Page 30 - ABF Newsletter October 2024

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Dear Editor,
I am writing to query a new philosophy being employed in first-round draws
in Swiss events. The approach is the random draw. Perhaps this has merit in
relatively balanced fields or events run over multiple days where the first
round result is not critical to the final placings. However, in one-day events with
six rounds, and a field with a wide standard spread, the approach can give some contending pairs an unfair advantage against other contending pairs. It’s not uncommon to see Seed 1 vs Seed 3 and Seed
2 vs the lowest-ranked contender. Par outcomes for these matches give one contender a 10 VP head start against the other contenders, a big margin to haul back over the remaining five rounds. The format also yields some unlikely big first-round winners, meaning the beneficiary of the head start may get a second soft match to follow.
Yes, Seed 1 and Seed 3 were probably destined to play each other anyway, but the point is, other contenders would be expected to have balanced matches if this was happening a few rounds in.
Surely it’s much more equitable for all contenders to have starting matches with closer degrees of dif- ficulty. A previous method, where the top 25% of field were drawn against the mid 50% seems a more balanced start. Yes, matches favoured the stronger seeds, but there were no top seed vs bottom seed matchups or predictable severely lopsided encounters.
Has this approached been recommended, and if so, what are the benefits?
Gerry,
Gerry Daly
WBF director Laurie Kelso agrees with your suggestion that the opening match should have a closer degree of difficulty. In fact, he tells me that simulations have indicated that the fairest draw for Round One is 1 v 2, 3 v 4, etc, but he believes that this would be “a significant departure from what the average participant has come to expect” (which I think is another way of saying “likely to be unpopular”). I have actually played in one event where that format was used, and I didn’t hear a lot of favourable comments.
In a national Teams event, held over several days, simulations have shown that a random first-round draw does produce a better outcome than the old approach, but a six-round Swiss Pairs congress will always be a fairly random event. The field will always be under-swissed, so each of the main contenders is going to experience a very different path through
the day. You won’t be able to avoid that by changing the first-round draw.
These one-day events will usually pro- duce one deserving winner – even with a good head start, it is hard to hold on to first place for a whole day without fight- ing off challenges from at least a couple of the other top-performing pairs. But these short events are quite poor at producing a meaningful ranking for the remainder of the field, even within the top three.
If you intend to win a one-day event, then you should aim to beat the strong teams – or at least not suffer a debilitating loss – in whatever round you meet them. If your expectation is second place, then you will have to accept some randomness; whoever loses to Team One in the final round will often fall some way down the rankings.
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Editor
Page: 30
Australian Bridge Federation Ltd. Newsletter: October 2024