Questions???

I continue to receive questions on how GotSoccer.com awards points at the tournaments. Usually, they are in the form of: “How come team XYZ got more points than us when we beat them and won the tournament?”

How they do it:

Take all the teams attending the tournament in your flight and arrange them in descending point order. Take the top five teams and add up their points. Divide by five. Think of it as an average of the points. Mathematically, the same thing is to divide each teams’ points by five and add them up. This a better way to think of it as these are the points that they brought to the tournament. The top five sum is the maximum number of points available to be awarded for first place in the flight. I say maximum because the actual points awarded are the maximum minus the number of points you brought to the tournament.  So, if the sixth or lower ranked team wins, they can get the maximum because they brought no points to the flight.  If any of the top five team wins their maximum award is reduced by the number of points they brought to the tournament. The same thing happens for each of the lower place finishers except that maximum is:

• 2nd (Finalist): one half
• 3rd & 4th (Semifinalist): one quarter
• 5th thru 8th (Quarterfinalist): one eighth *

* These points are only awarded for the larger tournaments that have true quarter-final matches like Blues Cup.

Each team’s awarded points is different by virtue of the points they bring to the tournament. If you have 1000 ranking points and are one of the top five, you bring 200 to the flight. The most points you can get, if you win, is the flight points minus the 200 you brought to the tournament. If you only make it to the semi-finals divide that number by four.

Points Awarded = (Flight Pts – Points Brought) * Finish multiplier

Examples:

Here are two examples where the total points available is the same but in the first case, there is a huge disparity (in numbers, anyway) between the first place team and the others. In the second case they are more evenly matched. Again, the points, when added up toal 1500, meaning the maximum available for the flight is one-fifth of that or 300.

Now let’s examine what happens if the teams finish in their “seed” order.  It’s not very exciting.  What you can see is that in the first case, the number two team has closed the gap on the number one team by 30 pts.  In the second case the first place team widens the gap.  The two columns on the left are the points that each team won and the two columns on the right are their total points after the tournament.

In the next part of the example, the second place seed beats the first place seed.   In the second, more closely matched scenario, the second place team actually overtakes the first place team in the rankings be virtue of their win.

Summary

In a case where there is a huge disparity in how many points each team has, a lower place finisher can receive more points than a higher place finisher.  (First example, scenario one)

In a case where the team are more closely matched, a win is a big benefit to the champion. (First example, scenario two)

In a case where the team are more closely matched, and the second seed wins, they can move in front of the former number one team. (Second example, scenario two)

Lastly, the explanation on GotSoccer.com is wrong as of this writing (1/19/2010).  You have to review a number of tournament finishes to see how it is really done.  Their explanation implies that the points brought are subtracted after being divided by two or four or eight based on the finish.  In reality, the points are subtracted from the flight points to determine your teams’ maximum available points.  It is that maximum available, to your team, that is divided based on your finish.

Bonus Points

There are a number of scenarios where one can receive bonus points. Examples are:

• beating a team that is more than 200 points higher ranked than you
• beating a state, regional or national champion
• beating a state, regional or national finalist
• or
• or…

However, these points are only awarded if the tournament was scored using the GotSoccer.com website/software to track the tournament.

Post Script

Mistakes wreak havoc on their software.  They cannot automatically deal with them and re-score/award the tournament even if it is using their software.  If a mistake is made entering the results, they must fix it manually.  That re-entry can be, and was, done wrong in the case of Magic cup 2009.

Update

Since about the time of the CYSA State Cup tournament, they have modified their scoring algorithm. They published the method over the Memorial Day Weekend 2010. The method is essentially the same with one change. The points that you “bring” to any particular tournament is based on your NATIONAL Ranking. The higher your percentile, the more points you bring to the tournament. It appears that they still consider only the top five teams in their calclualtions.

National Percentile	Points
1	10,000
2	7,500
3	5,000
5	2,500
7	1,250
10	625
25	313
50	156
>50	78

I’ll put together an example…

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