Scores and Schedule Strength Combination

The Scores and Schedule Strength Combination, abbreviated SSSC, is a tie-break for team competitions. A team encounter commonly produces two kinds of score: match points, awarded for winning, drawing or losing the whole match, and game points, the sum of the individual board results. The competition rules designate one as the primary score and the other as the secondary score.

What SSSC combines

1. The team's secondary score.
2. Schedule Strength, an estimate of how demanding its opponents were.

Schedule Strength begins with the team's Buchholz, meaning the sum of its opponents' final primary scores. That total is divided by a normalizing factor so that it sits on a scale compatible with the secondary score. By default, the factor is the highest primary score achievable in the tournament divided by the highest secondary score available in one match, rounded toward zero, although the event rules may specify another value.

SSSC therefore does not add two raw numbers. It rewards a team's secondary performance while also recognizing a difficult schedule. When the value must be known before a round is played, the regulations use Fore Buchholz, an estimate that treats the paired games of the final round as draws. This differs from Top Board Results, which compares points on the highest boards one board at a time.