Format for a tourney

[luis]

Hello everybody,

 

I'm trying to find ideas for our NBO for the upcoming national pairs event. So I'm requesting ideas about what format can be used to make it fair for everybody, the requirements are the following ones:

- Open event, so anyone can play

- Expect about 80 pairs with 50 very bad pairs and about 5 to 10 very good pairs

- Has to be MPs

- You have 3 days for the event, aproximately 5 or 6 sessions.

What would you do? Resources are of course limited

 

Thanks!

Luis

[mike777]

Hello everybody,

 

I'm trying to find ideas for our NBO for the upcoming national pairs event. So I'm requesting ideas about what format can be used to make it fair for everybody, the requirements are the following ones:

- Open event, so anyone can play

- Expect about 80 pairs with 50 very bad pairs and about 5 to 10 very good pairs

- Has to be MPs

- You have 3 days for the event, aproximately 5 or 6 sessions.

What would you do? Resources are of course limited

 

Thanks!

Luis

Just a guess but why not 50% cut each day that leaves 20 pairs for last day.

Losers get dumped into lesser rated event.

 

No carry over.

 

This of course leaves you with 3 MP events on last day.

20=top class

40=middle class

20=bottom class

 

Players now have a chance to win one of 3 events. More winners, more happy players.

 

We have found our proper level partner :)

[mink]

Of course it depends on some factors. Lets assume you have dealing machine that can reproduce computer deals and 10 sets of 30 boards each. You want to play 54 boards per day. Then it could be organized as follows:

 

At day one, you have one big tourney. There are 9 lines of 9 pairs each. The good pairs are seated one in each line. 8 lines play a 9-Round Mitchell at 4*9=36 tables, 2 boards per round. The remaining line plays a 9-Round Howell at 5 tables, with a sitout at the table of the not-moving pair. You play 3 sessions with 18 boards each. In each session, the lines are placed at different sections NS and EW.

 

This works perfectly with 81 pairs. If there are more pairs, the Howell section is extended, and the additional pairs take the pair numbers that stay at a table. If there are less pairs, you have no Howell section, and some or all of the Mitchell sections are extended by one table, and the extra pairs stay in their section for the whole day.

 

I recommend 3 sessions with 2 boards per round as this way each pair plays against more opponents than with only 2 sessions and 3 board per round. But if you really have only 10 sets of boards, the boards for session 3 need to be produced during session 2.

 

After day one, the tourney is divided. The top 28 pairs play at 9 tables Mitchell and 5 tables Howell, 3 sessions total. Each line plays Mitchell NS, Mitchell EW and Howell in one of the sessions, so each pair plays against each other. Therefore, the seating does not really matter, but I would place the top 4 pairs in one line each, and the forth is the Howell pair that does not move, so you you have one top-pair round in each session.

 

After day 2, these 28 pairs are divided again. The top 10 play Howell all of day 3, either 3 sessions with 2 boards per round or 2 sessions with 3 boards per round. The lower 18 play an interwoven Howell followed by a Mitchell. This way you have to have 2 session with 3 boars per round.

 

The lower-ranking pairs from day one play a single tourney for the other 2 days. This is organized the same way as day one, except that you probably have no Howell section if there are 53 or more pairs remaining. If you have at least 45 pairs maybe you want to play 5 sessions with 2 boards/round. But if you like you can play 4 sessions with 3 boards/round. If there are less than 45 pairs, you have to think of something else, but this is not likely.

 

About carry-over: I would use the results of day one only to determine the top 28, and after that discard the results completely. This way you get rid of random results that occur when a top pair plays against a very bad one. For the top 28 pairs the results of day 3 should count twice and the results of day 2 should only count once when computing the final result.

 

I hope you like that.

 

Karl