Phil, on 2012-April-16, 11:36, said:
(Q1: How you would you run it?)
Play more sessions and longer matches! Fix the CoC.
All matches in our district (21 - we are more geographically compact than many districts, but the event was in the center of the district and there were teams for whom that was a 3 hour drive to reach) for Open and A are 64 boards and are played over 2 different weekends (so 8 sessions, with each match 2 32-board sessions). The GNT B is 28 board matches, and played over as many sessions as needed to be a fair event (currently 5 sessions, so one weekend to play down to the finals and then the finals at a TBA time convenient to both teams). The GNT C is stuck with only a weekend, and is 28 board matches, but is currently less than 16 teams. The GNT are also set up so they mostly don't overlap (only GNT Open and C overlapped at all this year), so people can play in multiple levels if they wish. We had 15 teams in Open, 17 teams in A, 19 teams in B, and 11 teams in C. In the past some sessions of some events (particularly finals or semi-finals) are played at local sectionals, but this year they were all played at a centrally located bridge club.
In the B we started on Saturday with 2 heads up matches and 5 3-way with 2 survives (the seeding process in the B-flight is decent, but still highly debatable, so the top 2 seeds getting a 28 board headsup match to start is a dubious advantage IMO, especially when the 19 seed this year was probably one of the top 6 teams in ability). Then we had 12 teams so did 4 3-way with 2 survive. That left 8 teams for Sunday, all remaining matches heads up and end Sunday with 2 teams left.
In yours I would have done the obvious 2 heads up matches and 2 3-ways with 2 survive. Then with 6 teams left 2 3-ways with 2 survive. And then then final 4 teams play heads up matches for the semis and then finals. That leads to 4 matches, and I'd expect them to be equal length (so 64 boards). If the restrictions are so broken that you can only have 2 days and the finals need to be 64-boards so you need to eliminate 8 teams on Saturday and can only do it with 3-way and heads up matches, then I guess what you describe is best. If you can't get a full second weekend, and stick to 32 board intro matches what about playing a first round Friday night [to cut from 10 to 6]? If there weren't the 3-way and heads-up restriction and I was limited to just normal Saturday and Sunday and needed Sunday to be the 64-board final I'd do a RR on Saturday where each session each team plays the other team 4 times (so 2 36 board sessions). I'd do it that way so that each match (8-boards) is split between the sessions so it is harder to tell if you are in it or not. I'd also use seeding in the first session, and current standings after the first session in the second session, to try and have the top seeds/winning teams play each other at the end of each session, and have the top seeds/winning teams play the bottom seeds/losing teams early in the session. And hope that by doing that I'd have minimized the dumping chances.