For teams/player that are going to Nationals, or just those following along, there are a number of things to remember.
The sites for Nationals include the National Campus in Orlando, Las Vegas, Surprise Arizona, and new for 2019 Oklahoma City. I think this is a good set of sites with pretty even geographic distribution, and it appears are traditionally dry enough or have provisions for dealing with in-climate weather.
Regarding the weather, hopefully there are no issues, but if there are, players need to be prepared for altered formats. The most likely change is to go to a shortened format to speed up the completion of matches, either a Fast Four format or something similar like starting sets at 2-2 and using no-ad scoring. At worse though, it could become just a single set to decide a match.
The format for Nationals continues to be an un-flighted round-robin. Teams are not in traditional flights but each team simply plays four other "random" teams and the top-4 overall in the standings advance to the semi-finals. This is good as all teams get to play four matches (old format most played just three) and it provides some additional opportunities for a team to lose early and still make the semis, but also means the "randomness" of the schedule can become a huge factor as a weaker team with an easy schedule may have a better chance of making the semis as a strong team with a tough schedule.
The other big factor with the new format is how the top-4 teams are determined and the tie-breakers used. Last year, there were some issues (IMHO) a few times, that precipitated my proposing some rules changes that unfortunately were not adopted. So read those links in the prior sentence to understand the tie-breakers and the implications.
Given the new format and schedule and tie-break implications, using my ratings, I came up with a new report that performs a million simulations of the matches to determine the chances of all possible records for the teams and the chances each one will advance to the semis. I often post a summary of the simulations as a preview/prediction of an event, but also offer a report with all the details of the simulation including the chance of every record for every team. Note that the simulations show there is always a chance that five teams could finish undefeated and one team sent home as happened in NorCal when this format was used incorrectly. The chance is usually quite low, but it could happen at some point.
On the subject of reports, for those players/captains interested, I offer a variety of reports to help scout opponents and plan your line-ups. Reports include summaries on flights, details on teams, individual reports, and the aforementioned simulation reports. See the summary of offerings I posted here for more information and contact me if interested in any of them.
Good luck to all those fortunate to be going to Nationals, play well and have fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment