From: Leung Kai Wan GRADUATE HKU HK> Date: 3 jun 2000 Subject: Re: Tournament System - Knockdown or Swiss Dear Mr Kaufman and Mr Masui, After reading your discussions, I have a few personal opinions. Knock-out is the best system to determine the champion but Swiss is perferable for the rest. A-class Junisen is round-robin. But other classes are closer to Swiss than to knock-out. Why? Because if the tournament committee would like to see the positions of all players, everyone should play until the end to count their wins and scores. Swiss and round-robin are the choices in most cases. I guess Swiss is not used in Junisen is probably due to the inability of early pairings. The tournament schedules of the professionals have to be determined weeks or months beforehand which makes Swiss pairing difficult. Only Nihon Shogi Renmei can tell us the official answer. But that is another topic. Knock-out is the usual choice of major sports, especially in major, international tournaments. Running such tournaments are costly with heavy commercial considerations. Spectators are much less inclined to watch the losers' games and media are unwilling to pay for the boardcasting fees. People are only willing to pay to see the games of champion candidates. Holding matches for the losers' is financially unjustified and knock-out is the easiest way to save money. You can't have two basketball matches for four teams on the same field simultaneously. But all shogi players can stay in the same room to fight until the end of the competition. World Cup football players wait for several days to play the next game. But amateur shogi players play several games a day. Playing venue facilites and hotel charges show a great difference between shogi and chess against other sports. The Hong Kong Shogi Club is dominated by Japanese players. When I joined the club in 1996, they used Swiss in the monthly rating matches already. (I am an experienced xiangqi player and know Swiss well, please don't ask if I understand it.) So at least some Japanese people know Swiss system well. Just a few opinions. Your remarks are more than welcome. Best regards, Kai Wan Leung Hong Kong, China