[zachary]

I'm 'importing' a discussion from the newsgroup here. I would be most interested to hear what people think about the selection process for Teams at Osaka.

This is roughly how it functions in the US: Team selection is basically made on the basis of ONE tournament (the national team trials). there is a preliminary round, with some players being seeded out. Eventually, the main round is played as a 12-person round-robin.

This year, things were a little weird (for example, a top player hurt himself at the tournment and had to withdraw and is now not on the team), and some people, including at least one participant in the Trials, recently posted to the newsgroup saying that this might not be the best way to do the selection. An alternative suggestion might be a 'tour' format like the ITTF Pro-tour, where one has to earn points by competing in certain tournaments throughout the whole year.

My question is: How are Team selections done in other countries? What are the advantages or disadvantages of other ways of doing this?