But, that isn’t what the MSA shows. If that were true, then it would list it like this:
Bob 4.0
Joe 4.0
Jane 3.5
Of course, that would make the crosstable rather difficult to decipher, so instead it uses a “tiebreak” based on rating order. It could just as easily use the standard/default tiebreak order instead. This would then match most trophy style tournaments, which are the only ones where tiebreaks matter anyway. There will be still some tournaments that use different tiebreaks, but these can’t be shown properly unless the tiebreak information is included in the rating report. The vast majority, at least, will be correct. The way it is right now, no listing is correct.
None of it can properly be shown unless the tiebreak information is included in the rating report. The MSA cannot calculate tiebreaks.
Yes there is a “normal” tiebreak order specified in the rulebook, but that is not always followed.
As mentioned this does not impact cash events - only those with indivisible prizes (trophies).
The changes needed to accomplish printing such in MSA are pretty large, the rating reports would be far more involved, the rating software would not to accommodate the additional data in the rating report (probably the easiest part of such a change) and even the screen design would have to change.
And then, the question would now be “what does that tiebreak mean?”
In my opinion there are far higher priorities than this - and I mostly direct scholastic events which are the main ones subject to such questions. Frankly, I have not gotten very many calls after an event from a parent wondering why Johnnie got a 3rd place trophy when the MSA said he was in 2nd. I think that call has come once or twice.
There seems to be a misconception about what MSA displays. Notice that the column being misidentified as a final standing or ranking column is actually labeled “Pair num”, which is short for “pairing number”. This is what a wallchart shows. All MSA shows is a standard wallchart, sorted by score, after the final round. TDs use pairing programs to generate wallcharts sorted in this manner all the time.
So, the listing shown in MSA is actually correct - because it’s not intended to display final results or prize distributions. It’s just a score-sorted wallchart.
How is that a good thing? If I am a random chess player, perhaps new, perhaps a parent, perhaps a coach, how is not knowing the tiebreaks a good thing for me? What additional information does that provide?
1 John 4pts
2 Jill 3 pts
3 Sam 3 pts
4 Sally 3 pts
etc
The reason it is a good thing to the uninitiated or initiated for that matter is that looking at that result you see that Sally, Sam and Jill all tied for second place. Sally did not finish 4th. The fact that she might have or might not have gotten a 4th place trophy doesn’t matter.
If anything should be changed it should be the handing out of trophies at trophy tournaments to represent the fact that everybody tied for second (in the above example).
On dealing with trophies to show ties, here are two suggested ways to do that. Have the plates made after the event to reflect the real final placement. The plates can then be sent to the players. The second method is to have ribbons on hand to attach to the trophy which shows that though the player received a 4th place trophy, the ribbon would have second place written on it. Often the ribbons have a little card on the back to write a small message. Usually, though, because of costs and the need to hand out trophies with pre-made plates on them quickly at the end of the event, the trophies are handed out in tie-break order.
I don’t know what the big deal here is. The MSA record is designed to show ratings changes. It does not reflect what particular prize you got (2nd U600, woo hoo!), the door prize you received, or your actual finish in an event. It is only about ratings and the pairings a player had during an event. Nor does the MSA record show which tiebreaks were used, if an unusual scoring method was selected (such as 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, 0 for a loss), who you won against on forfeit, or the reasons for taking 1/2 byes.
A distinction without a difference. How isn’t this shown if we show them in tie-break order? There is a reason they are called tie-breaks – which involves the fact that they are tied, right?
Theoretically, there’s no reason we can’t allow the reader to sort on any available order - tiebreak order, rating order, or just prize order.
As noted in my original response - what additional information is rating order providing over tie-break order? Answer: None. But tie-break order provides additional information over rating order.
Kevin I’m implying that it is somewhat insulting to sort them by tiebreak. The player tied for second, period. Do we concern ourselves about tiebreaks when we divide money prizes? Just because no one has come up with a good way to do trophies with out tiebreaks doesn’t make it the best way.
The problem isn’t that the MSA doesn’t show results in tiebreak order. The problem is that some tournaments use tiebreaks.
I think you missed the subtle distinction. The ranking numbers on the left are in straight numerical order on the MSA page: 1,2,3, etc. while a strict tied order would repeat numbers and skip the extras: 1,1,3, etc.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that the information is correct. You can display this information any number of ways and it will still be correct. The point is that the current listing is using a “tiebreak”. It is sorted by points first and then by post-event rating. Without any additional information from the rating reports, it could just as easily be sorted by the standard tiebreak order.
Crosstable data is NOT SHOWN in tiebreak order and does not reflect
any distribution of trophies or prize monies.
the phrase that is highlighted is something of a term of art in the tournament world. Suppose this is changed to
Crosstable data is NOT SHOWN in tiebreak order and does not reflect
any distribution of trophies or prize monies.
