hey, gys i'm wondering how are tie points calculated I was tying first with this gy in a live tournament and he came up first with tie points of 18.5 and I had tie points of 17. How are these calculated?

It depends.  Tournaments use different types of tie-breaking prodecures.

For example, any or all of the following may be used:

http://www.swissperfect.com/tiebreak.htm

I won first place in a tourney in 2010, based upon tie-breaks.  In that tournament the tie-breaks were in order, were Modified Median, Solkoff, and Cumulative.  In my case the order wouldn’t have mattered, since I was fortunate to come out ahead on all three of those individual tie-breakers.

Modified Median:  add up all of the final tournaments scores of all of your opponents but throw out the low score.

Solkoff:  add up all of the final scores of your opponents (don’t throw out the low)

Cumulative:  add up the running total of your round-by-round tournament standing score. (Example: 1 2 3 4 4.5 5 = 19.5)

If you supplied the entire tournament crosstable, I could probably figure it out for you which method was used, assuming you're correct with your 18.5 and 17 figures.

Tie breaker points are the total sum of the scores of players you've beaten. For example, after three rounds, you have three wins. Your opponents that you've played have scored 2 points, 2 points and 0 points. Your tie breaker score would be 4 (2+2+0). For a draw, you receive half of your opponent's score.

thx man now i got it