alternate tournament formats

[mmatsen]

So my university's Athletic Dept is making up for losing our club's grounded strips (how do you lose a couple hundred pounds of copper?!?!) by giving us -three whole days- in the main gym to hold tournaments. We're thinking about using them to try out formats different from the usual individuals in pools/straight to DEs. One might be a 3-person team competition (most fencers in the area are university club affiliated, and come out en masse)... does anyone experience or suggestions running that sort of tourney? Or anything else out of the ordinary?

[flik]

Binghamton, eh? I remember you guys trying to find the strips at one of last semester's tournies...

Team formats are cool. The UR did one last spring (Binghamton skipped it - you bums) that didn't go over too badly (considering it was the same day as the Cleveland NAC - my bad) There's also a big one at RMC in Canadia land that's a hell of a tourny! Didn't make it this year (they didn't want a group of Yankees on a military base!) but they normally have a HUGE turnout.

To encourage more of the local university clubs to come, use the old team format - counting bouts won instead of total points. That way if you have some fencers who aren't up to par you can't get too far behind.

I'm offering my services as an armorer at your next tourny anyway... could always help run the thing in addition to fixing all of your strips drop me an email and we'll talk.

[darius]

One of the most bizarre tournaments I ever attended is an annual one in Toronto; they split up all the fencers who show into 3 categories; good, better, and best. (beginner, intermediate, expert)

Each team consists of a randomly-picked member from each pool. So basically, everybody gets new teammates that they may or may not know. Then they fence the best-of-9 bouts format that Jeremy just talked about.

I was really skeptical when I heard about it, but it ended up being a heckuva lot of fun.

darius

[vegan]

My club just hosted an epee invitational-
yes, they mean by invite only. The format was as follows:
1 pool of 15, everyone fences everyone in five touch bouts
seed into 4 pools of three, losing 3 fencers (they have not made the cut)
fence 15 touch bouts in this pool.
take the winners and seed them (by victory, indicator, ts, tr) into a table of 4- with 15 touch bouts.
Fun- this is a lot of fencing!!!
Cheers
B.
Ps. no, I did not fence, I fence foil!

[rjccj]

You could do it the old style, with 5 touch pools all the way up, with like 80% advancement after each round. Or you could do two rounds of seeding pools and then into a DE bracket.

[Moniteur]

One touch round robin epee is fun as well..

Oh...and on the subject of the grounded strips... what you would want to bet that someone got the idea of selling them off for scrap... 'hey...thats a lotta copper.. i bet the we could supply the frat with beer for a year if we stole those rolls of copper and sold it.... '

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Chris Holzman
Moniteur D' Escrime

[This message has been edited by Moniteur (edited 03-08-2001).]

[Oor Wullie]

Something that is becoming a little more popular over here is a 40'er.

The format is simple: between 40 - 48 fencers are split into 8 poules. After the first poule, the fencers are split into two sets of four poules according to their seeding (the top half of the fencers in one group, and the bottom half in the other). These two sets are now seperate entities, and noone from the bottom can cross into the top, and vice versa.

Another round of poules is fenced, and the split occurs again, so we now have 4 different groups, with 2 poules in each.

The next round of poules splits the fencers into 8 poules, each poule theoretically having fencers of the same level. This final round is fenced, and medals are awarded for the winnners/ runners up of each poule.

This is a good system for encouraging beginners to fence, as they get a chance to fight better fencers, then find their level as the day progresses with a chance of winning a medal at the end of it all.

Not only that, but the fencers all get four poules, which can be between 16-20 fights. That's a lot of fencing!

[BarryTice]

Someone recently mentioned an all-pool format to me that has the first round of pools seeding into the second round of pools normally, with all advancing.

The second round of pools decides how the third round is set: The top six fencers get in pool 1, the next six fencers get into pool 2, etc. You can't finish the tournament better (or worse) than the places assigned to your pool. The worst fencer in pool 1 will finish the event in sixth place.

This gives the novice fencers two pool rounds against some good fencers, and a pool round against people closer to their ability.

It also gives you a pool of really good fencing, with a better representation of who is the best fencer than a DE, where someone who might otherwise be head and shoulders above everyone else might get beat in a close scrape against one fencer with some unusual style that doesn't prove effective against anyone else.

I've seen that happen in a tournament last fall where the chairman of the division in a neighboring state was in my pool. Fencer A stomped everyone in my pool except for Fencer B. Fencer B beat Fencer A 5-0. That was the only pool bout Fencer B won. Go figure.

[sabreuse]

Our division opens the season each year with the "Cookie Classic" foil tournament. After all of the fencers are registered, the bout committee draws 3-person teams out of a hat. After that, fence in the regular pool/DE format. At the beginning of the year, we never know who is going to show up so it's kind of interesting fencing on a team with someone you don't know. We charge a reduced entry fee ($10 instead of our regular $15) and give plates of homemade cookies instead of trophies to the winners (3 dozen to the first place team, 2 dozen to the 2nd place team, 1 dozen to the 2 3rd place teams).