Country team league

[Biggles]

I'd like to see 4-6 man country specific teams set up to play against each other, representing their respective countries.  Use either 4 or 6 man teams, and let's get playing!  Let's see who is the best BG country, and prove it on the bg board.

Tomawaky?

 

[webrunner]

Sounds nice!
Count me in.. although my country might not want me

[diane]

Is there a handicap based on the size of a country?  

One country that is the size of europe all pooled together ought to be broken down at least a little!!


Having said which - i still think Finland is in with a very good chance!!

But it still sounds fun - shame all the really good players i know cant be gotten near fibs! Still - i would be in - me and you Alef (or do you technically count as American??) ?? - Oh yes, Bountyhunter??  Hmmm - who else??  Of course, I too am assuming some stuff here....

[Tomawaky]

Here you can find the number of player per country subscribed in the FibsLeaGammon :
http://fibsleagammon.free.fr/fcountry.php

here is the results :
usa  58  
france  26  
germany  24  
greatbritain  23  
europe  10  
australia  9  
italy  9  
finland  7  
canada  7  
sweden  6  
denmark  5  
switzerland  5  
no country specified . 4  
brazil  4  
argentina  3  
spain  3  
netherlands  3  
greece  3  
malaysia  2  
mexico  2  
turkey  2  
israel  2  
india  1  
belgium  1  
austria  1  

So it's maybe a good idea for the 4 first teams but that's not much.
We can extend to the 7 below if we consider all of them will accept to play those kind of event.
But more players we have in a team and more chance there is ;-).

If we consider Tryout's TEAM League, there is 3 USA Team, 3 German and 1 french but I am not sur that it will be easy for some people to accept to play with other in the same country if they not appreciate one or another player.

So, yes it's a great idea and I will be pleased if we can make it. But I think there is a long way to go.....

[alef]

To make it fair I think that there should be two teams each for UK, Germany and France and four teams for the USA. Maybe limit a team to four players? US can split using timezones. Perhaps the UK and France can divide into capitols and provinces? Germany, well, historically it might be too painfully to make them divide again    

[Kari_Grandi]

So, yes it's a great idea and I will be pleased if we can make it. But I think there is a long way to go.....

funny co-incidence. Blotman just gave me an idea (last week) about "continental cup" (about the same as ryder-cup in golf). Best players from US and best players from Europe.
I think it's worth while to think about that format also!?

Kari

[KDP]

instead of a team league  why not try a 3 or 5 person country tournament?  2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5 advances to the next round.  if the format proves successful then perhaps it could be expanded into a permanent league format.

[Ramses]

The idea of a country-tourney is great!   But i think the problem is that only a few can participate (mostly the high-rated players). So what to do with all the "normal"-rated players?
maybe we should think about a kind of qualifying for the country-teams.
Or we play withe several Teams in different Country-Leagues.
Another suggestion for the countries without such an big amount of players like UK, France, U.S., or Germany maybe they can join together to build 1 Team, i.E. Suisse and Austria or what about a joint-team from Greek and Turkey  
Before i forget it, i really would like to see a Ryders-Cup played om Fibs. Great Idea!

Ramses

[burper]

I like the idea of qualifying bracket tournaments for each position, but you would have to hold them one at a time in sequence, with the winner of each tourney excluded from the next tourney (they already made the team). We can use TourneyBot for this part. Make it so the first tourney is for position one, then two and three. A country qualifies for team participation if they get >= 8 players in the first qualfying tournament.

Then have the country teams play each other like the fibsleagammon TEAM tourneys, with each position on each team playing against the same position on each other country team. That way you can leverage some of the scripts on fibsleagammon already there.

I don't think you need to divide up big countries like the US, as the qualifying rounds make sure everyone can participate. The smaller countries with too few players (<8?) could join with any other small country to get enough players (no more than 16). Who decides this? The players themselves, as follows:

A helpful TB moderator opens a qualifying bracket tourney for small country A (by request in a forum thread). Players from that country register, but after some time (a week?) find they still have only 5 or 6 players). Same thing happens with small country B. After discussion in the fibsboard threads, B players all dropout out their tourney and join the A tourney, which is now the qualifying bracket for round 1 of AB, and the B tourney can still get used for round 2.

In this way, any 2 small countries can decide to merge in order to get in, no matter where they are geographically. If they can't put aside any differences in order to get in, they get left out.

Great idea Biggles. What's the name going to be? The Biggles Cup?

To proceed, I propose that anyone else with a complete format propose it here, and then we can make a poll and vote. I propose 2: burper-format 3-person and burper-format 5-person, as described above, both with the 8 and 16 player limit rules for merging.

Antoher rule: a TD partidipating in the qualifying rounds for their country can not moderate those tournaments, but can moderate the qualifying rounds of any other country.

[tryout]

A few random thoughts on the topic from me:

I had thought in particular to adapt the Ryder Cup to FIBS. But I'd like not to exclude the other continents, however I think there aren't that many players from e.g. Australia or Asia or even Africa.

To overcome the differences in player counts from specific countries I think some sort of qualification can not be avoided. I guess allowing to let everybody play and taking the medium (of points or such) wouldn't work too well.
The qualification wouldn't have to be standardized. Every country should have a captain who organizes things (e.g. the qualification tourney/league/lottery ) and who doesn't even need to play.
And the final tournament will simply be the FIBS Team World Championships.  

