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BGonline.org Forums
A long reply
Posted By: neilkaz In Response To: My simple solution (Colin Owen)
Date: Saturday, 12 October 2013, at 3:20 p.m.
Colin "The tradition in weekend T of starting on the Sunday at the crack of dawn is not welcomed by everyone."
+1000000 to that.
Here in the USA there's often a few Saturday night matches going on past midnight and as a result I am very opposed to any start times earlier than 11 am Sunday.
I can tolerate 10:30 am, hate 10 am, and publically boycotted the one smaller tourney a few years ago where the brochure said 9:30 am.
It is common for ABT events to have a Calcutta starting at 11 or 11:30 AM and these always seem to run later than the scheduled hour and then it takes longer than it should for the draw to be done and posted and as a result, the T starts 30 mins to as much as an hour late. All this does is to increase the problem of late night matches being needed to be played.
In Peoria, I volunteered to help speed things up by helping the staff do the draws while the Calcutta was still in progress. Of course this meant that I wasn't going to buy back nor participate in the Calcutta since advance knowledge of the draw would be most unfair. And yes, this was a public draw and the couple of players who came by to watch were told that they shouldn't buy back, or if they wanted to do so, to commit to it before seeing any of the draw.
After maybe a 15 min break at the conclusion of the Calcutta for buy backs, the draw was posted.
I see more and more Calcuttas now where the winning bidder can buy a player from Group A (typically Giant level) and then Group B (players not as skilled) and then Group C (the lowest tier of players in the event). This is HORRIBLE for a few reasons!
First of all, it is quite insulting to those put into Group C. Shocking..some of them were forced up from Intermediate/Advanced due to recent wins or improvement in skill level, and now even before the start of the event, they can see that they aren't regarded as even average players in the event. Others have been long time Open players and while they know that they aren't Giants, they don't need to be reminded nor have the rest of the room see that they are shown as Group C.
Often, when a bidder wins, he can quickly select the Giant or near Giant from Group A, but has no real idea who he wants from Groups B and C.
Far better to randomly pair one from A, one from B, and one from C and have fixed teams and not let anyone know who came from what group.
Far better still to get rid of Calcuttas and have the draw ready to post at 11 am and get the T started then on Saturday. Now there's less late night play needed and the event can start on Sunday at 11 am. This means a better night's sleep, a leisurely breakfast, and maybe some social time as well, Saturday night for a cocktail or Sunday morning for breakfast.
One tires of seeing events scheduled to start at 12:30 starting later than 1 pm and having a player or two playing past 1 am and then sometimes even being forced to play an match scheduled at 10:30 am Sunday an hour earlier because he's a round behind.
Progressive Last Chances (or Conso in DE events) are being used by more directors and the Progressive LC does improve tourney flow nicely. But not all will use them.
This long sermon in only because I hope to see the BG T experience improved for more players. I know some like Calcuttas, but please if you hold one, start it 30 minutes earlier on Saturday, do the draw during the Calcutta, and do a faster Calcutta.
Thx .. neilkaz ..
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