Seki, do you require them to be USCF members to participate in your unrated?
Only the players in the Rated sections are required to be USCF members.
I keep a local Chess for Kids rating list for the non-rated players using SwiSys.
As a postscript, and I appreciate all the thoughtful comments, I did end up having a 6-way tie in primary section (with 36 participants). Each of the 6 ended up with four points. I did the blitz playoff between the top two on tie breaks and awarded championship on that basis. In hindsight I don’t know if I’ll do it that way again because it doesn’t seem quite fair to the other four 4-pointers.
Yes that can be the problme. Good luck in the future with your events
If you’re going to have a blitz playoff it should include all of the players in the tie otherwise you might as well use tiebreaks. One organizer I work for, only uses blitz playoffs for perect 5-0 scores otherwise tie breaks are used. For 4 players I’d do a quad. For 6 players I’d do a knockout. (NCAA basketball bracket style.) For 2, I do one game and let them draw for color. The blitz play off for the K-1 section is usually quite interesting, but being in NYC even kindergartners have used a clock.
The primary organizer that I work for uses tie breaks. We have our trophy person make up generic “Co-Champion” plates. We put those on the 2nd tier of the place trophies that are involved in the tie. We have received complaints because the 1st place trophy is a 2 post trophy, and 2nd place is smaller and only one post. There is a significant difference between 1st and 2nd, so even though there’s a “Co-Champion” plate on the trophy the kid knows he ended out 2nd on tie-breaks. One of the kids on the team I was coaching in KC was moaning about that. “Tie breaks s##k because 2nd place is so much smaller then 1st.” were his exact words.
Maybe generic 1st place trophies are a good solution. Maybe I’ll have the guy who orders the trophies look at the price difference.