To ID or Not to ID, That is the Question
It's Round 9 - day 2 is within your grasp... do you risk it all for those two extra match points?
Pairings go up on RK9. You walk up to your table. It’s Round 9, you’re at 6 wins and 2 losses. Your opponent looks up as you approach. “It’s been a long day”, they say. “Why don’t we just ID? After all, it guarantees Day 2 for both of us”. You think it through. They’re not wrong, a tie does get you to that magic 19 match points number locking your spot in Day 2. And you’re exhausted, so dinner sounds pretty nice right about now…
Well, should you?
At Pittsburgh Regionals 2023, I’m talking to Cal Connor and ask him if he thinks it’s optimal to take an intentional draw in that exact situation. This was fresh off his miracle 2023 NAIC run where he entered Day 2 at 6-2-1 and won 6 straight to sneak into top 8 at 12-2-1 only finally losing to eventual champion (and fellow writer) Cyrus Davis in top 4. Given that run, I expected Cal to say that maybe the round 9 ID isn’t the worst thing in the world but he actually advised against it and noted that his 6-0 experience was out of the norm and felt that it was, well, a miracle, and didn’t want to be put in that position again.
Talk to respected players in the community and the majority of which would say, given how big Regionals and Internationals have become, if you’re playing to make top cut or to win money, you should play out round 9. But it’s still controversial and there’s still a lot left up in the air. How big should a tournament be before it’s worse to ID round 9? What if you care more about points than you do about money? Heck, ask a pro player their thoughts on round 9 and they might tell you one thing and turn around and do the complete other when it comes down to it, so it’s a tough question to answer given how many variables there are and how they change for each individual person and each individual event.
What interests me about this question though is that once you make enough assumptions, namely your win rate for the rest of the rounds, you can calculate the expected value of playing the match out versus taking the tie. And suddenly something that seemed very subjective and contentious could turn into something a little closer to a real world answer.