Well Riga was interesting, my first competition abroad coaching. Won't go in to any of the details other than one aspect of how it was organised. In 2* and 4* Table Tennis England events, the early stages typicallly consist of groups of 3 or 4 players - all play all within the group. Top two qualify for the knockout stages (in higher competitions like the nationals, sometimes the top 8 seeds skip the group stages and go straight in at the knockout stages. Anyway, I digress. In the group stages, players are allocated a table and play all their group matches on that table. When one group is particularly close and taking a long time to complete, this can result in time delays and lots of empty tables whilst everyone else waits for them to finish.

In the Riga Cup, the organisors did something different. Every group started on an allocated table [they had 24 tables to use], and as a match was completed, the next match on that table could be from any group - it simply depended on which players were available and which groups were getting behind. This meant the tables were in constant play and the groups finished roughly around the same time. The downside was that it's hard to scout opponents if you don't know who they are or what table they are on especially if the tanoy system is difficult to hear and you don't know the language [yes you can see the table draw on the wall, but once the round is under way, unless they have their names on their shirts, you'll strugle to recognise them].