the placement of seeding isn't arbitrary. it will be drawn by random and there should be witness. random drawing often produce very strange patterns but that's just because it is random. i organized a local tournament every year for a couple dozen local companies in my area. for 2 years in a row, 3 companies were drawn into the same group. the process was totally randomized and was witnessed by 20+ people. it was just luck! (or bad luck)
it was designed by BWF to, in their own words, "create more surprises" in the result of the tournament. which is a way for them to limit China dominance in the tournament result. LYB take that to the heart and being LYB he will "revenge" the system and maximize his teams performance within legal limits. and thus all the walkovers. the authorities make rules to control a strong country, the strong country will rebel as much as the rules will allow.
Totally disagree. You sound like you condone LYB s cowardice. Both WC and GP tournaments take into account nationality in draw formats but not SS. It is good to use different draw formats to see if outcomes can be affected by draw formats. So far the indications are it is more similar than different. The outcome is more determined by the quality of tournament participants. There's no way to limit CHN s dominance as long as they have the most number of quality players. And CHN is not and should not be restricted at all in SS. They have sent the maximum number that qualify.In last week's CHN Masters, they sent 8 MS, if I'm not wrong.(That's the lowest quality SS in terms of umpiring, one wonders how BWF can justify the continuation of this tournament.If a SS cannot maintain umpiring standards by attracting minimum number of non-local umpires and contravene BWF rules, BWF should just downgrade it to a GP Gold like other countries.) Actually, CHN can determine their 4 MS be spread out equally in both halves when their 4 MS can reach the top 4. BWF cannot stop that from happening. Except that it s not that easy for CHN MS to rank the top 4 because there are more top non-CHN MS to contend with. CHN haven 't changed its spots. CHN still do match fixing; it used to do it at the late stages of a tournament but now it happens at the early stages. The moment CHN s MS are all ranked in the top 6, if ever, badminton fans will watch more CHN match cowardice being televised. Many CHN fans are proud of that as proof of patriotism!
