UIC SWISS: POINTS SYSTEM
Player's score 5 - 0 = 5 points, 4 - 1 = 4 points, 3 - 2 = 3 points, 2 - 3 = 2 points, 1 - 4 = 1 point, 0 - 5 = 0 points.
HOW THE INDIVIDUAL POINTS WORK
• A player may participate in two of the three tournaments on the same day, and his or her higher score will count in the Individual competition. The only exception is when a player wins a tournament with a 5-0 win.
• If a player wins a tournament outright with a 5-0 win, he or she may not play in another tournament on the same day. This is to give other players a better chance of winning another tournament.
• One point will be awarded for each game won.
• Two bonus points will be awarded for an outright tournament win, and one point awarded for a shared tournament win. Bonus points for playing 5 rounds, bonus points for winning tournaments, average points applying when playing in 2 tournaments.
HOW THE TEAM POINTS WORK WITH 4 OR MORE PLAYERS
• If four or more players represent a team, a player's score will count once in the team standings.
• Example: Team UK have Carl (scoring 4–1), JoJo (1–4), Karen (1–4), Kerry (2–3), Marie (3–2) and Nigel (3–2) playing. In this case, the red scores are the FOUR LEADING SCORES, so Team UK score a total of 12.
HOW THE TEAM POINTS WORK WITH 3 OR LESS PLAYERS
• If three or less players represent a team, a player's score may count twice in the team standings.
• Example: Team Asia have Rauf (playing twice, scoring 1–4 and 3–2), Gin (3–2) and Raza (playing twice, scoring 2–3 and 5–0). In this case, the red scores are the FOUR LEADING SCORES, so Team Asia score a total of 13.
UIC SWISS SPECIAL REPORT: REPEATED PAIRINGS AND RULE 2.13
For those of you who hate repeated pairings happening in UIC Swiss, including games between players of the same team, the following may be of interest, if only to explain why UIC Swiss has adopted Rule 2.13. This article has been produced in a 'question and answer' format, because it covers the issues raised by one or two members.
QUESTION: "I have just played the same person three times in one tourney – ridiculous! Is there a rule in UIC Swiss covering pairings?"
ANSWER: Yes. Rule 2.13 reads as this: 'A TD may not, under any circumstances, alter any pairings in a tournament. This is strictly forbidden irrespective of the number of repeated pairings in any round. A TD who alters any pairing will be removed and will face sanctions with under 7.1. Category A(i).'
QUESTION: "OK, but I do not see why TDs are not permitted to change pairings! If they could, we would avoid the same pairings, or too many same-league pairings. I hate playing people in my own league. Why do you have this rule?"
ANSWER: Very simple. Swapping pairings is open to abuse and manipulation, let alone other logistical problems. A TD could theoretically alter a pairing to suit his or her league.
QUESTION: "I still cannot see why swapping pairings would be an issue. What kind of logistical problems could there be?"
ANSWER: These questions would arise for a TD – which players should be swapped? And for who? For example, cbc_aceman and ds_top.pooler have been paired for the third time – how does the TD go about choosing the opponents? Would they be stronger or weaker opponents? What happens if there are four repeated pairings in one round or four DS v DS pairings? Do they all get changed and again, for whom?
Say the TD from SS is making a swap, what is to stop him or her from giving the SS player on 4-0 a lesser opponent on 2–2 or even 1–3 instead of the correct opponent on 3–1, in the hope of improving the SS player's chances of winning? And we could have two CBC players both on 4–0 due to play one another in Round 5, yet the TD from SS wants to get the top-scoring SS player on 3–1 to play one of the leading CBC players in an attempt to share the tourney. How fair is that? If swapping was allowed, this could theoretically happen.
Now onto the other logistical problems. Clearly, the process of swapping players would be open to unfair interpretation and manipulation to suit a team or teams, and would delay the next round advancing whilst the swaps were being made. A TD would have to note previous games to recognise possible repeats, and also change every same-team pairing. All very time-consuming which could potentially cause a nightmare with a tournament lasting over 3 hours!
QUESTION: "Yeah, but nobody would cheat, would they? Only the repeated pairings should be swapped."
