[blml] Swiss Teams formats

[Jean-Pierre Rocafort]

Konrad Ciborowski a écrit :
>> Richard:
>>
>>> 2.  Psychological ­ A seeded Swiss is unpopular among some weaker teams
>> due
>>> to the first-round  bloodbath , where their teams get annihilated by
>>> Klinger, Marston etc.  There is no bloodbath in the first round of an
>>> Accelerated Swiss, as the top seeds and bottom seeds are paired within
>>> their own group.
>> Many years ago, I was playing in the Canberra bloodbath and after two
>> lucky
>> rounds, we met, and were annihilated by Indonesia 1.  This was one of the
>>
>> great thrills
>> of my life, as we won 1 board, and several others we went down only 1 IMP
>>
>> (an overtrick
>> here or there).  Surely this is the only game in the world where you can 
>> actually
>> get to play against the top players in the game.  So bugger the theory say
>> I.
> 
>     You are talking apples and oranges. I firmly believe that rules should
> be very different depending on the purpose of the event. If the main purpose
> of the event is to give people "great thrills of their lives" than
> the rules, CoC, laws and TD behavior should be entirely different than
> in an event where the main purpose is to select the best team(s).
>     These two purposes are not mutually exclusive in every case but
> sometimes _they are_. And this basic fact cannot be ignored. This is the
> same kind of blindness with which FIFA refuses to allow instant replay in
> football  because "teams in the Third Division of Uzbekistan won't be
> able to afford it". I say - so what? The Champions League game between
> Manchester United and Roma and an Uzbekistan Third Division game are
> basically two different sports - they have actually almost nothing in
> common: _everything_ is different there (pitch, number of viewers, 
> level of play, money involved - you name it) so insisting on it being
> played according to exactly the same rules is nonsense.
>     Same for bridge. If you run a friendly tournament then by all means -
> screw it. Keep it simple, use one scale, one method of scoring, don't
> let the discipline become too strict, allow players maximum leeway etc.
> When you run a national championship tournament or trials then it is (and 
> should) be a different story. "Giving players thrills" should be definitely 
> considered secondary.
>     As for rankings and including "strength of schedule" - here is 
> a very good website that discusses the issue. You'll need to know
> statistics and probabilities at the university level to understand
> the concept, though. A very good discussion about different
> kinds of rankings. It is mainly based on the American college football -
> a similar situation to Swiss Teams in a sense that you have a lot of
> teams and you cannot have the full round robin in order to determine
> that standings.
> 
> http://www.dolphinsim.com/ratings/
> 
accuracy of swiss teams is always the object of lively debates as is the
case in france where they are broadly used in national championships:
2-day competition, 14-30 teams, 80-90 deals, 5-8 rounds, 1 or 2
predefined rounds based on seedings. the particularity is the use of a
bonus system to prevent swissing and to make up for the disparity of
opposed teams: complementary VP are added to each team at the end of
each round (except 1st and 2nd) according to their present ranking (0 to
the last team, the most for the leader). the exact amount of bonus is an
arbitrary parameter, the tuning of which adds to the debate.
  one way to analyze the accuracy of a particular swiss teams result is
to compare it to an "objective" modelisation of the performance of the
competing teams. this modelisation is an extrapolation of the swiss to
what would have been the results in a complete round robin between all
teams, using the methodology of missing-data reconstitution: results
of actually played matches are retained; for non-played match, 
artificial results are computed, statistically the more compatible with 
other results of the 2 teams involved. (technical details available upon 
request)

jpr

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