NOTE: Scholastic ratings for KingCo play for Rounds 1 – 6 are now available at RatingsNW.com (follow the link to go straight to the report).
Round 8 results for Monday, February 5.
| White | Results | Black |
| Newport A | 4.5 – 0.5 | Bellevue |
| Inglemoor | 2 – 3 | Interlake B |
| Newport B | 0 – 5 | Interlake A |
| Mercer Island | 1 – 4 | Redmond |
Newport A, Interlake A, Inglemoor, Redmond, Bellevue, and Interlake B have all clinched state playoff berths.
—-
You’ll notice that there are only four matchups posted for Round 8. Yesterday, we received news that Skyline has dropped from the KingCo League for the remainder of this season. We got confirmation from their advisor this morning.
Yesterday, at the emergency coaches’ meeting, we debated the effect of teams getting potential 5-0 forfeits and how much of an impact that has on the standings of a round-robin event like this one. A proposal was put forward to remove all Skyline results from the standings — for the purposes of determining team standings and state qualifiers — and that vote carried unanimously by the adults present, 7 – 0.
Here are some other questions you may be wondering about:
Q: Does Skyline dropping from the league impact the number of teams that can qualify for state?
A: We believe the answer to this question is no, based on examining the WHSCA State Team Rules. In particular, Section 4, indicates that “[w]hen counting up the number of teams in the league do not count… teams that forfeited half or more of their league match games.” Skyline had played 30 of the 45 games on the schedule, which means that this should not apply to them.
Based on this, we believe that seven teams still qualify for state. And since Skyline appeared likely to be one of those seven teams, this will likely give qualification to another team that wouldn’t have otherwise qualified.
Q: Are the matches against Skyline players still going to be rated?
A: Yes, and in fact, they already are rated in the ratings update linked to up above.
Q: Are there any other changes to the league at this point?
A: Not really. Any teams that are scheduled to still play Skyline (Interlake B in Round 9) will have a bye instead that adds no points to the standings. Standings are now sorted by the percentage of points earned (wins counting as 1, draws as 0.5, losses as 0) since the number of games played is different for some teams.
Q: But… but… these changes are unfair to our team, because {insert situation here}…
A: It’s difficult to find a perfectly fair situation for these particular circumstances. Do we give teams who get forfeit wins up to five free points? That can have a huge impact on the standings, and potentially feels unfair to the teams who happened to play Skyline before they left the league.
We recognize that there are some teams who are impacted in terms of game points more than others in this scenario, but we really wanted our standings to be reflective of what happened between teams who completed the full season.
For what it’s worth, the team that is potentially most negatively impacted by this proposal was one of its strongest vocal supporters in our meeting.
