Discussion: Venue details are posted

All map and venue details are now posted; registration is open. The event center hotel will shortly be bookable, at the latest before the end of July.

All signed up and looking forward to some orienteering immediately prior to the AGU conference!

OK, Vladimir, I'm finding that I'm a little slow on the uptake here. Can I just make sure I understand the sprint classes?

First, are they different on Friday than on Saturday?
For Saturday, is it the case that there is a single category for all humans for the sprints?
Whereas for Friday and Sunday, you are either a Man, Woman or MasterJunior? i.e., 3 separate classes?

If I understand that correctly I'd like to move on to a couple other questions:
You state that the seeding for Saturday will be based on results from Friday -- how do you compare across Friday's 3 categories to create the seeding?

And then, another question: oh. I forgot my other question.

How do you give separate prizes to men and women in four different age categories for the Tournament when some of those people people may have competed on Saturday in only one sprint (because they got eliminated), in different heats? How do you compare them?

"Overall Tournament prizes will be given to the top three men and women in the following categories: Open, Juniors (age 20 and under on 31 December 2013), Masters (age 40 and over on 31 December 2013), and Supervets (age 55 and over on 31 December 2013)."

Tournament when some of those people people may have competed on Saturday in only one sprint (because they got eliminated), in different heats? How do you compare them?

At the two previous tournaments, everyone got to run each of the races and nobody was eliminated. After the first heat, the winners advance to the winners' bracket, and everyone else to the losers' bracket. And after the second heat, that sets up a championship heat of the winners of the winners, and other heats of the losers of the winners, the winners of the losers, and the winners of the winners.

At the end of it all, all 30 sprinters will be ranked 1-30, and that's how they'll award prizes. The 1st place woman could finish, say 7th overall, and the first masters man 8th overall, etc.

This year there are 5 heats of 6 instead of 8 heats of 4, so the bracketing will be different, but the theory should be the same.

So the bracketing will be different, but the theory should be the same.

Since I won't be winning much, I'm curious how the loser brackets will be set up. In the past two tournaments, everything made sense to me because basically the top half moved up, the bottom half moved down, and after 4 rounds everything was nice and neat.

This year, it's 5 heats of 6. After the first round, 12 of 30 advance, so that's 40%. How will the second round be set up with the other 60%?

After the second round, the top half (6) of the top 40% (12) advance to the "A" final. And the bottom half will go the "B" final. That makes sense. But how will the other 60% get funneled into the C, D, and E finals?

It would be nice if everyone got to run all three sprints, but it didn't seem obvious to me that was the case from the description.

From the tab describing Stage Four: Five brackets of six runners will be formed according to the results of Stages Two and Three: two-time winners, first-time winners, second-time winners, and two heats of everyone else. The results of Stage Four will constitute the final results of the Tournament.

Yes yes, everyone runs all Sprints, that's what you pay big bucks for!

Friday and Sunday events are just regular Orienteering USA Sprints. The course names could have been Blue, Red, and Green, but we don't necessarily like these names.

Seeding for the Tournament will be guided by divine thought. Trust us, you won't be disappointed.

On Saturday, the following will happen:

5 groups of 6 => (Stage Two) => 2 groups of 6 + 3 groups of 6

2 groups of 6 => (Stage Three) => One group of 6 + one group of 6
3 groups of 6 => (Stage Three) => One group of 6 + two groups of 6

I guess we could give these groups animal names again, but this would be confusing since the Foxes circa 2013 won't be in the same place in the hierarchy as the Foxes circa 2009 or 2011. If you can think of some other alphabetized (or not) objects, be my guest; I have an aversion to monster trucks.

In Stage Four, the results of each group determine the overall standings. Note that the two bottom brackets aren't disambiguated by Stage Four; we will use times in Stage Four for the final placements only for these two.

Hope this is understandable.

To clarify more:

3 groups of 6 => (Stage Three) => One group of 6 + two groups of 6

Top two in each advance to the top, bottom three in each form the two groups of 6. The "also two with best times" does not apply (only to the loser 60% of Stage Three).

And there will be no leapfrogging promotion aka "don't ever think of mispunching". You can mispunch all you want in 2013.

Will the runners be re-seeded after each stage based on results from that stage? Or are the brackets rigid based on initial seed?

Top two in each advance to the top, bottom three in each form the two groups of 6.

I think you meant bottom four?

Yes I did, bottom four.

Reseeding the brackets: I think yes. We had a mixed formula in the past, taking into account last stage's results but not results of the stages before the latest one. So the top 40% after Stage Two will be something like three first places, two second places, and the second-best top time go one way; two first places, three second places, and the top otherwise unqualified time go the other way. The lower 60% will be filled similarly, i.e. don't expect all five last places to end up in the same heat.

Thanks!