I’m not going to report about our matches yesterday. We started well in the lead but after 2 horribly played matches, we dropped to 4th position. We still have a chance 4 to play but it is going to be very hard, like scoring some 80 VP’s with the opponents making a few mistakes themselves. Enough said, if you want to look at the nasty details, click here for the team results and here for the butler scores. We’re Nijmegen 3.
In parallel with our matches, the finals of the Dutch national team championship were played in Utrecht. Participating teams were ‘t Onstein 2
from Vorden and Het Witte Huis
(HWH) from Amsterdam. Het Witte Huis fielded 1 pair of the recent Bermuda Bowl winners (Verhees-van Prooijen) and the pair that helped the Dutch qualify for that even in the first place even though they did not play in Veldhoven, Jansma-Paulissen. ‘t Onstein played with former Bermuda Bowl winner Berry Westra, together with Huub Bertens, Ton Bakkeren and Frank Bakkeren. The first 2 were on the open team for years, with a bronze medal in the Bermuda Bowl as their best performance.
Actually, it is kind of strange that our second division matches were played on the same day as the teams final. The NBB tries to make the teams final a bit special: vuegraph for the final 3 sessions, a celebration for all winners of major events in the past year and a cocktail party for players, sponsors and officials. It is then strange that they allow other events to be organized on the same day. That makes it hard for top players and officials to attend. Please change that for next year, I’ll promise that I’ll attend.
Note added 7/2/2012: The NBB meanwhile told me that the day of the open team finals has been blocked for all other events in 2013, so this won’t happen again.
Another newsworthy item is that at the celebration of all winners in the last season after the event, Bauke Muller (on the left) was promoted by her Majesty the Queen to Knight in the Order of Oranje Nassau. Oranje Nassau is the house of the Dutch queen. Congratulations Bauke, but I’m not going to refer to you as “your highness”.
Anyway, back to the topic of this blog. Who won the event? The official score, after a late correction, was 181-180 in favor of Het Witte Huis. Did they score more imp’s? Well, actually no, they were outscored 161-180 over the final days.
To fully understand this, one has to look at the setup of the event. 12 teams participate and play a double-round robin scored on a 25-5 VP scale. After 22 16-board matches, the top 4 qualifies for the play-offs (and the bottom 3 are demoted to the 1st division). The winner of the round robin gets to pick a semi-final opponent from the teams placed 2 to 4. The other 2 play in the other semi-final. Semifinals are 80 boards, finals 84 boards.
There is a carry over between round robin and (semi-) finals. The carry over is the difference in VP scored in the round robin, translated to IMP, with a maximum of 20. So, after 22 rounds, the scores of the top 4 teams were:
- 1. Het Witte Huis 403 VP
- 2. ‘t Onstein 1 397
- 3. de Lombard 1 354
- 4. ‘t Onstein 2 349
HWH selected de Lombard as its opponent, so the carry over was 403-354=49, which translates to 49 imp’s but this is capped at 20. The same applied to the other match, but here results were such that ‘t Onstein 2 won the semi-finals with a huge margin. For the final, the same thing happened. 403-349=54, which translates to the maximum of 20 imp.
In the semi-finals, HWH lost at the table to de Lombard: 136-138. With the carry-over added in, that translated to an overall score of 156-138. Strange. This look even worse for the Lombard if one looks at the results of the qualifying round. Here De Lombard won (over 2x16 boards) by 8. So, during the entire event (112 boards), De Lombard scored 10 imp’s more. Something similar happened in the finals. ‘t Onstein outscored HWH by 161-180, but the 20 imp’s carry over turned that into a 1 imp win. Of course, congratulations are in order for the HWH, after all, they did perform best according to the conditions of contest, but it is really weird, you lose the 2 most important matches at the table but still win the event.
Note added 7/2/2012: A reader pointed out the maximum carry over to the semi-finals was 10 imp, not 20, making the score 146-138.
So why do we have these carry-overs? The idea is two-fold: first to give an incentive to all teams to play well during the entire qualifying round even if they have already qualified. Second to reward teams for performing well in the qualifier by giving them a head-start in the play-offs.
Actually, I think both these arguments are invalid. First, there is already an incentive to play well in the qualifiers and that is that the winner gets to pick his semi-final opponent. Look at this year’s results, De Lombard was considered the least experienced team of the top 4 and I’m sure that ‘t Onstein would have liked to opportunity to pick them in the semi-finals as well.
The head-start argument means, in fact, that one is rewarded for scoring well against teams that are no longer in the event. You see that this year, De Lombard outscored HWH, but they lost because of scores from HWH against the teams ranked 5 through 12.
What are the arguments against a carry-over? First of all, they make the event less easy to understand for the audience. Take the other big sporting event from this weekend, the Super Bowl in American Football: the New York Giants won that 21-17 but can you imagine that New England actually got the bowl because of better performance in the qualifiers? Can you imagine that a soccer match Ajax-Utrecht starts with a goal in favor of Ajax because of earlier performance? Can you imagine that in tennis, in a match between Nadal and Federer each game is started with 15-love, because the former has a higher position on the world rankings? In fact, can you imagine that in any other sport, a serious event starts with something other than a score of 0-0? No, neither can I. In all sporting events, a match is a match, with no artificial changes in the score. Let’s do that for bridge as well.
The second argument against a carry-over: it is completely arbitrary what you do here, there is no established formula to calculate the carry-over. If you look around, the WBF and EBL also have carry-over rules, but these are different even though the situation they try to cover is the same. In fact, these rules are completely arbitrary selected by the organizers. Obviously, arbitrary rules should be avoided.
So, to conclude: congratulations to HWH for winning the event but for next year, please drop the carry-overs and decide the event at the table.
And to have a hand in this blog, you hold this hand
, all vulnerable, partner deals and opens 1♠, RHO overcalls 2♠ showing 5-5 or better in the red suits and it is your turn. In one case, the opening bid is limited to about 15 hcp, in the other it is standard. How do you plan the auction. More on this one in the next blog.
Disclaimer: I am a member of bridgeclub ‘t Onstein and not of Het Witte Huis, so that makes me biased a bit. On the other hand, I’ve frequently directed events where the sponsor of HWH played and, over the years, he has frequently bought me drinks for doing a good job. Finally, I do know most of the players involved here on a first name basis.