The Buchholz system (also spelled Buchholtz) is a ranking or scoring system in

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

developed by Bruno Buchholz (died ca. 1958) in 1932, for

Swiss system A Swiss-system tournament is a non-eliminating tournament format that features a fixed number of rounds of competition, but considerably fewer than for a round-robin tournament; thus each competitor (team or individual) does not play all the other ...

tournaments . It was originally developed as an auxiliary scoring method, but more recently it has been used as a tie-breaking system. It was probably first used in the 1932 Bitterfeld tournament. It was designed to replace the

Neustadtl score The term Neustadtl is the German name for: *Nové Mesto nad Váhom in Slovakia *Nové Město na Moravě in the Czech Republic *Novo Mesto in Slovenia The Neustadtl score is a scoring system often used to break ties in chess tournaments *Neustadtl s ...

. The method is to give each player a raw score of one point for each win and a half point for each

draw Draw, drawing, draws, or drawn may refer to: Common uses * Draw (terrain), a terrain feature formed by two parallel ridges or spurs with low ground in between them * Drawing (manufacturing), a process where metal, glass, or plastic or anything ...

. When used as an alternative scoring system, each player's Buchholz score is calculated by adding the raw scores of each of the opponents they played and multiplying this total by the player's raw score . When used for tie-breaking among players with the same raw score, no multiplying is necessary and the sum of the raw scores of the opponents played is used to break ties . When used as a tie-break system, it is equivalent to the Solkoff system. The major criticism of this system is that tie-break scores can be distorted by the set of opponents that each player plays (especially in early rounds). To avoid this problem a version of Buchholz, the Median-Buchholz System is sometimes used. In the Median-Buchholz System the best and worst scores of a player's opponents are discarded, and the remaining scores summed.

References

* * {{citation , last=Hooper , first=David , authorlink=David Vincent Hooper , last2=Whyld , first2=Kenneth , authorlink2=Kenneth Whyld , title=

The Oxford Companion to Chess ''The Oxford Companion to Chess'' is a reference book on the game of chess written by David Vincent Hooper and Kenneth Whyld. The book is written in an encyclopedia format. The book belongs to the Oxford Companions series. Details The first e ...

, year=1992 , edition=2nd , contribution = Buchholz score , publisher=Oxford University Press , isbn=0-19-280049-3

External links

Tie-Breaks in Swiss TournamentsAnnex to the FIDE Tournament Regulations regarding tiebreaks
Chess tournament systems Tie-breaking in group tournaments 1932 in chess

See also

References

External links