Uneven swiss - is it valid?
Yesterday we had a 5 team online event which, in order to avoid an 11 board sitout, I elected to do as a swiss event (per RealBridge guidelines).
Unfortunately the swiss matching didn't work as I thought it would, and the match between teams was highly uneven (a team played 18 boards each against two teams but only 3 each against the other two.)
It has been suggested that this does not meet EBU guidlines and that the skewedness makes it ineligible to be uploaded for NGS purposes.
I'm not aware of any such rule but I thought I'd ask those who are more likely to know.
Jeremy
Comments
Can you tell us a bit more about what you did and provide a link to the guidelines you mention?
I'm not really sure myself, I guess the potential problem is the Strength of Opposition calculation. The guidance suggests that for swiss they use the average of the pairs you played against, which would probably be OK.
The complainant has not said what regulations they were referring to, but I suspct something like WB 3.6.2.2:
While Swiss teams are advertised as avoiding re-matches it is considered acceptable for a team to play each other one and a half times, i.e. in one ordinary match or long triangle, and also in a short triangle. They could also meet twice in short triangles, but not again. _
and 3.6.3 (c): _allow teams to play each other twice, but no more;
In terms of what I did, I started a swiss teams event with 7 rounds of 6 boards each and 5 teams on Realbridge. Realbridge did the rest. Each round was 1 full match and three half matches in a triangle.
It doesn't sound ideal but that's to be expected since Swiss movements are intended for when you have (many) more teams than rounds. What were the RealBridge guidelines you refer to?
I'm not aware of any regulations that would stop the results from being submitted and the NGS should take account of the strength of your actual opponents.
It was an email following a support request from me. Perhaps guidelines is a bit too strong a word to use.
That's where I'd got to.
Thanks, Gordon
The reason I asked was because I wondered if they were making a suggestion for a slightly different situation or they didn't know exactly what you were trying to do.