Here's a brief report on the CAM98 tournament. A great time was had by all, with excellent spirit, lots of close games, bar and food all day, and four fields which could have passed for snooker tables. The game results are listed below. Whiplash were unbeaten and, with the aid of M.V.P. pickup player Greg Hallam, dominated Night Fever in a hard-fought windy final. Whiplash not only won the tournament but also won SPIRIT. Well done! The remaining teams were ranked using the infera software, which rated the teams in the following order (though some infera ratings were scarcely distinguishable): NB, Big Apologies to Reservoir Fish -- I mis-entered one score in the computer. You ranked fourth, not fifth as announced at the awards. Sorry! (But 3,4,5 were all very close anyway.) # Results and key # 1 wh whiplash (spirit) # 2 nf nightfever # 3 sv strange blue varsity team # 4 rf reservoir fish # 5 mc mud culture # 6 st strange blue townie tax-payers # 7 al albatross # 8 sl southern lights (top junior team) # 9 sd slip disc # 10 dg disc graceful Here are the infera ratings. # Team Infera rating 1 nf 11.1 +/- 0.2 2 wh 10.9 +/- 0.2 3 sv 10.3 +/- 0.2 (10.29 +/- 0.17) 4 rf 10.3 +/- 0.2 (10.27 +/- 0.18) 5 mc 10.2 +/- 0.2 6 st 9.8 +/- 0.2 7 al 9.6 +/- 0.2 8 sl 9.4 +/- 0.2 9 sd 9.3 +/- 0.2 10 dg 9.2 +/- 0.2 Points to note: (for people interested in tournament ranking software) (a) The software rates Whiplash lower than Night Fever even though Whiplash won the final. This is because Night Fever built up an excellent track record on saturday (eg they beat reservoir fish 13-3), whereas Whiplash didn't get such big wins in their games until they picked up three extra players from Prague (2) and Cambridge (1), eg Whiplash beat Mud Culture by only one point, whereas NF beat them 12-4. NF also beat ST by a bigger margin than WH. It is not conventional in ultimate tournaments that a team can lose the 'final' and still have a higher rating, but I think that on reflection it makes sense. Just as Arsenal would have still won the league even if they had lost to Newcastle. (b) Reservoir Fish were unhappy that Strange Blue Varsity were ranked ahead of them given that they had beaten them 12-10. Note first that the rankings are only different in the second decimal place. It would have been best perhaps to declare sv, rf and mc to be 3rd equal but we had got numbered prizes for 3rd, 4th and 5th, so that's why we split this hair! SV presumably clawed back a tiny bit ahead of RF because of their excellent result against Night Fever -- losing 11-9, as compared to RF's 13-3. (c) There are several other controversial points. Mud Culture end up ranked above Strange Blue Townies even though ST beat them 12-9. I think both teams would probably agree that ST were lucky to get that win, and that it would have been predicted to go the other way given how close Mud CUlture had got to Whiplash (11-12). Conclusion: If you use software, people will treat its output as controversial. (Especially if you misenter the scores!) But I think that the answers coming out of infera make a lot of sense (if the scores are entered right). The software probably gives the most sensible answers if teams' rosters don't change radically during the tournament. David # # individual game results # # saturday # nf 13 al 0 sv 10 rf 12 mc 14 sl 3 sd 10 st 12 nf 13 dg 1 mc 11 wh 12 rf 13 al 3 st 12 sl 9 sv 13 dg 8 nf 13 rf 3 sd 3 wh 12 mc 9 st 12 al 12 dg 7 nf 11 sv 9 sl 3 wh 13 sd 3 mc 13 rf 13 dg 6 sv 13 al 8 st 6 wh 13 sl 13 sd 5 # # sunday # al 8 st 7 rf 11 sl 3 al 10 sd 7 nf 12 mc 4 dg 7 sl 10 sv 7 wh 12 st 2 rf 5 sv 15 sd 5 dg 7 mc 12 nf 15 st 3 rf 4 wh 14 sv 10 mc 6 al 14 sl 11 dg 6 sd 13 # final nf 9 wh 13 # (I am not sure I got the final score exactly right) DJCM