From: bogin YAHOO CO JP> Date: 9 nov 2002 Subject: Re: ISF, 5-dans, Gert Schinder and Artem Kolomiyets Dear Mr. Cheymol, You make some good points. Perhaps my use of the word "conditions" was a little open ended. By "conditions" I meant the playing conditions( ie: time control, lighting, location, etc, etc...). I wasn't referring to the strength of ones opponent of the pairing a player got. There's always someone who's going to get easier pairings than the other players. There's no way around it, especially in a 5 round tournament. You just have to play who your paired with and try your best. Perhaps instead of drawing lots the best thing to have done was to create rank players according to their most recent Shogi numerical rating. The players with no rating (ie: the Japanese players or other non Europeans) would be treated as unrateds and put at the bottom. Then, you would just pair it like any other tournament with the same point totals playing each other as much as possible. I think if you did it that way then almost all of the strong players would have had to play each other and that there wouldn't have been a four way tie. And, even though the non-rated players might have been up happy at there low seeding, if they kept winning then they would have a chance as well. Winning your 1st four games and then losing the tournament is just bad luck. There's probably no way around that problem other than winning that fifth game. Pairings are always a crap shoot even when they're done correctly. Sorry for the confusion my use of "conditions" caused. Bill Gaudry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! BB is Broadband by Yahoo! http://bb.yahoo.co.jp/