Impromptu Tournament At The Cage: 11 March 2009

As Yaseen took my place last night, I was free to administer another mini-league tournament (instead of a mini knock-out competition).

We probably wouldn’t have had a mini-tournament last night if Nick hadn’t been so keen to play, and gotten two friends to make 16.

With Alan and Yaseen coming in later, we actually got to 18 players by about 7.40 pm.   Rolf and Rafi took turns, while I didn’t play.   It was in any event too late in the day to try to get 2 more participants to make it 5 per team, which would also have involved re-organising the line ups entirely.

Those who played were divided into four teams as follows:

• Team A (White): Gilbert, Sushil, Lukas, Rolf/Rafi
• Team B (Black): Yaseen, Nick, Andy N, Amaury
• Team C (White): Clive, Rajseran, Andy P, Julius
• Team D (Blacks): Damian, Alan, Chris, Geoff

The results were as follows:

Game	Pitch 2	Pitch 3
1	Team A v Team B:  2-3	Team C v Team D:  6-2
2	Team B v Team C:  3-5	Team D v Team A:  1-8
3	Team C v Team A:  0-1	Team D v Team B:  1-2

Each was a 4 v 4 game.   Click on any game to view a video excerpt of that game.

The final table was:

Team	P	W	D	L	GF	GA	Pts
Team A	3	2	0	1	11	4	6
Team C	3	2	0	1	11	6	6
Team B	3	2	0	1	8	8	6
Team D	3	0	0	3	4	16	0

For the rankings:

• Team A – 3 points into the ranking formula (equivalent to a ranked win).
• Team C – 2 points into the ranking formula (equivalent to a unranked win).
• Team B – 1 point into the ranking formula (equivalent to a draw or unranked loss).
• Team D – no points into the ranking formula (equivalent to a ranked loss).

As Rolf and Rafi took turns with Team A, rather than being given the equivalent of a ranked win, they’ll be given the equivalent of an unranked win in the rankings.

As far as the results and the table are concerned, the parallels with the first mini-league tournament are remarkable.

• Three teams finished equal on six points (with placings determined by goal difference), while the fourth team lost all their matches.

• Team A (with different players) lost their first match, but went on to win their remaining two matches to finish top.

• Like Team C in the earlier tournament, Team C only needed a draw in their last game to win the tournament, but conceded a goal with virtually the last kick of the game to lose by a single goal.  Rajseran and Julius from Team C suffered the same fate with Team C in the earlier tournament.

Damian is the only other participant to have played both tournaments.  On the previous occasion, he finished with the side that finished top.  On this occasion, he finished with the side that finished bottom.

Vote for your player of the tournament:

The polls on whether to have a mini-tournament and whether to have 4 v 4 sessions at The Cage are still open.  I’ll keep them open for another couple of weeks (the end of the day on 26 March 2009).