A tournament offers the choice of playing for a single cash prize or a single trophy with no details on tiebreaks. If a player playing for a cash prize and one going for the trophy tie how does one split the prize? Should the default tiebreaks be considered?
I think that both the trophy and half the cash prize should be awarded without regard to default tiebreaks and the organizer takes the hit for not noting any tiebreak details.
Yes, I was on the short end of the stick once. 
Sounds like hi-lo poker to me. 
The “or” in your question is a little confusing to me, but I believe the relevant rules are:
and also
Although I’m more than willing to be corrected, in absence of posted announcements to the contrary, I believe the procedure is to use tie-breaks to determine who takes home the trophy and you still divide the monetary prize evenly.
The book also states that in absence of announcement the expectation in order are: Modified Media, Solkoff, Cumulative, and Cumulative of Opposition.
Before you can answer this question, you need to know the answer to this question:
Suppose Player A is playing for the trophy and Player B is playing for the money. Player A wins outright.
Clearly, Player A gets the trophy - but what happens to the money? Does Player B get the money? Or, does the Organizer keep the money?
(Emphasis mine.)
This is dumb, dumb, dumb. It gives rise to all kinds of potential, and actual, problems. No wonder it’s not in the rulebook.
Bill Smythe
How so? A clear winner gets to decide: cash or trophy.
A tie results in the cash divided and the trophy is retained by the organizer to award next time.
When we did this many years ago at our local chess club, the trophy cost was roughly equal to the cash awarded. Those events were quite successfuly, BTW. $5 entry fee, play three games in a quad or a mini-swiss. And yes, the trophies for the mini-swisses were larger.
Ah the good ol’ days… 
I prefer Harry Sabine’s solution: cash prizes only - with a display showing several trophies and a sign saying: “If you think that your performance in this tournament is worthy of a trophy, we’ll be happy to sell you one”.
But…I think the real problem is in cases where the trophy is much less expensive than the cash prize, and some players are playing only for the trophy (perhaps they have a smaller entry fee, perhaps they want to maintain their “amateur standing” - this is a real problem for some junior players who also play high school sports).
For that case - consider the question I posted, above: if you have some players playing for the (cheap) trophy and other players playing for the (big) prize money, and a trophy-seeker finishes first - who gets the first place money? a) the top finishing prize-money-player, or b) the Organizer?
Wouldn’t the answer to this depend on the exact wording of the TLA? Speculating on the basis of one player’s complaint does not seem useful.
It should probably depend upon whether the trophy-seekers are counted as full entries for the cash based-on number. If only the cash-seekers are used for the based-on, then it would make sense to award the cash prizes as if only the cash-seekers were in the final standings list. If the trophy-seekers are included in the based-on but are paying a much lower EF then it would be reasonable to have the money go to the Organizer (i.e. it’s like he was financially backing their entry fees in order to get their winnings).
Lots of interesting stuff here since I tried to generalize the situation.
Let me be more specific with an example…
Quads!
EF: $10 if playing for trophy, $25 if playing for cash.
Cash prize based upon how many in quad playing for cash.
1: $30, 2: $45, 3: $60, 4: $75
3 players playing for cash, 1 for trophy
Trophy player ties with one of the cash players with 2-1
How do you split prizes if …
My thought, since no special tie breaks were announced, is that either way it should be
Trophy player gets trophy
Cash player gets $30 (1/2 of $60)
Or perhaps even better?? would be cash player gets the higher of
$60 minus the value of the trophy or $30 (1/2 of $60)
Trophy player gets trophy
Of course, it would have been best to just announce what happens in a tie like this.
Why would the “cash” player get only half? In the case you give, the “trophy” player gets the trophy and the top-scoring “cash” player gets $60. Since the organizer announced “$60 based on 3 cash players,” he has to award $60. Tiebreaks are irrelevant, since there is only one player eligible for the trophy. In any case, no matter how many “cash” and “trophy” players there are, the tiebreaks of the “cash” players will never be relevant. If tiebreaks were needed, the organizer would justified in using the ones recommended in the Rulebook. If he wants to use something different, he ought to announce it at the start of the tournament.
Absolutely corrrect.
If there’s only one player eligible for the trophy, would he get the trophy no matter what?
This choice stuff makes my head spin. It doesn’t make sense to me to offer more than one type of prize, unless who will get each is strictly specified, e.g.: 1st place, trophy plus $50; 2nd place, shiny medal; 3rd place, Rice-a-Roni.
As an organizer, I believe awarding some type of award, be it a glass etched trophy, or nice
gold cup, is truly appropriate for a club’s or organizations premier tournaments, in addition to
cash prizes. it seems to me that this adds a special “sparkle” to the tournament.
On the idea of offering a choice, or reduced fees if playing for the trophy only, seems to me
to make little sense, particuraly if your organization is not cash-endowed, and would prefer not
loosing money on the event. Also, it seems to me that it would be diffucult for players to
distinguish which of their opponents were in which pool-cash or trophy. And how silly would it
look to give the first place trophy to someone who actually finished second on tie-breaks??, or
give the full cash prize to the one who in actuality finished second?? Just seems kind of strange to
me.
Rob Jones
Denton, TX
What other activities offer a choice of which prize the winner receives? I have no problem paying a $5 entry fee and playing for an etched glass mug (my first “trophy”) or $65 and playing for $500 for the section prize. But I would feel horrible if I had paid to play for the trophy, had the tournament of a lifetime, and was out of the money because of my earlier choice.
The club I attend has frequent tournaments with NO prizes, and only $1 entry fees. Solves the problem, I guess.
I think this is the same reason that the book suggests that you don’t let players choose which cash prize they get - instead it’s determined. 
Ethically / morally I think the right thing to do is award the trophy to the trophy player, the full $60 to the cash player, and take the hit for the trophy cost for not writing in a tiebreak clause.
Legally the organizer might get away with $30 to the cash player in any event, and a trophy award only if the trophy player wins out on tiebreaks. Still, that opens up the can of worms that $30 of the first prize was not awarded as advertised.
Personally, I would prefer the ethical/moral version, for the organizer not writing in “In the event of tie for first, trophy or full cash award will be awarded to sole top player based on tiebreaks.” And, given that the minimum to organizer is $25 per quad for a sole cash win or cash tie, I’d presume there wouldn’t be much loss for adding the trophy.
Usually tie breaks are used to determine the winner of a trophy, but the first place and second place prizes would be combined, then split between the two 1st place winners.
For example. Player A and Player B tied for first and the prizes were: 1st place 1000, 2nd place 500.
Then you would combine 1000 + 500 = 1500 then divide by two. So each player would get $750 each.
The tiebreak winner would get the trophy in addition to the $750.
If pre-announced by the TD, tiebreaks can be used to determine the clear first place. Although thats usually reserved for higher end events like the various Championship tournaments and matches.
I do recall selling a trophy to a tied winner who added to his half of the prize money and purchased one. Seems like I remember that happening more than once. You guys are making this way too complicated…