Recreational Mixer Tournament

Compettion for a group of players encouraging a variety of partners.

Rules

- Tournament is open for men and ladies.
- One game to 21 points is played.
- Doubles with equal sex distribution are starting at 0:0
- Ladies double playing against mixed double, or mixed double
playing against men double is starting with 7:0 lead
- Ladies double playing against men double is starting with 14:0
lead
- Each player is allowed to play with other player only once during the
season, so he or she has to find different partner for each of his or
hers matches.
- Player has to play at least 15 matches in order to qualify for final
ranking
- The points for ranking are calculated for each player as a percent of
total wins against total matches played
- In case when two players have same percentage of wins, the player with
more matches won is better placed
- The 8 players with most points at the end of the season qualify for
final tournament
- Those 8 players are divided in two groups of four and they play one
match in every possible combinations (three matches: AB-CD;AC-BD;AD-BC).

- Ranking is made for each player according to number of wins, and if
there are more players with same number of wins, total points difference
is criteria
- The best two players from both groups qualify for final group of four
players, and now they play final three matches following same system.

Discussion

The point of this tournaments is that people do mix among themselves a
little. Recreational players usually play with their friends never
trying to change partners, and they are not used to enter competitions
of any kind. This can be a way for having fun, meet new people, and play
some badminton. The best thing is that you don't have to be at
tournament every week, you don't need to have a partner, all you have to
do is to take your equipment and show up in the hall, and there you can
find somebody that so far you didn't play with, and other pairs do the
same and you can play a match. After that all players mix and form new
pairs (being aware that they have to find a new partner) and so on.
There are some problems, of course. If there is only limited number of
players it will happen very soon that all combinations are used and
nobody could play. But there is also motivational factor in this because
players will be forced to find new players who would like to join in,
and every new player opens up a possibilities for new matches.
You can see that there is no system to decide who is playing, and
against whom. So far, agreement among players is the best system.
Surely, it could lead to situation when some "black sheep" is avoiding
to take "bad" players for partners, or to play against strong double.
But such person can be easily ignored and he/she would never make
necessary 15 matches. We are trying to match doubles equally as much as
it is possible, and I think we are doing quite fine because most matches
finish at 15-17 points for loosing side, almost every week there is a
match that has to be set, and so on.


Contributed by Tvrtko Macan from Croatia. Last revision: 08 Feb 1999