Sunday swiss teams bracketed

[dickiegera]

We are planning to have at our next sectional the SWISS TEAM event bracketed. We are expecting about 24 teams. This will mean 3 brackets of 8 teams each.

 

What I am questioning is how will this work?

 

First round in each bracket I am assuming #1 plays #8, #2 plays #7 etc.

 

Question: how many boards? and what happens in round two, round 3 etc?

 

Thank you

[ArtK78]

We are planning to have at our next sectional the SWISS TEAM event bracketed. We are expecting about 24 teams. This will mean 3 brackets of 8 teams each.

 

What I am questioning is how will this work?

 

First round in each bracket I am assuming #1 plays #8, #2 plays #7 etc.

 

Question: how many boards? and what happens in round two, round 3 etc?

 

Thank you

Assuming that you use some sort of computer scoring program, it should have a round-robin movement for an 8-table team event. That will take care of the eight-team brackets. I would imagine that the Groner book on pair and team movements would have a simple movement for an 8 team round robin movement. And I am sure that a simple google search would come up with more than one 8 team round robin movement. (By the way, the pairings that you proposed look like a bracket for a KO. That is not how it works in a round-robin. Typically, in the first round, 1 plays 2, 3 plays 4, 5 plays 6 and 7 plays 8. In the second round, it could be that 1 plays 3, 2 plays 4, 5 plays 7 and 6 plays 8. In any event, as long as everyone plays everyone else, all is fine.)

 

To set up the brackets, it is my understanding that the teams are ranked from top to bottom (usually by average masterpoint holding). The 8 lowest ranked teams make up the lowest bracket, the next 8 are the next bracket, and so on up to the top. When you have less than 8 teams remaining, the remaining teams and the next 8 teams form the open Swiss bracket. The top bracket will always have no less than 8 teams and no more than 15 teams (unless the conditions of contest state otherwise - I suppose it could be stated in the conditions of contest that the top bracket must have 16 to 23 teams, for example). The open bracket plays a "normal" swiss movement. Matchups for the last couple of rounds may be less than optimal, as most of the top teams will have already played each other. The last time I played in a bracketed swiss, which was at the Lancaster PA regional three Sundays ago, we were leading with one round to go and we played a team that was not in contention. That cannot be helped, as the top team is supposed to play the highest ranking team that it has not already played, the next highest ranked team is supposed to play the highest ranked available team that it has not already played, and so on. If you are using a computer program, it will make the assignments.

 

Given that the 8 team brackets must play 7 matches for a complete round-robin, each of the brackets, including the Open Bracket, should play 7 matches. Whether you choose to play 6, 7 or 8 boards per match is up to you as long as it meets minimum requirements for the number of boards played in the event and it fits the time allocated to play the event. In the Lancaster PA Regional, we played 7 7-board matches.

 

By the way, it is my understanding that the Tournament Chairman or the Tournament Committee can specify in the conditions of contest that any team can opt to play up into the open bracket. In that case, you can assign a team that wants to play up an average masterpoint total of infinity and rank the teams accordingly. If I am not correct about this, I hope that someone can point this out.

 

One could also arrange the brackets so that the "large" bracket is the bottom bracket. The top 8 teams are in the top bracket, the next 8 are in the second bracket, and so on, with the last group of teams and the 8 above them forming the bottom "bracket." In that case, all of the 8 team brackets would play a round-robin and the bottom "bracket" would play a Swiss movement. I don't know if this is an allowable option. I would imagine that guidance could be obtained from the ACBL if you wanted to run the event in this manner. This set up is probably not as popular as having the large bracket at the top. And it would cause problems if many teams wanted to "play up."

 

Here is a link to an 8 team round robin movement:

 

http://www.printyourbrackets.com/8teamroundrobin.html

[mycroft]

"Bracket Swiss Teams" is a misnomer, and I wish the word would disappear (I wish the game would disappear, but I know the reasons why it won't). It is in fact a Bracketed Round Robin.

 

Art has discussed how it works; frequently rather than saying "anyone can play top if they want", it's run as a Flight A Swiss and a Bracketed RR Flight B. That way any team who wishes to play in the open can, rather than any feeling about "overloading the top bracket"; and anyone who wants to play an actual Swiss can as well (provided they are willing to play in the open). Of course, the players in Flight A are stuck with it, but they *shouldn't be* the ones who have to worry about getting gold or "playing against the experts if they happen to do too well".

 

The big benefit of Bracketed RR is that you won't have to play out of your depth if you do well, or beat up on fish if you do badly. The big drawback to Bracketed RR is that you don't get to play out of your depth if you do well, or find a team you can beat if you do badly.

 

From a directing standpoint, it's a nightmare to start; once it starts though, it runs itself (because the matches are predetermied).

[JLOGIC]

Just want to add that another advantage of it is it runs much faster. Generally the lower flight teams play slower, compare/imp much slower, might forget or not know how to report their score, want to do things like go over all the scores at each table after it's over rather than compare then check with their opps (and they still have to check with their opps this way...) etc. This holds up the matching of swisses greatly normally.

 

In a bracketed round robin where the top flight is a swiss that anyone can play in, the top flight is matched much faster since that stuff doesn't happen (except maybe for slow play), and the lower flights are immediately matched and not dependent on results since it's a RR and everyone plays everyone. Also the swiss has less teams in it than normal which naturally means it will probably be matched faster.

 

Great event IMO, good for everyone. A lot of people, yours truly included, dread swisses since they are usually soooo slow.

 

Also, more points awarded! lol.

[JLOGIC]

One of my favorite stories happened when a Florida regional held this event but did not make the top flight open, it was also just 8 teams. I was on a team of 4 grand life masters and sat down for round one against Zeke Jabour who has over 30k points (top 25 in the ACBL). We were surprised to notice this was a bracket 2 match (!) lol. The directors then changed us to bracket 1 after we played a board since a team that included Larry Cohen and Joel Wooldridge reported their points but forgot to add they were 5 handed, so their avg per person was slightly lower than ours. Larry was not impressed since I think he was practicing for the US team trials with Wolfson... He said he did not remember ever being in bracket 2 haha.

[mycroft]

You get a lot of the speedup by doing one-in-arrears matching. You pay a price for that, too - the matches aren't as good, at least in Round 2 and the middle. Near the end, it settles out as the overswissing starts putting in "who can fish out the best against the midpack" matches. But that's gone out of style as well, because the biases are so obvious.

 

Our local club swiss is lots of fun, because they flight the first match so that A's will play A's, C's play C's and such like. Of course, all that happens is that the 12-8 winner of National Champion vs repeated Contender meets the 12-8 winner of Guppy vs Rabbit in round 2. Of course, last week, Guppy won that match 11-9 too :-)