FAQs About the SportAccord Event

What is the event?

The SportAccord Mind Games will be held in Beijing from Dec. 10-17, 2014. For more information, see the invitation letter from the WBF.

What Expenses will be Covered?

Travei: The organizers will provide each player with a round trip coach ticket to Beijing and will arrange transfers from the Beijing airport to the tournament hotel and back.

Hotel: The organizers will pay for a room at the tournament hotel from two days before the event starts through the ending date of the event. We do not know the name of the hotel, but the organizers promise a 4 or 5 star hotel.

Meals: The organizers will provide 3 meals a day.

What Prize Money is Available?

The organizers promise a minumum of $250,000 total prize money; $140,000 for the Open events and $110,000 for the Women's events. That money will be divided among the first through fourth place teams, first through 8th place Open Pairs, first through 6th place Women's pairs, first through sixth place Open individuals and first through fifth place Women individuals. We have calculated that a player who won the Open team, pair & individual events would receive $18,000 in prize money. If that player's partner was second in the Individual, the partner would receive $16,000. The corresponding numbers for the Women's events are $14,000 and $12,000. The fourth place Open & Women's Teams will each receive $6000 ($1000 per player). The average prize money per player in the Open is $5833. Average in the Women's is $4583. For the precise breakdown of prize money, see the information provided by SportAccord.

How will USBF Choose the US Open and Women’s Teams

The USBF Board has selected the Open Team and will select three pairs for the Women's team, based on a ranking of pairs who have asked to be considered for the team by an electorate of players who have competed in the Finals of the last five Women’s USBCs.

Who will be eligible to Rank Pairs?

Any player who has reached the finals (or won a repechage) of the Women's USBC in the last five years, will be asked to rank the ten best pairs on the slate of pairs who wish to participate. Subject to an oversight, there are 37 Women’s Team voters. You can see the lists of voters by clicking on "Women’s Team voters" in the previous sentence.

Why aren’t All the players slated also all eligible to vote?   

The Board wanted a sufficiently large voting pool to ensure a fair election, yet a limited size, to allow for efficiency in tabulating the ballots.  We determined using the finalists (and USA2 winners) of the last five years’ USBCs provided the best objectively determined voting field, both providing peers, and also keeping the number of voters appropriate.  

Since slating is open-ended, having all slated players eligible to vote could create more ballots than desired, could have the effect of enfranchising players not as qualified to make the best assessment, or, though highly improbable, allow someone to stack the field for voting purposes.

Though many players who are eminently qualified to vote will be excluded, we felt this was a much smaller drawback than having to potentially make subjective judgments where and how to draw the line by allowing further voters.

What is the voting process?

A few days after the slating deadline, if you are an eligible voter, you will receive a ballot with the final slate of pairs.   We will ask that you rank the top ten pairs in order.   All pairs choosing to be slated will receive an e-mail which will include the final slate.  Click here for a more complete explanation of the tabulation process. Eligible voters will vote online and the results of the voting will be available only to the tabulation committee of 2 or 3 people who are not on the slate, who will tabulate the results, and keep those results confidential among themselves.  This “tabulation committee” will tell the USBF board, on a need to know basis, only the top pairs from the balloting, as needed to fill out the team. Barring unforeseen circumstances, in September the USBF board will  extend an invitation to those pairs. 

Will it matter if or where I vote for our pair?

If you are both a voter and a candidate your ballot will not be used until you have either been selected or eliminated from consideration, so it does not matter whether or not you vote for yourself.  Please rank the pairs as you would if you were not on the ballot.