You can't police what someone's partner is there for so if someone enters with a random no name person too bad. Are you not going to allow Ed O'Laughlin to play with his son even though that's essentially Ed playing singles? Would you not allow anyone to play with a date even though the date has no clue what's going on and is there for the social aspect of it? If they enter with a partner, any partner, you can't really bitch...which leads us to...
Why not let someone enter as 1 instead of 2 if all they needed to enter as a 'doubles team' was a semi warm body to begin with? They float the price, they're supposed to pay the price in the sense that they don't have a doubles partner also. I couldn't care less if people are allowed to play singles doubles and for the most part believe my equity would be higher if I did play singles doubles than normally taking a partner.
When I take a partner playing doubles it usually hurts my overall game I believe. First off I'm not as actively engaged in the games/match because I get lazy and distracted. There is someone else there to look for plays I may miss and it's hard to keep a running tally of current happenings such as the pip count, the take points or gammon values, etc... if I have to talk on every play.
Secondly it is distracting to have to explain plays to people that are so obvious you don't even have an explanation for it at times. Right now for example in the Paris finals we have a very odd combination as one of the teams. We have Eli Roymi from Israel and Kenji Shimodaira of Japan playing together. What makes this so far effective combination so odd is that neither of them is particularly strong in the same language. Kenji speaks some English and Eli even less I would venture to say. This means they can't really 'talk' about plays. Eli has a very combative opinion. When he thinks his play is right he's more of a Falafel style where his play is right and you're just crazy if you can't see it. Kenji is always the gentleman never wanting to start the rukus that Eli does. They had the following position come up in their semi finals match.
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 on roll, cube action? | ||||
is Heitmuller-Humke
This position caused a monumental disruption to say the least as one player wanted to cube (not the person rolling) and the player rolling for the team did not want to cube. It involved the partner standing up, yelling, almost grabbing the cup out of the other player's hand because he 'knew' it was a big pass and you must double. Some shouting ensued and eventually after stating 30x what a monster pass he thought this was, they doubled ... and the other team took. They promptly won a gammon that game and the match. Both players were frustrated after the match because they were forced to play a match that wasn't their style and I'm sure they spent a lot of energy trying to 'give in' on plays that didn't matter to them so when something came up that did it wouldn't feel like they were hoarding control over the game. I know both players separately are capable of playing a lower error rate than I've seen them play collectively in any of their matches thus far.
In general two heads are better than one but when you pair a top player with an average player I would suspect this often hurts the top player's overall performance. Casper said I think in general a doubles team will play better than the strongest player alone. I'd like to offer up an error rate bet at any doubles tournament I enter alone on every match I play. Any takers? He did say 'in general' but I'm again pointing out how at a certain level of play and higher I think if the teammate isn't also of that level (and sometimes even if they are) it is more harmful to have a partner than helpful.
Stick