Anatomy of the Air Cap

This is going to be filled with statistics, numbers, analysis and facts. If these things upset you, this is your warning to stop reading now. I'm going to be using 30 minutes per round. That's a reasonable time unless it takes 15 minutes for people to show up for a match or matches become marathons.

One of the biggest challenges in the Air Cap is to get people disqualified from earlier events so they can be called in the next event. Let's start with Saturday morning.

Youth-Adult: The functional maximum entries is 32. More entries leaves the Youth-Adult with 8 Adults still playing when Mixed Trips starts. More boards doesn't help.

Mixed Trips: Functional maximum is 32 entries. More entries leaves 8 Mixed Trips teams playing when Open Doubles starts.

Open Doubles: If there are still 8 teams in Mixed Trips, then it's at least an hour and a half until the Mixed Trips winners are available for their first board calls in Open Doubles. There's enough time before Men's Singles (2-1/2 hours) to go through 5 rounds, but there's only enough time for the Mixed Trips finalists to go through 2 rounds in Doubles before Singles is called. To get to 8 teams still playing (which leaves 32 matches that can't be called in Open Singles) there shouldn't be more than 32 entries in Open Doubles.

This is about the first time that the number of boards becomes a factor. It's also when an "efficient" tournament has anyone not playing automatically in the prelims and those playing are kept out of prelims - which I consider a dishonest tournament.

Women's Doubles starts 1 hour after Open Doubles. Boards aren't available, plus there are still women in Mixed Trips, plus there are women in Open Doubles.

At this point it should be obvious that our format is being stretched to the maximum with the number of entries we are getting. It's possible to have a woman simultaneously entered in 3 events.

More boards won't solve the problems of late board calls in events for some entrants.

It is my opinion that if the Air Cap is to offer more money with the hope of drawing more entrants, then the format needs to be evaluated or excessive delays for some players to be called in events they've entered will damage the reputation of the Air Cap.