League – 1st and 2nd Division weekends.
League Scoring
1. There is nothing in the rules to prevent as many teams as wish to doing this next or any season, provided that the last
of the weekends takes place on or before the day of the first League match. With that proviso, all it requires is the teams
who want to organising themselves and being prepared to meet the expenses and possibly find a T.D. There will be some teams
who do not wish to participate in the combined weekend, and these teams will have to be played according to existing rules.
2. The League has existed in its present format for round about fifty years. I find it difficult to just throw away the
present traditional format with which, by and large, everyone is happy.
3. Unless the weekends take place before the season gets under way, it would be necessary for each team in the two divisions
to set up a squad of players large enough to cover all eventualities who would all be debarred from playing in matches prior
to the second weekend for any other team.
4. If this were to be made the set format for the first and second divisions, some teams might find it impossible to raise
teams of their best players as many will have spouses who are not their League bridge partners who may well not be happy at
the prospect of the players being involved for two full weekends and in some cases having to sleep away. For this reason,
it would have to be voluntary so, back to paragraph 1. Equally, some players might not find it attractive to have to play
so intensely over such short periods (64 boards a day for two days on one of the weekends) and might drop out of the teams.
5. To obviate the effects of paragraph 3, it might be that one of the two weekends suggested would have to be before the
start of the season. (The other would be the first match date of the season.) It is difficult enough to find seven League
dates without major clashes with EBU and other counties’ events. An eighth might well be impossible. And, by virtue of the
fact that only a minority of League players would be involved, a clash for that match date might have to be considered less
important than for the other dates.
It might be said that clashes are not so important for teams below the second division, but is this entirely true? Not so
high a proportion of players of lower divisional status will be involved but nevertheless those who wish to be involved in
the potentially clashing events should not be deprived just because the first and second divisions wish to be reorganised.
6. The League is basically a winter event and the effects of weather or an epidemic of, say, flu interfering with one of the
designated weekends would be catastrophic.
League – Scoring.
1. The League has had the present scoring system for very many years and most players seem happy with it.
Why try to fix what is not broken?
2. Whatever scoring system is adopted, there will be times when to re-score a division using a different system
would produce a different result, thus making some teams very happy, or the converse.
3. The present system is that which is used for almost all Multiple Teams and Swiss Teams events throughout the bridge world.
4. If the system were to be changed, would we be faced next season with a request to change back again when some team
becomes disadvantaged?