Seedings for 2014

We have benefited by several new teams arriving in the league for 2014, bringing our total to 20.  The range in size between the smallest and largest teams is greater than last year, and to address this I am proposing to go to a two-division format based on team size.  This would provide for two 10-team divisions run as 7-round Swisses.  The U1600 division from last year will be dropped.  If we maintain a two division structure in the future, I will promote the top two finishers from Division B into Division A, and relegate the bottom two finishers from Division A into Division B.

The splits, based on team sizes as of today (Jan. 13), would be as follows:

If there are no significant issues with this two division structure raised by the admins this week, I will develop the first round pairings to be posted on Saturday, Jan. 18, with the matches scheduled to start Saturday, Feb. 1.  I will also post the schedule for the remaining six rounds.

Looks reasonable to me.

I like it as well. That's a good idea.

I am almost thinking ABC is needed but i would find it difficult to make a group that tiny and only have 6 people, it would make the rounds down to 5 instead of what, 8 or 9? It would make the games slightly more competitive though, I think. I get the feeling the bottom teams (Newer ones) wont be playing all the rounds.

I am hoping that the Swiss system will provide more equitable pairings in the later rounds and encourage all teams to stay engaged for the full season.

I just disagre with a team being in a different division by the mere difference of two players. Granted these are their total numbers, not the total that actually play. I am sure your judgement will lead to a good tournament valley boy :)

Just one more team playing and we could have done three 7-team divisions playing round-robin.  But we took all the teams that responded to us and we're looking forward to a great season.

Great job Admins for putting this together. congratulations

I was looking up the size of the teams and there are big differences and to make it more even for 2015 we should do round-robin with smaller groups like 4 division of 5 teams top team moves up and lowest team moves down at the end of each season.  right now the top team on division A has 1200 players and the lowest team on division A has 277, there is a big gap. same with division B 275 vs 46. those teams should not be competing in the same division.

Round-robin would be much simpler for me since I wouldn't have to make new Swiss pairings each round.  Having an odd number of teams in a division would mean byes, which I was trying to avoid since we are only playing seven rounds.  Let's see how competitive the two divisions are this year, it may be that the biggest teams don't turn out to the winners.

oh I didn't think about the odd number, we can make them even, 6 teams per division.  for next year, I can post the league on my group Latino. I think in my group I have players from every country in the americas. 

That would be great.  There are still a number of South and Central American countries with teams that did not respond to our requests to join the league.

Remind me around November and I would push the other teams to join up. 

Yes that was my problem as well, a 2 man difference placed teams in either division. At the same time, no where near all the players join up for either group, so it is not neccesarily a guarenteed win.

I've seen in the World League that team size is a very bad indicator for team strength. A better indicator is the maximum number of participants a team has had in a recent team match.

I know my team Rompiendo Fronteras with 300 members can do 80 people matches with no problem, in the other hand New Jersey with over 500 players has problems getting 50 players to a match.