Our State affilate has mandated that the scholastic championships us the following Tie Breakers:
When individual scores are equal, the following order of tie-break systems will be used to designate individual awards:
1 Modified Median
2 Solkoff
3 Sonnenborn-Berger
4 Cumulative
5 Kashdan
6 Game result between tied players
7 Most Blacks
8 Total Opposition Rating
When team scores are equal, the following order of tie-break systems will be used to designate team awards:
1 Total Solkoff
2 Total Sonnenborn-Berger
3 Total Kashdan
4 Total Individual Cumulative
5 Total Opposition Rating
Please note the that this is basically the current USCF Scholastic Guidelines tie breakers except that the coin flip is replaced with Total Opposition Rating, and that Total Individual Cumulative for the Team Tie Breaks is bumped down to 4th.
My questions are:
Can WinTD and/or SwisSys handle the Opposition Rating Tie Breaker or will this have to be done by hand?
1a. What do the programs use for Unrated players and unplayed games?
Does changing the order of the Team tie breaks mean that WinTD has to be “reconfigured” between printing the Individual Tie-breaks and the Team Tie-breaks, since I can no longer use the Team Tie-Break check box in the preference settings?
2a. How does SwisSys handle the Individual vs. Team Tie-breaks?
SwissSys has an “Average opposition” tiebreak, which I assume comes to the same thing as “Opposition rating.”
1a) Depends on the tiebreak. As far as I know, SwissSys does just what it says in the Rulebook, though obviously I haven’t tested them all.
2a) SwissSys (current version) sets individual and team tiebreaks separately.
If you want to test the programs, I suggest you download the free demo versions and experiment. (SwissSys will pair only three rounds without registration; WinTD will not let you save files.)
Opps… I wasn’t very clear. How does SwisSys do Average Opposition for unrated players and unplayed games? If I can’t do it in WinTD, I better learn how to do it by hand.
It’s sounding like our State Affiliate is requiring us to purchase SwisSys.
Average opposition
Basic median
Cumulative score
Drop-low Average Opposition
FIDE Cumulative
Head-to-head
Game Points (fixed roster)
Kashdan (aggressive play)
Modified Median
Opposition Cumulative Score
Performance of Opposition
Round Robin (Sonneborn)
Solkoff
Total Blacks
US Amateur (fixed roster)
Win count
As already noted, Swis-Sys can specify different tiebreaks for individual and team use. It MAY be possible to specify different tiebreaks for each section, I’ve never tried that in this version, but I think the old DOS version kept that information at the section level.
So basicaly I would have to calculate and print the Individual standings, then change the tie break order to then print the Team standings. And in the case of the Total Opposition rating, I have to do that by hand. (Again, does anyone know how that’s calculated with regards to unrated players and unplayed games?)
If I recall there was a check box in the preferences that allowed the team standings to be calculated with a hard-coded tie-break order. But since the affiliated decided to use a difference order, my guess is that the hard-code won’t work.
Unrated players are averaged in at their performance rating. Unplayed games are not counted (since there is no opponent). This, by the way, means that there is a difference between “opposition rating” and “average opposition rating.”
It isn’t. Tiebreaks are either on or off for all tournaments/sections. This is sometimes a nuisance, since, for example, I want the tiebreaks on for a scholastic/trophy tournament, but off for calculating prizes in all the other sections.
