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From: Chris Hughes <cjhughes@talk21.com>
To: "'Nolan Taylor'" <nolan@daletaylor.co.uk>
Cc: "'Britdisc'" <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: The format
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 20:58:19 +0100
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Nolan,

Whilst I sympathise withyour thoughts, at this stage I don't really have an answer to the problem. In any tournament format, some one is going to be unimpressed with their games. If we go for a completely open event, everyone plays a large number of games with a forgone conclusion, leaving very few games that they can actually fight and compete in. In the tour format, we try and remove this situation on Saturday (one of the reasons for not going with a top 16 format was that it seriously hampered the possibility of a 13 - 16 team coming from the bottom of their pool to progress up). However this will always mean that whoever just misses the split and goes down to the join the 4 teams below, will feel that their Sunday has not been as fruitful as before. A similar situation will happen at T3 when one out of the top five teams, UTI, Dough, Catch, Chevron, and DSM get nudged out into the 5 - 12 group, when they feel that they missed the shot at being in the semi's.

Unless we force a false gap in the quality of the teams to fit the events, some teams will always feel that they are the wrong side of the split. This is something that must be addressed if the BUF ever goes to a league or separate Tour formats. The teams on the lower side of the split MUST have the chance to rapidly come back up. Otherwise a team seeing that it is forced to be in a bottom half for a prolonged period of time, will as you suggest, split up as the players go to play in the top group with other teams, or simply give and play a different sport. 

Chris

----------
From: 	Nolan Taylor[SMTP:nolan@daletaylor.co.uk]
Sent: 	26 May 2000 11:48
To: 	cjhughes@talk21.com
Subject: 	The format

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Whatever the ramifications of the current format for Hammerage, I feel it is
somewhat of a failure for those of us in the 11-16 category and probably
others.

Whatever some may naively wish to believe, there is a huge gulf between the
mid ranking teams, let alone the top and bottom teams and it is foolish to
attempt the current half way house solution. Fever lost one game on Saturday
by two points and then spent the rest of the weekend bored to death by the
lack of any worthwhile games. OK so we shouldn't have lost, but one or the
other team had to and the result for the losers is a wasted weekend when
many of us could have been using their time to get fit for Worlds. Jogging
against the minnows does NOT qualify!

More segregation is required in order that meaningful games are played and
thus the standards of all teams are raised. Yes, the top eight deserve to
play amongst themselves, but why should the rest of us pay the same fees for
a poorer quality pool system?

If not this year, it MUST happen next, before players from 9th down simply
lose interest in the sport.

Nolan