Now the emphasis is drawn to what really matters and what ones hopes just about everyone can understand. If someone doesn’t bother reading the disclaimer, then nothing will help, but at least what’s highlighted is something that a person would be less likely to skip over as being “greek”.
I agree.
On the final scholastic tournament cross-tables I used to write, in big letters, “not in tie-break order”. For some years now I have, instead, been writing “NOT in trophy order” with no mention of tie-breaks.
With real estate on the page easier to come by, Tom’s suggestion still references tie-breaks while emphasizing the real issue.
One thing to remember about showing the cross-tables in trophy order is that doing so in sections with ratings-based prizes makes it more difficult to find who may have won things like the U2000 prize in the open section. Now, all you have to do is check the last few players in each scoregroup until finding the highest rated one starting the tournaemnt under 2000 (well, right click on the player and check the supplement history to see if the player would have been U2000 on the wall chart).
If the cross-table is put into tie-break order then you are stuck looking through all of the players starting at the top until getting down to the ratings you are interested in.
When I was looking through the US Open cross-table to see the possible D prize winner I only had to quickly eyeball about a dozen players before focusing on the one that won. If it was in tie-break order I would have had to eyeball more than 100.
Now if it could just be bolded, too, for the sake of the 10% to 15% of the male population who are red-green colorblind. (By the way, I have normal color vision, so this isn’t personal.)
But back to the original question of the order in which players should be listed –
Some have said that the cost-benefit ratio of making a change is too poor to be worth the effort.
I agree, but I’ll go even further. The cost-benefit ratio of such a change would actually be negative. For every 1 person who has complained “the players aren’t listed in trophy order”, there would now be 10 who would complain “the players aren’t listed in rating order” if such a change were to be made.
I understand what you’re implying. I’m saying that 1) What you’re implying makes doesn’t really make sense, and 2) What you’re implying is a distinction without a difference.
The lack of sense comes from the fact that sorting things in tie-break order implies that the people were tied. The distinction without a difference is because ANY sort will imply an order that may have no meaningful relevance, and there must be a sort. Tie-break order at least adds information and at least may apply to the application of prizes.
The sort doesn’t have to be the best way. It should, however, reflect reality. Why are we o.k. in actually USING TB order, but concerned about showing it in MSA? That to me is nonsensical. My sense is that we should be capturing more information from a tournament, and we can show whether TB were used in prize distribution or not. If we have TB in the rulebook - then our MSA should certainly be capable of reporting TB as part of the tournament report to the general chess public.
The point I’ve been trying to make is that WE SHOULD be capturing the needed information. And generally speaking, I think that aligning what we do to have clear and consistent communication is not something lower on the priority list. Having a more useful MSA would drive more people to the USCF website more consistently. I don’t see that as a bad thing.
That doesn’t mean that I’m advocating reprogramming this tomorrow. But I would advocate an information release to software developers saying that we’d like to be able to capture needed information by date X - so that we have a plan for improvement.
Capturing it, maybe. Ramming it down everybody’s throat, no.
Now, how do we capture the desired sort order, without forcing it upon everybody who views an MSA crosstable? For starters, how about:
In the rating report the organizer submits electronically to USCF, add a new (optional) field to each detail line: “Organizer-supplied tiebreak points”:[list][*]For an organizer who creates the report manually via the USCF input screen, there would simply be one new optional field. No big deal.
For an organizer who creates the report automatically via WinTD or SwisSys, the USCF software would leave the extra field blank. No change required in WinTD or SwisSys. Then, at the USCF verification stage, the organizer could run through the report line by line and populate the extra field.
[/:m][]At the USCF end, the crosstable could (and should) still be listed by score and rating. However, an option could then be offered to the person viewing the crosstable: “Re-sort using organizer-supplied tiebreaks.” If the viewer chooses this option, bingo – the crosstable is resorted. (The viewer would then have the option of switching back to the “normal” display.)[/*:m][/list:u]
Notes:
The default sort order would remain as it is now – by score, then rating – for any person viewing any crosstable. The option to switch to the organizer-supplied sort would lie with the viewer, not with the organizer, would affect only that viewer, and would reset automatically to score-then-rating for that viewer’s next crosstable view.
An organizer could (and in most cases probably would) leave all the tiebreak information blank. In this case the “organizer-supplied” sort would be the same as the standard sort.
Alternatively, an organizer could supply tiebreaks only for those receiving trophies. Players with organizer-supplied tiebreaks would be listed ahead of those (with the same score) for whom the organizer left the tiebreak field blank.
The above scheme would avoid the sticker shock inherent in unconventional changes in the sort order, while still allowing the organizer to recommend a different order, and allowing the viewer to accept or reject the suggestion.
