The question has come up a few times as to what determines who plays in the interdivisional bracket of the Tournament of Champions each week.

In general terms, the answer is "arbitrariness". But there is indeed a method to it.

At the end of week 3, all 40 bowlers were arranged in descending order of what their exact average was at that time. Having not bowled yet, Steven Anthony and Conrad Bonney were assigned an average of 0 and the arbitrarily sorted between each based on the first letter of last name. Using this ranking, everyone in the league was assigned a number 1-40.

Divisions were then counted off in groups of 10. Your week 3 within each division then became your base ToC number. So, if you are in Division 2 for instance, your week 3 ranks of 11-20 become ToC base seed numbers of 1-10.

Now is where it gets arbitrary. Lacking any other better system to use, we applied the same schedule that determines what teams bowl each other in the first two weeks of the standard USBC 10-team schedule, simply replacing team numbers with bowler numbers. That took care of weeks 4 through 13 of the season, with everyone rolling in Interdivisionals twice.

For weeks 14 & 15, a total of four people in each division have to go through Interdivisionals a third time. The USBC formula became messy here, so we ditched that and decided to put 10 & 1 in week 14, and 4 & 7 in week 15. Why these? Because it solved the following:

• There are two possible game 1 matchups in the interdivisional bracket that bowlers from each division can start from. This ensures everyone starts within both matchups at least once.
• It lets the top and bottom seed bowler in each division get a chance to join the interdivisionals together.

So where do you fall in the schedule? Just take a look at the following chart to see!