I decided to go with 6-team sections for this tourney, as they were quite well-received when we used them for two sections last time. Those who want to offer their thoughts on the format can do so here. If anyone is unhappy about the reduced length of the season, tell us! It won't always be possible to use 6-team sections, but the frequency with which we do so in future will be affected by the feedback we receive here.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised to actually have it for the first time in several seasons where I don't have a single player clash so in that respect having 6 team groups has helped or maybe I just got lucky!

I noticed in news post it said "Captains may add new players until the beginning of round 6" that might be a typo as finals are round 6.

With introduction of a 1 week break would that mean if it's hard to schedule a match during a certain round it's OK to reschedule it to last week or is it mainly intended for Round 6 games?

I noticed that pchesso's suggestion of making upper limit equal to top team in section rather than bottom team in section above wasn't implemented although this season it doesn't make a huge difference although if we had a 5 team Fischer Section then it would have had a big impact.

Overall I think it's only at end of the season that we'll be able to tell how it worked out but I think it can only be seen as a good thing that TL is willing to experiment to make things better

Well, as deputy captain of the weakest team in the Fischer section I am not very happy, we have a 94 points gap to the next team (and >130 to the second next) which is more than the gap across the whole Spassky (91 points) or Kasparov (35 points) sections. It is not a surprise that top and lower sections are less balanced, but to me this begs the question if a swiss system could be more appropriate.

I see three major issues with a swiss system:
- games have to be concluded before the next round. This would pretty much force to have two weeks per round, and even then we would need strict policies for unplayed and especially unfinished games.
- players can only enter one team.
- I guess TD would normally not be allowed to play if there is one single tournament.

One option would be to have two tournaments running in parallel with a delay of one week between them. So week 1 starts R1 in tournament A, week 2 starts R1 in tournament B, week 3 starts R2 for tournament A, etc. This would allow players to register in more than one team, although they would still only get one game per week. And this would also allow TD to act as TD in one tournament and play in the other one.

The other (or another non incompatible) option would be to split between an open tournament and a say U1900 or whatever (I would personally consider player limits rather than team limits). This would reduce the imbalance in the first say two rounds, but maybe we have not that many teams for that. We could even have 4 tournaments in parallel, open and capped for tournaments A and B.

The main advantages I see are:
- generally swiss system ensures opponents of similar strength after a couple of rounds
- no need for all that rating engineering you've been discussing in other threads. You submit a team and you play, full stop.

Moreover, this should encourage more homogeneous teams (there is no especial interest in mixing very strong players with very week ones to bring the average rating to a certain level). In my opinion, teams with very different ratings within the team and who do not always play with the same lineup severely distort the round robin system, since not all teams are really facing the same opponents.

I know this would be a major revolution, and there may be many other issues I have not considered, but well, those are my thoughts.

As far as Fischer section goes fact that RainbowWarriors_Azul and FlamingPhoenixFighters didn't enter a team may have had an impact on cut offs.

As an aside as imbalance in top and bottom section are greatest actually my suggestion was to make it so that Spassky is let's say a U2000 section with Fischer being any team over 2000 and doing same with bottom section at a relevant cut off with notification before entry so teams know what they're entering for.

Section cut offs can be modified but basic premise is that no team ends up in Fischer when not aiming for it and in same way for bottom section if you know section rating in advance you can get teams under limit without being way below section cap. For example Mysterious_Pawn_Moves is 1608.25 in an U1772.25 section

As for swiss system actually the bigger problem is making pairings. For example in a standard competition with 30 entrants (we have 30 teams this season) they are arranged in terms of rating and team 1 in rankings is paired with team 16 etc. This means in round 1 top Fischer Team (Team Avg.: 2225.75) would be paired with 4th team in Kasparov (Team Avg.: 1898.00). Then in next round assuming all the strongest teams win it would be 1 vs 9 (Team Avg.: 2007.25). You can do accelerated pairings but even that has potential for mismatches.

Actually if using swiss system concept it's actually better to use it in combination with current group system. If let's say each section is made with rating difference in mind. Let's say that as there are 12 teams between 1870.50 and 1941. In that case all 12 teams could be in same section and play a swiss although you can then argue it can make 2 good groups of 6 or as we did this time a 3/6/3 split for relevant teams. This concept is mainly useful in a scenario where let's say we have 6 teams at 2200, 10 teams at 2000 and then 6 teams at 1800. Old system would place some 2000 and 1800 teams together but having potential for larger groups might be useful or you can split 10 into 2 5's

Another thing that sounds a bit scary is how tie breakers work in a swiss system

I noticed in news post it said "Captains may add new players until the beginning of round 6" that might be a typo as finals are round 6.

Good catch. I think the logical thing to do is to allow adding players throughout the regular season, so the cutoff would be the round 5. We'll update the homepage with a proper announcement later.

We've had some discussions about using a Swiss system before; the objections are mostly administrative (no extensions possible, rulings on games have to be done in a certain time, each new round means setting all the pairings and so forth). Also, your point about TDs sitting out the competition does not appeal to me, for obvious reasons.

Hello,

In reply to alexmontes.

My main objections against single Swiss system tourney in TL are:

1) Lower-rated teams will NEVER be able to win the tourney or even finish close to the top. And this will discourage players with rather low TL rating and maybe even make them think to abandon Teamleague. When I participate (as a player, not a team) in any big FIDE swiss system open tourney (not splitted into sections), I clearly understand I will finish very far from the top, but my own incentive is possible increment to my FIDE rating if I performed well during the tourney and some good games (if any) played against stronger players. In a team tourney like Teamleague, the driving force and objectives are distributed between personal achievements and team's achievements, perhaps with more weight for the latter.

2) Following the above-mentioned consideration, I think the situation with "homogenous teams" will be completely opposite comparing with what alexmontes said, because a homogenous team consisting of rather low-rated players has no chances to reach high places in such a tourney. The only way for such players to share the feeling and spirit of successful team will be possessing 5th and 6th board slots, playing occasionally for a stronger teams (and even this possibility is limited, as there is always strong correspondence between personal and teams' ratings, even for substitutes).

Thus, I think this is far from approach Teamleague intends to develop and implement.

Even now, having 5 Sections this Season, we point out that average ratings' range throughout the highest and the lowest sections is rather big (183.5 [2225.75-2042.25] in the Fischer and 273.75 [1758.75-1485.00] in the Karpov), reducing the chances of lowest-rated teams in these two sections. But everyone understands that this is a fair balance between number of opponents (number of rounds) and number of sections (and, consequently, the ratings' range in a section). But the full range throughout all sections is now 740.75! Does anybody wants to compete in such a section? I can hardly imagine.