Schedule & seeding (Closed for comments)
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Problem 1:
Hockey Schedule. Teams that do not make it past the group stage have no more games. Teams like Australia travel a long way for only 3 games. Encouraging strong teams to play in the B tournament.
Problem 2:
Team seeding/ranking. Teams are not accurately seeded, making groups not fair. And if this problem is combined with the hockey schedule problem, then better teams miss out on playing while less strong teams keep playing.
Problem 3:
Teams not wanting to play in the A tournament, lots of teams wanting to play in the B tournament.
Problem 4:
Good teams not going to Unicon. Strong USA hockey teams, Strong UK teams, South Korea and Hong Kong have really good teams. All were not at Unicon 17.
Idea for a solution to Problem 1:
Hockey Schedule. All teams play the same amount of games, weather it play-off for 1st or 21st. They do this in the German Unicycle Hockey League, they also did this at Unicon Denmark and Eurocycle 2013. Teams still played on after not making it past the group stage.
Idea for a solution to Problem 2 & 3:
Team seeding. I was talking to a lot of hockey players about this. An idea form Arne; have a qualifying day/ half day at the start of Unicon. All the teams, play short games to work out seeding. Then split it 50/50 teams in A and B tournaments. It should be an achievement to make the A tournament.
Idea for a solution to Problem 4:
Hopefully if we solve the problems 1-3 then more of the world’s top teams are likely to attend. And will all enjoy their Unicon :)
Ashley Curtis.
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I don't know how seeding/ranking is supposed to work. I notice this is not included in our Rulebook which only tells you how to play, score and referee individual games. Maybe we need a Tournament section?
Ashley/Arne's idea for qualifying day/half day for all teams sounds like the only logical way to determine where a team should fit. Yes there are downsides to this approach. More gym time is required (though some of it could happen outdoors, weather permitting). Some riders might not be able to attend the first day(s) of the convention. But these things are constants; they would apply to any solution. If you only have a finite amount of gym time available, a qualifying day seems like a better use of that time than a full-on round robin tournament. As for late-arriving riders, the seeding woud have to be firmly determined at qualifying time, regaredless of missing riders. I would perhaps allow teams to use "substitute" riders for people who can't be present for qualifying. This would have to be documented, where the team would have to use the specified missing person, or could keep the substitute, but not do any other team changes unless they are allowed by the existing rules.
As for Problem 4, it's not really worth worrying about. You just can't make people show up to these things. Sometimes the team members are present at the competition, but have to elect to do different competitions because Hockey (or Basketball) require a large committment of time, and might keep people from being able to participate in their favorite events. You can try to incentivize them, bribe them or even raise funds to help "attract" them to the competition, or the Hockey tournament. I'm all for that. Good luck. :-)
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You don't talk about a Hockey Rule here. Like John said, we don't discripe how to organize a competition.
Your problem 3 we have in the German league too.
Maybe we have 6-8 very good teams. The teams between 9 and 15 are not bad some of them don't want to play against the better teams.
So they choose their tournaments so that they don't rise up in the ranking. Than they can play the B-Final and win some games and don't lose every game in the Quali- or Finaltournament.
Maybe it is wrong that a team can choose by oneself if it want to play A or B at the Unicon.
A possibiliy is that we put all teams in one tournament. Than we make some groups and in the first round we play very short games. (Exp. 8min or less)
It is like your proposal. But that all depands on the gym capacity.
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As an organiser, I am very concerned about additional days to the schedule for hockey. It is already one of the events that requires the most gym space and competition days at Unicon. If both Idea 1 and Idea 2 are added to the rulebook, that is a huge time increse. However, like John said, it might also be possible to do a short qualification and then make the main tournament shorter as a result.
I think one of the main reasons medium level teams sign up for B is so that they can play more games. If they play in A, they will probably lose quickly and then not get to play anymore. Idea 1 would help solve this.
I am starting to see a good idea take shape:
- Every team starts in one short qualification round for everyone.
- From there, Teams are split into A and B (~60/40 so that medium-good teams are put in A)
- B tournament is played in a normal bracket style. Many of the B teams are just there for fun and compete in other competitions so they don't have so much free time for hockey at Unicon. Also then less gym time is needed.
- A tournament is played "German style" where every team gets to play a lot.
For me, I see this as a good solution. Everyone is putting in the right bracket (approximately). The just-for-fun teams get to play a few games but it's not too serious and don't use much gym time. The medium teams get put in A but doesn't get kicked out right away; they still get to play lots of games. The top teams qualify, play, and win usual.
I'm not a real hockey player so I would appeciate your comments.
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I am also not a Hockey expert, but Scott's solution sounds like a good model for seeding.
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Maybe it is possible to play the A tournament like in the german league. But if you have mor than 7 Teams you will have a lot of time between your games.
Also we would lose the finals In the style of Scott's proposal we have to find 12 Teams in the short qualification round.
Than we play in two groups of six. After this we have two half-finals 1 vs 2 and 2 vs 1, the bronze medal game and the final.
If you have more time you can make a loser round for the Teams 3 to 6 in the Groups.
I don't agree with you if you say in the B tournament they play only for fun. If the Eurocycle or the Unicon is in Europe you will have a lot of German B and C Teams.
Here are playing younger Players and Girls/woman. Of course they are weaker than the man between 18 an 30 years in the A-Teams. But they play with the same interest and the same Intention.
So I think it is difficult to write somethink in the rules. Every host shout try the best to find as much as possible time in the gymes. Talk to People who have some experience with hockeytournament a know a lot of Teams. I think during a big competition like the unicon it is possible to play from 8 am to 10 pm. That is enought time to play two Groups of 6 Teams with two halfs of 10-12 mintutes. In Germany we play from 10am to 6pm with one Group of six.
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I guess I don't exactly understand what Jan is proposing here. (Feel free to post it here in both German and English, most of the people in this committee understand German and then we can help translate.)
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I agree with Ashley's issues and do think this should be fixed. Scott might have the best idea so far.
I would also like to add that both the A and B brackets should be required to have quarter finals and semi finals. Not sure if this is in the rules already but I know for the B bracket for basketball at the last unicon, they didn't have any finals. Every team just played each other and that was it. I'll start a discussion in basketball about this. The games are much more exciting and intense when you know it's the finals and playing for a medal.
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I meant a semi finals and finals at a minimum. Quarter finals optional.
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Hello Ashley,
Sorry for not participating in this discussion yet.
Currently, the IUF hockey rules only describe the game itself but not
how a host can organize a whole tournament. There is actually a proposal
in the Main Committee of this IUF Rulebook Committee which wants to
clearly separate rules for the host from the rest of the rules.
Nevertheless, I find the ideas presented here very important! I suggest
that we keep collecting possible tournament structures. Then, based on
the number of teams, the available time and gym space, the organizer can
choose the most suitable option.
Best regards
Rolf