FAQs About the Hua Yuan Event

What is the event?

The Hua Yuan Cup will be held in Beijing from Oct. 13-18, 2013. Click on the dark blue letters for more information and the playing schedule.

What Expenses will be Covered?

Hotel: The organizers will pay for 4 twin rooms at the Beijing Hotel

Meals: The organizers will provide 3 meals a day.

What Prize Money is Available?

The organizers promise total prize money of $200,000. Each player will receive a minimum of $2500 (last in both events), which should be sufficient to cover coach airfare. For the precise breakdown of prize money, see the information provided by the organizers .

How will USBF Choose the US Open and Women’s Teams

The USBF Board will select three pairs for the team, based on a ranking of pairs who have asked to be considered for the team by an electorate of players.

Who will be eligible to Rank Pairs?

The electorate is any player who has reached the finals (or won a repechage) of a women's  team trials in the last five years. She will be asked to rank the ten best pairs on the slate of pairs who wish to participate.  You can see the list of voters by clicking here.

Why aren’t the players slated also all eligible to vote?   

The Board desired a sufficiently large voting pool to ensure a fair election, yet a limited size, to allow for efficiency in tabulating the ballots.  We determined using the finalists (or repechage winners) of the last five years’ trials provided the best objectively determined voting field, both providing peers, and also keeping the number of voters manageable.  

Since slating is open-ended, having all slated players eligible to vote could create more ballots than desired, could have the effect of enfranchising players not as qualified to make the best assessment, or, though highly improbable, allow someone to stack the field for voting purposes.

Though many players who are eminently qualified to vote will be excluded, we felt this was a much smaller drawback than having to potentially make subjective judgments where and how to draw the line by allowing further voters.

What is the voting process?

A few days after the slating deadline, if you are an eligible voter, you will receive a ballot with the final slate of pairs.   We will ask that you rank the top ten pairs in order.   All pairs choosing to be slated will receive an e-mail which will include the final slate.  The tabulation procedure will be fully explained on the USBF website before ballots are sent out.

Eligible voters will be asked to send their ballot to each member of a group of three independent individuals, not on the slate or voting, who will tabulate the results, and keep those results confidential among themselves.  This “tabulation committee” will tell the USBF board, on a need to know basis, only the top pairs from the balloting, as needed to fill out the team. Barring unforeseen circumstances, in early August the USBF board will  extend an invitation to those pairs. 

Will it matter if or where i vote for our pair?

If you are both a voter and a candidate your ballot will not be used until you have either been selected or eliminated from consideration, so it does not matter whether or not you vote for yourself.  Please rank the pairs as you would if you were not on the ballot.