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BGonline.org Forums
Tournament formats
Posted By: Alex Davies In Response To: Tournament formats (Timothy Chow)
Date: Sunday, 24 April 2011, at 4:21 p.m.
I think the main reason that backgammon tournaments are elimination is to prevent players from arranging matches. In chess, this is a big issue. For instance, Bobby Fischer's accusations that the "Russians" arranged games between themselves was the reason that elimination matches were introduced into the World Championship qualifying structure. And Fischer was only talking about the round-robin Candidates tournament; it is worse in big Swiss events where (a) there are various rating prizes and such at stake, (b) first prize is usually a lot better than finishing half a point back, and (c) winning your final game is paramount.
In backgammon, hedging seems to be part of the game. In a pure Swiss event, the expected prizemoney of players in a given match might be much larger after one result than the other. If I was chasing the leader in a pure Swiss backgammon event, for instance, I'd don't think I'd have a very good taste in my mouth if he was playing his roommate with whom he always hedged in other events.
As a result, backgammon Swiss events are often a bit convoluted (with play-offs or an open-ended number of rounds), at least if the prize money is large. For a friendly small-stakes event where people just want to play, I think it should be used more often. If it's a regular event, it's fun to try to better your score from the previous event, and the nature of Swiss events is that you can often salvage a decent tournament score just by winning your last couple of matches.
Another reason why backgammon tournaments are elimination may be that some matches can drag on and would hold up a Swiss event. In chess, on the other hand, clocks have been used since the nineteenth century, and all matches are over in only one game.
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