From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Thu Oct 8 14:11:26 1998 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) id NAA25854 for britdisc-outgoing; Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:59:17 +0100 (BST) Received: from exchpk02.chelt.ac.uk (exchpk02.chelt.ac.uk [194.66.194.6]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA25824 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:59:12 +0100 (BST) Received: by exchpk02.chelt.ac.uk with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) id <4J9BWWXZ>; Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:59:27 +0100 Message-ID: <8102C4585310D211858D0060B01A41330A38F0@exchpk02.chelt.ac.uk> From: "HUGHES, Chris" <CHughes@chelt.ac.uk> To: "'Britdisc'" <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Subject: Big Funky vs World Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:59:26 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2232.9) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk I think an argument here is getting distorted, but it raises a number of points. BAFlies performed very poorly at the start of the tour last year, the sent a weak team to the critical 1st tournament, Merrick was injured, and so they finished tour 1 in a low position. Then during the season they picked up their perfomance - Mezza came back from injury, they practised hard and improved (Sorry - that's not supposed to sound like it is a one man team). When it finally came round to nationals they were seeded tenth just outside the top eight slot. The nationals rather like NFL / NBA leagues, take the performance over a year and then let these qualifying teams slug it out to finally get a winner. Unless we start again and have Nationals as a completely open tournament some one just outside the cut is going to get pissed. The argument here should be more about the tour. This was set up so that teams played teams of approx the same level, but in the tournament format you would always play some one better than you (unless you won outright). And the tour WORKS like that. BAF this year, 1st Touch last year, came up through the ranks as they improved. The argument is that teams are too hampered / promoted by their initial results. BAF had a bad 1st tour, and since the seeding is a complicated version of an average result you need a number of good results to remove the effect of a bad result, which is then too late in the season. Vhappy and their initial results worked for them as they started to struggle later in the tour and were consistently seeded higher than their previous starting position, BAF always started lower than their previous finishing position. So why not start each tournament with seedings based on previous finishing positions. Yes this would promote more movement of teams, and would make it easier to remove the effects of a poor tournament, but it also punishes the teams who have a poor tournament much quicker. Example Team finishes 1st in T1, 9th in T2, then has poor turnout and plays badly and finishes in 9th position in T3 by loosing a lot of their games. By basing the starting position on average results they would start T4 approx 4th , could go on to win T4 and T5 and the tour. Using the previous finishing position system the best they could do in T4 is finish 5th, irrelevant of how good they are and then go and win T5 but not the tour, loosing to a team that is consistently 2nd. Both systems have their ups and downs, the present system makes teams slow to move, and teams need good results at the beginning, the new system, which is not in place yet, is quicker to react to a new result - to the benefit or detriment of the team. My personal preference is to have the new system used for seedings in the tour, allowing more movement of teams within groups, and the present to seed teams for national, thereby rewarding a consistent team with a slot in nationals Discuss. Chris