Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:46:10 10/29/97
I was looking at the official rules to decide how to handle tie-breaks in the crosstable program I wrote. And found an amusing problem that goes to show how little thought goes into some decisions that are made for these tournaments: from the rules: the first tie-break is the sum-of-opponent's scores. Ok so far. the second tie-break, should the first tie-break still result in a tie is to use cumulative round-by-round scores. And that won't be fair after accelerated pairings are used. IE a weak program gets paired against weak opposition in the first round and can easily end up with +2. A strong program can get paired with a stronger opponent in rounds 1 and two and end up with a zero. At the end the weaker and stronger opponents are tied, and the cumulative score favors the weaker opponent because he won earlier rounds. I think the cumulative round by round score is a pretty shoddy tie-break scheme anyway, as it rewards early wins over later wins, when the later wins are harder to come by. And with the accelerated pairings, it is not just shoddy, it is wrong. Another complaint for the complaint department... :)
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