[JanM]

32519, on 2013-August-24, 11:42, said:

Bocchi/Madala have made some interesting changes to their CC (2011 Bermuda Bowl v 2013 Bermuda Bowl)

In 2013 the CC now reads like this -
2♣ 18-19 Artificial, any Balanced
2♦ 23+ Any GF, or 23+
2♥ 4-10 6-card suit (V)
2♥ 4-11 5+/4+ both majors (NV)
2♠ 4-10 6-card suit (V)
2♠ 4-11 5+/4+ both minors (NV)
2NT 20-22 Balanced / Puppet

I'm not sure where you're seeing the "Artificial, any" for 2♣. I see 18-19 BAL on both the front and back of the card they filed on Aug. 7th, pretty much the same as 2 years ago. 2♦ is 23+ Balanced or any GF. So they've put the very strong (and infrequent) hands in 2♦ instead of 2M and use 2M for weaker (and more frequent) hands, especially NV.

[GreenMan]

Seems to me that any NBO's goal for the WC would be to have the best possible showing by their representatives, and you'd think that would mean having the best possible team. In the U.S. and other countries there are up to a couple of dozen players among whom the differences are quite small, so you avoid the politics of a selection committee by having open trials and effectively letting the players sort it out. If your tolerance for politics is high and for surprises is low, you go with selection by the NBO.

[mike777]

GreenMan, on 2013-August-24, 16:33, said:

Seems to me that any NBO's goal for the WC would be to have the best possible showing by their representatives, and you'd think that would mean having the best possible team. In the U.S. and other countries there are up to a couple of dozen players among whom the differences are quite small, so you avoid the politics of a selection committee by having open trials and effectively letting the players sort it out. If your tolerance for politics is high and for surprises is low, you go with selection by the NBO.

I strongly disagree that this should be the number one overriding priority, but I understand you disagree. Failure to have the best possible showing is ok, it is important just not number one goal

In any event in Poland's example I don't think we can say with such surety that they have achieved that stated goal. But if that is what the membership wishes, so be it and good luck.

[GreenMan]

mike777, on 2013-August-24, 16:34, said:

I strongly disagree that this should be the number one overriding priority, but I understand you disagree. Failure to have the best possible showing is ok, it is important just not number one goal

I didn't mean to say it should be, I meant that I expected it would be. Whatever the individual members' priorities, I can't think of something that would be more important to the organization as a whole.* Of course organizations don't always do what one might expect.

*Setting aside things like financial considerations, which I envisaged would be accounted for under "best possible".

[mike777]

Again if this is what the membership wishes ok.

I just think in this case open competition rather than a tiny group of selectors leads to a process that benefits more.

A system benefits from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder and stressors, risk and yes uncertainty and failure.

[cherdano]

GreenMan, on 2013-August-24, 16:33, said:

Seems to me that any NBO's goal for the WC would be to have the best possible showing by their representatives, and you'd think that would mean having the best possible team. In the U.S. and other countries there are up to a couple of dozen players among whom the differences are quite small, so you avoid the politics of a selection committee by having open trials and effectively letting the players sort it out. If your tolerance for politics is high and for surprises is low, you go with selection by the NBO.

But you also want to motivate the strongest players to get better. I think you are much more likely to achieve that by giving them a chance to win a trial once they got better, rather than giving them a chance to get noticed by the selectors to get better.

[GreenMan]

cherdano, on 2013-August-24, 18:13, said:

But you also want to motivate the strongest players to get better. I think you are much more likely to achieve that by giving them a chance to win a trial once they got better, rather than giving them a chance to get noticed by the selectors to get better.

Good point that a trials process aims not only at "best team this year" but also "better teams in later years". I certainly think it's been good for U.S. top-level bridge, with less familiar players breaking through in the past several years.

[gnasher]

mike777, on 2013-August-24, 16:16, said:

This brings back the issue of what should be the number one priority for Poland or England or Italy or the USA when it comes to a team

I can't speak for other NBOs, but for England the priority is selecting the team that has the greatest chance of success.

Quote

and for that matter who should decide what that priority is.

That seems pretty obvious to me - it should be the members of the NBO, either directly or indirectly, because they pay for it, and because the team is representing the members. I can't imagine who else you might possibly want to have make this decision.

Quote

It seems for many NBO's the number one priority is not an open competition even if that means 6 unknown players win it by beating the pros. The fact that the so called 6 best players may or may not split up and not play on the same team sounds like a positive thing, not a negative that so many postulate.

OTOH if the membership much prefers that a tiny group of people make the decision rather than an open competition ok, it just sounds like winning is more important than the actual competition even if that results in failure.

