See online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 … %3Darticle
This is the kind of article where USCF should work with an NTD to quickly write a nice response to the WSJ talking about some of the advantages to the Swiss System. A very inexpensve way to try to get USCF positively in the press.
Some of the early college basketball tournaments are sort of like the Swiss System, but an early middle-round win counts for more than a late one. It would be interesting to just rank the W-L and L-W evenly like a chess tournament. In the basketball events, if you win the first-round of a three-round tournament, you can’t finish lower than fourth (with W-L-L), whereas an L-W-W result only gets you fifth.
It appears that the journalist did not look at chess history for “brackets”. That was odd considering Dodsen’s fondness for chess. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess shows that a bracket was used in 1849 for a tournament in London. It does not indicate how the 12 players were seeded, but this was likely done by lot as occurred in later tournaments. The final three players played a double round robin for the final placement of 1st through 3rd.
The 1851 London tournament was interesting that it not only started with a 16 player bracket, it also had a loser’s bracket allowing those knocked out in a previous round the chance to continue to determine the 3rd through 8th placement and prizes. Howard Staunton was unhappy to meet Adolph Anderssen in the semifinal match. He then lost to Williams in the consolation match. There was a bit of whining about the fairness of the seedings.
The American Chess Congress of 1857, which Paul Morphy won, also used a knockout bracket method with 16 players. The losers in the semifinals played a consolation match to determine the 3rd and 4th prize winners.
Knockout tournaments remained a popular method, but it appears that a round robin event was contested in 1862 in Germany. Over time round robins replaced the tournament knock out brackets as a fairer way of play. Have no way of knowing which method was considered cheaper by organizers to run. Certainly the players preferred to play a number of games than be knocked out by one encounter.
Despite the claims of “unfairness” by some critics, the Swiss System, which is designed to handle a large mass of players, appears to be the only method that allows all players to continue playing and recover from an early defeat.
This thread should be in all things chess for perusal and comments by the whole chess community. It does not take an NTD to descibe the Swiss System. Besides, most NTDs are too busy in the spring to help write an article for the WSJ. A wag might say they would not be able to do it anyway as they would get bogged down in the minutiae of color allocation, 80 point rules, look ahead methods, and other folderol that would put the reporter to sleep.
I liked the comment you added to the article:
I’m not suggesting an article. I’m suggesting a Letter to the Editor, briefly covering why things are done the way they are in chess, and perhaps discussing that other competitions have also adopted the Swiss Sytem. No one suggested minutae.
The point of an NTD is not even necessarily to have him/her write the letter (though they should contribute.) The point is the signature of XXXXX, National Tournament Director, United States Chess Federation. Alternatively, it could be “Bill Hall, Executive Director, United States Chess Federation”. An official title is ore likely to get published and to get noticed.
Note what I wrote: “This is the kind of article where USCF should work with an NTD to quickly write a nice response to the WSJ talking about some of the advantages to the Swiss System. A very inexpensve way to try to get USCF positively in the press.”
Most of your responses are to things I never said. Since I suggested that this was about what USCF should do, I didn’t originally put it in “All Things Chess”.
The article in the WSJ was a whimsical knock on the history of “brackets” and how they are used in the NCAA basketball tournament. The reporter did only a partial job of research and was content with a half-humorous piece. Since most media is geared toward the sensational, murders, car crashes, and the more negative context, a corrective or informational article is less interesting to them. We can try to correct her “homework”, but I doubt that the reporter or WSJ would spend time publishing it. At best it would make an unread back page.
It’s less likely to make a back page than the Letters to the Editor. There would be no attempt to correct the author’s homework, just something brief stating the positive aspects of the Swiss System and its use in chess. The reporter isn’t the one who would decide on publishing it.