Life In 19x19

willemien wrote:You are right.

It doesn't really help if the top players start losing to lower ranked players.
It makes strange things possible.

Still i think that of the criteria for setting the bar http://senseis.xmp.net/?McMahonPairing%2FBarTheory

the criteria that every player who is deemed to have a reasonable chance of winning the tournament should be in the top group, is the most important.

I have asked an expert in tournament pairing to do some experiments i am awaiting his reply.

Yes, I think all players with a reasonable chance should be in the top group, except that the top group should never be larger than 2^N, where N is the number of rounds, because that would mean there could be a tie between players with all wins.

In the given field, I think the chance of the 3 dans for winning the tournament is slim to none, there are enough stronger players that even though a 3 dan has some chance against an individual 5 or 6 dan, their chance of beating two or three of them in the same tournament is very small. The exception would be 3 dans that are underrated, that are already 4 dan but haven't been promoted yet. That's why I thought my solution was reasonable, because any underrated 3 dan would surely be in the top half by rating of the 3 dans

BTW, the 3 dan that shared 1st place defeated the 6 dan, but other than that played (and won) against four other 3 dans. Pairings can do that, when there's that many 3 dans

willemien wrote:BTW i think your avatar is highly amusing

Thank you, my girlfriend made it.

She made a whole bunch of go related smileys, I'll ask her to put them on her homepage, most of them are very nice.