session over all 7 sections.

As of this morning, only two of six sections were posted. I haven't checked back.

[jchiu]

A note on the turnout in the Fast Pairs.

 

I see that the finals consists of 52 tables. When I played in this event in New York City several years back, the finals consisted of 39 tables.

 

So perhaps the turnout is not so bad after all.

I remember three things about that event

- it was a weekend event running concurrent the open swiss

- people played so slowly that I had trouble catching my train out of Penn Station

- there were hardly any late play penalties, even in the final

[ArtK78]

Yes, it was a weekend event.

 

But no, it was not opposite the Open Swiss. It was opposite the Mixed Teams.

 

As for the pace of play, it was not particularly fast. My partner and I were almost always one of the first pairs done the round, and we had to wait quite a bit to play each following round.