It is becoming quite common for tournaments to allow players to take pre-notified half point byes. This is to allow players who would otherwise miss an event because they couldn't play a single round (or two) to take part. It is also made available to players in tournament that have a 'holiday' component to them (eg Queenstown in 2009)
However the policy on this is a bit haphazard, so I'd thought I'd list the policy I use for my own events.
- A player wishing to receive a bye for a round must notify the arbiter in advance
- The player will receive half a point for the round missed
- A maximum of 2 byes can be requested by any player
- Players missing a third or more round shall receive zero points for the extra rounds missed
- No byes can be requested for the final round
- A player must be in the draw for the final round to be eligible for a prize
If the tie-break in a tournament is important this also raises the issue of what tie-break score a player receives for the rounds missed. Traditionally the opponents score (for SOS etc) has been 50% (ie the opponent is considered to have drawn every game). However this disadvantages higher scoring players. A recent proposal I saw makes much more sense. The score of your 'nominal' opponent is the same as your score for that round+50% of the remaining rounds (ie if you are on 4/6 and take a half point bye, your 'opponent is considered to have score 5.5/9 for tie breaking purposes). I'd have to check whether this is implemented in any computerised pairing software, but it does seem fairer.
6 comments:
Hmm, can you explain the reasoning behind the last condition? -A player must be in the draw for the final round to be eligible for a prize.
Twofold - If a player fails to complete a tournament I would consider them a withdrawer, (approved or non-approved it does not matter) and therefore ineligible for a prize and secondly, to avoid players taking 'tactical' byes and skating into the prizes while avoiding potential difficult opponents.
What happens if a player who did not play the final round finished high enough to win a prize?
Is the money given to the next eligible person, or is the money withheld?
While it would be tempting to withhold the money to improve the tournaments bottom line, I would award it to the highest eligible player that has completed the tournament.
There was a tournament in Tassie in 1999 that was held over an Australia Day weekend, with the Monday not a public holiday. There were two rounds scheduled for the Monday and as it happened the Sunday night leader with 5.5/6 had to work Monday and could not get time off work. The question then came up of whether he was entitled to any points in byes-on-request for the missed rounds 7 and 8. It was quickly determined that he would get no points for round 8 but then there was a massive debate involving the arbiter (not me) and various players (also not me; since I was running second on 5/6 I decided not to involve myself in the discussion) concerning whether a half-point bye should be awarded to the leader for round 7. Eventually the arbiter decided not to do this, and the leader finished third. That, as it happened, carried no prizemoney. However, if it had, I think it would have been rough to strip a leader of any right to prizemoney under the circumstances.
The point made by the player running third after the Sunday (who was on 4/6 and therefore stood to gain second alone if he could make 6/8) was that a leader shouldn't be entitled to the assumption that he would score any points in the last two rounds. While most likely the leader would have scored 1.5 or 2/2 (having already met the other top seeds), in 2000 in the same event the overnight leader on 6/6 did indeed go loss-loss in the last two rounds.
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