The luck factor and picking teams
I am not making excuses I made mistakes. I personally could have easily found 7 imps. But there is also a luck factor. I suppose that is why we hope that 72 boards are enough. That in that number of boards luck will even out. But sometimes it just doesn’t. Anyway, I vote for more boards. It still won’t eliminate the luck factor but the dice just can’t keep coming up against you, can they?
Don’t worry that is my last comment about luck. I wrote a BLOG before I went to Montreal about how we should pick teams. At the tournament they asked the players if the CNTC should be imp pairs. I am sure noone said yes. Why would you? The CNTC (and the CWTC) are fun events. I had a great time. Yes, even me, the loser. But it still seems to me that we are not getting the best teams. I know we could take the group that competed in the CNTC and pick 3 or 4 pairs and declare them a team and have a much better team than any of the finalist. Not to say that there is anything wrong with whoever wins the event. Just that it still won’t be the best we can do. It is true on the women’s side as well.
I love the idea of a program like the juniors where we put time and money into a group of elite players and eventually select our team from that pool. That’s the way to go. Not hope the players form good teams and that we Canadians are lucky enough that a truly good team wins.
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I agree that the women’s finals should be a two day, 128 board event, just as it is in the CNTC. Let’s hope that this is the format for next year. Yet, even in a 128 board final, there is an element of luck. In a close match, the losers will usually be able to find unlucky boards. However, the same can usually be said for the winners and in the end, I think it evens out. The team that plays the best throughout the tournament usually wins. That’s what makes these competitions so much fun and so challenging.
Okay we go for 128 boards. Even if it doesn’t reduce the luck factor it sounds like fun.
Let me be clear, any team that wins has to have played well. It’s just that when it’s close and either team could have won that luck seems more important. However, I still think that we don’t get our best teams out of competitions for many reasons which have been discussed already.
Extra boards won’t solve the problem of how teams form and the fact that good pairs are spread around etc.
To me the issue is geography. When we form teams geography seems to inevitably play a role, but if you want the “best” team nationally, you have to create an “all-star” set of pairs from across the country, accepting that they won’t practice together much. We could do that, but we’d have to be valuing the success of the team above the congenial way we presently form it.
Mmm, Charles, isn’t the whole point to select the best team and have it be successful? What else would be the goal? As I’ve said before, I think CNTC is a great event — I was part of the original group that founded it, under Ted Horning’s leadership. But it’s a terrible way to select teams to go to a World Championship if we want to send our best possible representatives. I don’t think CNTC should be scrapped — I just think the CBF should use some other method to select teams.