Cancelling Matches

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Alex Holowczak
Posts: 9085
Joined: Sat May 30, 2009 5:18 pm
Location: Oldbury, Worcestershire

Re: Cancelling Matches

Post by Alex Holowczak » Thu May 04, 2017 6:16 pm

Kevin Thurlow wrote:What annoys me is people conceding matches when they expect to lose, especially if they will have a longish journey to do so.
There was a rule that actively encouraged this in the Wolverhampton League, which existed until a few years ago.

My club made the mistake of winning the league on tie-break, gamepoints - after a team defaulted against us. So we got 6 gamepoints and won the league. Amidst cries of foul, the tie-break was amended such that if Team A tied with Team B, and Team B beat Team C by default, then the gamepoints didn't count for Team B, and the gamepoints scored by Team A in the match against Team C wouldn't count either.

The impact of this a few seasons later was that Team B defaulted against Team A mid-season, and at the end of the season, Team A and Team B were tied on matchpoints. Team B won the league on tie-break. However, had Team B turned up to play Team A and lost the match by any scoreline, Team A would have won the league on tie-break, because then Team A could have counted the gamepoints.

To a disinterested observer, this was hilarious. If Team A v Team B was the last match of the season though, they could have just defaulted to win the league, rather than go through the rigmarole of actually bothering to play.

It was a comically misjudged rule, which survived for another season :!: but they've now finally changed it to a playoff, I think, which is much more agreeable.

Julie Denning
Posts: 140
Joined: Sun Jun 08, 2014 9:07 am

Re: Cancelling Matches

Post by Julie Denning » Thu May 04, 2017 6:39 pm

I've been told that the Mid Sussex League had a similar situation many years ago. Team A defaulted against Team B, who were awarded a full set of game points. This meant Team B overtook Team C to become League Champions, but others felt they would have been unlikely to have done this if their match against Team A had been played.

New rules were introduced that allowed re-arrangement by mutual consent where sufficient notice was given, but if a team defaulted at short notice without good cause (e.g. we accept severe weather cancellation in the middle of winter) they were penalised a match point, yet still expected to re-schedule the match. If they failed to do so by the end of the season, all their results were cancelled (for League, but not grading, purposes) and, assuming they were not already in the bottom division, they would be relegated for the following season.

Kevin Thurlow
Posts: 5821
Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2008 12:28 pm

Re: Cancelling Matches

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Thu May 04, 2017 7:45 pm

"Kevin Thurlow wrote:
What annoys me is people conceding matches when they expect to lose, especially if they will have a longish journey to do so."

"There was a rule that actively encouraged this in the Wolverhampton League, which existed until a few years ago.

My club made the mistake of winning the league on tie-break, gamepoints - after a team defaulted against us. So we got 6 gamepoints and won the league. Amidst cries of foul, the tie-break was amended such that if Team A tied with Team B, and Team B beat Team C by default, then the gamepoints didn't count for Team B, and the gamepoints scored by Team A in the match against Team C wouldn't count either.

The impact of this a few seasons later was that Team B defaulted against Team A mid-season, and at the end of the season, Team A and Team B were tied on matchpoints. Team B won the league on tie-break. However, had Team B turned up to play Team A and lost the match by any scoreline, Team A would have won the league on tie-break, because then Team A could have counted the gamepoints.

To a disinterested observer, this was hilarious. If Team A v Team B was the last match of the season though, they could have just defaulted to win the league, rather than go through the rigmarole of actually bothering to play."

Wow. Surrey have the rule that defaults above bottom board score penalty points related to board count. So, default on board 2 of 8 and you get 6 penalty points. Board 7 default would score 1 point, but default on board 8 is no penalty (except loss of board obviously). For every ten penalty points in a season, you lose half a match point. I pointed out a few years ago that if Team A has 7 match points and 40 game points and 9 penalty points, and plays Team B last, away, who have 6 MP and 31.5 GP, Team A is well-advised to default as they still win the league after an 8-0 default loss, but if they play and anyone but board 8 defaults, and they lose the match they would go down to 6.5 MP and B would have 7. I proposed that a whole match default should score -1 MP, but after everyone said, "Oh I never thought of that", there was a lot of hand-wringing, and flapping, and the penalty was amended to -0.5 MP. It made the point though.

Amusingly, in the Civil Service League some years ago, the usually victorious Inland Revenue team defaulted both matches against league leaders Eastern Knights, and were relegated on board count. All the other teams turned up and lost to EK heavily, but at least picked up the odd board...