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The Grand Prix is a cumulative point score received from all of the Diplomacy Cons that take place in North America. For a tournament to be eligible to be part of the Grand Prix, the Con must have at least three Standard boards and be open to the public. It can be a "house con" where everyone is invited, but it must be advertised prior to the event in Face-to-Face Tournaments listings kept here at The Diplomatic Pouch and on the NADF website so that a person in the local area can find out and play in the tournament. Points are awarded based on how well a player does at the Con with consideration given to the size of the tournament, as I will talk about later. At the end of the year, all of the points are tabulated by myself, and at the subsequent DipCon, the winner of the Grand Prix is given an embroidered polo shirt and more importantly, has his or her name added to the trophy. Tournaments have until January 15th to send their results to me or to Buz Eddy at the NADF, where I then calculate all the tournaments and determine the winner. Please check the current Grand Prix standings as I keep a running total -- most tournaments do a pretty good job of quickly sending in their results. The ObjectiveThe overall intent is simple; to encourage more players to travel to more and more Diplomacy events. The HistoryNow for a brief history lesson. The Grand Prix was designed by Buz Eddy as a means for the North American Diplomacy Federation (NADF) to crown one player as the continental champion for a calendar year. It was created for the 1999 calendar year with the biggest influence being the Bismark Cup in hope of encouraging more players to leave their backyards to play more Diplomacy. One of the biggest departures from the Bismark for the Grand Prix is that it is a cumulative score for the whole year rather then the best four scores at a Con or something to that effect. The goal was/is to encourage players to do as well as possible every time a player sits done to play Diplomacy, and avoid throwing games or solos as what happened Down Under a couple of years ago. While I do not mind or condone meta-gaming to that level, I think Buz wanted to avoid the negative impact at later dated Cons as a result. Ultimately, the NADF wanted to be able to crown our own Continental champion, and in doing so, encourage more players to play multiple Cons. The EvolutionAs the score keeper of the Grand Prix (not the French pronunciation), I felt it was necessary to explain the changes I made to Buz Eddy’s scoring method, and the future changes I made for the 2002 campaign. Before I took over the scoring method for the calendar year of 2001, the Grand Prix previously awarded points to players based on the number of participants who took part in a con multiplied by 10 points with no consideration on how many rounds each player took part in. So if there were 40 participants, the winner would receive 400 points, regardless of how many rounds each of these players participated in. Second place would receive 75% of the points that 1st place received, or 300 points in our previous example. I felt that this method overly rewarded the winner of DipCon, the largest event annually. So, when I took over the scoring, I decided to change the calculation from 75% to 90%, thus opening the Grand Prix not just to the players who win Cons, but now to players who play well consistently over many Cons. Thus, at least now the emphasis is to finish on the top board of a Con. Now, a player can play in numerous Cons and catch a player who wins a Con, even DipCon by doing well consistently. With the previous mechanism, the winner of DipCon would win the Grand Prix simply by showing up and scoring at another Con. The other item I changed was making the calculation based on the total number of boards rather then the number of players- this seemed to me the fairest way to judge the size of a Con and award points based on relative size. I then open the scoring to all Cons, including House Cons, and this was probably the most controversial aspect of the changes. The question that I always asked is what if the Dip Incident has two or three boards and the PitKissers have a weekend house Con of four or five boards, who am I to judge which one should be included and the other not. While this increased the workload for the scorekeeper (me), I thought the inclusiveness for everyone would be a way to encourage everyone to have more house cons, thus making the hobby even stronger. For the year of 2002, I have required that an event be three boards to count towards the Grand Prix, and will likely raise the requirement to four boards for 2003. This effectively reduces house cons being a major point grabber, and makes the Grand Prix what it should be -- the cumulative point scoring of the Major North American Cons. Hall of FameI would like to congratulate Chris Martin, Matt Shields and J.T. Fest for conquering the Diplomacy world and winning the Grand Prix in 1999, 2000 and 2001 respectively. J.T. Fest participated in five major tournaments last year with a top seven finish in all of them. Truly an outstanding, backstabbing year. One last item that has been changed: previous winners are eligible to win the Grand Prix. While Buz likes to share the wealth, I want the winner to truly be the Continental Champion -- not the sorta, kinda, continental champion. What it Takes to be a ChampionSo, you want to win the Grand Prix? There's not much to it if you want to be known as the best backstabber of the continental North American Diplomacy hobby world. If you're serious about being the grand champion, you'll need to attend and place top-board results in at least four of the tournaments listed below. Can the previous campaigns shed any light on what it takes to win it all? The previous winners have two things in common: All three were on the top board at DipCon, and all three played at Dragonflight the year they won the Grand Prix. So my advice is, if you're serious about winning the Grand Prix, you'll need to attend DipCon, World Dip Con (if it's hosted in North America), and play at Dragonflight. As Mr. Fest showed, you should plan on playing five of the following with one including Dixie (this year’s DipCon). The significance of DipCon is still part of the equation, although the calculation has made it possible to win the Grand Prix while only doing well at the biggest event of the year.
The first five events listed above have already taken place. The "Size" is the actual number of boards this year, while the remaining events reflect the size of the event the previous year. In additional to the list, the Missouri Compromise, GenCon and Origins could change the landscape to the point where the Grand Prix canidate will need to play in six events or more, thus making it even more competitive to win the Grand Prix Champion. At present, if you can only attend four national events, attend the biggest tournaments. Remember, ratings are weighted by the overall number of boards at a tournament. As the scorekeeper of the Grand Prix, I am open to comments and input to improve the Continental Championship for our great hobby. |
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| Please send comments or questions to:
Jeff Dwornicki (jsab@excite.com) If you wish to e-mail feedback on this article to the author, click on the letter above. |
