by DeDaan
The Australian guy (Paul Huntley) started his first match at about half past 9 pm his time and played until deep in the night/start of the morning. Quite challenging, but he didn't complain at all ;-)I need to rectificate the bidding procedure as written here. Only in the first round AREA ranking decided who started bidding, after that the lower ranked player in the actual tournament ranking started bidding. Reacting on Ioan's remark: yes, you should immediately bid the amount you think it's worth to play a certain side instead of hoping for the other player to pass. In that case you will get your preferred side or you get more IP for the other one. So, seeing the results of this year I expect more US +2 bids next year.
Anyway, I'm still surprised by the difference between online TS WC and WGR league on one side which give a big USSR advantage, and the ETSL and the TS Convention on the other side, which give very balanced results. For example, at the TS Convention 39 matches were played with US bids 0-2 recording 19 USSR victories, 19 US victories and 1 tie ;-)
I'm very aware of the sample size, so don't take these numbers too seriously, but I tend to agree with Janusz that there are too many other factors deciding on the outcome to hang everything on the additional US influence.