Nationals EUCR-W Update - Open Division This announcement provides details on the competition format and seeding at Nationals EUCR-W Open division. Teams are reminded that in order to improve the integrity of the competition format, this competition will be held over 3 days. We expect that all teams will play 2 or 3 games on Monday 28th August.



16 teams (14 UK, 2 IRE) EUCF bids: 5 WUCC bids: 2-3 (3 expected). UK will definitely receive 2 bids to WUCC. We may receive a 3rd bid depending on the size of the division versus the take-up of bids from other countries.





Regionals takes place 29-30 July

Days # qualifiers Teams (alphabetical order) N 2 6 / 9 2 Alba, BAF, Chevron, EMO, LLLeeds, Manchester, SMOG, The Brown, Vision S 2 8 / 14 Brighton City, Brighton Legends, Bristol, Bristol 2, Camden, Clapham, Devon, Fire 1, Fire 2, Flump, Ka-Pow!, Kent, Reading 1, Reading 2

IRE teams are IRE1 = PELT and IRE2 = Ranelagh.





Format



Phase 1 (Sat): 4 pools of 4 Phase 2 (Sun): 4 power-pools carrying 1 result (top 8, bottom 8) Phase 3 (Sun): Recovery round: 5-12 Phase 4 (Mon): Semi-finals 1-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16 Phase 5 (Mon): Recovery round 3-6 Phase 6 (Mon): Finals: 1v2, 3v4, 5v6, etc



Teams play 7-9 games.





Pool Layout and Seeding A B C D

E F G H 1 S1 2 N1 3 S2 4 IRE1

1A(1) 1B(2) 3A(9) 3B(10) 8 IRE2 7 N3 6 N2 5 S3

1C(3) 1D(4) 3C(11) 3D(12) 9 S4 10 S5 11 N4 12 N5

2C(6) 2D(5) 4C(14) 4D(13) 16 N6 15 S8 14 S7 13 S6

2A(8) 2B(7) 4A(16) 4B(15) Seeding notes: Relative seeding of the UK teams (by Regional finishing position, S1, S2, etc) is based on results from UK Nationals 2016. IRE1 has been seeded 4th based on PELT’s result at EUCF 2016 where they finished between the 3rd and 4th UK teams. IRE2 has been seeded 8th on the following basis:

a. There is no absolutely clear rule about how we should seed IRE2.

i. The closest thing we have to an objective pre-written position would seed IRE2 at 16th.

ii. There are no results from EUCS 2016 that we can use to determine where to seed IRE2.

b. Based on results at UKU Tour 2017, we have reason to believe IRE2 may be a top 8 team at this tournament. Noting additional comments below regarding the format, there is no benefit to any of the teams if the placement of IRE2 creates a perceived “group of death”. We note that the seeding has resulted in teams from each region being spread reasonably well across the four pools. This means that the results from regionals have more “value” in obtaining the most accurate final positions at the end of Nationals-EUCR.



Format Considerations



The format this year has replaced the first two bracket/knockout rounds with the five pool games (first round and power pools). Combined with Regionals this provides a really robust process to rank teams prior to bracket play. The recovery bracket rounds from then on are the same as they have been at Nationals for the last few years with 5 teams qualifying to EUCF.

All formats and schedules involve some trade-offs. The biggest problem with this format occurs if 3 of the top five teams are in the same phase-1 pool. Given the structure of the pools with reference to the intra-regional results/rankings, this scenario is theoretically possible but unlikely.



It is possible, but unlikely, that A UK team could finish in n th position without playing the UK team in ( n-1) th position A UK team may feel that an Irish team has impacted on their WUCC qualification

In those cases, either It is our view that the results still provide sufficient information to deliver an accurate internal ranking for the UK teams, or

The alternative solutions involve introducing other compromises that we concluded were equally undesirable or worse.