Masterpoints


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Why Masterpoints Deserve Care

Principles of Masterpoint Administration

Teams Versus Pairs
Changing the massive discrepancy between team and pair events


Building a Better Formula
Criteria for a good formula, problems with the current formulas, and a better formula.


What You Can Do

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The "Cliff"


Take a look again at a sample of awards produced by my tournament formula:

9.88     7.10     5.81     4.96     4.33

The lowest overall winner receives a lot more than the next finisher, who receives nothing (except section or match awards). This is called a cliff. The cliff is at least slightly ameliorated by the fact that the next finisher will receive section awards.

Cliffs are common. In the Olympics, there is a huge cliff between 3rd place (bronze medal) and 4th place (nothing). In football, there is a huge cliff between just making the playoffs and just missing the playoffs.

Nonetheless, it is a little odd that the difference between 5th and 6th is larger than the difference between 1st and 2nd.

Mathematically Adjusting the Size of the Cliff

There is a simple change to the formula to reduce this cliff. The formulas are in the form

log (n/ (m * (r - .5)).

In the club formula, m equals 1 and the zero award goes to the last place finisher in an infinitely large field. In the tournament formula I proposed, m equals 2 and the zero award goes to the competitor in the exact middle of the field. If m is equal to a higher number, that reduces the cliff. For example, suppose m was 3. The awards would now be

10.52     7.24     5.68     4.70     3.94

Setting m equal to 3 makes the players who are 34th out of 100 receive a zero award. That is not mathematically elegant. But the formula does not violate any of the other, more important principles.