Selection process for EHBPC 2011 23-26.06.2011

Sorry to drag this off point, but to clarify, DTGP was our last game in the round, so should have been the most evenly-matched. They whooped us 5-0 in about 4 minutes I think.

It seems to me that swiss rounds is the least bad option in terms of fairness when you have a lot of teams to schedule, but round-robin is faultless. So more tournaments with fewer teams is fairer. What's a realistic number to do round-robin in one day, 8? 10?

Maybe 20 teams in the UK interested in going? 7-10 in London, maybe a bit more outside London? Could work.

Yes, RR is faultless (when it comes to the maths). Everyone would prefer a RR tournament every time.

No, more tournaments with fewer teams is not fairer. The level of teams in different tournaments will not be equal.

Anyway, your experience with Swiss Rounds at the London Open is ultimately of no use in this debate. Unfortunately the software that day had a bug/design flaw which meant replays took place. There may have been other issues that day as well, I'm not sure. I wasn't that bothered at the time to be honest. It wasn't until the league considered using Swiss Rounds that I read up on it. I now believe (and am willing to say that I am right in believing it) that it is the fairest way, with the exception of one giant RR tournament, to rank teams in a tournament.