Revision to Tie Breaking Method

Background

Croquet NSW submitted a motion to the 2009 ACA AGM regarding the currently used tie-breaking method for Association Croquet national tournaments.

The Block Performance Rating (BPR) method is used by the ACA to resolve ties within, and between, blocks in order to determine players progressing to the knockout phases of national Association Croquet tournaments.

The previous method, net points, had been disliked by players for a number of reasons including the fact that it would cause players to be less inclined to complete peels on their opponent (for example, TPO’s and POP’ing). This was a point which some believed could hold back Australian players from being able to fully explore tactics required for top-level international play.

Outcome

The ACA Executive, however, are aware that there exists some unease among a number of players over the BPR method.  Executive members were asked to consider available options.  They were identified as:

  1. Increase the length of tournaments to allow an extra day to resolve possible tied situations – not acceptable to players or officials.
  2. Decrease the number of entries accepted to allow one of the current days to be used for tie-breaking purposes – not acceptable to players and not in the best interests of our sport.
  3. Employ a tie-breaking method.

Option 3 is considered the only acceptable option by the ACA Executive. Furthermore, the Executive decided that the BPR should be reconsidered.  Executive members and the ACA Tournament Committee were asked to consider whether the BPR was the most appropriate method to use as a tie-breaker.  It was decided that it was not.

A New Tie-Breaking Method

The Tournament Committee proposed a return to wins and net points.  The ACA Executive accepted this.  The following will be used to determine which players move from the block to  knock-out phase of a tournament. This will apply both within and across blocks.

Ties within a block will be resolved before across blocks.

Players to proceed will be:

  • Those who have lost least games.
  • If there is a tie on games, those with the largest net points.
  • If there is a tie on games and net points in a block
    • between two players, the player to progress is the winner of the game between them; or
    • between more than two players, those to progress are the winners of the most games between the players in the tied position.
    • If there is still a tie, a tie-break of such form as the Tournament Manager deems fit may be imposed.
  • If there is a tie on games and net points across blocks a tie-break of such form as the Tournament Manager deems fit may be imposed.

Summary

It will be noted that we have returned to more or less the starting point.  Those players who objected to net points will still have their same objections.

In conclusion we may take a short quote from email Louis Nel sent to the Nottingham Croquet email list and that is:
“… the perennial and essentially unsolvable tie-breaking problem – unsolvable in the sense that no method will ever be found that is satisfactory to all.”

Maree Skinner
Executive Director
Croquet Australia