A gigantic contest - it's worldwide!
By Henry Francis
- Top on a board - 10,000 (or more)!
- Average - 1,200,000 (or more)!
- Worldwide frequency charts!
- Real comparisons against every contestant in the world!
- Up-to-date standings available every hour of the day!
This is what you can expect when you play in the Mind Sports Organization Worldwide Charity Simultaneous Pairs on August 22 and 23, 2000. There will be two separate competitions with completely different hands for each day. This will be a contest like nothing you've ever seen before.
In the past such events as the Epson Pairs produced a worldwide winner, but the results taken from each club never were integrated with results from all the other clubs around the world. Your final score was whatever your percentage was at your own club. This time your scores will be compared with every score at every other club in the world. Anna Gudge and Mark Newton of Great Britain have devised a program that will make this possible.
Another major change - this time there will be no arbitrary matchpoints.
The number of matchpoints you receive on a board will be the result of
matchpointing against the entire field.
How is all this going to work?
It starts with you playing with your partner at your club. The hands
will be supplied to every club director. These will be the hands you
play. The director will then matchpoint the results to determine the
club winners, the same as usual. Then the director will use special
software to transmit the results directly to headquarters in Great
Britain, where they will be added to the results already received.
The computer will immediately re-score the event to this point, and a new set of results will be produced. These results will be changed every time a new club reports.
When all the clubs have reported, the computer will have all the results from all the games all over the world. It will matchpoint them and produce the winner almost instantaneously.
After the process is complete, every player in the world will be able to access the tournament on his own computer. He will be able to get his personal scorecard, the overall results, all the board frequencies, all the hands - even the individual scorecards of some of the experts in whom he may be interested.
Incidentally any unusual results that appear to be possible mistakes will be checked.
Your percentage at the local club most likely will be different from your percentage worldwide. At the club you are matchpointed only against others in your field at the club. Worldwide you will be matchpointed against everyone everywhere.
You will be able to see the results on www.msoworld.com. To get an idea
of what this is going to be like, you can access
http://bridge.ecats.co.uk where the results of a British tournament are being compiled at this moment.
There will be a special MSO heat at the Alexandra Palace in London on
those days, and the organizers are hoping that some of those players
headed for the World Team Olympiad in Maastricht, the Netherlands, will
stop in on their way and play in the London games. The Olympiad gets
under way on Aug. 26.
This will be a charity event - a large proportion of the entry fees will be donated to charity.
The games are in addition to the Simultaneous Pairs sponsored by the
World Bridge Federation that will take place on June 2 and 3. That event also will be scored on the Internet.
MSO also is planning a rubber bridge competition. Details concerning
this event will appear on their website when they are ready. The winners of this event will be invited, with expenses paid, to the Mind Sports Olympiad in London where they will have the opportunity to win cash prizes. The bridge portion of the Mind Sports Olympiad will take place August 22-28.
Click here for more information:
or contact anna@msoworld.com.
