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Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1998 14:31:35 +0000
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Subject: Hitchin and Handicapping
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Just thought I'd send in some comments regarding the Hitchin 
tournament and some personal thoughts on the handicapping system that 
caused so much controversy hereabouts when Chris Hughes brought it 
up last month.  First thanks to Chris on behalf of the Kows for his 
excellent organisation and his most reasonable tounament price.
Personally I felt the handicapping worked fairly well, in the games 
the Kows played against teams from around their own level the 
handicap cancelled out anyway so we could have a normal competitive 
game, perhaps the only problem being that a strong wind from one end 
of the pitch to the other in some games meant that play went with the 
wind and a two or three point handicap became quite difficult to 
turnover. The system really came into its own when the normally 
higher ranked teams came across a much lower ranked one, the 
significant opening score seemed to motivate both teams to go all 
out, the weaker to try and maximise their advantage and the stronger 
because they had to fight to prevent every scoring opportunity - a 
big difference from the usual format of weaker teams being 
dicked on by stronger teams in essentially meaningless games where 
both sides know who will win from the start, for a tournament of this 
size with perhaps only three or four high quality teams this seemed 
to maintain everybodies interest throughout all of the games and for 
the full length of each game. Games didn't tend to become hammerfests 
as the stronger team get to 10-0 as can easily happen.
The main problem with the system probably arose from misassessments 
of individual team handicaps, while I think Chris had done a good job 
of assessing most teams with the result that there were some good 
close matches and teams seemed fairly evenly matched, (for example 
Goldfish beat the Mad Kows who beat the Hurricanes who beat Mud 
Culture who beat Goldfish) a team which had the wrong handicap, for 
whatever reason, was punished for it throughout the weekend.  

All in all though I thought it worked pretty well, spirit was good 
throughout and I'd have no objections to other occasional tournaments 
along the same lines,

Pete
(Mad Kows)