Spingold Day 4 - the sweet 16 - collision!

When the event reaches the round of 16, it now becomes a matter of which teams are playing in top form. The best predictor of this is how much IMPs a team has been dropping to other teams. When you make mistakes, they usually show up as IMPs losses to the other team. However your IMP gains might be due to your good play, or they could just be gifts from the other team self-destructing. Thus IMPs given up are a better predictor of playing form.

Here are the sweet 16 match-ups, and IMPs given up by the teams in their last two matches, recent match listed first:

Nickell (92, 94)
Brogeland (125, 136)

Ekeblad (143, 83)
Meltzer (138, 88)

Gromov (112, 137)
Lynch (133, 138)

Tuszynski (118, 94)
Markowicz (87, 135)

Weed-Cayne (74, 36Withdrawl)
Ladyzhensky (155, 123)

Narasimhan (142, 48)
Sadek (91, 81)

Schwartz (102, 83)
Lusky (92, 113)

Welland (117, 168)
O'Rourke (131, 113)

We can expect wins by the Nickell, Weed-Cayne, and Sadek teams. The Ekeblad-Meltzer match is too close to call: having to call something, we will pick Meltzer as the Ekeblad-Weichsel partnership may not be in full form. For Tuszynski-Markowicz, again close to call, we will pick Tuszynski, as the Markowicz team is a 5 bagger, which means heavy playing time and multiple partners for somebody. Gromov is only a 4 bagger team, but they've played like this before without being overstrained, and thus we will pick them against Lynch who is a touch weaker. Schwartz and Lusky teams are both in good form - on Drew Casen's home turf of Vegas, our horse in this race will be Schwartz. In Welland-O'Rourke, I like the partnership of Welland-Glubok better than O'Rourke-Jacobus, and I expect Welland's teammates to hold off a late charge by Hampson-Greco and Duboin-Sementa against Garner-Weinstein and Cohen-Smith.