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BGonline.org Forums
drawsheet mishaps
Posted By: Mike Main In Response To: drawsheet mishaps (Bob Koca)
Date: Friday, 11 April 2008, at 5:06 a.m.
Hi Bob,
Certainly here in the UK the allocation of players to slots in the Last Chance has nothing to do with where they were in the Main or the Consolation. I’m rather surprised to learn that some sort of progressive system is used in the US or was at least attempted in Pittsburgh. I’d certainly be interested in seeing what system they used.
How many players commenced in the Main? If you have a “bad starting number” of entrants and you run a progressive Last Chance you’re likely to have byes popping up all over the place in a progressive Last Chance. This could have been the cause of the Pittsburgh LC problem. Byes are the bane of a T.D.s life. Better to banish them. To do so forget all about running a progressive Last Chance. Only in tournaments where you have a perfect number of entrants (16, 32, 64, 128, 256) do progressive Last Chances really work.
The main reason we don’t use a progressive system for the Last Chance is the desire to keep players active. This of course is a Q for JLee to state that all tournaments should be run on a clock and hence keep the progress of an event as even as possible which will mean players progress from one round to the next at the same pace, et voila, problem solved. Well, yes and no. Usually a Last Chance commences on the Sunday of a weekend tournament and some players simply drop out because they couldn’t be bothered to play low point matches. Do you think they are going to bother to tell the T.D. this? Dream on. So if you use a progressive Last Chance you could have a situation whereby 1 player progresses all the way though to the final without having played a match. Unlikely I admit but the unlikely can happen and it is the T.D. that is going to take the blame should this happen. It could of course be argued that the same situation could happen in a Consolation but the reality is that it is far less likely because a Consolation commences on the Saturday when players are in situ.
So we create a list of all the players knocked out of the Main and Conso ready for the Sunday morning. Last Chance players apply to play. Hence all players interesting in playing in the Last Chance identify themselves and those that don’t are out of the picture = no slots empty that should be taken.
Let’s say that’s 34 players who apply. We’re bound to have some Main and Consolation players knocked out of those brackets shortly, there might be some stragglers still having a late breakfast and 17 Last Chance players are going to be knocked out in Round 1 so we’re confident that we will fill a 64 player drawsheet. We fill in players from the top, all present player commence at the same moment and the remaining slots (30) are available on a first come first served basis no matter what bracket players last played in.
A Last Chance is generally 5 point matches. Pretty quick stuff. Matches shouldn’t take more than 45 minutes. If you play slow and lose then you might not get a second chance in the Last Chance but then you’ve only yourself to blame. If you play quick but your opponent plays slow and you lose and don’t get a second slot then yes, you’ve had hard luck and are entitled to feel hard done by. But you play a game with dice so you should just jolly well accept luck as a factor. (Can you tell I’m English now?)
The point is that this method keeps those who wish to be “backgammon active” at the boards and those that don’t outta of the way. Run a progressive Last Chance and “player entertainment value” is going to suffer. Generally players don’t come to sit about waiting – they come to play. So maximise the possibility of play for those that want play. The T.D. is interested in players coming back next time he runs a gig. Provide poor entertainment value and it’s cheerio players.
Right, having said all that yes it is possible to run a progressive Last Chance. Here’s an example:
http://www.backpacker-backgammon.com/dailygammon/olympiad/001SF.xls
Ok, that’s only a 32 player tournament and as such only 4 players got the full Last Chance progressive treatment so it’s not a wonderful example but a principle that works for a 32 can work for a 64 player, 128 player, 256 player etc. There is a certain amount of ordered juggling of players needed to try to ensure players do not re-play somebody they have already played. It’s impossible to do that 100% but you can get pretty close.
If a Last Chance progressive is used I wouldn’t attempt to do it without a computer program to do all the hard graft for me. A tournament structure is logical. Win here, you go there, lose over there, you go way over there. Slots are predetermined. This is right up a computer’s ally. It can do it far better than I can (as long as I program it correctly) so hand the job over to the computer. Test it out before you run the weekend with dummy names and check it works. Far better to find faults (and sort them out) before the event than to have players posting up on bulletin boards that something went wrong after the event. But as long as we live and learn we’ll move forward.
Now, JLee, where’s that dusty clock? How’s it battery?
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