Direct Comparison

The scoring of tournament results is covered by the ISF Tournament Regulations, section 14:

Scoring of Tournament Results
LevelQuantityMeaning
1ScoreSee: ISF Tournament Regulations, section 14.1
2M-Buchoften called median
3BuchBuchholz Points
4Direct mutual resultSee: ISF Tournament Regulations, section 14.2
5Tie breakerBest of three Stratego Duel (ISF Tournament Regulations, section 14.3).

In the process, the quantity with the lower level index has the higher significance. When levels 1 to 3 match, direct comparison comes into play. The other way around: When score, m-buch, and buch already suffice to arrange the players unambiguously, the Compa column remains empty. This happens in almost 99 % of all games. So you have to try hard to find an example of direct comparisons. Don’t panic, hang in there!

To stop keeping you in suspense, I’ll provide the first example, the tournament of Wuppertal on 2011-04-09. The cross-table of the junior-results contains two pairs of players with equal score, Median-Buchholz score, and Buchholz score. This is an example were the direct comparison rescues us from trouble. Both games between the pairs end up decisively. This is denoted by ±1/1 which means that the player has got ±1 win from 1 game. This time we were lucky and the direct comparison helped us to evaluate the performance of the players unambiguously.

However, the next example teaches us that the direct comparison fails to resolve ambiguities too often. One more year ago, Wuppertal on 2010-04-10, there were two groups of three players with equal final standings. Unfortunately the results within both groups were cyclic. I.e., ABCA. In other words: Player A had a win and a loss, so had player B, so had C. Added up, each player scored zero in his equal-standing-group. The column contains +0/2 meaning that the players got 0 points out of 2 games. Though this seems unlikely, it isn’t. At least in round-robin tournaments.

                       

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