Axd/mini tournament

The challenge:

Organise a three-day tournament + initiation event for 90-some beginner-level players, Knockout, with only four 9x9/13x13 gobans, four clocks and enough stones. And a paper and pencil. OK - let's also admit a spreadsheet application.

Some players have already played before and will do a training round, others have never and need an initiation round; separate the strong players in the pairings (slide pairing), and keep the women together. Make sure not to run out of time, and increase the difficulty towards the last rounds: as an example, start with 1 winning 9x9 (1W9), then 2W9, then 2W13 (the idea is to ideally fill up the available time, using the available resources). As a reference, use 25 stones per 5 minutes. Try to plan hour-per-hour.

Table of contents game times, including changeover number of rounds needed for N players women sub-tournament time planning: the Knapsack Problem See also

game times, including changeover

Because the first rounds play on smaller boards, the time per round differs, which has an impact on the tournament planning; understanding this allows to find out how much games can be played in an allocated period (eg 3 days of approx 8 hours/day).

@ 25 stones / 5 min, no byoyomi (1W9 = one winning 9x9), round up to the next 5 or 10 minutes to allow for changeover

1W9  = 9*9/5 = 16 min    => 20m
2W9  = 3*9*9/5 = 49 min  => 50m
3W9  = 5*9*9/5 = 81 min  => 90m
1W13 = 13*13/5 = 34 min  => 40m
2W13 = 3*13*13/5 = 101 m => 110m
3W13 = 5*13*13/5 = 169 m => 175m

From this table, we see that e.g. a board for a 13x13 match with two winning games should be planned for 110 minutes.

number of rounds needed for N players

N   r=N.log2
2          1
4          2
8          3
16         4

women sub-tournament

The idea is to insert the women player tree in the overall tree, rather than scatter them throughout the player field.

Example: 6 women require 3 rounds:

  1 1 1
3 3
5
  2 2
4 4
6
^
+--- extra round to handle non-2**n cases (round 2 contains the byes)

In case such a subtree is needed, replace part of the main tree with it, then proceed with the allocation of places of the remainder of the player field.

It becomes more hard when one tries to separate men from women AND training rounds from initiation rounds (the idea being to have each category compete internally before facing the other categories.)

(Side issue: Discrimination in Go)

time planning: the Knapsack Problem

The basic unit to use is the board_time unit: 1bu = 1 board used during 1 minute. So, six 2W13 matches will use 6*110 bu = 660bu; with e.g. 3 gobans, this event will require at least 220 minutes ( 660/3 ) to complete. Decide on the game form for each round (e.g. 2W13 for final round, or ring 1, 2W13 for semi finals (ring 2), 2W9 for quarter finals (ring 3), 1W9 for eights (ring 4))

The idea is to draw a grid with rounds on the X-axis, and game types on the Y-axis. Then, look for the optimal format to fill the allocated time.

A handy way is to combine a spreadsheet's "sum()" function with the mouse to try the most interesting combinations.

See also

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem

See also

• Organizing a Tournament