MFA, on Jul 6 2010, 04:25 PM, said:
cardsharp, on Jul 6 2010, 04:14 PM, said:
MFA, on Jul 6 2010, 03:03 PM, said:
I would prefer a format like in Pau where all teams start from scratch in the final round, playing a new, complete round robin. It would be fine for me if there were some VP-bonus for finishing in the top of the qualification, or some small VP-carry over based on all qualification results.
I don't understand what difference a fresh round robin would make.
You discard the result of a 20-board match against a team and replace it with the result of a 20-board match against the same team.
Yes I would be discarding 18/18 results from the qualification round instead of discarding just 10/18 of the results since the latter will inevitably contain a big amount of luck in what results are discarded and what results that are not.
Alternatively a bonus carry-forward that reflects the results of all the 18 matches, but still we should be playing a complete round robin in the finals. The final round is a whole new stage of the championships, with new goals, and I think the scoring should reflect this.
While the actual format is certainly not terrible, it does seem to me to be a less than ideal compromise.
It would be even better if we did not have to discard any of the results from the first stage. However, carrying forward all of the results from the first stage in its current format would be potentially unfair if the non-qualifiers from one group are materially weaker than the non-qualifiers from the other group.
Reverting to one big round robin might be fairer, although it has been suggested on another thread that:
PeterE said:
The main problem with so many teams exists for the weaker teams from the smaller NBOs. They had to stay with nothing to win and the accommodation costs were very (too) high for them.
Nowadays they "only" have to pay for one week and can go home then, if they do not finish within the upper half of their group.
and
cardsharp said:
The overall standard of the Europeans has risen immensely over the last few years and there are very few weak teams playing nowadays.
However the non-professional teams, typically from the smaller NBOs, do tend to tire a lot more during the championships. So there would be a big advantage in playing these teams near the end of the event if it was just, say, a full round robin.
To address all of these concerns, I propose:
Stage 1: all 38 teams play a round robin of 37 (say) 10-board matches. Each match is converted to VPs with half of the normal number of VPs available (e.g. 7.5 each for a draw, maximum of 12.5) using an appropriate VP scale for 10-board matches.
Stage 2: the top (say) 16 teams qualify for stage 2. They carry forward 100% of the VPs from Stage 1 and play a round robin of 15 20-board matches. These matches use the current VP scale (15 each for a draw, maximum of 25).
Note that under this proposal:
All results in Stage 1 count and there is little incentive for "sportsman-like dumping".
In the final ranking, there are 3 times as many VPs available from matches against fellow-qualifiers than those against non-qualifiers.
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