kSail Single Change Swiss League (SCS)

kSail Single Change Swiss League

The kSail Single Change Swiss League (SCS) is a scheduling and scoring system developed by the kSail team and integrated into the kSail Events Portal.
The SCS concept has been developed as an additional scheduling option for team racing events and brings together some of the benefits of established ideas and concepts such as the HLS System and Swiss League.
Traditional round robin schedules provide a clear and well-understood structure for team racing events. However, the schedule is fixed before racing begins and does not respond to performance on the water. Swiss League formats take a different approach, using completed results to generate dynamic schedules which match each team with teams of a similar standard as an event progresses.
The kSail Single Change Swiss combines the benefit of peer-to-peer Swiss scheduling with the advantages of a teams sailing two races before changing boats.

The SCS Schedule

In a kSail Single Change Swiss League, racing is organised into rounds. A round is completed once every team has sailed two races. Teams therefore generally sail two consecutive races before changing boats. As a result, rounds are longer than in a standard Swiss League, but require fewer changeovers.
The first round is determined by a random draw. During the first round, the second round is generated and published. Thereafter, the next round but one is generated at the end of each completed round.
As with a standard Swiss League, future matches are generated using the results from previous rounds. As the event progresses, teams are scheduled against teams of a similar ranking encouraging closer and more competitive racing.
For the first race in each round, there is a planned double-changeover which ensures matches between all teams can be scheduled.

Scoring and Tie Breaks

Teams are ranked according to their percentage of races won. However as incomplete rounds are currently ignored in the ranking, this is the same as ranking on total race wins.
Tie breaks have been adapted from the standard Swiss League to better reflect the nature of SCS scheduling, with greater emphasis placed on the teams a competitor has beaten. Head-to-head results are used where only two teams remain tied.

Benefits of SCS

  1. Adaptive scheduling based on event results.
  2. Teams sail two races before changing boats.
  3. Encourages peer-to-peer racing.
  4. No limitation on entry, can be used with both odd and even numbers of teams.
  5. Requires fewer team and boat changeovers than a standard Swiss League.
The Single Change Swiss League adds another scheduling option to the kSail Events Portal and provides event organisers with another tool when designing an event format.

If you would like to discuss whether Single Change Swiss, Standard Swiss, HLS or a traditional Round Robin format may be most appropriate for your event, please submit an Event Support Request or contact a member of the kSail team.