The MIT team, in its second year playing in the Sam Magruder Summer League, claimed the championship this year by five points over BSC-Waltham. MIT swept its first three matches, including a decisive victory over the defending champions from the Lynch/van Otterloo YMCA in Week 3. MIT was within one point of clinching the title with two weeks to go and won decisively despite suffering its only two losses of the season to Cross Courts and BSC-Waltham in the last two weeks.
BSC-Waltham edged out BSC-Allston and Harvard Club by three points for second place, with Allston claiming third place over Harvard Club by head-to-head tiebreaker. LVO YMCA rounded out the top half of the standings, another two points back, only one point ahead of Cross Courts. All positions in the standings were closely contested.
There were ten teams this summer, down from twelve during the previous two years, but an impressive total of 116 people with a wide range of abilities played matches. The captains are to be commended for decreasing the number of defaults this year, despite the gorgeous and very distracting weather all summer (MIT, BSC-Waltham, and LVO YMCA had no defaults; Union Boat Club and Andover had only one each).
Thanks to a lot of hard work by yours truly, League Coordinator Ralph Kusinitz, with plenty of helpful and accurate guidance from the captains, there were no incorrect handicaps (i.e., no one reported, “He’s better than me, and I had to give him points!”). There was a lot of “What chance do I have against someone a third or a quarter of my age?” (well, that was all from Ralph Kusinitz).
On the flip side of the accurate handicaps was the fact that players who were stronger by three or more points went 30-0 during the season, with only a third of those matches going more than three games. Players two points stronger went 16-3. Matches with a one-point handicap difference were 29-25 in favor of the stronger player. Players with the same handicap won exactly 50% of the time (no need to compile results to figure that out!).
The two-point modification from game to game continued to work well. It was not necessary for the referee to announce “He’s on the shneid” when someone went from -1 to zero and then “He’s off the shneid” when he got to +1, but the League Coordinator often just couldn’t resist.
An attempt will be made to encourage more advanced planning to ensure closer handicap match-ups next summer. Alternatively, supplementary handicapping methods are being explored, in order to accommodate teams, such as MIT, with a small range of ability among their members, in hopes of having more teams in the league next summer. We will also start organizing earlier next year and try to start at the beginning of June.
Thanks to all captains and players who joined in the fun this summer, and particular thanks to anyone who read all the way to the end of this report!
– Ralph Kusinitz