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The good and the bad and the only fix needed

Posted By: Phil Simborg
Date: Friday, 17 May 2013, at 2:04 a.m.

In Response To: The good and the bad and the only fix needed (Chuck Bower)

Everyone knows where the line is Chuck. If you win, it's skill; if you lose, it's luck. Therefore, every loser is sure he lost because of luck.

But here is why I like giving byes to the worst records:

1. It's true that they might have been unlucky, and a bye might help mitigate the damaging affects and if nothing else will make them feel a little better. Wouldn't it be nice if every loser could feel just a little better knowing that at least he has a chance for a bye?

2. What if he is a loser because he truly is a worse player? In that case, as was pointed out earlier, giving him a bye is not as likely to affect who wins the tournament...heck, he's losing anyway and he's not playing well, so it hurts everyone else less to give him the bye.

3. How would you like to have a great record, with no losses, and the other guy with that great record was lucky enough to get a bye and you didn't. That gives him a HUGE ADVANTAGE in his winning chances, and it was ALL LUCK.

I'm sold...give the bye to the losers.

Even if you go with random byes, there is still the chance that there are two or three players strongly in contention to win and one of them gets a huge break and gets a bye. I'd hate to just miss winning a tournament because of such bad luck that could have easily been avoided with a different rule.

Now, back to the bigger issue. Just about everyone likes to know that they will have more than one match and still have a chance to win the tournament. Just about everyone likes the FT, Swiss, Modified Swiss, and alternative formats...at least some of the time. Most of us like Legal Moves and Clocks. All of us would love to know when our matches stop and start and when we will have breaks, and none of us enjoy playing until the middle of the night.

This is not about a popularity contest...it's about what those of us who play a lot of tournaments KNOW is best for the players and spectators and what makes for a better, fairer, more enjoyable game. Now, all we have to do is convince the tournament directors who, in my opinion, only use one argument to keep from change: tradition. They don't like change. It takes them out of their comfort zone. Every time they make a change they get a few complaints from a few players who, like them, hate anything new (like clocks, baffle boxes, Swiss movements, legal rolls, better fast-rolling rules, recorded matches, etc. etc. etc.).

Maybe we need to make a little more noise, or beg a little more, or simply have more people speak up in favor of these things we know will improve the game.

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