From: Pieter Stouten EU PNU COM> Date: 15 may 2001 Subject: Re: U.S. Shogi Championship --- "J. Andrew Lipscomb" CHATTANOOGA NET> wrote: > by my count, that means that since all four top boards, at least > three second boards, and at least one third board will have 4 or > more points, the fifth-board players were eliminated from > contention before they even started to play. I can imagine someone > being upset about that (but if they were ok with it, then it's not > a problem). > The system employed was basically a McMahon system with the added restriction that pairing occurred strictly within the initial McMahon classes. The drawback of any McMahon system is that lower-ranked players (who may well be underrated or in exceptional form) have to score more wins than higher-ranked players in order to secure the same position. In the case of the US Championship this meant that the lower-ranked players could not compete for the championship's title at all. The advantage of a McMahon system is that there are no artificial group barriers, that no "almost-walkover" games are necessary just to separate weaker from stronger players and that the players that perform above (below) their formal rating get to play stronger (weaker) players as the event progresses, overall leading to the best-matched pairing of players. If one wants to have a team match, final knock-out rounds with an unambiguous winner that is decided in the last round and accomplish all of that in one weekend, compromises have to be made. Since no cross-games between initial McMahon groups takes place during the preliminaries (the team match), the distribution and absolute strengths of the different teams as well as the accuracy of the pre-event ratings/grades may play a decisive role in determining the composition of the A group, but (unless a highly underrated player, who plays on board 5 is actually the strongest one present) it is unlikely that that would have affected the final outcome of the championship. Given a choice, I personally might not have integrated a team match into the event, but that may not have been an option. Just my $0.02, Pieter