I’m going to run a relaxed club event in a couple of months with a format I’ve never heard of before (maybe it’s new).
4 rounds of match play on one day where you play two games against the player directly higher rated than you and two games against the player rated directly lower than you. I’ve announced a TD option to switch pairings within 50 points to try to avoid some family/teammates pairings. In one match, the highest rated player plays the lowest rated player but must give a brief chess lesson on the games to earn his/her prize. The prizes are 1/2 entry fee for every win, where the TD donates the rating fee (thankfully we have a free site). The prize for drawn games goes to a shared fund for 4-0 bonus prizes, or if none, to 3.5 point scores, or if none, to rating fees/club.
Thoughts? I haven’t announced whether to play up or down first, which is especially relevant on the wheel game. Any wisdom on that would be appreciated as I can see arguments for both sides. I’m probably just going to flip for it if unconvinced otherwise. Any other traps I’m missing?
I like any change of pace ideas for low key club events, and this one sounds good. Love the “lesson” idea for the high vs low, and truly hope the higher rated player gives it a good effort.
I don’t quite get the question about whether to play the up or down round first. Wouldn’t it be up for one opponent and down for the other?
Sure. But I meant for the wheel game (top player vs. bottom player). Should that be played after the top player has “woken up” or before he gets too tired?
I’d think of it from the standpoint of the lower rated player. Would they rather play the top guy and get their lesson, then try to apply it in the next round? Or would there be no time for that lesson, in which case it pretty much has to be the last set played. They might also have either view from the standpoint of discouragement when the top guy stomps them.
What?? A new idea? For a minute I thought your name was Micah Smith.
As with many new ideas, some people will scoff, but a few others will be open-minded enough to give it a try. Go for it.
I agree, but for a different reason. Since this will likely be the first match to finish, there will be plenty of time afterwards for the lesson to actually occur. And the lesson can be open-ended – no need to cut it short to make way for the next round, since there is no next round.
Small additional point: If there are an odd number of players, there won’t be any wheel game. First round-pair, lowest player sits out. Last round-pair, highest player sits out.
Yes, that is a trap worth mentioning. In my case, I had already decided that since I will likely have three of my own kids playing, I’ll just bribe one of them to play video games on my laptop all day (it won’t be hard ).
Another way to handle an odd number would be to give atryeto the lowest, 2nd lowest, and 3rd lowest players. First X plays Y, then Y plays Z, then Z plays X, one game each. That’s 2 games per player, so it comes out right. Players rated this close to the bottom usually play quickly, so they should be able to finish these 3 games in the same amount of time the upper players use for 2 games.
In the second round-pair I guess you’d have to give the trye to players W, X, and Y, since Z will be in the wheel game. Since X will be playing Y again (they already played a single game in the original round-pair), make sure to reverse the colors this time: Y plays X, then X plays W, then W plays Y.
When you say “trye,” are you referring to a triad (as opposed to a quad)? I haven’t heard the word before. Your solution would work in our all-ages club as the lower-rated participants are indeed populated by fast-moving scholastic players.
I’ve created a new topic, Tryes for fixed roster team tournaments, for discussion of the use of tryes in fixed roster team tournaments. This topic is for discussion of Ben Bentrup’s proposed format for individual club events.
This post by Alex Relyea belongs both in this topic and in “Tryes for fixed roster team tournaments”. His comment about using an ID number of 25000000 for dummy players applies to fixed roster team tournaments, but his question about whether the “initial proposal” runs afoul of the match rules applies to this topic.
In the “initial proposal” (as well as some of the modifications that follow), as far as I can see each player is playing each other player at most twice. In this way the proposal is similar to a double round-robin or a double-round Swiss, neither of which runs afoul of the match rules as far as I know.
Another anomaly that could raise a match-rules eyebrow might occur if one or two players were playing many more games than any of the other players, but I don’t see how this would occur here either.
Perhaps Alex Relyea could explain to us what he is worried about, i.e. what match rule he is afraid of running afoul of.
In, for example, the recent New Hampshire-Maine matches, each player played a player from the other state twice. This was required to be coded a match. The OP’s situation appears to be two consecutive two game matches, not a double round swiss or round robin.
The NH-ME thing sounds like a team-vs-team match. Is that required to be “coded as a match”, as though it were an individual-vs-individual match?
I suppose bbentrup’s original proposal could be thought of, like NH vs ME, as a team-vs-team match, namely, the odd-numbered players vs the even-numbered, with each player playing two games each against two players from the opposing team. Or it could be viewed as two of the rounds of a Schwennigen (with 2 games played per round).
Maybe Mike Nolan could weigh in on whether such an event would need to be “coded as a match”, whatever that means. I’d also like to know what restrictions an event “coded as a match” would be subject to. Limits on rating differences? Limits (upper or lower) on number of games per player? Limits on how many times a player could play the same opponent?
And, what happens if you go ahead and code this event as a match? Does it affect the rating calculations?
This is different because you have two opponents and two games against each. That isn’t considered to be a match. Obviously you can deconstruct any double round tournament into a series of “matches”, however, they’re submitted with multiple opponents just like this is and so don’t run afoul of the match regs. The tricky part about the match regs are the situations where someone has an unplanned match (not enough players show for a tournament) and where someone has a planned but disguised match (A and B play 19 games with each other and then each plays C one game).
Playing a match results is a request for players who are at their floors to have them lowered. Also, players who are provisionally rated, unrated, or rated more than 400 points away from their opponents, are not allowed to play matches.
In the USAT teams play five or six matches (one per round) but that would not be considered a series of individual matches. The Red River shootout and the ME-NH state vs state matches are team matches but I would not consider them individual matches.
The club match-play concept is closer to individual matches because the players are likelier to know in advance who they’d be playing (a key ingredient of coding as a match) but there would still be enough doubt about who’s show up to make me hesitant to code it as a match.
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