VUL @ IMPs @ swiss movement

[hotShot]

If you play a tourney with a swiss movement, the table position you play depends on your score.

Think of a 4 board tourney, vul is:

1) none 2) NS 3) EW 4) both

 

A pair can play board 2 as NS, board 3 as EW, playing in 3 boards vul.

Another pair might play board 2 EW, boards 3 NS, so just one round is vul.

 

Is it fair to compare the results?

[inquiry]

Interesting question. I guess a statistical analysis would show the more vulnerable hands you had the better chance you have to win an imp event compared to a pair with less vulnerable hands. How much an advantage such a difference would be, and given the randomness, how much a difference can occur is a question.

 

For instance, in round 3, board 5-6, NS is vul one board, EW anohter, so that one has to even out. Round 4 (boards 7-8), no one and both are vul). I checked the winner of a tournment I co-directed last night. On the hands were only one side was vul , they were vul 3 out of 6 such hands. I guessw a statistical analysis of swiss Imp events can tell whether the results are tilted towards the pairs being vulnerable greater than 50% of the hands. (of course, there is always the chance of collecting greater penalties on your vulnerable opponents, some of the winners best scores were sets of their vulnerable opponents)

 

Ben

[mink]

A solution to this would be to play it the following way:

 

Round Boards

1 1&4

2 2&3

3 5&6

4 7&8

5 9&12

6 10&11

7 13&14

8 15&16

 

This way, in each round there would be 2 boards with opposite vulnerability, so it does not matter if you are N/S or E/W.

 

Karl

[hrothgar]

A solution to this would be to play it the following way:

 

Round Boards

1 1&4

2 2&3

3 5&6

4 7&8

5 9&12

6 10&11

7 13&14

8 15&16

 

This way, in each round there would be 2 boards with opposite vulnerability, so it does not matter if you are N/S or E/W.

 

Karl

VERY good suggestion...

[uday]

Why not just make everyone nonvul all the time ? (I'm not being sarcastic or anything, wouldnt this flatten out the VUL randomness better?)

 

Similarly, a pair might find that it is never in 1st/3rd seat in a one-board-per-round swiss. That is also a bit of a disadvantage.

 

Aren't imp pairs inherenently very random (in the sense that some boards matter many times as much as others and you dont know which ones they are and you can't control whether the opps are meckwell or a pair of fish) that this sort of tweaking doesnt buy much ?

[Cascade]

I think restricting the vulnerability to just nil or whatever would take away from the interest of bridge. There are many interesting decisions that are vulnerability dependent.

 

Sure there are bigger opportunities to win IMPs when you are vul. But you also have opportunities to win similarly sized IMP gains when the opps are vul.

 

In the long run it evens out. So I don't think it is a major issue.

[the hog]

Why not just make everyone nonvul all the time ? (I'm not being sarcastic or anything, wouldnt this flatten out the VUL randomness better?)

 

Similarly, a pair might find that it is never in 1st/3rd seat in a one-board-per-round swiss. That is also a bit of a disadvantage.

 

Aren't imp pairs inherenently very random (in the sense that some boards matter many times as much as others and you dont know which ones they are and you can't control whether the opps are meckwell or a pair of fish) that this sort of tweaking doesnt buy much ?

This is a very bad idea, Uday. As Cascade says, a lot of decisions are predicated on vulnerability. Rudimentary examples are whether to sacrifice or not, or even whether to overcall or not. Removing vulnerability from the decision making process removes a lot from the game.