What's a tie-break?

There are several tie-break methods that provide good, objective ways to break ties for indivisible prizes, such as trophies.

Often, one tie-break method alone won't break a tie, and it's necessary to use a second, a third, or even a fourth method to break a tie. A specific tie-break is used only if an earlier tie-break does not resolve a tie.

Each tie-break seeks to discover the "first among equals", i.e., the player who has a somewhat better claim to a prize, based on the strength of his/her opposition.

The tie-breaks used at the Wildcat Scholastic have been used successfully at all levels of play. They appear in the order you'll most likely see at other tournaments:
  1. Modified Median (TBrk[M])
  2. Solkoff (TBrk[S])
  3. Cumulative (TBrk[C])
  4. Cumulative of Opposition (TBrk[O])

Here's an oversimplified summary of how these tie-break methods work:

1. Modified Median evaluates the strength of a player's opposition by summing the final scores of his/her opponents, and then discarding the highest and lowest of these scores. If there are only a few rounds, it may be that only the lowest score is discarded.

2. Solkoff is exactly like the Modified Median, except that no opponents' scores are discarded.

3. For Cumulative, you add up the cumulative (running) score for each round. For example, if Player A had a win, loss, win, and draw, the cumulative scores for each round would be: 1, 1, 2, 2.5, so the Cumulative tie-break total would be 6.5. If another player scored the same 2.5 points total by a win, win, draw, and loss, with cumulative scores for each round of: 1, 2, 2.5, 2.5, then the cumulative tie-break total would be 8. The latter player's tie-breaks are higher because he/she won earlier and presumably had tougher opposition for the remainder of the event.

4. For Cumulative of Opposition, you do the same steps as in the Cumulative tie-break for each of your opponents, then you add those totals together.

For more details, consult the USCF's Official Rules of Chess. Most of the information on this page is paraphrased from that book.