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At our club (Mayfield) one of the annual tournaments we run is a pairs championship over two sessions. The first session is a pairs qualifier where 10 pairs go through to the final with no carry through of first session scores. On the same evening of the finals we get an additional three or four tables. It has been suggested that instead of a qualifying session we should run the championship as a two session event with scores assessed over two sessions since this would make for a fairer competition.
It seems there are pros and cons for either method. I wonder if there are strong views about which would be the better form of competition? Alan Bailey.

Comments

  • edited March 2018

    I can see problems with the proposed change, since it might mean that it could not be all-play-all, and you might have problems with some pairs not wanting to play on both nights. So my first thought is to stick with what you have. If you are worried about the size of the side event, reduce the number of qualifying pairs - a 7-table final has a lot going for it.

    EDIT - just realised I had misread 10 pairs as 10 tables.

  • I see that this year you had a 10.5 table qualifier and, five weeks later, a 5 table final with a separate 3.5 table movement for your normal ladder trophy. Both these latter two movements are very much on the small side for Match Pointed Pairs for lack of comparisons. If you really must have a two sessions quali-final event on normal club evenings, I would suggest having just a one week gap and to increase the final to 7 tables as Gordon suggests, but I would be more inclined to turn up if you simply had two normal sessions with the winning pair being that with the highest average score over those two sessions, without worrying if you have some pairs coming for one but not the other session.

    The only two session events that I run at Sheffield BC are Swiss events, three Pairs and one Teams per year, and we have these at weekends, often Bank Holidays. We have 6 matches, nowadays of 7 boards each but we have had times with 8 boards each. We start at 1pm and play through with a meal break. It gets round the problem for players of having to be available on two different days. If you are able to use your premises at a weekend, this may be a more popular way of running a two session trophy event.

    Barrie Partridge - CTD for Bridge Club Live

  • Running your club championship over two weeks with only those pairs playing both weeks eligible for the trophy is doable even if not ideal. Gordon has pointed out the drawbacks above. However I know a club which does it. The difficult however comes in awarding the masterpoints and submitting the USM files. As this is the club's major pairs championship they will want to take advantage of the additional masterpoints they can award for this two-session event. They may even want to make it Blue-pointed. It can be done in EBUScore but it is not trivial. The two separate sessions need to be submitted to UMS for NGS purposes with the masterpoints not awarded . You then need to combine the sessions in EBUScore with the correct masterpoint settings, create movement of lines so that all of the pairs who played both weeks are mapped, then in properties you need to mark all pairs who only played one week as missing then the correct masterpoint award will come out and can be submitted just for masterpoint purposes.
    This will get the correct NGS update and masterpoint awards whether it will generate the correct UMS charge for the club I am not sure.

  • Gordon, Barrie and Paul. Many thanks for your comments. There's some good ideas and thoughts for our committee to mull over. I quite like the idea of an open to all Blue Pointed event with the club champions being the highest scoring members. I also think that holding it as a two session event on a Saturday would be good but that would be for next month's AGM to decide. Great to have this forum. Alan.

  • Alan - I'm not sure from your post whether you realise that there are two types of blue pointed event. Open which is open to anyone, or closed which is only for your club members. Most clubs would use the second option for their club championships. You don't need to apply for a licence for the closed blue point event.
    Just use Code 50 when setting the event up on your scoring program

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