Odd tiebreaking

jjkabel · 6 October 2014 19:30

This past weekend we ran 4 races on Saturday, and 3 more on Sunday. I worked up interim results on Saturday for posting on our clubhouse board. A tie was broken incorrectly. We discard one race after 4, 2 after 8 at our club.

I was surprised, and so was the supposed leader, when we saw results as follows, brackets showing the drops. These were one-design races scored by place, so no issues of small rounding errors in elapsed time calculations, etc. were possible.

Sailor 16: (2) - 1 - 2 - 1 Total 6 Nett 4 Position 1st

Sailor 14: 1 - (2) - 1 - 2 Total 6 Nett 4 Position 2nd

By my reasoning, Sailor 14 should have been scored 1st because he had the earliest 1s after the drops. I’ve tried unchecking either or both A8 options, and I end up with a tie for 1st.

At the end of the regatta, once 14 had accumulated two more 1s, he was the clear winner, of course, and Sailwave correctly position him so.

Why the failure to properly break a very simple tie? Latest version of SW is installed.

John Kabel

Art_Engel2 · 6 October 2014 20:59

John,

The tie is being broken per the rulebook.

Rule A8.2 says that if boats have equal scores (here, two 1sts and one
2nd each) then the tie shall be broken on which boat beat the other in
the last race, regardless of whether that race is discarded for one of
the boats (which is not the case here).

The concept of "use last race to break ties" came into the rulebook in
1997 although at the time discards were excluded from consideration. In
2005, the rule was changed to include excluded scores for consideration
because of the possibility of manipulation of results through voluntary
"tactical retirements" after the last race.

It sounds like you don't have a special tie-breaking provision in your
NOR and SIs so Sailwave IS doing the tie-breaking correctly according to
the rulebook.

Art

···

On 10/6/2014 12:30 PM, jjkabel@rogers.com [sailwave] wrote:

This past weekend we ran 4 races on Saturday, and 3 more on Sunday. I worked up interim results on Saturday for posting on our clubhouse board. A tie was broken incorrectly. We discard one race after 4, 2 after 8 at our club.

I was surprised, and so was the supposed leader, when we saw results as follows, brackets showing the drops. These were one-design races scored by place, so no issues of small rounding errors in elapsed time calculations, etc. were possible.

Sailor 16: (2) - 1 - 2 - 1 Total 6 Nett 4 Position 1st
Sailor 14: 1 - (2) - 1 - 2 Total 6 Nett 4 Position 2nd

By my reasoning, Sailor 14 should have been scored 1st because he had the earliest 1s after the drops. I've tried unchecking either or both A8 options, and I end up with a tie for 1st.

At the end of the regatta, once 14 had accumulated two more 1s, he was the clear winner, of course, and Sailwave correctly position him so.

Why the failure to properly break a very simple tie? Latest version of SW is installed.

John Kabel

mtownsend · 6 October 2014 21:17

The results are correct. A8.1 does not break the tie, so A8.2 is used to break the tie.

A8.1

Sailor 16 – 1,1,2

Sailor 14 – 1,1,2

A8.2

Sailor 16 (1^st) beat Sailor 14 (2^nd) in race 4 so wins the tie break.

A8 SERIES TIES

A8.1 If there is a series-score tie between two or more boats, each boat’s

race scores shall be listed in order of best to worst, and at the first

point(s) where there is a difference the tie shall be broken in favour

of the boat(s) with the best score(s). No excluded scores shall be

used.

A8.2 If a tie remains between two or more boats, they shall be ranked in

order of their scores in the last race. Any remaining ties shall be

broken by using the tied boats’ scores in the next-to-last race and so

on until all ties are broken. These scores shall be used even if some

of them are excluded scores.

Mark Townsend
Phone: 562-433-4366

Cell: 562-533-5909
Email: s_mark_townsend@hotmail.com

···

From: sailwave@yahoogroups.com [mailto:sailwave@yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2014 12:31 PM
To: sailwave@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [sailwave] Odd tiebreaking