Just after celebrating the party in GNT Flight A, Flight C has also reached pre-pandemic levels with 12 teams. Filling a teams event with 48 players in our District, all non life masters with under 500 Masterpoints, is incredible. A huge thanks to all the instructors, mentors, and supervisors who have encouraged our up-and-coming players to participate.
After consulting with ACBL, our Director-in-Charge, and the GNT Committee, we have expanded and clarified several elements of the conditions of contest.
Why Not a Round Robin or Swiss for 12 Teams?
We want the opening round to be as fair as possible and eliminate any reliance on seeding teams. However, it’s not practical for all 12 teams to play each other. You would need 11 rounds and each round would be too short. If we run a swiss, then not all teams face each other, creating unfairness. You might avoid playing against the strongest team or miss a chance to play the weakest team.
The “Two Groups” Round Robin Method
With 12 teams, we can split the teams into two equally strong groups, Group A and Group B. Then, the 6 teams in each group can play a relatively long match against each of the other teams in your group (sneaking in a lunch break somewhere). At the end of the day, the top half of each group based on Victory Points survive to the quarterfinals.
Any Changes to the KO Phase?
New this year, as required by ACBL, is the option for the 2nd place team in the semifinals to opt-in and become an opponent choice for the top seeded team. This occurs when say GNT Flight A has 9 teams in a round robin and 4 survive based on Victory Points. Team 1 usually chooses from Teams 3 and 4 as their semi-final opponent. However, sometimes due to luck and randomness, Team 3 and Team 4 might actually be more scary than Teams 1 and 2. In this case, Team 2 can decide to opt-in and become a selection, which under our premise would be a wise choice for Team 1.
How Do you do a Quarter Finals with 6 Teams?
The top teams in Group A and B, call them A1 and B1, receive a bye. Then A2 plays B3 while B2 plays A3 to advance to the semi-finals. In the semi, A1 plays the B2 vs A3 winner while B1 plays the A2 vs B3 winner.
The theory is, after the opening round, the two strongest teams are either A1 and B1, or they could have both been in the same original group, A1 and A2, or B1 and B2. This style of bracketing ensures that for all three such cases, the two strongest teams face of in the finals. Of course, in practice there’s enough randomness that all of this theorizing is quite silly!
Who Forms The Two Groups?
The Director will announce the groups as the event starts. Sometimes, a seeding committee consisting of the GNT Committee and other unbiased volunteers will do their best to take into account defending champions, tournament experience, past performance, Masterpoints, and ribbon qualifiers to balance the groups as best as possible. Seeding committee members recuse themselves when they are also participants in the same flight.
Why Not Cut Down to 4 Immediately?
The Masterpoints awards grant overalls to all teams advancing to KO Phase as long as the Opening Round cuts 50% or more of the field. Therefore, the event will award a big chunk of gold and red points to more teams by advancing 6 out of 12. It also gives an incentive to do as well in the Opening Round because of the valuable byes in the quarter finals.
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