[blml] Swiss Teams formats

[Herman De Wael]

Interesting first results Richard,

how did you determine the results of the matches? I assume that the 
further the teams are apart, the less chances you give the weaker team 
of scoring a lot?

richard willey wrote:
> This post might be timely considering all the posts regarding scoring tables:
> 
> Girben Dirksen, Alex Ogan and I are doing some work studying different
> formats for Swiss team type events.  Our end goal is trying to
> determine how to make these events more "efficient".  For the purpose
> of this discussion, we're assuming that efficient = accurate.  Our
> only goal is to produce a system that is as accurate as possible in
> rating the various teams that participate.
> 
> We're using a fairly simple methodology based on Monte Carlo
> simulation.  We start by creating a set of virtual teams with known
> strength.  (Team strength is assigned using a Gaussian distribution).
> We then have the teams compete against one another.  At the end of the
> tournament, we're able to compare the sample statistic (the result of
> the tournament) with the population statistic (the known ranking of
> the teams).  We can then vary the Conditions of Contest and see
> whether this improves or degrades the accuracy of the sample
> statistic.
> 
> For the moment, we're using a very basic measure of "accuracy":  (The
> average (objective) rank of the winning team).  Long term we're
> planning to adopt a more sophisticated metric based on the statistical
> notion of the Coefficient of Determination (R^2).
> 
> We've already produced one quite interesting result.  We can
> significantly improve the accuracy of a tournament by "rear loading"
> the boards.  Assume for the moment that a Swiss Teams event will
> consist of 72 boards distributed across 9 rounds.
> 
> Format A holds round constant.
> 
> Format B has
> 
> Round 1 = 4 boards
> Round 2 = 5 boards
> Round 3 = 6 boards
> ...
> Round 9 = 12 boards
> 
> Format C =
> 
> Round 1 = 12 boards
> Round 2 = 11 boards
> Round 3 = 10 boards
> ...
> Round 9 = 4 boards
> 
>> 100000 Swiss team tournaments of 9 rounds, team 1 = strongest team,
> team 2 = next
>> strongest, etc. (from Gaussian distribution). Calculated AVERAGE TEAM NUMBER
>> of the winner.
> 
>> 8-board rounds: 2.86
>> increasing round length (4 ... 12): 2.69
>> decreasing round length (12 ... 4): 3.10
> 
>> Sounds like first-order proof that longer matches later on is a good idea.
> 
>> Finally I tried 16 rounds (8 board less!) of 4 boards and got: 3.93
> 
>> I didn't use a VP table yet but instead a match result was IMPs/board
> * sqrt(boards) ,
>> the formula on which the VP table is based.
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Herman DE WAEL
Antwerpen Belgium
http://www.hdw.be