I was thinking about this scenerio.
I’m running my first team tournament, say I have 2 sections, Open and Reserve.
10 Teams join the Open
2 Teams join the Reserve
Rd1 - Rd 3, each Reserve team plays someone in open because I combined the sections.
Say the Last Place team in Open withdrawls, opening up a Bye. Since that Bye would ultimately go towards a team in Reserve, could I move that Bye to the last place team in the Open and force the 2 teams in the Reserve Section Battle it out?
Ah come on TD gurus? Someone has to know this…
If there’s no chance of the OPEN team being guaranteed a prize as a result of the BYE, then there’s probably nothing wrong with your idea. Having the two RESERVE teams play in the last round is probably a good idea, so long as there isn’t a major score-group jump.
If you have 4 players per team, and you can get 3 teams near the bottom that have not yet played each other, and if all 3 teams are out of the running for prizes, then another possibility is to have a 3-team match. This has been done by Dave Kuhns (USCF Rules committee?) with the Twin Cities Chess League in Minnesota.
Here is an example pairing for 3 teams: sand, pawn, king
sand 1 pawn 1
king 1 sand 2
pawn 2 king 2
king 3 pawn 3
sand 3 king 4
pawn 4 sand 4
As you see, king 1 plays sand 2, and king 4 plays sand 3; one board
plays ‘up’ and one plays ‘down’ thus balancing the inequality.
Kind Regards,
Tom Ewers
This has come up in Illinois (both theoretically and practically) a few times. An even more symmetric solution might be:
sand 1 pawn 2
pawn 1 king 2
king 1 sand 2
pawn 3 sand 4
king 3 pawn 4
sand 3 king 4
I like to call this idea the “trye” – an alternative to giving one team a full-point bye.
Bill Smythe