[paua]

 mycroft, on 2013-January-10, 11:40, said:

If you have a 10-table game, and 5 pairs are mobility-challenged (and usually they're the better, but not the best, pairs), and there are those who will come an hour early because it's their God-given right to sit North, it's almost impossible to balance the field. Arrow-switches and one-winner movements are your friend - at least when giving out overalls.

And in the case above, it's usually the E-W pair that wins the overalls, because the N-S field is so averagely better that the two or three sharks in the weaker pairs E-W tend to score disproportionately high.

Arrow-switching is messy, but I don't think the players need to wear overalls

[Vampyr]

 paua, on 2013-January-10, 20:28, said:

Arrow-switching is messy, but I don't think the players need to wear overalls

Arrow-switching is messy if you want to enjoy the maximum balance and comparisons; but you can just adopt the EBU approach and arrow-switch the last round (or the last two if needed).

[mycroft]

for the purpose of this discussion (ACBL club games with overall awards), any arrow-switching would be better (except, possibly, every round - which at least is no worse, just really confusing)...

[barmar]

 Vampyr, on 2013-January-10, 17:55, said:

Maybe they do, but combining two lines to produce "overall" results does not make it a one-winner game.

Who said it does? Masterpoints are typically awarded for placing in your section/direction and also for placing in the overalls (in ACBL, you get whichever award is higher).

[mycroft]

You just did. The ACBL gives out overall awards, to pairs who have no - zero - comparisons against half the field; and frequently only 1/3 boards-played comparisons against some of the rest of the field.

These overall awards are therefore similar to running two Howells, one Friday night and one Saturday night, and awarding extra points for the best score in either game.

If you have an unbalanced situation, and they do occur by design or accident or requirement of mobility, then the winner is likely to be the strongest pair in the weakest line - even if they have no better a game, potentially a worse game, than the strongest pair in the stronger line.

[blackshoe]

I said at one of the games recently that what clubs ought to do is make a bunch of small slips of paper with some number of masterpoints on them (about 60% of them would be "zero" by current ACBL rules). Put them all in a bowl. Mix well. When the players come in, they pick a slip out of the bowl, and that's their MP award for the day.

[barmar]

 mycroft, on 2013-January-11, 14:57, said:

You just did. The ACBL gives out overall awards, to pairs who have no - zero - comparisons against half the field; and frequently only 1/3 boards-played comparisons against some of the rest of the field.

It's not a one-winner event, it's a 3-winner event. There's a NS winner, an EW winner, and an overall winner. And even more when it's stratified, since there are awards in each strat.

Quote

These overall awards are therefore similar to running two Howells, one Friday night and one Saturday night, and awarding extra points for the best score in either game.

You mean like the side game series at regionals and NABCs? These are 4 or 6 single-session games. All the players who played in at least 2 sessions then get their best two results combined, and these are ranked to produce series winners (the series masterpoints are gold, versus red for the session awards).

[pigpenz]

ACBL is in the business of selling points
Case:
1...club game 14 tables stratified 9/14 pairs got awards
2...sectional 2session pairs we come in 3rd overall get less than pair who come in first in B strata...both with 1500Mp

Of course BBO gets to cash in on this too cause it sells

[blackshoe]

We have a club here that once or twice a year runs a "continuous pairs" over several sessions. Then he computes the best total matchpoint score for each individual, and the top players get extra masterpoints. So you can play with different partners and still be "in the money" for the "extra" masterpoints. Yet the laws say "the contestant in a pairs game is the pair". I'm still trying to figure out why this club's method makes sense.

[Vampyr]

 blackshoe, on 2013-January-17, 10:13, said:

We have a club here that once or twice a year runs a "continuous pairs" over several sessions. Then he computes the best total matchpoint score for each individual, and the top players get extra masterpoints. So you can play with different partners and still be "in the money" for the "extra" masterpoints. Yet the laws say "the contestant in a pairs game is the pair". I'm still trying to figure out why this club's method makes sense.

Interesting. We have lots of that sort of contest around here, but the top players get a prize or a trophy instead of masterpoints. I think that this club's method is interesting; I am curious about the mechanism for giving masterpoints to individuals; perhaps the event is scored as an individual duplicate with however many total tables there were. It sounds a little dodgy, though. I would be surprised if the regulations permitted it.

[blackshoe]

 Vampyr, on 2013-January-17, 10:29, said:

Interesting. We have lots of that sort of contest around here, but the top players get a prize or a trophy instead of masterpoints. I think that this club's method is interesting; I am curious about the mechanism for giving masterpoints to individuals; perhaps the event is scored as an individual duplicate with however many total tables there were. It sounds a little dodgy, though. I would be surprised if the regulations permitted it.

I'm not sure how he does it, but I think he computes the awards manually. How he gets that into ACBLScore to report it to HQ is another question.

[barmar]

The side game series at tournaments are also often called continuous pairs, and the mutl-session awards I talked about earlier are awarded to individuals, not pairs. I suspect ACBLScore knows how to do this.

The contestants in each session are pairs, in accordance with the Laws. But the series consists of multiple events, and across them you're just individual contestants.