How much time needs to be alloted for an 8 team, team competition?

[milstdfarm]

I've never been in one as large as 8 teams.

How long would an event like this take?

I have to start planning for one we are hosting next Fall.

Thanks!

[oiuyt]

What's your tournament format?

Complete round robin between the teams? Straight DE? Seeding pools (of how many teams) into DE?

What's the format for a team match?

45-touch relay? 9 bout single-weapon match? 27 bout 3-weapon meet? Best of 9 5-touch bouts? Any of a bunch of other possibilities?

What weapon(s)?

-B

[milstdfarm]

What's your tournament format?

Complete round robin between the teams? Straight DE? Seeding pools (of how many teams) into DE?

What's the format for a team match?

45-touch relay? 9 bout single-weapon match? 27 bout 3-weapon meet? Best of 9 5-touch bouts? Any of a bunch of other possibilities?

What weapon(s)?

-B

You bring up several great questions. I had hoped to have 3 weapon but had all but dropped the idea because of time concerns. If only one weapon is fenced it will be foil.

8 teams is a fairly random number. I chose it as an upper limit because of time concerns.

I've toyed with the scoring sheets for a double elimination round robin vs a 45 touch relay to try to estimate time required.

Plus the teams will be very difficult to seed so I thought a double elimination round robin with random initial seed would be most fair.

I am in over my head at this point. I have a lot of learning to do in the next few months. I'm open to all comments and suggestions regarding format, seeding, etc.

Thanks!

[mfp]

What the heck is a "double elimination round robin"?

Other big influences on the time required include whether those running the event, those reffing the event or those fencing the event know what they're doing :)

[Allen Evans]

When you're in very deep water, it's a good time to chant "perfect is the enemy of 'good enough'" and abandon fancy strokes for an old fashioned dog-paddle.

Do two pools of four teams (individual bouts) into a DE of 8, single elimination. You should be able to push that out in short order.

A

[AllezCat]

Rain City runs a team tournament every year, so we've got a fair amount of experience doing this. We usually adjust the format based on the number of teams. Sometimes just a pool, sometimes a round of pools with the top 4 to DE, whatever. Search FRED for "Ray Coates" and you'll find results going back several years.

Assuming standard 45-touch relay format, a team match typically takes about 45 minutes. Add in the time for team captains to set their bout order for the next match, call it an hour.

Most important in planning your format is how many "rounds" of matches you'll need. Note, for all the following we assume you have enough strips and referees for all teams to be fencing at once.

For a pool, take the pool size and round it down to an odd number. That is the number of rounds of matches needed to complete the pool if as many teams as possible fence at once. So for a pool of 3 or 4, it takes 3 rounds. Pool of 5 or 6, 5 rounds. Pool of 7 or 8, 7 rounds. Bigger than that? Probably don't want to go there, it will take forever. If the pool is an odd number of teams, it takes as long as a pool 1 bigger, but one team is idle each "round". They get to help referee.

A DE bracket takes as many rounds as there are tables in the bracket, whether you fence out all places or not. Table of 16? 4 rounds. Table of 8? 3 rounds.

So, say you have 10 teams. I would do 2 pools of 5 (5 rounds) with the top 4 to a DE with fence-off for third (2 rounds). 7 rounds times 45 minutes is about 5-1/2 hours (or more if you're feeling pessimistic). The pools mean that everyone gets at least 4 matches.

For your example of 8 teams, you could do 2 pools of 4 (3 rounds) with a DE of 8 (3 rounds) as Allen says for 6 rounds total, or a giant pool of 8, 7 rounds total. Takes an extra 45 minutes, but everybody gets to fence everybody. The drawback to a giant pool is that you don't get the excitement of a gold medal match, though you can sometimes arrange it by jiggering around with the bout order so the two presumably strongest teams happen to fence each other last.

Fencing Time has a team seeding method that assigns points based on team members' ratings. It seems to do a good job. I'll let Dan weigh in on the specifics.

Team tournaments are a ton of fun, you can charge a decent amount of money for them, and everyone leaves really tired. Good luck!

