Q: What is Serpentin ranking? I found it in the Contest menu > Settings > Scoring tab.

A: This is a method used by the French Bridge Federation (FFB) to create one overall ranking in spite of using two-winner movements.

The traditional way when using Mitchell without arrow switches is to have one ranking for North-South and one for East-West. The FFB sometimes prefers to have one overall ranking. To overcome the fact that North-South results have not been compared to East-West results, the ranking is created in the following way:

1. The highest overall score is the winner. Let us assume this is an East-West pair.
2. Second place now automatically goes to the highest North-South score, no matter if this is higher than the second East-West score or not.
3. Third place goes to the highest remaining score, no matter the directions of the first two pairs. Let us assume this is a North-South pair.
4. Fourth place now automatically goes to the highest remaining East-West score, no matter if this is higher than the third highest North-South score or not.
5. And so on, until the selected number of pairs have been reached.
6. Below that, no matter the direction, the ranking is set according to the score.

The FFB recommends 3 pairs from each line when below 70 pairs, 4 pairs when below 100 pairs, and (number of pairs) / 20 above that.