Inequitable Strats

[Butchie T]

Played in an ACBL Open game with more than 100 tables. The strats in our section were evenly divided with five each A, B and C pairs. We played six rounds of three boards (a pet peeve of many about those overpriced Regionally-rated tournaments on BBO.) It seems unfair, as C's, then, that we played against three A pairs, two B's and one other C. Am I assuming your computers are able to alleviate this inequity or are they just lazy?

[mycroft]

BBO has stated many times that they do not seed playing lines. They divide the field into 2N groups, each of 1/3 A, 1/3 B, and 1/3 C, where N is the number of sections; and then they randomly assign seats to pairs in those groups to the assigned section, assigned direction.

 

Which means with 15 table sections and 6 rounds, yes, you can meet 5 A pairs and a B - and there will be some pairs in your line that will meet no A pairs.

 

In a non-stratified event, it's even less good - everyone is just seated randomly.

 

I have suggested this is not perfect behaviour a number of times. A suggestion I make to club game holders is that when the fields get to 2*rounds that they aggressively create sections of as close to "all-play" as possible because of this.

[dsLawsd]

It doesn't seem to me very difficult to fix this- how about an anti-seed to assure playing at least 2 rounds against peers? Other methods would work too.