Sum of Progressive Scores

[John Upham]

Would anyone like to suggest what the advantages of "Sum of Progressive Scores" might be over "Sum of Opponents Scores" as a tie-breaker?

As far as I can discern, SoOS reflects the quality of opponents played whereas SoPS reflects the abilities (or lack of) of the person(s) operating the draw.

SoPS allows a player who has tied with an opponent, beaten them in their individual encounter to then lose out on tie-break.

I'd be grateful for views on this.

[Roger de Coverly]

SoPS allows a player who has tied with an opponent, beaten them in their individual encounter to then lose out on tie-break.

In a tournament of five or six rounds, that's really unlikely. Essentially it rewards the early leader and thus penalises those who would submarine their way to victory. If used in conjunction with seeded Swiss pairings, the likelihood is that the winner on sum of progressives has played the higher rated field.

It doesn't always work that way, if you get one leader scoring near 100% in a seven round or more tournament, a tie-break involving players finishing second, third and forth might depend on the order in which they lost to the leader, which in turn might depend on whether they had the same or different colours in the first round.

[Paul Dargan]

It's a proxy for strength of field on the assumption that people who keepo winning are stronger than the field.It should do the same thing as SoOS.

The main advantages are administrative/mechanics:
1) easy to work out looking at the wallchart
2) you know what you need going into the last round (you dont need to watch the games of previous opponents to guess your tiebreak position)
3) no issues with withdrawals (what do you do about that opponent who withdrew with 0/2 that one of the winners played in round1?)

Paul

[Michael Flatt]

Sum of Progressive Scores:
1. The theory is that losing in earlier rounds causes a player to be paired against weaker opposition in subsequent rounds than if he or she had won those early games.
2. It is simpler and easier to calculate than Sum of Opponents Scores.
3. If two players drew against each other, they may have identical Sum of Progressive scores and another tie-break method would need to be invoked.
4. There are multifarious tie-break methods and no single one can be relied upon to place one player above another having the same final score.
5. Obviously, different tie-break methods may yield different results, which is why the tournament rules need to specify which methods are used and which order they are applied.

[Stewart Reuben]

A 9 year-old Vietnamese boar child explained SOP to me some years ago.
Bucholz and its variations fail the test of being easy to understand.
It is an anethema to me that third parties decide who wins on tiebreak.
But, yes SOP does have disadvantages. e.g. It is a 6 round Swiss. Player A went 1 2 3 4 5 5. Playeer B went 0 1 2 3 4 5. B won gheir individual game, but lost out on SOP.
All tiebreaks systes are flawed, but some are more flawed than others.

[IM Jack Rudd]

A 9 year-old Vietnamese boar child explained SOP to me some years ago.

Someone capable of understanding tie-break systems:

[Neil Graham]

If this is in relation to the 4NCL, I found the SoOS absolutely awful at the weekend. My team played one of several teams that failed to show up for the last weekend so we (and several other teams) were immediately affected. Thankfully we reached a points total where a tie-break didn't come into play.
I doubt that any of the sides in Division Three who finished on 13 or 12 points were confident they had progressed into the new Division Three South.

[Mick Norris]

Do we know where the tiebreaker fell in dividing up Div 3 South from Div 4?

[LawrenceCooper]

Do we know where the tiebreaker fell in dividing up Div 3 South from Div 4?

I think Guildford 4 may have been the sixteenth but it may well depend on what various teams choose to do. My guess at the start of the weekend was that my team would need 14 because of our awful SoS

[Mick Norris]

Div 3 South?
The 4 teams relegated from Div 2 plus:

P W D L GP SOS Pts

Surbiton 1 11 7 1 3 39½ 127 15
Midland Monarchs 1 11 7 1 3 41½ 99 15
Fermented Sharks 11 5 4 2 39 151 14
Broadland Bitterns [1] 11 7 0 4 41 140 14
Anglian Avengers 2 11 6 2 3 35 133 14
Leeds University Old Boys 11 5 4 2 38 130 14
Poisoned Pawns 11 7 0 4 40 129 14
Ashfield-Breadsall 11 5 4 2 36 121 14
Shropshire 11 6 1 4 35 135 13
Warwickshire Select 2 11 6 1 4 37½ 129 13
BCM Rhinos [2] 11 6 1 4 33½ 117 13
Guildford 4 11 5 2 4 30 142 12

Div 4?

The Rookies 11 6 0 5 32½ 135 12
e2e4.org.uk 3 11 6 0 5 36½ 133 12
West is Best 1 11 5 2 4 40 129 12
Oxford 2 11 6 0 5 32½ 127 12
MK Phoenix 2 11 5 2 4 36 100 12
e2e4.org.uk 4 11 5 2 4 35 91 12

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Shouldn't this be in one of the 4NCL threads? Though talking of going off topic, is there not normally a politics thread around at General Election time? I might start one...