When I enter a bridge event, my primary objective is usually to win or to do well. One of the ways I try to achieve that is by playing with a good partner and teammates. When the English Bridge Union enters a World Championship, its primary objective is also to win or to do well. One of the ways that it tries to achieve that is by choosing a good team. To me, these situations seem equivalent.

I don't understand what you mean by winning being more important than the competition. The competition is a World Championship. The primary objective of the competition is to find the strongest national team* in the world. If each nation chooses its best possible team, that maximises the chance of that nation winning, and it also serves the primary objective of the competition.

* Or, strictly speaking, the strongest team where all the players are from the same country (to cover the presence of two ACBL teams).

[gnasher]

cherdano, on 2013-August-24, 18:13, said:

But you also want to motivate the strongest players to get better. I think you are much more likely to achieve that by giving them a chance to win a trial once they got better, rather than giving them a chance to get noticed by the selectors to get better.

That sounds like an argument for a competent selection committee, rather than for no selection committee. A good selection committee should study players' performance in major events, watch lots of bridge, discuss selection matters with good players (both those who are being considered for selection and the players just outside that zone), provide plenty of opportunities for up-and-coming players to show how good they are, and make sure that these players know what they have to do to get noticed. In a country with a fairly small pool of good players all of that should be achievable.

For what it's worth, the England Open Team for the World and European Championships last year contained three people who were making their first appearance at that level. (I'm not claiming any responsibility for that - I wasn't on the committee that selected them.)

[cherdano]

Maybe the best argument for trials are simply the trials themselves.
Most NBOs try to organize some sort of national championship. Why? Because it's exactly one of the goals of an NBO to have the best players in the country compete against each other in a serious tournament.
No tournament is taken more seriously than team trials.

[nige1]

A minority view: IMO selectors should determine the trials format, act as "marriage-brokers", check player-credentials and then bow out. Selectors may designate appropriate national competitions to be trials events. Teams-trials are fine if they attract lots of rich sponsors. Otherwise pairs-trials are better. e.g. national-league of cross-imped Swiss-pairs with long matches. IMO this approach encourages players to compete for selection and alleviates paranoia. It fosters team-quality in the short and long-term.

[jallerton]

gnasher, on 2013-August-25, 00:52, said:

I don't understand what you mean by winning being more important than the competition. The competition is a World Championship. The primary objective of the competition is to find the strongest national team* in the world. If each nation chooses its best possible team, that maximises the chance of that nation winning, and it also serves the primary objective of the competition.

* Or, strictly speaking, the strongest team where all the players are from the same country (to cover the presence of two ACBL teams).

**Or strictly speaking, the strongest team where all the players have a vague connection with the same country.

[mike777]

gnasher, on 2013-August-25, 00:52, said:

I can't speak for other NBOs, but for England the priority is selecting the team that has the greatest chance of success.


That seems pretty obvious to me - it should be the members of the NBO, either directly or indirectly, because they pay for it, and because the team is representing the members. I can't imagine who else you might possibly want to have make this decision.


When I enter a bridge event, my primary objective is usually to win or to do well. One of the ways I try to achieve that is by playing with a good partner and teammates. When the English Bridge Union enters a World Championship, its primary objective is also to win or to do well. One of the ways that it tries to achieve that is by choosing a good team. To me, these situations seem equivalent.

I don't understand what you mean by winning being more important than the competition. The competition is a World Championship. The primary objective of the competition is to find the strongest national team* in the world. If each nation chooses its best possible team, that maximises the chance of that nation winning, and it also serves the primary objective of the competition.

* Or, strictly speaking, the strongest team where all the players are from the same country (to cover the presence of two ACBL teams).

Again to repeat, your entire argument is based on:
1) no higher objective for the nbo than to win
2) selectors is the optimum way to do that

If that is what your membership and the leadership wants ok, otoh you preclude other higher objectives, for example the competition, open, itself and the benefits it brings, the increase in fragility and negatives such as but not limited to players leaving the NBO out of disgust with the tiny group of wisemen to play elsewhere and that open competition may produce a more optimal team.

Again if you find that a tiny group of wisemen rather than open team trials that induces stressors and shocks to creating a team works better in the long run great, but I hope you measure to ensure you are correct.

[mfa1010]

Trials vs. selection committee is an interesting issue.

In countries such as mine (Denmark) with amateur players and a smallish pool of candidate pairs, there is a lot to be said for having a selection committee. Gnasher has already made good points.

I would add that for trials to be a good idea they need to be long and fair. A quick weekend playoff would imo be ridiculous. Our country has plenty of strong players that are selfmade ineligible because they can't find the time to play on the national team. If our top pairs were to take for instance 1 full week off from their daily work to play trials, it would be even worse, and our field of candidates would surely shrink further.

