Not to repeat the entire earlier post, but the format change appears to mean that there will no longer be four flights with teams playing each team in their flight round-robin, and instead a "flightless" group of teams where each team plays four other random teams. Then instead of having four flight winners advance to the semis, the top-4 teams in the overall standings would advance.
I noted earlier that one motivation for this change may have been second place teams in the old format having no shot at making the semis with just the flight winners advancing, but with this new format a team that loses a team match and would have otherwise ended up second in their flight could mathematically be in the top-4 overall and make the semis.
Another motivation, perhaps the larger one, could be to normalize the number of matches played by each team. In the old format, three of the flights had four teams meaning just three matches for each team, while one flight had five teams playing four matches each. Not only is this inconsistent, having just three matches at Nationals for the majority of teams may have been perceived as a bit of a negative, and guaranteeing each team at least four matches would be a positive.
Note that scheduling may be a little more difficult as there are more matches to fit in to Friday and Saturday. The old format had 28 team matches to be played the first two days while the new format has 34. Six matches isn't a lot, but should there be any weather delays this will put a squeeze on fitting all the matches in without resorting to shorter scoring formats.
I was asked how this format might work with an odd (17) number of teams. I have no idea if this is what is planned, but here is one way that each team gets four matches.
Randomly number the teams 1 thru 17 and have each team play the two adjacent teams on either side of them. For example:
- Team 1 plays teams 16, 17, 2, and 3
- Team 2 plays teams 17, 1, 3, and 4
- Team 3 plays teams 1, 2, 4, and 5
- Team 4 plays teams 2, 3, 5, and 6
- ...
- Team 16 plays teams 14, 15, 17, and 1
- Team 17 plays teams 15, 16, 1, and 2
I'm sure there are other ways to accomplish it, but this one is relatively straight forward.
I was also asked how many teams could finish undefeated in this format, or put another way, would going 4-0 guarantee making the semis?
Using the match assignments above, one scenario would be for teams 3 (beats 1, 2, 4, 5), 6 (beats 4, 5, 7, 8), 9 (beats 7, 8, 10, 11), 12 (beats 10, 11, 13, 14) and 15 (beats 13, 14, 16, 17) to all finish 4-0. In this case with five teams undefeated, it would go to tie-breakers to determine the four teams that advance. It would be pretty tough to go undefeated and be left out, but this exact scenario happening is also pretty unlikely. It may even be unlikely that four teams finish 4-0 in which case it would come to a tie-breaker between 3-1 teams.
Note that when it comes to tie-breakers, it is better if the teams being compared have played common opponents and that is one of the challenges I see with this new format. In the above ordering, say teams 4 and 11 both finish 3-1. They won't have played any common opponents so when it goes to the individual courts won/lost tie-breaker, the team with the easier schedule will have the advantage.
This is by no means a showstopper to this format being successful, the old format had a similar issue with easy vs tough flights, but all the tie-breakers involved teams that had played each other and/or common opponents.
I will continue to think about this and come up with a way to do some simulations, but I do see some positives with the format, the four match minimum per team is the big one, but I think there are some challenges too, notably the equitable tie-breakers. The luck of the draw is in play in either format, some teams will get an easier flight/schedule and others will get a harder flight/schedule. It will be interesting to see how it works.
What do you think? Do any of the points above change your initial opinion?
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