Current mood:	intimidated
Current music:	Try - Nelly Furtardo

Ubergeekery (1)
A couple of years ago, jiggery_pokery talked about the Aussie Rules finals schedule. After some hard research, may I present, for everyone's geeky delectation, the San Marino football championship playoffs.

The regular season splits the fifteen sides into groups of eight and seven; the groups play home-and-away amongst themselves, and home-or-away against the other group. Twenty-two rounds later, the top three from each group progress to the championship round. It goes a little bit like this

(1a) A2 : A3
(1b) B2 : B3

(2a) A1: W1b
(2b) B1: W1a

(3a) L1a: L2a
(3b) L1b: L2b

(4) W2a: W2b

(5) W3a: W3b

(6) L4 : W5

(7) W4 : W6



As the expensive* graphic shows, that would be almost a double-elimination tournament, except that the unbeaten side in the final only has one loss to lose the championship, and the potential of a money-spinning* UEFA Cup tie against a side from Bosnia. That fate befell Domagnano, who beat Pennarossa in the Winner Sofa match, only to tie against the same opposition in the championship match, and lose on penalties.

We note, in passing, that it takes 10 play-off matches for San Marino to determine its football champion. To achieve the same end, the NFL requires 11, albeit on a tediously simple single-elimination system. We also note that the expense spent on the expensive graphic (above) is almost as large as the money spun from Pennarossa's match against Zeljeznicar Sarajevo.

Next time: the Schleichswig-Holstein question explained in language anyone can understand.