Is it possible to tell the TD you don’t want any full point byes?
The situation is that a player wants to play up, and at some point is the lowest rated with the fewest points. But they want to play, for fun, for practice, whatever, and they may have travelled a great distance to get there. This is especially true if their schedule requires them to rush to make the first round, only to find they are not playing.
Does the pairing software allow an override so the next lowest rated gets the full point bye instead?
If it’s SwissSys yes the TD can “override” that pairing but it sounds like the program correctly shot out the right pairing giving that individual the bye correctly. To tinker with the pairing would be incorrect regardless of the individual’s travel. He/she has to learn it’s part of being paired in and has nothing to do with them.
I’ve seen some players who habitually play up try to avoid the no-game surprise by requesting a half point bye in a round of their choosing. That way they don’t get the full point bye and know they will be playing all the other games.
As Steve correctly pointed out someone else gets the bye instead. What if that person doesn’t want the bye either? Where does it stop? Maybe a new money making idea for organizers would be “bye insurance”. A player could pay a fee to insure against getting byes.
I hate getting byes. I would rather play. I always ask the director to find a house player if possible. There’s no guarantee he will get me a game every time, but usually the director will try to accommodate my request.
In tournaments with multiple sections there are often players from several different sections getting byes. Usually the director will cross pair so that the players have a game.
Getting a bye is one of the risks one faces when playing up. It’s a trade off. One less game, but probably more challenging match ups because of the 1 point.
I’ve seen cases where a parent might ask that the TD make it a zero point bye so that their very low rated child won’t get pounded by players who have won a game.
That works until there are no players with a half point or less. Then the person whose lone .5 came on a 1/2 point bye ends out with a full point any way.
Sometimes on Thursday nights I’ve taken what I call the preemptive last round bye when it’s clear I’m going to get a full point bye in round 2 or 3. I stopped doing that because it usually would blow up in my face.
The easiest override is to enter a zero-point bye in round N+1 of an N-round tournament and then let the program pair normally. Whether or not such an option should be available is a different issue, as the discussion has indicated.
Yes, you’re sticking someone else with it. And if everyone minds getting a bye, I understand it’s not fair for one person to be allowed to refuse it and another not.
But if there are those who don’t mind, then it’s not the same issue.
Now, I understand pretty well how pairings work and why there are full point byes. The question was whether or not the option was available. Does anyone know if it is? I’m thinking along the lines of what if the TD is told o the wish before the tournament starts, and if the software allows players to be tagged that way.
Swiss-Sys does have a setting where a player can be tagged to never get the bye.
However I don’t any tournament director would honor that request. It comes down to suppose everyone wanted that? That would clearly cause problems with the pairings.
You have to hope there is a house player with a decent rating available if there is a bye situation. Even if the player loses to the house player, the TD usually won’t let the low player get the bye again.
The first round is a special situation, and a commitment to a future bye, especially in the last round, is frequently made to avoid the first-round bye, in exchange for a round that the player might not be able to play. But it does still mean one less game. Sometimes there is a suitable house player, but that’s not a guarantee. But as the tournament progresses after the first round, the most effective way to avoid the bye is to not have the lowest score.
I surely wouldn’t, a pairing is a pairing if done correctly and on SwissSys prior to the first pending you got the rating in correctly (and today with the Golden DB no way to scr-w that up) the Round 1 pairing is correct.
I agree wholeheartedly, the TD would be swamped with requests including prior to Round 1 which tends to bring the most work for a backroom TD. I could see it now Timmy requests a bye gets it, the section gets repaired, Bobby who got or didn’t get the bye requests it, stop the shaking of the hands repairing, the third copy comes and Suzy does not like it and wants the or a bye, like what is this McDonald’s?
The end result of the tournament runs fair when the individual who lucked gets the bye the first round.
Getting stuck with a full point bye is one of the natural consequences of playing up. Learn to deal with it!
Another problem is when a player who wanted to play in the last round gets stuck with the full point bye because someone else withdrew. In my last tournament, the TD found an unusual houseman to pair with the odd player: the same guy who withdrew!
I’m not so sure it’s a macho thing or just learning to be a part of the scene. Taking a day off from work to make it to a Friday night game out of town and then finding out there’s no game to play has consequences beyond sitting around in a hotel uneccesarily. The later rounds, up to the last one (when it could impact what flight you catch home), are a different story, and there’s at least some warning about what’s coming up in those cases. As was pointed out, the best defese against it is to play well and avoid being at the bottom of the pile, but in round 1 there’s no other way to avoid it, and no way to know if there’s going to be an odd or even number of player in the section.
Simple: If getting to play a game on Friday night is that important to you, then don’t play up. Or at least make sure you’re not the lowest rated player in the section for round 1.
People make a choice to play up. That choice has advantages, but also has at least one disadvantage. Live with it, or else don’t play up!
That’s it period and any chess-player who doesn’t like it can curse out Rule 28J The first round which states, “… After ordering all the players by rating, the director divides the cards in the upper half against the highest player in the lower half, the second-highest in the upper half against the second-highest in the lower-half, etc. Pairing programs do this automatically.” and further direct them to Rule 22B Full-point byes which notes, " If there is an odd number of players for a round, and a suitable house player not in the event can not be found to fill in, one player will receive a full-point (1) bye."
In IL scholastics it used to be common to handle byes by using cross-round pairings with a person who lost that round (one player’s round one is the opponent’s round two). The two biggest problems with that were that the game couldn’t start until somebody in the appropriate score group lost (requiring either a time control change for that game or risking delaying the next round), and if the bye came because somebody else had a half-point bye scheduled then every round from then on would require a cross-round pairing (as opposed to just biting the bullet and accepting a bye for one round). The time issue is more significant in adult tournaments. Keeping the bye and having an extra game (with reduced time) against an early finisher is one way of finding a house player even if there are no spectators.
Multi-section tournaments can see cross-sectional pairings to handle byes (usually either both players get their bye and have their game put into an extra-games section, or the player in the lower section gets the bye and is copied into the higher section for one game so that the cross-sectional game is treated as a normally paired game in that higher section). Not everybody that gets a bye actually wants to have it converted into a game (seems like about 70% of the scholastic players here are happy with a bye).
Instead of bye insurance, how about a bye auction? The players who don’t want a bye pay the ones who do, and the tournament gets a percentage. The fewer players who want a bye, the higher the price. The auction takes place before the first round, and each round is a separate transaction.
I think both the top seeds and the bottom ones would be thrilled with this arrangement.
An organizer who sells bye insurance may need to put in a caveat that it is only valid as long as at least one player who did not purchase the insurance still has not received a bye. I can just imagine a 5-round 15-player tournament where 12 of the players purchased such insurance. I guess that an additional premium could be paid to extend the insurance until such time as everybody without the extended insurance has either two byes or one bye plus the basic insurance.
Just think of the fun when the top-rated player didn’t bother with the insurance, has won all games so far, and receives a bye when all of the people ranked lower have either already had a bye or have purchased the insurance. When somebody else complains to the USCF (rules or TDCC) it would be just peachy for the organizer to explain why the pairing was done as it was (seems like a major rule variation that would require advance notice).
If it truly is that the player wants the game for fun / practice / etc., that player could find a suitable opponent and ask the TD or organizer for an extra-rated game, no? Or, for that matter, simply indicate that they are willing to grind out some extra-rated games if the TD/organizer knows of an opponent. (Though time controls and scheduling, JTP, etc. may come into play…)
and any chess-player who doesn’t like it can curse out