2002 WORLD TANTRIX - ROUND 1 REPORTS BY COUNTRY

128 players from 21 countries played at least 3 games in Round 1. 64 players from 11 countries made it through to Round 2 and the performance of each country is summarised in the following table. The table is ordered by number of entrants per country to make it easier to add results from later rounds rather than by either of the measures of success:
NATIONALITY IF EXPECTED TO WIN IF EXPECTED TO LOSE RECORD IN ROUND 1 OVERALL
Won Lost %Won Won Lost %Won Played Won Lost %Won Shocks
GBR
11 4 73% 3 13 19% 31 14 17 45% -1
NZL
9 0 100% 0 10 0% 19 9 10 47% 0
FRA
7 2 78% 4 4 50% 17 11 6 65% 2
AUS
5 2 71% 1 5 17% 13 6 7 46% -1
GER
5 1 83% 3 2 60% 11 8 3 73% 2
HUN
5 2 71% 1 2 33% 10 6 4 60% -1
USA
5 2 71% 0 1 0% 8 5 3 63% -2
SVK
      0 3 0% 3 0 3 0% 0
FIN
2 0 100%       2 2 0 100% 0
NED
1 0 100% 0 1 0% 2 1 1 50% 0
SWE
      1 1 50% 2 1 1 50% 1
Others
1 0 100% 0 9 0% 10 1 9 10% 0
Only two seeds were knocked out in R1, nos 15 and 31 (Julia Schwarz from the UK & Kathy Upton from Australia), and they were both beaten by fast-improving players (Malcolm Wotton & Peter Hinton, both from the UK) towards the top of the final quarter of the entrants ordered by seeding points.

As can be seen from the list of the potentially closest and potentially most one-sided matches in R1, 13 players (20%) beat players with more seeding points than them and 51 results went as the seeding points predicted. In fact, 10 of the 13 'shocks' were among the 20 matches predicted to be closest on the basis of the seeding points. Most of the top 32 seeds won by more than 60-40 TPs but strangely what should have been the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th most one-sided matches made up half of the matches involving seeds that were won by less than 20 TPs.

Only section 6 of the draw did not have any surprise results in R1 - that probably explains why it now looks like the strongest section based on the average seeding points of the remaining players.

As can be seen from the table below, of the countries with more than five entrants, Germany and France did best in R1, each with two more surprise wins than surprise defeats and with 73% and 65% of their entrants respectively reaching R2. Indeed, France has two more players in R2 than New Zealand and Germany has two more players in R2 than Australia despite the latter country having two more entrants than the former in each case.

The other countries, ordered by number of entrants, fared as follows:

For the first time, the United Kingdom had easily the highest number of entrants and was the only major Tantrix-playing country apart from NZ with more entrants expected to lose in R1 than to win. In this case, that reflected the fact that Tantrix has only become big in the UK in the last couple of years and the number of inexperienced players keen to enter should bode well for the future. The UK had a fairly neutral R1, with 45% of its players progressing to R2 and one more surprise defeat than surprise wins from its 31 players.

New Zealand had a very neutral round, with 47% of NZ entrants progressing. Amazingly, all of the 9 NZ players who were expected to win did so and all of the 10 NZ players who were expected to lose did so too! This fits in with the fact that the group phase of the NZ Championship is always much more predictable than any of the other continental/national Championships. It must imply that NZ has a core of very strong, very reliable players and a number of weak, more casual players but not many players in between, i.e. very few players who are just below the top group but capable of beating the top players from time to time.

Australia also had a fairly neutral round, with one more surprise loss than surprise wins and 46% of its entrants progressing to R2.

Hungary also had an excess of entrants who were expected to win their R1 matches. Tantrix in Hungary is growing fast and lots of new Hungarian players have played in other tournaments this year, but very few of the newer Hungarian tournament players seem to have felt ready to enter the WTC. Hungary had one more surprise loss than surprise wins in R1 but 60% of the Hungarian players progressed. Hungary was also the only country with more than

The USA is something of a special case because 7 of its 8 entrants were expected to win their R1 matches. The lack of low-ranked American entrants is mainly a result of the low numbers of new American tournament players in recent years. This has also been observed in the Pan-Am Championshipswhere the proportion of inexperienced players entering is much lower than in the other continental/national tournaments. Hence the paradox that the Americans had the worst R1 in terms of surprise results (two surprise losses and no surprise wins, but of course they had only one entrant who could have scored a surprise win) but the 3rd best R1 in terms of the number of entrants who progressed, with 63%.

Of the countries with less than five entrants, only Sweden was involved in any shock results, with Thomas Jarl having the third biggest surprise win of R1 when he edged through against the UK's Rick Yagodich. Both of the players from Finland progressed as expected as did one of the two players from the Netherlands. All three players from Slovakia went out, but one got through the Preliminary Round and the other two did much better against seeded opposition than their rankings predicted they would.

Of the countries with just one entrant, only Israel had a R1 winner. Sadly, none of the players from the new countries with one entrant each got through, but they all seem to have enjoyed their first taste of tournament Tantrix and hopefully it will spur them on to greater achievements in future years or maybe even in this year's Plate competition, which (unprecedentedly) almost all of the R1 losers have entered.

The potentially closest and potentially most one-sided matches in R1

RESULTS FROM:

 SECTION 1     SECTION 2     SECTION 3     SECTION 4
SECTION 5     SECTION 6     SECTION 7     SECTION 8

ROUNDS 4 TO THE FINAL

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