| |
BGonline.org Forums
Scheduling Problem in Santa Fe
Posted By: Paul Weaver In Response To: Clocks (Bill Riles)
Date: Tuesday, 2 February 2010, at 2:25 a.m.
The tournament in Santa Fe was a total and complete success in its first year!
If you have never been to Santa Fe, you are missing out on one of our nation's treasures. I have traveled extensively in all fifty states and I can testify that Santa Fe (elevation 7000 ft) is a unique, special and beautiful place. Six inches of snow fell Thursday, the day before the tournament began, creating a beautiful white blanket everywhere. The rooms at La Posada go for $300 or more in the summer but we got them for only $99. It is a beautiful resort, located only a quarter mile from the center of historic Santa Fe.
I would strongly recommend that you put this tournament on your schedule. Thanks to Ed Bennett, Pat Gibson and all the members of the staff who worked so hard to pull it off. One great thing Pat did was to start the first round on time promptly at 12:30, as scheduled.
Pat did a much better job than I possibly could have done. Although the tournament was very well run in general, it was not run perfectly. I hope that we can all learn from the unfortunate event that Bill Riles mentioned.
Bill Riles wrote, "One first round match (a usual suspect) took somewhere between 3-4 hours for an 11 point match and created some scheduling difficulties throughout the remainder of the weekend."
The biggest problem facing backgammon tournament directors is dealing with slow players. Directors handle the situation in 2010 better than they did ten or twenty years ago, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Ed O'Laughlin and Larry Liebster are two of the nicest guys on the planet. However, neither of them is known for being a fast player. With Ed and Larry facing each other in the first round, it should have been a no-brainer for the director to keep a close eye on the progress of this match. It began and 12:30 and was not completed until 3:30.
Many people, including myself, were seriously inconvenienced. As a result of this three-hour match between Ed and Larry, I did not finish my fourth round match until almost 1 AM and I to show up nine hours later at 10 AM to play my semifinal match. I am too old to play my best game under these conditions.
I feel that this problem of the Ed-Larry match taking three hours was totally preventable. I am not writing this to publicly embarass anyone; I am writing this in the hope that we can all evolve our understanding of how tournaments can and should be run with fewer glitches.
First of all, I will say that I would like to see all championship matches in all tournaments be played with a clock. I strongly believe that there would be many benefits to both directors and players. Attendance would increase if clocks become mandatory. Some world-class players refuse to attend tournaments unless all matches are clocked. The Ed-Larry fiasco would have been avoided if clocks had been required.
Secondly, even if clocks are not to be used for all matches, directors should keep a very close eye on the matches of certain players. It is no secret that there are some notoriously slow players. I believe that directors should have a DSP list of designated slow players that is shared openly with other directors and players. All players on this list should be forced to play all of their matches with a clock, even if clock usage is not mandatory for all players.
Even without using clocks, the problem was still totally preventable and avoidable, if only these two simple steps had been taken:
(1) The first round started at 12:30. One hour later, at 1:30, the director should have made an announcement over the PA system, "If the sum of your score and your opponent's score is less than ten points, you must inform us now (not wait until the end of the game) and you must begin using a clock immediately." This announcement would have taken only ten seconds (I just timed it) and it would have nipped a huge problem in the bud.
Let's do a bit of arithmetic. First round started at 12:30. Dinner break was scheduled for 5:00. Surely a minimum of two rounds of 11pt matches should be completed in this period of 270 minutes. Let's allow for a break of 18 minutes between matches. This gives us 252 minutes for two matches, or 126 minutes per match. The maximum number of points that can be scored in an 11pt match is 21, which occurs if the final score is 11-10. If 21 points are scored in 126 minutes, then no more than six minutes (on average) should be taken to score one point. If a total of ten points (adding the scores of the two contestants) have not been scored within the first hour, then the match is behind schedule and a clock should be used. Taking this logic a step further, an announcement should be made after thirty minutes, "If you and your opponent have not scored a total of five points, then you are behind schedule and you will need to play with a clock."
(2) After making these announcements every thirty minutes, the director should not naively assume that everyone will voluntarily comply. It would take only five minutes for a member of the staff to walk around the room and check all scoresheets to see if five points have been scored within thirty minutes, ten point scored within sixty minutes, etc.
A tiny investment in time could have and would have prevented the problem and made the tournament more enjoyable for all.
Players spend a lot of time and money to attend a tournament, and we have the right to demand that directors do a better job. Players can vote with their feet. Directors who aggressively address the problem caused by slow players will be rewarded by seeing their attendance increase.
I will conclude by quoting from Ray Fogerlund, the 2007 and 2009 ABT champion, in his interview on Phil Simborg's Web site www.simborgbackgammonlessons.com.
"Q. What are your pet peeves at tournaments?"
"Slow play in doubles events is one. Directors who create match conflicts by allowing players active in a main event to enter side events is another. Then they want to solve that problem by forcing me to play after midnight under threat of forfeiture! It is not my fault they have a log jam, and it is unfair to ask me to play an important match at the end of a 14 hour day so the last chance will go smoothly for them the next day."
For the complete interview, go to http://www.simborgbackgammonlessons.com/home/coolray-fogerlund-is-no-1-in-u-s
| |
BGonline.org Forums is maintained by Stick with WebBBS 5.12.