Today I attended an unrated chess tournament (Homestead, FL) with my son who is in the (K-3) category. There were a total of 5 rounds. He won the first four rounds. He lost the last game. His opponent (in the last game) won a total of 5 games and won 1st place. My question is how did my son end up in 4th place? The 2nd and 3rd place winners also won four rounds. Shouldn’t they all receive 2nd place if they have the same amount of wins?
Thank you for helping me with my inquiry.
M. Stewart
I would assume that they used tiebreaks. When awarding indivisible prizes like trophies, ties are usually broken by such methods as Solkoff (sum of opponents’ scores), Median (sum of opponents’s scores dropping highest and lowest), Cumulative (sum of the points in each round as shown on the wallchart), or Sonnenborn-Berger (too complicated to explain). The tournament director ought to be willing to explain to you which ones he used.
Tiebreaks are generally not related to ratings, except to the extent that ratings affects the initial rankings, which affects pairings, which ultimately affects tiebreaks.
Some TD’s will use performance ratings as a secondary tiebreak method, but that’s probably not the best choice and also probably doesn’t work in a non-rated event.
With the awarding of non cash prizes, such as trophies, tiebreaks are necessary. Which methods used are up to the individual TDs and Organizers. Tiebreaks seek to determine the best players among equals. In this case, your son was equal (in total score) with other players. The tiebreaks look at the player’s opposition. Basically, the system attempts to determine which tied player competed against the tougher players (as indicated by their final scores). If you and I both scored 4 out of 5 games and you played opponents whose final scores were higher than those who I played, then you would be considered higher in the standings.
You can still say that your son finished in a 2nd place tie with 2 other players, but when it comes to awarding trophies, the tiebreak system must be used to determine who gets what.
Hope this Helps,
-Terry