I was wondering if anyone could comment on a practice that I have never seen before (and disliked). At a large tournament, pairings were posted with the following information ONLY: Name, board #, color. The name of the opponent was not given.
This pairing information was posted briefly. Once the round started even this information was removed. Standings were not posted each round. This created a situation where it was practically impossible to determine who anybody was playing or had played. For that matter it would have been difficult to determine even your own opponent if he was not willing to divulge that information. Only after the tournament was over, was a full cross-table published. Is such a practice of keeping players in the dark common or legal? If so what are its merits?
Certainly it’s legal. The TD can announce the pairings verablly if he wants to. He’s not going to get much repeat business, though. I’ve seen what you describe once or twice, but it has no merits that I can think of other than saving paper.
I wonder what pairing program they were using? Some of them have the ability to customize what’s on the pairing sheets, but not including the opponent’s name is, at best, unusual.
I find it hard to believe any of the pairing programs have an option to leave off the opponent’s name on the pairing chart. Though I admit I’ve never looked to see if this an option on Swiss-Sys which I use. There is an option to do alpha pairings wheich provide the players name in alphabetical order, but also includes board number, color and the opponent’s name.
I’m surprised players weren’t screaming for an updated wallchart after every round. Even if one doesn’t manually update the wall charts during the round, a new one should go up with the next round pairings.
Could this be a new format? Keep everyone in the dark until it’s over?
I don’t use WinTD a lot (and only use SwisSys about once a year), but as I recall WinTD lets you customize pairing lists and add or delete any field, even if the customized report doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I am not familiar with pairing programs but think SwissSys is the typical program used here. I don’t have specific information about what was used at this tournament. The pairing charts were alphabetical, excluding opponent name.
Possibly it is my paranoid nature, but one of many things that concern me about the policy of secrecy (no pairing or standing information) is that it could, hypothetically, provide cover for someone deliberately manipulating the pairings. I consider it unlikely in this case and have zero direct evidence to suggest that this was done. However, it raises a related question. Is there a way, from the crosstable information, to determine whether the pairings were done according to the stated policy? That is, is it feasible, hopefully in a largely automated way, to validate the correctness of pairings of large events after the fact?
Certainly, but for any significant number of players it becomes pretty tedious. Make pairing cards and reconstruct the pairings. Or, if you don’t like pairing cards, enter the players into a pairing program and see what comes out. I’ve done this once or twice (when the computer pairings didn’t look right, or when testing a difficult pairing problem), but generally only for the top score groups.
Laziness, incompetence, or a foolish desire to innovate are much more likely explanations for the situation you describe.
In tournaments where there are monetary awards, hiding the results would maybe persuade people to always play their best and go for the win instead of ‘taking a draw’ because they are ahead or can still get some money.
It seems to me that if the pairings rule are embedded in a program, it would in principle be rather straightforward to automate the determination of what pairings did not conform to certain rules. Of course, that wouldn’t be the whole story since there could be perfectly innocent reasons for irregular pairings. I was curious if this was a problem that had been worked on before.
I’m not especially concerned about why this was done, but wanted to make sure that I wasn’t just seeing a variant that was new to me, but known elsewhere. And if this practice isn’t addressed in the rules and does start to catch on, then maybe the pairing programs should be modified to work backwards.
It’s not quite that simple. There are many mathematical operations that are easy in one direction but very difficult in the other. However, the short answer to your question is that no one has worked on checking pairings after the tournament because it hardly ever comes up. (The TD can have the program show the pairing logic when making the pairings, however.)
I posted to gain perspective on a practice with which I was unfamiliar, and hoped that the world contained those who could offer some. I am here to gain information, not publicly discuss a specific tournament.
I do appreciate any comments you might have. If it helps, please consider it a hypothetical question.
If it’s a hypothetical question then it sounds like something that hasn’t actually happened. If it didnt happen then it seems silly to even discuss it because I can’t imagine any TD doing such a thing, and I can’t imagine players putting up with such nonsense.
If it did happen then even if you don’t want to disclose what tournament it was, it still would be interesting to know how many players were in the tournament and what sort of money was at stake.
In terms of trying to hide incorrect or irregular pairings this seems highly unlikely. If the TD is using a pairing program then the pairings for the most part will be proper. There have been times when the TD has chosen to override what the computer has produced, or players have complained about what the computer produced. A skilled TD who has lots of experience with pairings knows when it is appropriate to to override the computer.
Players who are in contention for money will be aware of who the competition is wallchart or no wallchart. Unless the opponent outright lies about who he is or what his score is a player will have a enough an idea of whether te pairing was valid. Besides in any tournament somebody knows somebody. Chess isn’t so large that you would have 200 people in a tournament where not one person knows any of the other people. An out of towner may not know anyone, but the locals know each other.
OK. I guess part of the reason I asked, was to point out that such a practice is extremely uncommon (at least, I’ve never seen it). I grant that, if something like this happens to a player playing in one of his first tournaments, his perspective could be quite different.
but it has no merits that I can think of other than saving paper.
It would give the TD a lot of flexibility in calculating the prize fund.
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You’ll be amazed what some people will do to save a little paper. I know an individual that habitually saves paper to print on the back sides. But maybe we have two issues here. The initial pairings and no crosstables.
The pairings made could have been done under the thinking that it made it simpler and less confusing. One simple column of names and board numbers etc. Much easier than two columns. It could be simplicity simply carried to an extreme.
Now the no wallcharts or even standing sheets I can’t see happening. People generally come and ask for them by round 2 if they aren’t out.
Could they have been out somewhere and not clear to the general populace?
but it has no merits that I can think of other than saving paper.
It would give the TD a lot of flexibility in calculating the prize fund.
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You’ll be amazed what some people will do to save a little paper. I know an individual that habitually saves paper to print on the back sides. But maybe we have two issues here. The initial pairings and no crosstables.
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Nothing wrong with saving paper. Sometimes I’m embarressed by how much paper we go through at some tournaments. Print 4 sets of pairings, then find out they have to be redone. Argh!
I’ve seen a number of TDs use the back of old fliers to print pairings. In this day and age I think saving paper is good, but not at the expense of no wallcharts.
I have enough perspective to know that it is not common, but not enough to conclude that is is “extremely uncommon”. My hunch is that the goal was to avoid having to deal with questions. The lack of openness detracted from the event’s integrity in my opinion. But no one here has suggested that it violated any official policies, which is also useful to know.
You haven’t mentioned if anyone questioned this practice during the tournament. It seems odd to me that no one would have raised the issue of the lack of wallcharts during the tournament. Also, I am curious as to how the players turned in their results if the pairings weren’t still posted?
Unless the TD was using some homegrown pairing software, I think he would have a hard time justifying the actions as you described them.
I know that at least one person questioned the practice.
After the game, players were instructed to give the result to a judge holding the scoring sheet. That scoring sheet did have the names of both players arranged by board number, and that would have been a way for somebody to learn the name of his opponent if for some reason the opponent had not been willing to divulge it. This sheet was, of course, closely guarded by the tournament officials and not available for general viewing.
As far as the lack of updated wall charts, by itself that is not so irregular in my experience. I’ve been to a number of tournaments where, in the rush, rounds get skipped or are posted late. In some cases, the next round’s pairing sheets (depending on the details) can contain quite a lot of the information that is present on the wall chart, so normally there is some redundancy.
