Round 7 and the Playoffs

The final round of the regular season has begun, so there follows the usual reminders about how this all works.

First off, no extensions are allowed in round 7. All games must be completed by 22:00 on Tuesday, December 12th. This is to make sure that the playoff pairings can be set before the start of the playoff round.

The playoffs will be between the top two teams in each section, to determine who wins the section title. This will be round 8 (for the purposes of setting lineups), and extensions will be possible as usual. The team who finished first in the regular season will have white on boards 1 and 3. More importantly, if the match finishes at 2-2, the first-placed team has draw odds, and will be declared champions.

For determining the final standings, match points (MPs) count first, followed by individual game points (GPs). If two teams are tied on both of these scores, the head-to-head result between those teams is the next tiebreaker. If that match finished 2-2, then the team that accrued the fewest forfeits throughout the tourney progresses. If this is also equal, then board removal takes place: board 4 results are removed, and then the head-to-head tiebreaker is recalculated. if that game was a draw, board 3 is removed, and so on. If all four games in the head-to-head match were drawn, then board removal is recalculated for all rounds.

Note that the standings page only takes MPs and GPs into account, since in practice the remaining tiebreakers are rarely needed.