A question on tie-breakers in tournaments:
I see that
Oso has stated that ELO (at the time that a tie-breaker needs to be determined) is the final tie-breaker, at least in round-robin tournaments. In other posts, lower thinking time has been mentioned as one of the tie-breakers.
Question: In turn-based tournaments, when it is not expected for people to be on simultaneously, what is the order of tie-breakers? Is it thinking time or ELO?
If thinking time, this creates an unfair advantage due to when people play.
[[--longish example follows. If it is ELO as the primary tie-breaker, ignore this.
--]
If both players A and B play in a tournament that only requires about 1 move per day (15-day Quarto) or 2 moves per day (30-day Reversi), and both play their moves at the same local time (say, over their lunch break and when getting home from work), then the person living a few hours west will have a distinct advantage. Let's assume 1 move per day will finish the tournament. Player A lives in Germany and plays at 11:02 UTC (which is noon local time), and player B lives in England and plays at 12:02 UTC (which is also noon local time). Both players log in at noon, look at the board for 2 minutes, and make a move. However, since "thinking time" starts as soon as the other player has played their turn, it will be recorded as player A taking 23 hours to think of their move, while player B only takes 1. Quite a large difference for a tie-breaker, when both players are playing in the same manner. It gets worse if player A logs in at noon, looks at their board for 2 minutes, and makes a move, while player B logs in at noon, spends 1:02 analyzing the board, and then makes a move. The intent of using thinking time as an indicator is obviously to reward the person who came up with a play faster. But, in this scenario, A will still be recorded as having an average thinking time of 22 hours per move (after only 2 actual minutes), while B will be recorded as 2 hours.
[[----- end of example --]]
Actually, a related question: Is there a full list of the tie-breakers available? It is not in this FAQ, although the question has been asked several times, and a search of the entire forum doesn't seem to turn up anything.
