20-06-2015, 08:27 PM
Keith Rose Wrote:Quote:the current arrangement gives unfair advantage to teams where players have similar ratingsCan you clarify what you mean? What arrangement and what is the advantage?
I think I can take this one, because the lineups would be a nice thing to change. If you are from a club where you have a lot of players within 100 points, there are so many permutations of board ordering that the opposing team has no idea who will play where, especially when switching between rounds is allowed. Teams play out of order all the time to try and surprise their opponents and get a slight advantage. However, if you come from a club where your players are spread out a bit, the lineup is easy enough to predict, or at least on some boards. Therefor one club is getting a decent prep advantage. It is not their fault, but it is certainly an advantage, and I can't see any good reason why evening this up would be a bad thing. The way round it would be basically what 4ncl does. You submit the team sheet the night before, and the team lineups get published, say by 10pm the night before. That way both teams get a chance to do some prep, and when the event is FIDE rated, I think it is only right.
There were some people wondering what would happen if a player pulled out between the team sheet being submitted and the actual game. Well, just have a nominated reserve, again like 4NCL, who can step in on a given board. OK this may not strictly fit with grading order, but to be a reserve the player would likely not be in the strongest 8 anyway, and the club fielding the reserve would be the ones put at a minor disadvantage. That would only change that one board, and I believe that teams would all be reasonable enough not to fiddle it to have a GM reserve who steps in on b7.