The second in a series of vaguely related posts.

Did you ever read The Princess Bride?

No, no, no... Not this Princess Bride. That's the movie. And like most fencers I know, I've watched it way too many times, and can quote from it extensively. It is, in my opinion, one of Rob Reiner's finest moments. And that's saying an awful lot.

But as much of a cliche as I know this is: the book is better. Mr. Goldman (who also wrote the screenplay) had time to tell how his characters got to the story in the film. They each had stories only hinted at on screen. And the important story for today's purposes was thet of Inigo Montoya. ("Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." See, I told you I could quote from it excessively — I mean, extensively.) In the film, Inigo hunted the six-fingered man who had commissioned his sword-maker father to make a custom sword, but who then refused to pay for it and killed his father.

But in the book, we learn the story that came before the six-fingered sword. It tells of how the elder Montoya was one of if not the finest swordsmen in the land, and his swords came to be prized beyond any others. He had so much work that he couldn't keep up. So he raised his prices to try to drive business away. But buyers decided that such expensive swords must be even more valuable, so the demand increased. Soon he couldn't keep up with his own standards, and he openly said that the quality would suffer; but people didn't care, because only a genuine Montoya would do. And besides, despite his protests, he was too professional to ever let the quality really suffer.

If he hadn't been such a hard worker, he wouldn't have had to work so hard.

Same lesson, different story: Star Trek. The Enterprise crew is exhausted. They haven't had a rest in months. And on their way to some much-needed shore leave, Starfleet throws them another certain death challenge. And McCoy demands, "Why do they keep giving us all the hard jobs?" And Spock answers, "Because we keep succeeding."

No good deed ever goes unpunished. I really believe this is a law of human nature: the more you succeed, the more people expect from you.

Eight years ago, we of the Ann Arbor Dueling Society decided the time had come to finally do what we had been wanting to do for years: host our own tournament. We were complete newbies; but with a lot of help from the Division and a lot of patience and support from the Y, we pulled it off. We were tired and dirty, but we pulled it off. And we learned. And we vowed to do even better the next year.

And we did. In fact, much better. And better still the year after that.

But at the same time, the Y became a little more strict about the clock. There were various, justifiable reasons — cost of maintenance staff, building security needs, etc. — but probably the biggest was that they were saving and budgeting for a new facility. So while we were getting better at running the tournament, we needed to get better just to keep up.

But here's the thing about fencing tournaments (and I would assume other sports as well, but I can't say): people appreciate a well run event. They like it when things go well, and they get more time to fence and spend less time waiting for things to happen. And when they like a tournament, they're more likely to come back the next year — and to tell their friends about it, so they show up, too. So when you get better at running a tournament, more people show up.

And here's the thing about the Duelist: for various reasons, we chose to hold it in late August. That makes it the first tournament of the season; so people who haven't fenced in a tournament all summer are just a little more eager to show up. And also, it's one of the few tournaments during the pre-Labor Day summer season, when people tend to travel a bit more. So that's another pair of reasons why the Duelist has tended to grow.

And then here's another thing about fencing tournaments: when more people show up, more people want to show up. See, fencers (present company excepted) are all obsessed about improving their ratings. It's like horse racers wanting to run at pole position: a better rating helps you in small ways, and also just indicates that you're a better fencer. And the rules for awarding ratings state the you have to place at-and-such a place with so-and-so-many fencers including a minimum number of fencers of a given rating in order for you to advance in rating. So as more people start showing up at a tournament, the chances for a rating go up, enticing more people to show up at the tournament. It's a vicious positive feedback loop. Yes, we're proud of the size of our tournament; but at the same time, it's vicious.

And yet another thing about fencing tournaments: while the sport is still way less popular in the USA than seems right to us (good grief, one evening I caught two hours of competitive hot dog eating on ESPN, but they still won't air fencing tournaments), the popularity is growing. There are just more fencers out there looking for tournaments. (In our own miniscule way, we like to think we're helping that growth.)

Now here's one more thing yet about fencing tournaments: unless you can add fencing strips and directors, adding more people tends to make the tournament take longer according to the square of the number of people. See, initial fencing is divided up into roughly equal pools, where the number of pools is pretty much limited to the number of directors you have. (Michigan has some fine directors, but doesn't have many directors over all.) So if you add more people without adding more directors, you have to make the pools larger. And since the rules for pools are that each person in a pool fences each other person in that pool, well, that's an n-squared growth problem. Actually, its (n-squared + n) / 2 (George could explain why; but because I studied under him, the answer's intuitive to me.) Six people in a pool means 15 pool bouts. Seven people in a pool means 21 pool bouts, so a 16% increase in fencers means a 40% increase in bouts. And eight people in a pool means 28 pool bouts, or nearly double the 15 we started with. Adding people slows you down. A lot.

So while we have been doing everything in our power to get better and better at running a tournament, the very success we achieve makes it harder to run the next one. Every year we have had to learn from our experience last year and do just a little bit better; but since that sort of improvement can only go so far, we have had to invent new techniques for getting lots better at things we thought were pretty darn good already.

And that's the sort of game that can give certain sorts of control freaks (hey, I resemble that remark — and thankfully for the tournament, I'm not alone) a certain thrill as you try to find ways to beat your past performance. But in all modesty, last year's tournament (The Duelist VIII) was run as close to picture perfect as any of us could imagine. In our post mortem review (that's fancy talk for "hanging out in the bar afterwards"), we shared stories from the day; and we learned from each other of a half dozen to a dozen different catastrophes that didn't happen because someone on our very capable and conscientious staff happened to be in the right place at the right time and noticed the problem and had the presence of mind and the experience and the ingenuity to deal with it in the most efficient possible fashion. If we had simply had normal human failings just once, the whole schedule would've collapsed. And we are only human, after all, so we had to count luck as a significant factor in our success last year.

But with all that on our side — ingenuity, experience, willingness, determination, and lots of luck — we barely snuck out the door 30 seconds before the Y's closing time. Literally: they locked the doors behind us. Luck alone is not going to cut it this year.

On the plus side, the Y has lengthened their schedule by one hour this year. That will buy us some breathing room; but if the tournament grows at all, or if one catastrophe goes unaverted, we're at risk of the whole house of cards falling apart.

And yes, to the control freaks among us, that's a sick kind of game: how do we do measurably better than the best we could do last year? It's sad, I know, but we find it fun. We have to do better.

All of which is preamble to my next post...