ANSWER: Well, we would rather not put a TD into the position of being tempted to make incorrect or unfair swaps. Therefore, it is far easier – and considerably safer and fairer – to have a blanket ban on any swaps. It is very clear that allowing a TD to swap players could be opening a can of worms. We do not want the integrity of a scrupulously fair competition challenged in any way.
QUESTION: "So you think me playing members of my own league 4 times in 5 rounds is fair?"
ANSWER: Absolutely 100% fair! It's called 'tough titty'! That's the way the cookie crumbles! Get over it! Call it what you will, it's the nature of random pairings. And to protect the integrity of our TDs, and, more importantly, the competition itself, our Tds are NOT allowed to alter anything. It's that simple.
QUESTION: "Am I not entitled to say that I think tourneys are rigged?"
ANSWER: Not advisable – best to keep your comments to yourself! Calling a tournament rigged is accusing a TD of cheating. And if you do that and bring the name and reputation of UIC Swiss into disrepute, you will be boxed for at least 30 days. Rule 2.13 is there for a good reason – it is the best way to prevent a tournament from being rigged!
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ALL ABOUT UIC SWISS (WRITTEN FOR SEASON 14, 2015)
WHAT IS UIC SWISS?
UIC SWISS is a competition held by UIC (Universal Interleague Competition) but runs separately to any other UIC competition. This means that separate registration is required when joining. UIC Swiss has been running successfully since 2007 and has completed 14 seasons to date, the most recent being played in GameDesire (for the second season running) which finished on 15th May 2015. Five teams have won the team event competition, namely STRAIGHTSHOTS (nine times), DEADSTROKES (twice), FREEDOM (once), INTERNATIONAL CUE ADDICTION (once) and HARLEY HUSTLERS who took their first team title in Season 13.
WHAT IS THE COMPETITION FORMAT?
Two True Swiss tournaments are held every Friday during the UIC Swiss season. Each tourney consists of FIVE Regular 8 rounds. A player can only take part in ONE tourney per week. The first is the UK (UNITED KINGDOM) TOURNEY tourney at 2pm EST (7pm BST) and the US (UNITED STATES) TOURNEY at 7pm EST (midnight BST). They are both held in the room 'LEAGUE 11' which is located in Pool 8 2009 in GAMEDESIRE. A maximum of five players per league are allowed to participate in each tourney. An individual competition runs alongside the team event and all competing players are automatically entered into it.
HOW DOES ONE ENTER A TOURNEY?
A player simply needs to sign-up to UIC Swiss using the league initials as a prefix before the correct league screen-name. For example, 'ace.player' signing-up for Harley Hustlers would need to sign-up as hh_ace.player. And then he or she must jump one of the UIC Swiss tourneys listed on the website. It's that easy! UIC Swiss permits players not associated with any league to join as 'non-league', using nl_ as the prefix before their screen-names.
WHAT IS THE SCORING SYSTEM?
A maximum of the FOUR leading scores from each league will apply towards the team standings each week. These four scores can come from one or both tournaments. The scores of all participants will count in the individual standings. Full rules appear on the custom website. WHO RUNS UIC SWISS? A management team of four Admins look after the competition, namely Nigel (England), Roy (Australia), Shelle (USA) and Angela (USA). Nigel and Roy maintain the website, graphics and rules, whilst Angela and Roy look after the weekly statistical updates. Shelle and Angela are the main tourney hosts. Altogether an experienced team there in place to maintain the smooth-running of the competition.
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HOW TO STAY COMPETITIVE IN UIC SWISS
By Nigel (en_dk)
I have been lucky enough to have seen my team Straightshots become UIC Swiss team champions on quite a few occasions. I also led International Cue Addiction (ICA) to one UIC Swiss title as well in Season 6.
So you could say I know a little bit about what it takes to be successful in the competition! I always encourage participation in UIC Swiss and with that I want the competition to remain competitive. The objective of this article is to improve the chances of all teams to grab victory in this popular competition! As an Admin in UIC Swiss, I am happy to share some tips if only to make UIC Swiss more competitive, even and enjoyable for everyone taking part.
