From: Douglas Dysart <dougdysart <at> HOTMAIL <dot> COM>
Date: 26 feb 2000
Subject: Re: Results Dutch Championship 2000

Hi Marc,

>The top 3 of the list consisted of the 1999 Champion and the 1999 numbers 3
>and
>4 (the 1999 runner up did not participate this year). All other players
>were
>ranked according to their ELO rating.

So there is a mixture of "ranked" players and "rated" players.  This is
interesting.  My experience has been that rating or performance in a
qualifier determines one's "seed" in a tournament.  Thus, it's a little
unusual to see that the Dutch Championship does it with a mixture of
rating's and *last year's* performances.

Does anyone ever comment/complain about this system?  It would be wild if
the strength of a shogi organization increased in a short period of time, or
if strong players entered the fray, since this could skew the pairings.
Ldet's say last year the winner was a shodan, and suddenly a 5-dan moves to
Holland.  Now his highest possible seed would be 5, correct?  Yet he could
demolish the number one seed.  This might pose a problem.

>The playing scheme was as follows:
>1-16   8-9   4-13   5-12   2-15    7-10   3-14   6-11

Standard sports playoff type of scheme, a la March Madness in basketball.

>The idea behind this scheme is that the supposedly strongest opponents meet
>in the finals

Usually the case, but there are exceptions.

>All players that are eliminated keep on playing in the side tournament
>which has
>the normal Swiss pairings, where rounds played in the knock-out tournament
>are
>taken into consideration. Basically the pairings of the knock-out
>tournament are
>a prescheduled part of the bigger Swiss system.

Thanks for discussing this further.  The side tournament is what I was
REALLY interested in.  I may have heard of such a system before, but never
in my TDing days have I run across it.  I'm going to look at how the overall
tournament was paired so I can use this system.

Thanks for all your help,
Doug Dysart
Midwest Championship Tournament Director
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