Tie breaking

CBQ

CBQ

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Last weekend in Laughlin Little Pig Town, Quau, and ZBQ tied for 1st in brisket with a "perfect perfect" score. (Even the dropped scores were perfect.)

The organizer (Ron Cates, Smoke on the Water) called all the teams to the stage and gave us the option of getting payouts in the order the computer ranked us, or spitting the payout for the first free places evenly. We opted for the latter - with payouts being 2000, 1500, and 700 giving everyone 1400 seemed to be the better option.

After we made the decision we were shown the KCBScore rankings, and 1st to 3rd were in alphabetical order. The reps told us that the computer didn't know what to do with a perfect perfect tie and defaulted to alphabetical. That's not a good thing when your team is named "ZBQ." I was surprised to hear that as I thought the tie breaker used a coin flip when the scores were dead even.

Does anyone know? Is a coin flip used and it's just a coincidence that the team ranking was alphabetical? Or were the reps right that the computer defaulted to alphabetical?
 
First off... Congratulations on a job Well Done !

Rule #7 states that (as a final tie breaker), a computer generated coin toss will be used.

Sounds like the software couldn't handle the totally 3 way tie.
 
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How can you do a coin flip with 3 teams? A basic coin flip where ZBQ gets heads and Quau gets tails wouldn't work because it leaves the third team out. To do a coin flip in two "rounds" also doesn't seem quite fair to me, but neither does alphabetical order. My guess is that they had no rule for this. I'll bet there will be soon! My vote is for beer chugging. Everyone is given a beer and the order is decided by who finishes first, second, and third. If that results in a tie, another beer is chugged until a winner is determined. It's either that or arm wrestling.
 
I'm astonished that with the current overscoring problem, and previous contests in different areas of the country that have had multiple 180s, this hasn't been addressed already.

I agree that a team should not be penalized for the starting letter of its name, and the issue goes beyond prize money to TOY points also.

Regardless, congratulations for a damned fine brisket!
 
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I know all three of you are d@mn good brisky cooks but out of curiosity did you all hit different tables?
 
The alphabetical tie breaker was an issue that was supposed to have been fixed a few years ago. Score sheets seem to tell a different story. Really sucks for payouts and TOY points. Great job this weekend!
 
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It was inevitable that we would arrive back at this point, given the score inflation that keeps coming back around every few years.

The cycle goes like this:

  • Cooks constant harp that "a seven takes you out of the contest"
  • Judges respond by incrementally abandoning lower scoring numbers
  • Eventually 9 becomes the default score
  • Ties increase until they become rampant
  • Cooks complain about too many ties
  • KCBS makes a move to "recalibrate' the scoring system
  • Cycle repeats

So far nobody's come up with a permanent solution for KCBS. The MBN approach forces judges to rank samples so ties are less of an issue, but that involves comparative judging which goes against one of the core principles of the KCBS system.

This is a tough problem for sure, and there don't seem to be any simple solutions that last long term.
 
I think it's amazing to have 3 perfect perfects in a category! The randomly generated number is individual to each team in each category. Happens when the reps set up the contest in the computer. IMO, it's just coincidence that the rank was alphabetical. My team name, BBQr's Delight, always seems to lose on a tie breaker and the other team name rarely starts with "A".

Again, in my opinion, all three teams should be listed as 1st, with the 4th team at 4th. Especially since y'all split the prize pool. ToY lists ties this way.
 
CivilWarBBQ said:
It was inevitable that we would arrive back at this point, given the score inflation that keeps coming back around every few years.

The cycle goes like this:

  • Cooks constant harp that "a seven takes you out of the contest"
  • Judges respond by incrementally abandoning lower scoring numbers
  • Eventually 9 becomes the default score
  • Ties increase until they become rampant
  • Cooks complain about too many ties
  • KCBS makes a move to "recalibrate' the scoring system
  • Cycle repeats

So far nobody's come up with a permanent solution for KCBS. The MBN approach forces judges to rank samples so ties are less of an issue, but that involves comparative judging which goes against one of the core principles of the KCBS system.

This is a tough problem for sure, and there don't seem to be any simple solutions that last long term.
Click to expand...

I haven't been competing long enough to notice that the high scores are cyclical, but I have noticed an awful lot of 700+ scores and perfect 180's a lot more than I have in the previous couple of years.
 
Regardless of the tie breaker system, it was great they they called you all up there and recognized you and allowed the decision of how to divide up the proceeds. I have had it happen to me that I tied for first with a 178.8, had the same 6th score dropped, lost in what I assume was a coin flip, and was announced 2nd. Only to find out that I had actually tied for first when I got the score sheet. I think when you hit the payout calls, ties should be split as ZBQ mentioned - much like golf purse's are divided.

Congrats to all three of you!
 
This brings up an interesting point. Let's say you have an instance where you have a tie even after the initial tie breaker rules are applied and it comes down to the coin flip.

Can an organizer choose to combine and split the prize money as described in this thread? Or does the right to make that decision reside with the cooks or the Reps?

I think it is great that in this instance the power to decide was given to the cooks, but that doesn't always happen, pretty commonly where there is a two-way tie. In these cases, does the organizer have freedom to award different prize amounts than originally published (i.e. combining and splitting two places), or are they bound by KCBS edict to abide by what KCBScore spits out?
 
Insane Swine BBQ said:
How can you do a coin flip with 3 teams? A basic coin flip where ZBQ gets heads and Quau gets tails wouldn't work because it leaves the third team out. To do a coin flip in two "rounds" also doesn't seem quite fair to me, but neither does alphabetical order. My guess is that they had no rule for this. I'll bet there will be soon! My vote is for beer chugging. Everyone is given a beer and the order is decided by who finishes first, second, and third. If that results in a tie, another beer is chugged until a winner is determined. It's either that or arm wrestling.
Click to expand...

There are pretty easy ways to draw a random winner given any number of teams. Just sounds like they haven't hit this case yet.
 
I've heard tell of an undocumented feature that defaults to alphabetic sorting.......

But that's 3rd hand info. How many super tables were at the contest last year since they had two TOD's last year out there.
 
Candy Sue said:
I think it's amazing to have 3 perfect perfects in a category! The randomly generated number is individual to each team in each category. Happens when the reps set up the contest in the computer. IMO, it's just coincidence that the rank was alphabetical. My team name, BBQr's Delight, always seems to lose on a tie breaker and the other team name rarely starts with "A".

Again, in my opinion, all three teams should be listed as 1st, with the 4th team at 4th. Especially since y'all split the prize pool. ToY lists ties this way.
Click to expand...

Looking at the Royal dessert category, it looks like multi-team ties are handled randomly. There were three perfect 180's, 1st went to Tenacious Q, 2nd to Porketeers, and 3rd to Roughnecks BBQ.
 
seems like the best way to avoid all the ties is to create more scores. Just allow 8.1 .2 .3 and so on and you create many many more scores. I would do the math, but I wont.
 
IMO, the contest rep should be applauded for doing the fairest thing and this should be followed at all contest. Announce a tie, split the money, both get the points.
As for trophies, give the trophy to the team who is furthest from home, the organizer can have duplicates made and mailed to the other team(s), that is, if the team wants the trophy.
 
Is does seem easy enough for the KCBS Reps to alert an organizer of ties that cannot be resolved by using the judging cards and for the organizer to split the prize money into however many portions as required. To be consistent, the points also need to be divided equally between the teams as well. However, I doubt the system can do that, at least yet. The trickiest issue I see is how does the organizer split the trophies and non-cash awards?
 
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