A good day for the home countries as both English teams and the Scots qualified for the quarter finals. Normally the winners can choose any of the 5th to 8th teams in the ko but to complicate things a new rule allowed 4th, 3rd and 2nd to decare themselves available for selection by a higher ranked team. This was billed as being fairer. I thought it wasted enough time to delay my evening glass of something fortifying. Predictably 0 teams availed themselves of this unmissable opportunity and it did not take Nostradamus to predict this would be so.
The English women play USA1. They start eight behind as a result of losing the qualifying match. USA1 have a sponsor and expect her to appear early in the match and not at the end.
The open team have been getting stronger and finished the round robin well, making the early struggle to stay near a qualifying position just a bad memory. They now play Monaco and start 4.33 ahead but this will be a tough match.
The Scottish Seniors did well to qualify and play the USA in the quarter final.
The women's hotel had a surprise for one of the team at 4.30 this morning when water started dripping through a light fitting. This was a follow up to what seemed to be an earth tremor in the early hours. Ideal preparation for a big knock out match!
The English women play USA1. They start eight behind as a result of losing the qualifying match. USA1 have a sponsor and expect her to appear early in the match and not at the end.
The open team have been getting stronger and finished the round robin well, making the early struggle to stay near a qualifying position just a bad memory. They now play Monaco and start 4.33 ahead but this will be a tough match.
The Scottish Seniors did well to qualify and play the USA in the quarter final.
The women's hotel had a surprise for one of the team at 4.30 this morning when water started dripping through a light fitting. This was a follow up to what seemed to be an earth tremor in the early hours. Ideal preparation for a big knock out match!
The point of the new 'picking' rules is to prevent the problem where you can be better off finishing 8th than 4th in the round robin and hence also to remove an incentive for teams to 'dump' to try and change their final round robin order. Suppose there is one very strong team that is doing worse than expected in the round robin (say their top pair were delayed arriving at the venue, or just took a while to warm up) and they finish somewhere in positions 5-8. If you finish fourth, then you will certainly be left to play this very strong team. If you finish fifth, you won't.
ReplyDeleteUnder the new rule, if you declare yourself available for selection, then at least there's a chance that one of the top 3 teams will pick you.
If teams finish in the round robin in what you might call 'seeding' order in the round robin then the new rule won't be needed. But any time you think the team(s) who finished ahead are weaker than the teams who you would otherwise get to pick from, it will come into play.
I see what you mean, it could become relevent if the two most fancied teams finished 5-8. The teams finishing 1 & 2 would pick the two remaining teams in the 5-8 bracket, The 4th placed team now declares themselves available to be picked, and the 3rd placed team would almost certainly pick them, leaving the two fancied teams to face each other in the remaining match.
ReplyDelete