Inter-nation Team Tournament

[dorbel]

Fibs Inter-Nation Tournament.

A progress report.

Entries have now closed and voting for teams and captains is taking place. We received 76 entries before 2359 UTC October 16th. I refused to invite one entrant, one entrant withdrew before voting commenced and one entrant withdrew after voting commenced, leaving us with 73 entrants chasing 48 places.
We have 16 teams. I made provision for Team Europe, for those European entrants who preferred to represent Europe, or whose country could not field a full team. I also included a Rest of the World team, to accommodate five players whose country could not field a full team. In addition, I decided to include a second team from the USA, partly because their entry was larger than any other and partly so that we would have exactly 16 teams.
The teams will be Austria, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Europe, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Rest of the World, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, USA 1 and USA 2.
You will see that the name has mutated slightly, to be the Fibs Inter-Nation Tournament. I thought that this more accurately represented the nature of the competition.
There will be a draw on fibs next week to divide the teams into groups of 4. One fibster will draw numbers from a hat, while a second tells us which team corresponds to that number. The draw will be entirely random, with no seeding. Each team in the group will play a tie against each of the others in a league format. Each player will play a 7 point match against each of the other three players, so a tie will consist of 9 matches in all. The team winning 5 or more matches will win the tie. When all matches are complete, the team winning the most ties will head the group. If two teams win the same number of ties (very likely), then individual matches won will decide. If teams are still level on individual matches, then the result when the two teams met will be the decider. I hope that that is clear!
As soon as all the voting is complete and team captains appointed, I will post the final teams and hold the draw.
I look forward to a tough contest, in which friendly and sporting competition will be the rule. Thank you very much to all entrants and thank you to all those who have sent their good wishes.

[Tomawaky]

Great job dorbel
I wish you and for all the players a very good competition.

[Slipshod]

And who will represent Nigeria?