david53 wrote:As Hammy said at the club quite a discussion about seedings.
Of course the seedings do help the seeded players or way elese do it.
I've been told that people might play for a draw if two top seeders play, now I can see that happening not example last night Dave and Phil neither played for a draw or I've never seen Hammy play for a draw I know a club game is different but. To be honest a stright draw would'nt stop the top players winning it might make it harder for them though. Too me it gives easier games to top players thats fine but say that then don't hide behind other reasons.
If your going to have seedings why such a high properation in the early period 44 players 10 seeded players 23% seeded seems a tad high.
TBH this will not change, and I'm sure there are some very good players who have'nt been seeded.
I think the underlying assumption is that whoever wins in the end will have won all his games. In rounds 2 to 6 he will have played opponents who have also won all their games up to that point, so are difficult opponents. In round 1 with a random draw, some seeds will get a hard game against another seed, while others get an easy game. The ones with the easy game get an advantage as they can win by playing 1 easy and 5 hard games instead of 6 hard games. Giving all seeds an easy game ensures that none has an unfair advantage. It also means that a very good unseeded player does not get an unfair advantage, although he has a chance of getting an unfair disadvantage if he has to play a seed.
Of course, we are not using a pure win/lose swiss system, so in reality things are more complicated. However, the scoring and pairing system we use tends to balance things out in the long run, so it's unlikely that seeding will do any harm nd it might actually do some good.