[RunemPard]

A local club has their club team match league every year, and I somewhat disagree with the setup. The play is once a month, 28 boards per match. 14 boards then a switch of pairs after coffee. The problem I see is that there are 10 pairs and 5 rounds leading to 2 placement rounds. I have not bothered asking how they plan the matches, but if it is random, a pair could for example skip out on playing the top 2-3 teams from last year while other teams are playing more higher placed teams. I do like the long matches, as it provides a much more accurate result in the end, but not playing 4 teams seems a little strange.

Thoughts?

Oh..and we managed to win our 1st match 107-30 against a decent team who I consider "club rivals"! Made some dumb bids/calls, but all around it was a great session for all 4 of us.

[Vampyr]

RunemPard, on 2013-October-09, 15:12, said:

A local club has their club team match league every year, and I somewhat disagree with the setup. The play is once a month, 28 boards per match. 14 boards then a switch of pairs after coffee. The problem I see is that there are 10 pairs and 5 rounds leading to 2 placement rounds. I have not bothered asking how they plan the matches, but if it is random, a pair could for example skip out on playing the top 2-3 teams from last year while other teams are playing more higher placed teams. I do like the long matches, as it provides a much more accurate result in the end, but not playing 4 teams seems a little strange.

Thoughts?

Oh..and we managed to win our 1st match 107-30 against a decent pair who I consider "club rivals"! Made some dumb bids/calls, but all around it was a great session for all 4 of us.

Perhaps the league could be split into two divisions. With this number of teams you would probably want one team to be relegated and one promoted each year -- either automatically or the two teams involved could play off.

This would mean only 4 matches in a season instead of 5, but perhaps you could add another placement round, whatever that is.

It's not clear to me why you posted this before "bothering to ask", but they may use some sort of seeding system, or if the draws are done before each match instead of once for the whole season, perhaps they use a Swiss-type system.

[RunemPard]

Not sure what it is called exactly, but placement round at this club is just like a playoff I guess...

1 vs 4
2 vs 3
5 vs 10
6 vs 9
7 vs 8

Then...(not sure if it is based on standings going into final round or not)

1 vs 2
3 vs 4
5 vs 6
7 vs 8
9 vs 10

And I am just curious!

[NickRW]

I would assign team numbers at random and have the 1st two rounds as

1v2, 3v4 etc and
1v10, 2v3, 4v5 etc

Thereafter assign matches swiss style, i.e. basically the top team plays the next highest that they have not yet played and so on. Sometimes you have to rethink the final round in particular if you want to religiously stick to the rule that each team plays a team that they have not yet played.

Nick

[Zelandakh]

If I understand this correctly then it seems like there is a very simple format. There are 10 teams and 10 sessions. So it would be very simple to arrange the first 9 sessions to be a complete round robin and then to have the top 2 teams have a final in the final session (presumably with carry-over) and the same for 3rd-4th and so on down to 9th-10th. Is that not absolutely fair?

[BillHiggin]

Zelandakh, on 2013-October-20, 15:28, said:

If I understand this correctly then it seems like there is a very simple format. There are 10 teams and 10 sessions. So it would be very simple to arrange the first 9 sessions to be a complete round robin and then to have the top 2 teams have a final in the final session (presumably with carry-over) and the same for 3rd-4th and so on down to 9th-10th. Is that not absolutely fair?

No, it may be somewhat fair but "absolutely" is absolutely too strong a word here. It is quite possible that the two top teams from the round robin are not the two best teams, but are simply the best at really stomping on the bottom teams.