Sunday 27 March 2016

SNCL Round 7 - Tiebroken to the Nth Degree

Inverclyde and Giffnock chess clubs will be forever in my bad books after todays finish to the SNCL season.

Whilst all the focus was on the Division 1 playoff between Dundee City A and Edinburgh, All Inverclyde had to do was to draw.  No they had to lose against the league leaders in a match that had a draw claim that I could not see as I had an optical migraine.  Really funny having to ask Donald Wilson what is going on as I could not see the clocks :D  Thankfully it came out a draw in the end (phew).

Steps were losing to Edinburgh 2, so what were Giffnock up to?  They were beating on Cumbernauld 4-1

So after entering the results, I saw 2 bemused captains before me.  They knew what was coming.

Tie break 1 - Game points. Yep they are the same

Tie break 2 - Game between the teams - well would you believe it, it was a draw

Tie break 3 - After a spate of teams coming short, we brought into the tie break rules that the team with the least defaults against them would win the tie break.  Whilst it was a good idea, neither here had had any.  Next...

Tie break 4 - Remove the bottom board from each match and recalculate (bottom board elimination)/  So after that they were still the same on match and game points.

Desperation time

Tie Break 5 - Sonneborn Berger.  Well what do you know, finally we can break the teams.

That was nearly the ubiquitous tie break of last resort.  The Square Go in the Car Park!


Why why why do we do this to ourselves :D