From: Larry Kaufman WIZARD NET> Date: 2 jun 2000 Subject: Re: Tournament System - Knockdown or Swiss At 04:59 PM 6/2/00 -0400, you wrote: >Dear Larry, >I am glad to know that you agree the knockout system is suitable to determine >the champion. >I thought you were against the knockout system even for the championship. Our >tournament committee will be very pleased to hear that you agree to use >knockout for final 4 or 8 (then why not 16) as we always respect your opinion >as a real leader of American shogi world. As for whether the number should be 2, 4, 8, or 16, I would say that the number should equal the number of top place prizes being offered. In other words, once a player makes it to the knockout, he has won a prize. Otherwise a player could be deprived of a prize due to the bad luck of getting paired with the champion early. So if you want to award 8 or even 16 prizes (of value at least above the entry fee) I would say it's okay to have 8 or 16 in the knockout, but I think that going to 8 or especially 16 makes for too many rounds with no official games for the eliminated players. One solution would be for the Swiss to continue until the finals, with some prizes allocated only for the Swiss. The main point is that there is no need for "B", "C", "consolation", etc. tournaments if the knockout is kept short. >However I do not think knockout will not solve your dilemma for the 2nd and 3rd >place although I do not think it is a serious issue. Yes, it's true that my complaint about 2nd vs. 3rd place could still be a problem, but since the players in the knockout would be seeded by their result in the Swiss, the two best players (based on the Swiss) would be in different halves and thus guaranteed not to meet until the final. If you want to see the two best players meet in the final (as was probably the case this year), this is the best way to make it happen. >I am not sure whether Japanese agree to your opinion that Japanese are not >familiar to swiss system. As the matter of fact we often used swiss system for >Sumo and Judo etc. in my childhood when we played in the back yard with many >friends more than 50 years ago although we did not call it swiss but called it >in Japanese ("soatari" - all of them play against each other or "riigu-sen" - >league system). You seem to be describing the "Round Robin", such as is used in the Meijin League (A class) in shogi. It is the best system of all, if there's enough time for all players to play each other. But this is not the Swiss system. The main point of the Swiss system is that players with the same score play each other. If there is any sport or game that truly uses the Swiss system in Japan, please tell us about it. >I agree that chess is not yet popular in Japan but there are many sports using >swiss system in Japan too. I think Japanese are using both knockout and swiss >case by case same as in the United States. If the Japanese are really using Swiss (not Round Robin) in many sports, I am sorry for my ignorance of this. I don't know much about the systems used for physical sports, but if they don't use the Swiss system, it may be because it was not known at the time these sports were organized. If they do use knockout, I suspect it may be only for the later stages, as Pieter and I have proposed. Let me know if you want a more specific proposal for a combined Swiss/knockout system that would meet your objections. Otherwise I'll leave this topic for now, having said enough about it. Thanks for your great contribution to Shogi, Larry