06-04-2012, 07:28 PM
JRedpath Wrote:Farell 2133
Neave 2126
Grant 2115
These are the published grades of players who have played for Edinburgh West this year in SNCL. As you can see all three players could have played in any order! You cannot say that it is only Hamilton that this rule benefits, as Ive said other teams can change order as well, if they choose not to then so be it!
...
OK but lets see how it worked in practice in this season's SNCL.
So, for Ed West I played board 2 in every game. Neil Farrell played one on all bar one game when he was unavailable and jonathan Grant stepped in. So it was probably a good bet playing Ed West that any team would face Neil on 1 and me one 2.
Now lets compare with the Hamilton strategy:
Rounds 1 and 2 we see 1. Coffey 2. Redpath 3. S Tweedie. 4 weeks later, however, playing strength has shifted because now we see Joe is playing board (1) and Pat dropped down to board (2). It seems Pat was unable to regain his top spot over the Christmas break as by round 5/6 Joe retains board one ahead of IM Muir and Coffey relegated to board 3. Hang on though, all is not lost because by time we come ot the key Dundee match in round 7 Pat has obviously been practising hard because now he is back on board 1 not just ahead of Joe on (2) but also ahead of IM Muir this time as well! What a surge in "playing strength" that was. In fact Andy has clearly completely lost form as for this game he has dropped from board 2 on previous weekend down to a lowly board 4 this time.
There was me thinking this was all this order manipulation was designed to maximise difficulty for opposition - especially Dundee in key final round - to predict the order. How could I be so cynical?!