Hey, on behalf of some Norwegian players I wanted to check up what the IFPA consensus ( @pinwizj ) is on this situation, so I can bring some info back;
An organizer had a flip frenzy tournament, lasting for 3.5 hours with the goal of it being finished at 10 PM with some pauses included. When it was a couple minutes left of the frenzy, the organizer added 5 minutes to the time, since the pauses had been shorter and the clock was still not 10 PM.
This made some players very upset, as they thought it was over when the time initially was over, and they were like refreshing the standings and one thought he would win as it was 1 minute left. Then, when suddenly 5 minutes were added, it changed up things, some went back into queue and were not able to play anymore while others were.
I am not discussing the format here, I thought id just hear peoples opinion on the following;
What several players were pissed about is that they perceived it as the organizer âchanging the rules of the tournament while the tournament was activeâ, when extending the frenzy for 5 minutes when it was close to being over, and they felt it was unfair. They also wondered if this is okay for a sanctioned IFPA- tournament.
Would you define this as âchanging the rulesâ and not good organizing/decision making, or is it just up to the organizers discretion/choice and people need to suck it up?
The organizer can do that sure, but like you said, it will likely piss players off. Best to make your dislike known to the TD and if they plan to do that in the future, donât participate.
Itâs similar to when people do timed matchplay and start another round after the clock is up.
Can you explain how the organizer didnât realize the time the tournament would end the very minute the tournament started? Maybe Iâm missing something, but this makes no sense to me.
Oh, I think I get it. Tournament is scheduled for 6 pm to 9:30 pm, with the last round starting as close to 9:30 pm as possible. No rounds can start after 9:30 pm. But, the âlastâ round actually ended at 9:34 or 9:35 pm, so the TD arbitrarily decided to add one more round.
This, in my opinion, is crazy. Follow the rules. If you want to give yourself an out to start a round at 9:35 pm, get that provision into the rules. I would only ever participate in this TDâs future events if this is directly addressed moving forward.
From what I know, the tournament is to be finished at 10 PM, so 3.5 hours frenzy with some breaks for smoke/bathroom/beer is included and the timer is paused. I believe the pauses was not 10 minutes x 3 specifically, so thats why the frenzy was about to end abit before 10PM.
As we know just one additional match in a Flip Frenzy can matter a great deal.
The info about the pauses is an important detail. So it seems it wasnât an arbitrary decision to just add 5 minutes, I now read it as the TD trying to honor the originally stated 3.5 hr allowed time.
The pauses for breaks is really a courtesy which eases some of the strictness of having to play play play now now now.
I think the easiest workaround is set the timer for X, and let it run down to zero with no pauses. Advise players to get as many games as they can in X time, and budget their time and bladders accordingly.
So yeah, on one hand I can see some players being upset, but on the other if someone was diligently tracking the actual play time, maybe some other players would have felt cheated out of advertised playing time.
The impact is really on the reputation of the organizers and how that impacts the support from players who want to participate in events that may âchange the rulesâ at any time for any reason going forward.
From an IFPA perspective, the AMOUNT of time doesnât matter for a Flip Frenzy. Just the average number of games played.
If the real goal is âEnd at 10pmâ as opposed to â3.5 Hours Playedâ, then either make sure the timer is properly aligned with the clock at the very beginning or tell people youâre NOT using the countdown clock on MatchPlay and instead the structure will be as follows. Make sure thereâs a clock everyone can see and agree is the âgame clockâ.
Start at 6pm
8pm - Break. Complete your game in progress but DONâT start a new game
8:30pm - Play Resumes
10:00pm - Event Over. Complete your game in progress.
Personally, itâs just way easier for me to trust the MatchPlay clock instead of trying to tie to to actual time. I aim to end at 9pm, but sometimes itâs 8:55pm, sometimes itâs 9:08pm. Much easier for EVERYONE to be looking at the MatchPlay clock as the arbiter.
You could even use that reverse countdown concept against the MatchPlay clock.
Start at 6pm. Set for 4 hours.
2 Hours Left - Break. Complete your game in progress but DONâT start a new game
1.5 Hours Left - Play Resumes
Clock Says 0 - Event Over. Complete your game in progress.
there is âchange the rulesâ and there is poor wording / planning.
If Tournament is scheduled for 6 pm to 10:00 pm with some pauses and then the pauses end up being an bit faster and your clock is about to hit zero before 10:00 then I can see 5 min more to get it to 10:00 or maybe say 9:56-10:00.
If Tournament is listed as 3.5 hours play time with some pauses then maybe not butâŚ
IF you look at soccer I can see the room for 5 min (lowest block of time to add) of stoppage time to make up for things like slow webpage / reporting jam ups / other slow downs to get to 3.5 hours of REAL PLAY TIME vs 3.5 hours of clock time.
thanks for the input and feedback everyone, I have brought this back to the players.
I would personally put this on âpoor wording/planningâ and not intentionally changing the rules, if anything it was probably an attempt to make players happy by giving them more time to play, but as opposed to one extra round of matchplay it can turn out more sour and problematic when the fomat is frenzy.
Isnât the whole point of a Flip Frenzy format is that itâs constant play? Having 10 minutes breaks seems against the ethos.
If you want to take a break, do so, just join the back of the queue when youâre ready.
Changing any of the rules mid tournament is never a good idea. As it invariably p!$$es some competitors off as it negatively impacts them.
About 10 years ago I changed the format of a comp immediately prior to it starting (due to a few dropouts making the original format unusable). Later in the day I then had to making an on-the-fly judgement to how the tiebreaks worked (which was different from original format). It really didnt help that i won the 3 way tiebreaker then proceded through the knockout stages to win the whole tournament.
Iâm still ribbed about it now by certain people it negatively impacted.
Basically, rules/format need to be clear at the start of the comp and only ever changed under exceptional circumstances not on a whim, and even then clearly communicated to all competitors before they happen.
