Scheduling of matches - Tour Championship

[RonnieO’Hendry]

I’m trying to understand the current Tour Championship scheduling of matches?
Trump who is the No.1 seed had to play his two sessions of the 19 frame match against Hawkins consecutively ie. on the same day whereas Higgins the No.4 seed gets the luxury of playing his two sessions over 2 days ie. with a session break in between?
I would have thought that luxury would go to the No.1 seed not the No.4 seed?

[Ginger Freak]

Is it a luxury though? Another way to look at it would be that it could be a momentum killer, having the second session a day after, also, its a day less rest. If you note, the defending world champ always plays both his sessions on the opening day at the crucible too!

I'm sure Higgins would have loved to come back yesterday evening, the way he finished the afternoon session off!

[akofb]

Is it a luxury though? Another way to look at it would be that it could be a momentum killer, having the second session a day after, also, its a day less rest. If you note, the defending world champ always plays both his sessions on the opening day at the crucible too!

I'm sure Higgins would have loved to come back yesterday evening, the way he finished the afternoon session off!

This is my view, I would rather have back to back sessions than have to stop and start again on a different day.

[RonnieO’Hendry]

Conversely I’m sure Trump would have rather had played the next day when down 2-6 to Hawkins in the afternoon session instead of having to backup a few hours later in the night session.
Also in the World Championship’s 19-frame first round at least there is always a session rest in between and not consecutive sessions since the sessions for the matches are either morning/evening afternoon/morning or evening/afternoon.

[Ginger Freak]

Conversely I’m sure Trump would have rather had played the next day when down 2-6 to Hawkins in the afternoon session instead of having to backup a few hours later in the night session.
Also in the World Championship’s 19-frame first round at least there is always a session rest in between and not consecutive sessions since the sessions for the matches are either morning/evening afternoon/morning or evening/afternoon.

He would, but its no ones fault but his own that he was 2-6 down! If he was 6-2 up he would have wanted to come back that evening!

Yes you are right, there is a longer break between sessions for the first match at the worlds, but only by a matter of hours. The general consensus is that it is better to play your match in one day!

[RonnieO’Hendry]

I agree but this is what they veered away from in their scheduling, which is what I couldn’t understand in the first instance of my post.
The bottom line is that’s this happened for the first four matches on Day 1 & 2 but the scheduling then became inconsistent for the quarter finals, in my opinion.
ie. why wasn’t Day 3 just the Trump/Hawkins and the Higgins/Guodong matches played as the afternoon and the night sessions instead of replacing the Higgins/Guogong second session with the Robertson/Selby first session?
This meant the Robertson/Selby match ends up being played over two night sessions?
Tô make the schedule consistent Day 3 should have been as I mentioned… the Trump/Hawkins and the Higgins/Guodong afternoon and night sessions. Then Day 4 the Robertson/Selby and the Wilson/Ding afternoon and night sessions, which makes plain obvious sense but they didn’t stick to the plain obvious!

[Ginger Freak]

Not really, Murphy/Hawkins and Selby/Jiahui were played over 1 day whilst the other two 1st round matches were played over 2, exactly the same as this round. You could argue it might be fairer to have every match played over 1 day, but organizers will want as many players on show each day to maximise attractiveness (same with the Worlds), so the top two seeds get the percieved advantage of one day matches.

To be strictly true to the theme, Xiao/Wu should have been over 1 day rather than Murphy/Hawkins, but other than that I can see why they have done it the way they have!

[Mark187187]

I'd rather play both sessions the same day. I always think the world championship matches over 3 days suffer as a consequence of being too spread out and destroying momentum

[RonnieO’Hendry]

Yeah I guess with scheduling the sessions can’t be totally consistent with a number of factors taken into account.
Even in the first round of the WorldS the only matches that can be scheduled to complete on the same day are the morning/night session matches whereas the afternoon/morning and evening/afternoon session matches are scheduled over two days.
The only consistent constant in any tournament is the final where there’s only two contestants left and the sessions are always consecutive.