At the middle school and high school level it is relatively common for the national championship sections to be accelerated because they have 1.5 to 3 times as many players as the number where you could guarantee only one perfect score (i.e., 128 is the max to guarantee one perfect score after seven rounds) only to see that there are no perfect scores after only six rounds. It is more the elementary level championship sections where acceleration becomes almost necessary to reduce the number of 7-0 scores. Acceleration is not used in the under sections.
If there are divisible prizes (such as cash) acceleration may not be needed. The old Master Challenge tournaments (single section) with over 140 players and only five or six rounds were accelerated and things pretty much settled down by the final round(s).
The other option would be, and I don’t know if this was stated before, is to turn the event into Quads and perhaps lengthen the time control. They would be getting one less round but also higher quality games with people more closely rated to them.
Then look at the following event: main.uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.ph … 1-10336015
Accelerating the 34-player four-round (junior high) section resulted in 1 4-0 and 1 3.5-0.5 players (both won in the final round).
Going into the final round there were 2 3-0 and one 2.5-0.5 players. 8 of the 10 players in the upper “half” that lost in the first round then proceeded to beat the players in the lower “half” that won in the first round. Acceleration worked in that section.
In the elementary section acceleration wasn’t quite as overwhelmingly successful, but still successful enough that we had only one 5-0 out of 43 players.
In the primary section we did not attempt to accelerate with only 40 players, and I would have hesitated to accelerate that section with 48 or 56 players.
Would the ramifications of not accelerating and having multiple perfect scores have been as bad as the ramifications of deviating from what was advertised? That is the relevant question. To the question posed in the thread title, I would argue “neither”. Certainly I would argue that in an adult tournament where there are no trophies or anything that needs to be split.
Point noted. But in a tournament with no unusual objective, just a chance for players to play, I would think that sticking with the announced terms is preferable to changing them, even if it results in multiple perfect scores. Whether including the possibility of change in the advance publicity, thus eliminating my argument, would adversely impact attendance is a question best left to the philosophers among us who have TD experience.
Because people don’t like it, particularly if there was no compelling reason for doing accelerated pairings in the first place. Note also, that, although the hope in doing accelerated pairings is that all the 2-0 will be top half players, it rarely works out that way. So you may end up with one 2-0 pairing being (say) master vs expert, the other one may be expert vs B (or even C) player. Needless to say, that really feels wrong to the players on board 1. Particularly in a four round tournament, you should only distort the first three rounds with acceleration if there is a good reason. You don’t have one.
Based on player feedback, they are saying they would prefer not to have more than one perfect score at our monthly G/60 tournament but would prefer to keep the 4 round G/60 format rather than switch to 5 rounds at G/45.
Are your players confused about what will happen if there are multiple perfect scores? The money gets divided equally. No tie breaks…nothing to distinguish one from the other.
Then why do they care? Seriously. A two-way tie for first at 4-0 (which is unlikely even without accelerated pairings) gives exactly the same prize distribution as a two-way tie for first at 3.5-0.5.
To go 2-0 a C player near the bottom of the top half using standard pairings needs one upset win over somebody near the top of the second quarter. To go 2-0 a C player near the top of the bottom half using accelerated pairings needs one upset win over somebody near the top of the second quarter. Granted, one difference is that with accelerated pairings the C player may have had an easy round one win and ended up more rested than the opponent that may have lost a tough game in round one.
One thing many people seem to expect with accelerated pairings is that they more quickly end up playing matches against players close to their rating. When they learn that isn’t so then they get perturbed.
I use accelerated pairings quite often (but not always) in non-money tournaments that don’t have ratings based sections and that do have a comparatively large number of players, but when the prizes are monetary it is only the unusual tournament that I’d want to accelerate (such as the old Master Challenge events). It sounds like Micah’s events have people that want things that are more likely to happen with acceleration, so it sounds reasonable to me that he’d accelerate them. My best guess is once people see the ramifications of acceleration that there will be a push to move back to standard pairings, at which point acceleration becomes “tried that, didn’t work out like we thought, back to the normal but at least we made the attempt”.
This can go either way. I would prefer a tough round 1 game to get my head warmed up. Tiredness will build up and will affect the later rounds, but probably not yet a factor for Round 2.
If you decide to use accelerated pairings because of this feedback, I’d be interested in hearing what the feedback is after the accelerated tournament.
In my experience, once people have seen the round 3 massacre effect, they understand that accelerated pairings may be a necessarily evil in a trophy tournament with a high player to round ratio. (Bottom half players tend to be quite happy with it…until round 3). But this is a money tournament so there’s really no upside (from tougher pairings—>better tie breaks) even for a handful of players who might score near 4-0.
There were complaints from some of our top players that they weren’t able to face many players of similar strength in our monthly “Game in 60” since the number of players in the event has been growing and there have often been 2 perfect 4-0 scores. What my club decided to do was this:
NEW POLICY-Starting with the May 2015 Game in 60, whenever 30 or more players register, the field will be split into two sections. The division will be at the mid-point of the registered players with the upper section starting with an even number of players if there is an odd number of players overall. Players in the lower section may not play up in the upper section. Registration will now close promptly at 9:45am to give time to possibly set up two sections and still start at 10:00am. In the event the field is split the prize fund will be as follows: Upper Section (based on 15) 1st $75, 2nd $50, 3rd $25; Lower Section (based on 15) 1st $65, 2nd $35, U1400/unrated $50. (If there are less than 30 players and is one section, the prize fund remains the same as beofore-$200 cash prizes based on 20 entries distributed as follows: 1st-$60, 2nd-$40, 3rd-$30, 1st U1800/unrated, 1st U1500/unrated-$35 each).
Personally I was very much against the idea and was in favor of keeping it one section and using accelerated pairings. Players will not know what to expect now. The number of sections and prize allocation could be completely different based on how many players show up.
I agree with your objection – players will have no idea what to expect.
The advantage is, that this new scheme will keep players away, so that you won’t have to make two sections.
I have never been a fan of accelerated pairings, because round 3 (for most of the players) feels almost like round 1 in a regular-paired tournament.
Better would be to make the section under-XX00, where XX is decided well in advance, based on what has been the midpoint in your past events. On the other hand, dividing into sections may decrease the event’s popularity among higher-rated players while increasing it among lower-rated, since now more of the prizes will go to the lower-rated than before. So you may need to adjust XX00 downward a bit. On the third hand, it’s just as well that the higher section is smaller than the lower – more prizes for the higher rated, per capita, which seems just.
I suppose you could have a proviso that, if either section ends up with fewer than 6 players, then the sections will be combined.