A selection committee has the huge advantage, that it could give weight to all tournaments the candidates have been playing. So in a sense it is the ultimate way of playing for a spot on the team, when everything counts. But if the committee can't live up to its responsibility of scrutinizing the candidate pairs perfomances in every tournament, and falls back on relying on reputation etc. instead of facts, it should immediately abstain from selecting the team and arrange for trials to be held instead.

Even though it is a subjective decision, the selection committee should formulate in advance as accurately as possible what criteria they will be applying for their selections.

[mycroft]

I would suggest that in zones where access to the World Championships by a particular country is not guaranteed(**), that if a lucky team wins the Nationals, but isn't likely to do it twice, then they're not getting to the WC anyway. Since representation at the WC gives benefits that missing the cut does not, there is an added incentive to pick a team thought likely to make it *to* the WC, never mind do well *at* the WC.(*)

Selectors have problems - many of them - and the addition of the unique way professionalism works in this game just adds to that. So do trials (especially for players who *aren't* professionals, or who professional for a foreign sponsor).

(*)My british readers are now giggling at all the references to meeting at the WC. Sorry.
(**)The U.S. is unique, not only in that their country is allowed two teams to world championships, but that they are guaranteed entry by their Zonal Organization. Now, they're always going to *be* there, even if there were a Zonal competition (I am strongly in favour of at least USA II having to qualify 2/top 3 against Canada and Mexico - but it'll never fly because "well, they're always going to, why force them to spend money", not noting that they're always "going to" if the other teams don't get that extra competition); but they are still the only country that doesn't have to *try*. That certainly makes a lot of decisions as to how, when, what, by the USBF...also unique.

[gnasher]

mike777, on 2013-August-26, 01:06, said:

Again to repeat, your entire argument is based on:
1) no higher objective for the nbo than to win
2) selectors is the optimum way to do that

If that is what your membership and the leadership wants ok, otoh you preclude other higher objectives, for example the competition, open, itself and the benefits it brings,

Who says these are higher objectives (apart from you)? In any NBO, if you were to ask the ordinary members why they send a team to a World Championship, I expect they would say that the primary objective was to win or to do as well as possible.

Quote

the increase in fragility and negatives such as but not limited to players leaving the NBO out of disgust with the tiny group of wisemen to play elsewhere

Which players have done that? The only example I can think of is is Nunes-Fantoni, but this was when Italy's teams were selected by a single individual who was also a sponsor. That's rather different from a committee of several disinterested people.

Quote

and that open competition may produce a more optimal team

Can you explain how it might do that, in the case of an NBO that has a small number of world-class players?

Quote

Again if you find that a tiny group of wisemen rather than open team trials that induces stressors and shocks to creating a team works better in the long run great, but I hope you measure to ensure you are correct.

How do you propose to measure the success of a particular method? The only way I can think of is to try both selection and qualification as selection methods, and see which works better. Unsurprisingly the EBU (along with most NBOs, I expect) has done this. At different times we've had teams-of-six trials, teams-of-four trials, pairs trials, and selection by committee. The evidence isn't particularly compelling in either direction, but there's some reason to think that selection by committee works better than the other methods.

[NickRW]

I suggest that, in theory, selection by trials ought to be better than by committee. However, for the result to be "fair" and "accurate" you need the trials to be over at least 1000 boards and 2000 more like ideal. This is circa 3 to 6 solid weeks of trials. I suppose that even "rich sponsors" would start to feel uncomfortable at the degree of expense involved.

Selection by committee is, therefore, a sensible alternative.

Nick

[hrothgar]

NickRW, on 2013-August-27, 06:29, said:

I suggest that, in theory, selection by trials ought to be better than by committee. However, for the result to be "fair" and "accurate" you need the trials to be over at least 1000 boards and 2000 more like ideal. This is circa 3 to 6 solid weeks of trials.

Given this, it would appear that the actual tournaments are pretty damn meaningless...

[NickRW]

Not meaningless, but the eventual winner is, necessarily, somewhat random. This is possibly no bad thing.

[GreenMan]

Long trials such as the U.S. had this year effectively eliminate the chance that teams much below the skill level of the top few will qualify. Among those with the chops to win, the trials may be somewhat random, but I don't know anyone who has argued that second-rate teams have survived, or could survive.

But again, this mainly works for NBOs with deep pools of talent. If you have a noticeable drop-off after the first, say, four to six pairs in contention, then long team trials become less useful, especially if those pairs are all on different teams. IMHO.