Tourney: BFF London 2011 09.10.2011 5th Anniversary

Thanks to John H for his work and putting me up on Saturday night, I had a great time as always and a big thanks you to Harvey and Hayden for some great games.

See you all at Hell's Belles or Cambridge next month.

two questions, who was the 3rd in the Outcast? Did Pompom actually made or did Rappers play with another 3rd?

i have one of alfies gloves, couldnt see the second one. great final, really fun polo to watch, epic hustle goal from ali and adam and pinpoint shooting from jono. Mraks short shorts were AMAZING. (he's a big baby, he's just a big baby). My favourite games were against psyclone. You guys played brilliantly, great passing, shooting organisation massive props, you guys matched us finely twice. Thanks Emmet, love playing with you, so +, always smiling. And thank you Valley for stepping into the team and playing so well, lovely to meet you, you will def be my 2nd fave team after 'chukker dorris' in the hells belles :)

Every final should be a Mrak short shorts final!

The final was 5-3. Third place playoff might have been 5-2. Not 100% sure about either though.

Rik: Outcasts were Ryan, Dean and Alexis and Rappers played with Valley.

Thanks for an awesome day everyone, especially the two Johns for scheduling/organising and Ryan/Alexis/Erin for sorting the transport of garb from the Orwell to Newington.

Chuffed to have won and really enjoyed the knockout games, let's get a BBQ, some hammocks and some hard liquor involved next year, boom!

[edit] SB v Mallet Ballet was 4-1 (they had us at 0-1 for the first five minutes or so, it's awesome to see Cambridge mix it up so often).

I could'nt make it, a polo giz for that.
Who were the mysterious 3rd?
Sncf strike on friday push me to reconcider my plan.
On friday i reach lyon hitch hikking,
but i didn't have any eurostar ticket for saturday and last minute tickets are so expensive that i could'nt afford it.
I didn't have bike neither (mine is stoke on marseille)
so first i went to a workshop in lyon, i built a bike (not a polo one, a holland one),
and then i try to push further.
the plan was to be in Lille on friday night or saturday morning, then take a train to Calais, take a ferry, and another train to london (one day to do that is possible) and that's why i needed a bike, whatever bike, to link different train station and different boat station.
Well, all train that i could have took on friday was cancelled, and after a heavy rainy afternoon riding in circle (between the train station, and different friend point) I found one friend and i get cold.
Saturday morning I woke up at 4pm, to late to imagine that it'll still possible.
That's how I missed the BFF London 2011...
SNCF sucks, they should be privatised as in England, and so we'll know where we'll go, and stop paying taxes for a semi privatised compagny, using our money for more benefits, without giving back to people what belong to people (ceasar was right but he was egocentric)
See you this week end so.

good effort though jo. Me and emm were sad is true and lots of people were disappointed not to see you. But we'll get a pompon fix next weekend yes?! :)

Great day yesterday, thanks Eggie, John H, Alexis, Ryan, etc etc.

Poor little Jack.. Fractured wrist :( BUMMER..

Did he get a cast in the end?

Yeh.. Poor kitteh.

It totally destroyed #dckbrn's chances of getting into the knockout stage*... Heal up fast, kitten weasel... Best team shirts ever!!

• OK, the fact we were all plastered by midday didn't help either... ;)
  

No way! It's actually fractured? That sucks! Heal up, kitteh!

Had a great day with the Jam Rags, best name of the tournament! Stoked to hear so many peeps shouting it out in support.

Periods aren't gross, they're a fact of life.

Periods aren't gross, they're a fact of life.

Fullstop.

Shit buzz Jack. At least you can get all the polo crew to write on your cast. Heal up soon.

Does Jack know how long it is before he can play again? Heal up soon

If everything goes ok with his healing up, it should be four to six weeks. That's standard waiting time for a fracture.

I (Trevor) picked up Alfie's right glove... I'll figure out how to get his way from Adrienne.

1) Byes are shit. There just is no fair way to deal with them in Swiss. So in the future we really need to make sure we have an even number of teams.

Ok so it would be needed to be writen into the software, but instead of bye's one team (who would have had a bye) should just have to play the next team that would have had a bye. I'd like to see the logic behind the way teams are selected, but i'm sure it would be possible. Obviously that only really works with an even number of rounds, with an odd number of rounds and an odd number of teams you have to have a bye for someone.

3) A full Swiss, and then a single elim seems to work well. Yes some higher seeded teams got knocked out of the knockout early, but in the end the usual teams got the final anyway.

So basically the test of whether a tourney system works is if there's a spring break verses nice touch final? :)

I believe double elimination was originally used for polo as the sole format for one (or even two) day events as you could just (semi) randomly assign 32 teams into a DE bracket and the reasoning was that if you had a hard first game you could still fight your way back through the loser's bracket (every team had two games minimum)?

Swiss is a great format as it gives you a seeded list of teams fairly accurately and I'd rather see more teams taken into a single-elim bracket than less teams into a double-elim bracket for the final stages (as John did yesterday).

We seem to default towards double-elim, but I think more rounds of swiss (if needed) and a larger single-elim is a better format.

Awesome day. The heritage of the BFF being London's longest running and one of the most fun tournaments continues.

Was awesome playing with Iain and Trevor. Cheers, duders. It was a bit of a mix bag as I hadn't played in 2 weeks, was on a bike I'd built the night before (which I think I'm digging), and we had never played with Trevor before, but I think we did great all things considered.

Oh, and draws and Swiss definitely don't mix (look at Degeneration's result in Barcelona... Grrrr..). Draws and any format don't. I've eliminated them when scheduling has permitted.

I (Trevor) picked up Alfie's right glove... I'll figure out how to get his way from Adrienne.

cool we have both then!

thanks all, sorry we pissed off early but getting up at 0445 after 2 hours sleep then an awesome polo tournament kinda made me want my bed,
also don't forget about erectus's moral victory, getting beat 2-1, not 5-2 by nice touch

Great tourney. Low key and fun. Thanks, John H.

I lost a mallet there. Did anyone find it? Orange MKE shaft, black hockey tape handle, black HDBP pipe with yellow stripe, no caps?