There have always been questions about the variations in percentage scores between club and overall rankings in the Simultaneous Pairs events. This can happen, for example, when a pair's 'top' or 'bottom' on a board at the club becomes only an 'average' when merged with the scores from other clubs.

These variations usually balance out fairly well, although on occasion a pair may suffer (or benefit!) if most of the variations act in one direction and lead to a large rise or fall - the most noticeable one I've seen being where a pair recently won their club event with over 58% but sank to less than 50% when the overall scoring was completed.

To help explain how this can happen, in future the basic traveller scores will be available on-line as part of the results service, linked from the final rankings page. The February 2011 travellers have been linked in as a trial.

I'd be pleased to hear comments!

Paul Ainsworth