Tie-break system decides Olympiad

After the last round of the Olympiad the USA and Ukraine shared first place. With nine wins and two draws the USA had 20 match points, the same number of match points as Ukraine with 10 wins and one loss. However, the USA had half a game point more than Ukraine - 31.5 vs 31. But the decisive tie-breaker was not the number of points the players scored but the Olympiad-Sonneborn-Berger-Tie-Break without lowest result.

The happy winners (Photo: Maria Emelianova)

This means that the match points of the teams against which the USA and Ukraine (or any other team) had played during the Olympiad are multiplied with the number of team points the USA or Ukraine (or other teams) scored in the match against that team. One example: In round nine of the Olympiad the USA won 3-1 against Norway. Norway finished the Olympiad with 16 match points and therefore the USA gained 3x16=48 Sonneborn-Berger points for that win.

Germany (right) vs Estonia - the match that turned out to decide the Olympiad (Photo: Paul Truong)

German grandmaster Matthias Blübaum (Photo: Pascal Simon)

But how then could a win by Matthias Blübaum that helped the German team to a 2.5-1.5 victory against Estonia decide the Olympiad in favor of the USA and against Ukraine? After all, Ukraine had won 2.5-1.5 against Germany in round three whereas the US team had not played Germany. If anything, Ukraine should profit from a German win.

True - if it were not for the fact that the Olympiad-Sonneborn-Berger-Tie-Break without lowest result applied. This means that the team with the lowest result is not considered for the tie-break. As the crosstable below shows, the team with the lowest result against which Ukraine had played was the team of Jordan, which finished 70th with 12 match points and 25.00 team points. The second-lowest team against which Ukraine had played was Germany.

Source: chess-results

Germany finished 37th with 13 match points and 25 team points. If Germany had drawn its match against Estonia in the last round they would have had 12 match points and 24.5 team points and would have finished behind Jordan - and the Ukrainians who had won 4-0 against Jordan in round one would have had 15.5 tie-break 2 points more - enough to win gold. To put it differently: The Germans scored badly but not badly enough for the Ukrainians.

Final standings

Source: chess-results

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