This event should probably advertised whereever possible, e.g. on r.g.b., local clubs, other bg servers.

The teams don't even need to play like it's done right now in team league, but every player vs every player from the other team, making a bit for a change rating-wise of one's opponents. (Btw, I have plans to put up a (bracket) tournament with this format for the existing teams on FibsLeagammon when I find the time.)

[diane]

I like the qualifying arrangement put forward by burper - if all team players are selected in the same way - seems fairer somehow.

I prefer that all team players play all other team players (although thats another whole heap of matches - so best give this quite a while to run!!)

But still a tad uncomfortable that USA is picking one team from a pool more than twice the size of the next nearest .  Is there not an easy way to split this in to at least two??

I like the idea of advertising widely though - this might pull in a few new faces perhaps (or old ones who havent been around in a while   )

[Biggles]

You mean we can't use FIBS rating to qualify?  



I'll be interested in whatever format you guys deem appropriate....keep up the good work.


Biggles
(The most popular Fibster)

[burper]

Who is "you guys"?

[Biggles]

You FIBS TDs and moderators.......

I'm just a dopey wannabe bg player.....



Biggles
(Shuggie's sister's favorite weekend experience)

[Tomawaky]

Tryout captain idea make me think about how we can plan this country tourney.

1Ã,°/ The players wishing to take part must make known themselves.
2Ã,°/ These players will have to elect their captain between those who want to take this place.
3Ã,°/ All matches would have to be to plan for all the session has hours and fixed dates during the session (with varying schedules)
4Ã,°/ Then the captain will be in responsibility of organize who will take part in the different matches according to the players' disponibility. It will decide with organizing tourney or a mix of all other kind of judgment (rating, trust, discussion with his members, friendship,....etc)
5Ã,°/ So the other players would have the possibility to join and why not take part in the match (rules must be clear) or simply support his team.
6Ã,°/ At the end of the session, the captain could be re-elected to know if his management award him the pleasure to organise the next session or if he must stop.

I don't know if I success to point out my idea and if you find it good or not.
It  is just a start to see if it could be interesting or if it must be giving up ?

What is sure, is that it make captain very important to manage his team with some time to spend on it. But is it not what a team tournament could be ?

[JLee]

I think overall this is a great idea, and I'm ready to wave the red white and blue.

I really think that there shouldn't be any qualifying, and we REALLY should not use any FIBS ratings for anything.  Let's all start on an equal footing.

My suggestion:  teams of 3.  If a country has more than 3, then allow more than one team from that country.

If somebody is from a country that doesn't have 3 people, then allow merging of teams.

I do not like the idea of seeding the players on a team.  When Team A plays Team B, the players on the respective teams should be paired randomly.

Otherwise, all sorts of formats could be entertained.

JLee

[JLee]

The idea of a country-tourney is great!  But i think the problem is that only a few can participate (mostly the high-rated players). So what to do with all the "normal"-rated players?
maybe we should think about a kind of qualifying for the country-teams.
Or we play withe several Teams in different Country-Leagues.
Another suggestion for the countries without such an big amount of players like UK, France, U.S., or Germany maybe they can join together to build 1 Team, i.E. Suisse and Austria or what about a joint-team from Greek and Turkey 
Before i forget it, i really would like to see a Ryders-Cup played om Fibs. Great Idea!

Ramses

There is no way that any tournament should restrict people based on ratings in any way.  This should be a tournament for everybody, not just high rated players.

JLee

[Ramses]

I agree Jlee.

I think the way burper descriped the way of qualifying, i like most. But the position wher a player has to play in his Team should be decided by the Team or by the Teamcaptain.

What about play Matches, in the Countrey-Tourney, by best of 3 or best of 5 (5-point-matches?) to reduce the influence of luck a little?

Why not extend the normal Ryders-Cup format to all Continents so 5 teams have to play.
Don`t know how many players from Africa are on Fibs and from Asia as well. But if they are not enough maybe Australia will join Asia and the Middle-East will join Africa.

[Tomawaky]

Is there a good thing to have more than 1 team for a country ?

[burper]

Is there a good thing to have more than 1 team for a country ?

I don't think so. It's a little  like the Olympics. Everyone knows you have a bigger pool of players to draw on, just because you have a larger population. Still, only N players will be allowed on the team.

In any case, I can see that no concensus will ever be reached. I think it is up to someone to create a format and move on with creating it if they have the means. If it is any good, people will play.

If a couple of TourneyBot TD's would help me with it, I would spearhead a "Biggles Cup" world FIBS championship along the lines as I have proposed above, with team sizes of 3. Team qualifying rounds would take 2 months each (2 weeks signup, the rest for play, with maximum bracket size 64 and 1 week to play each match), and the final team play would take 2 months, with each team member playing against every other teams players (i.e. 9 potential matches between each 2 teams), with the most points at the end getting the cup.

For the 2004 Cup, round 1 would be help in May/June (better start soon with this!), round 2: July/August, round 3: Sept/Oct, finals: Nov/Dec. If there is a tie, we can do a playoff between the tying teams.

Any TD's interested in helping file off the rough edges and moving forward with this?