Chess Part VI Trivia Quiz

Answer: the player just below the halfway mark

In a Swiss System tournament, the players are sorted by rating. They are then divided into two groups by rating. One group contains the top 50 percentile of players' ratings, and the other group contains the bottom 50 percentile of players' ratings. The strongest player in the strong group plays the strongest player in the weak group.

The second strongest player in the strong group plays the second strongest player in the weak group, and so on. The strongest players usually play each other in the last couple of rounds.

Answer: 18

A knockout tournament is when players are out of the tournament if they lose. After each round, half the players (the winners) are still in, and the other half (the losers) are out. In order for 1 player to be left at the end, the amount of players must be a power of two.

When the amount of players does not equal a power of two, however many more players are needed to have a power of two, is how many players will receive byes. In this case, there are 46 people, so they are 18 short of a power of two (64). If 18 of them receive byes, 28 will be left.

When the 28 people finish playing, there will be 14 winners. The people with byes automatically advance to the next round and are combined with the players who won the first round. 14 + 18 is 32, which is a power of two.

Answer: No

In a Swiss System tournament, you play people with the same number of wins, unless you can't. If there were an odd number of players with 1 win, and the same number of players with 0 wins (who lost to the people with 1 win), then it would be impossible for all the players with 1 win to play somebody else with 1 win, since there is an odd number of people.

Whenever this happens, the lowest rated person with that score will play the highest rated person with the next highest score. In this case, the lowest rated player with 1 win would play the highest rated player with 0.5 wins (1 draw).

There will now be an even number of players with 1 win, so they can all play each other, but now there is an odd number of players with 0.5 wins since the highest one was paired with the lowest player with 1 win. We do the same thing as before.

The lowest rated player with 0.5 wins will now play the highest rated player with 0 wins. There will now be an even number of players with 0 wins, and only 2 players left with 0.5 wins.

The two players with 0.5 wins will play each other, and then everyone will have an opponent!

Answer: $300 and $0

In a prize money tournament, if players tie for a certain place, then the prize will be split, and they will all receive the same amount of money (regardless of tie-breaks). If three players tie for second, then the player with the next highest score will receive the money for fifth place, not third place.

The prizes for third and fourth will be combined with the prize for second (since there are three people), and then the total money of the combined prizes is divided by the number of people tying. 500 + 250 + 150 = 900, and 900 divided by 3 is 300. All three people will receive $300, and the next person will not receive anything since there is no prize for fifth place.

Answer: 10

Double Round Robin means you play everyone else in your division twice (once as White and once as Black). If there were 6 people in the division, there would be 5 opponents you can play. Since you play everyone twice, you would play 10 games. (All five opponents twice)

Answer: 32

4SS stands for (4 Swiss System), meaning you play 4 games against players with similar scores. If there are 17 people, then one person would have to have a bye in each round. There would only be 16 people playing in each round. This would mean there would be 8 games each round, and 4 rounds. This results in 32 games.

Answer: 8

Modified Median is a common tie-break method usually for trophy tournaments. Modified Median is when your opponents' scores are added together and then adjusted. If the player won more than half their games, then the lowest scoring opponent's score is discarded from the total (being that it is the least important). If the player won less than half their games, then the highest scoring opponent's score is discarded. In this case, the combined scores of all the opponents equals 14.5, and the player won exactly half their games. If the player wins exactly half their games, then both the highest and the lowest scoring opponent's scores will be discarded.

The highest score is 5.0, and the lowest score is 1.5, so both of these will be discarded from the total. 14.5 - 5.0 - 1.5 = 8.

Answer: 30

Double Swiss System is where players play people with similar scores, just like Swiss System, but they play them twice (once as Black and once as White). If there are 10 rounds, and everyone draws all their games (half a point each round), then everyone would have 5 points. Since there are 10 games, the total scores would equal 50.

The tie-breaking method 'Modified Median' subtracts the top scoring opponent and the bottom scoring opponent's score from the total, if the player won half their games.

In tournaments with more than 8 rounds, the bottom two and top two scores are discarded from the total if the player won half their games. Since everyone had the same score, 5 would be subtracted from 50, 4 times. 50 - 5 - 5 - 5 - 5 = 30.

Answer: 3-1

The tie breaking method 'Head to Head' goes by wins, not percentage. If you beat three people with the same score and lost to one person with the same score, you'd still get a better place number than someone who beat two people with the same score. Even though they didn't lose to anyone, they'd still get a worse place number than the person with 3-1.

Answer: 3

The tie-break method 'Cumulative' sums up the player's score after each round. If somebody lost the first round and slowly caught up by winning the rest of them, they'd get a worse place number than someone who had a perfect score through most of the tournament and then lost the last game.
In this case, the player's score after each round was 0.0, 1.0, 1.0, 2.0, so all of them added together equals 4. If somebody has an unplayed round such as a bye, then a point is subtracted from their total.
4 - 1 = 3.