[Stormbringer]

I've recently run a large team event with the following specifications:
- three weapon tournament (21 foil teams, 10 epee teams, 5 sabre teams)
- staggered start times (foil, then epee, then sabre) by 2-hour intervals
- epee was generally self-reffed (semi-final and final matches were reffed); there were enough referees for the conventional weapons
- each event consisted of a pool round (double-stripped pools of 5-6 teams fencing matches to 15 points) and a DE round (100% advancement, matches to 45 points)
- a total of 12 available strips
- teams had a 10 minute break between DE matches in each event
- USFA rules were generally enforced, despite the tournament being not-USFA-sanctioned
- pre-registration was mandatory; anyone who did not pre-register was not permitted to fence (this greatly accelerated the check-in process)

The foil event took approximately 8.5 hours from start-of-pools to the end of the final DE match. The epee event took about 6.5 hours. The sabre event took around 3 hours.

With only 8 foil teams... assuming you are having a pool round (one large double-stripped pool, or two pools of 4 teams each?) AND you have no technical issues AND that your tournament would be generally similar in format to mine (I, too, would like to know what a "double elimination round robin" would entail...), I would estimate a time requirement of about 4-6 hours.

Milstdfarm, what kind of time limit is it that you have?

[milstdfarm]

As of right now I don't have a time limit. But we are trying to do it in a public location to draw spectators and the Press so I have to deal with the space's manager. I need to tell them how long this will last. I was thinking the 6-8 hour range was rational.

I didn't word it properly when I said 'double elimination round robin..." What I was thinking of was using a double elimination bracket with 45 touch relay bouts as one possibility. The other possibility was a 45 touch relay starting with pools and going to DE's.

Effective seeding will be nearly impossible as we will be dealing with college club teams who typically have lots of non-USFA fencers with no rating or track record.

[Blackwood]

I don't know much about this, but one question I haven't seen asked is how many strips (and refs) do you have. If an event (or part of an event) can be fenced on multiple strips, it will obviously take less time if those strips are available. I believe the rule of thumb is that a 45-touch relay match takes 60 minutes for epee and foil and 50 minutes for sabre.

[milstdfarm]

how many strips (and refs) do you have.

I'm asking the venue for space for 4 strips.

[coerciveutopian]

The Griffon Cup at Reed College started as a team foil event with other schools in the NW. We usually had 5-8 teams and fenced round robin. With 3-4 referees we usually got through most of the table in 7 hours but never got to do all of it. We just made sure the teams that were doing well got to fence each other so we had a clear first, second, and third place.

[PeterGustafsson]

Hi!

I'm asking the venue for space for 4 strips.

Assuming that you have at least 4 refs, you can keep all teams going all the time. This format requires no knowledge of team strength, and the bouts get more evenly matched as the competition progresses.

Name the teams A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H. Assign a letter to each team randomly.

Round#1
Piste 1, bout#1: AvE
Piste 2, bout#2: BvF
Piste 3, bout#3: CvG
Piste 4, bout#4: DvH

Round#2
Piste 1, bout#5: winnerb#1vwinnerb#3
Piste 2, bout#6: winnerb#2vwinnerb#4
Piste 3, bout#7: loserb#1vloserb#3
Piste 4, bout#8: loserb#2vloserb#4

Round#3
Piste 1, bout#9: winnerb#5vwinnerb#6
Piste 2, bout#10: loserb#5vloserb#6
Piste 3, bout#11: winnerb#7vwinnerb#8
Piste 4, bout#12: loserb#7vloserb#8

Finished. No need for a BC doing any sort of calculations during the competition, just plug in in winners and losers in the spots.

Results:
1. Winner bout#9
2. Loser bout#9
3. Winner bout#10
4. Loser bout #10
5. Winner bout#11
6. Loser bout#11
7. Winner bout#12
8. Loser bout #12

Everybody gets to fence 3 bouts, and you are done in about 3 hours.

If you instead do 1 round of 4-poules, followed by 100% promotion to a DE tree without repechage, you will be done in 6 hours. In that case, teams finishing #1-4 will fence 6 matches, and the rest will fence 4.


Have a nice time!

Peter Gustafsson