Jeckland wrote:Very nice looking bid Greg. Just a couple of questions.
1) Are you confident you can handle any overlap between this and the Baptism of Iron?
2) Why have you chosen the groups to be double round robin when they have the potential to be so large? For example, the record WCoH had 72 signups. Under your format, this would be eight groups of nine, with double round robin making it 16 matches for each team over 18 match days. That's way too long IMO.
1. Yes, the overlap should be small, if any, and occur towards the end of the BOI when there are fewer teams to grade RPs from.
2. I highly doubt we will hit that record number this time. When you have between 7 and 9 teams per group in a top-level tournament like this, single-round robin seems like too few games while double round robin seems like too many. IMO, seven games per team is too few for a top-level tournament like this since one or two losses early can ruin a team's chances. I'd rather have too many games than too few. Should we set a new record for teams, I might reconsider, but even eight games per team (if we equal our record) is too few IMO for a top-level tournament like this. I believe 10 games is a minimum length for the group stage, meaning in the unlikely event we get 80 teams, there would be 18 matches, but still 18 days just like if there were 72 since there would be no byes. In the even more unlikely event we get to 88 teams, I would do single round robin with 10 games per team, but that possibility seemed so remote I did not bother including it in my bid.
(Yes, I know the World Cup has only three games per team in the group stage, but that has qualifiers first with many more games than that, making the World Cup proper a second group stage of sorts, with the qualifiers being the first group stage. We may not use those terms to describe them, but it's the same principle. So it's different than a tournament with a single group stage. I'm guessing that would be the next question, so I'm answering it now.)