1. Organisation: If you really want to have a seriously competitive team in UIC Swiss, you MUST be well organised. You need someone delegated to make the effort to find players. This should be done as early as possible in the week and not left until the last moment. As soon as the jumps are placed on the Swiss website, copy and paste them into a text/Word/post-it note document such as the examples below and circulate to potential players.
UIC SWISS THIS FRIDAY 2ND NOVEMBER. First-come, first-served! Stay 'n play all 5 rounds! UK (2pm EST) http://cgi6.igl.net/tourney/uicswiss/9242081/ UIC SWISS THIS FRIDAY 2ND NOVEMBER.
Then later in the week follow them up and make sure you get your players to commit themselves on a first-come, first-served basis. if you can have a stand-by at the time of the tournament starting, so much the better. On many occasions SS had 6 players jumping and we had to adjust because a player didn't show at the last minute. Our 'cut-off' time was 3 minutes before closing but it takes organisation to make it happen. Try to avoid the players who only think of themselves and not the team – they are the ones who leave on 0-1 or 1-2 because their mentality is "I can't win so what's the point?" Never mind the fact that they could go on and get a very useful 4-1 or 3-2 for your team!
2. Filling places: It must be your objective to fill as many of the five allocated places as possible in each tournament. Remember, the more players you have, the better chance of collecting higher scores. If you have 2 players in and they both 'fail' (meaning scores of 2-3 or 1-4), you will score low for that tournament. But if you have 4 or 5 in and 2 'fail', you still have 3 players who may get better scores. From my experience of running the SS team with Marie, when we had the luxury of 5 players jumping, it was very rare for all 5 to 'fail'... usually at least one or 2 would get a good 4-1 or a satisfactory 3-2. And over the course of a long season, it is these helpful scores which contribute towards the overall team points total ticking over, because you cannot only rely on 5-0 outright wins or 4-1 shared wins.
3. Tactics: It is prudent to keep an eye out on who the opposition are in the three tournaments, so check the jumps and move your players if necessary (and if possible) accordingly. I think it is always advisable to split up your strongest players rather than just allow them to play in the same tournament. After all, of 4 strong players in one tourney, only 2 can score for the team anyway! This means that if you are lucky enough to get 4-1, 4-1, 4-1, 4-1 from your 4 players, two of the scores would be completely wasted! Marie and I used to try to get at least 3 really good players in the UK (3pm) and US (7pm) (before the 11pm Aussie was introduced). We were not bothered if 2 lesser players filled the other players, because we knew that it would be very rare for all 3 strong players to get low scores. If 2 perform out of 3, they could bring home a tournament win or 2 relatively high scores (scoring 4-1, 3-2 every tournament will go a long way to keeping your team right up there in the standings).
4. Teamwork: The important mindset for your players to realise is that they are not 'merely' a bunch of individuals thrown together as members of your league, playing for themselves and left to their own devices. They are part of a TEAM. And must be made to feel like that. It is well worth the effort of a few individual messages in Yahoo Messenger to make your players all feel part of The Team. SS players feel motivated and perform well because of the man-management and support they get. So try to treat them with respect as valued players and I am sure you will get more out of them.
5. Consistency: It's fine applying the above four points for a few weeks. The art is to keep them going for the entire season. You need consistency in your organisation, planning, application, effort and teamwork. Letting these slip for just one week, when you cannot find enough players or your organisation goes AWOL for whatever reason, could be the difference between challenging for the championship or not. My advice is to find assistants who can help organise your team of players, rather than leave it to just one person. I would suggest you consider appointing 'captains' as well to look after the three different tournaments. If you cannot be there, wouldn't it be great to have someone making sure the Aussie (11pm) tourney is covered and supervised while you're sleeping? Consistency in applying everything above is the name of the game if you seriously want to keep your team competitive.
So there you have it! I've given away some 'trade secrets' towards achieving success in UIC Swiss – and you didn't even have to buy the book! Lol! I want UIC Swiss to be competitive so that you ALL enjoy it for 12 weeks. Good luck!
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