The Gibraltar controversy raises a good question:
Should there be human over-riding of computer-made pairings?
In a non-norm tournament the answer is “It depends.” In a norm tournament, almost never.
Alex Relyea
I am not sure if this question is asked correctly. If the question is, should a human check for correctness in the computer pairings, the question is of course,
yes. For, “computer error” quite often is the direct result of human input error.
Or, as a tournament progresses, perhaps pairings need to be “tweeked” to minimize same school or team pairings if possible while maintaining score group
integrity.
A tournament director whose answer to questions re pairings who states “well, not my fault, it is what the computer spat out” probably is not qualified to be
the computer pairings chief.
Rob Jones
A computer is a tool used, hopefully, by a competent human who knows what and why and how the pairing software works as it does. That the human understands not only the rules, but knows FIDE pairing rules as they apply to norms. This is vital. And I have seen several instances of norms not being
awarded as the FIDE specific rules regarding individual players federations not observed correctly, and thus the norms not allowed.
Rob Jones
Is it reasonable in a large, long Swiss to expect that a tournament official is going to know that, for example, someone has been paired several time with women? Or even that two players with different surnames are related, as in the last-round Fridman-Zatonskih pairing?
In a norm event, neither of these questions is relevant.
Alex Relyea
This is a case where stuff happens. First, there was a 15K euro women’s prize, so there was a higher percentage of strong women players than would probably be typical. And because she has a high rating, she was generally paired down (she was paired up only once) and the bottom half of her score groups is where the women were. So far as I can tell, she was one of only two woman in the top 46 in the rankings, but over 1/3 of the players ranked between 47 and 103 (the types of players that a 2650 player having an OK but not great tournament would play) were women.
Ding! Ding! I think we have a winner. I’ve been wondering about this exact issue: Women in a strong tournament are often seeded in the bottom half of the field. In all the discussion I’ve seen about this event and this issue, you’re the first who’s brought that up.
In the later rounds there were likely many woman vs. woman games, and perhaps other women who played more women than men over the course of the event.
The same thing happens in scholastic tournaments where we attempt to non-pair teammates. The strong teams float to the high score groups and we’re left with either pairing teammates or venturing out of a score group. It’s a grey area where we either make a one-off decision or create a standard for a repeating event.
On the other hand, we’ve seen long threads on this forum regarding “correct” pairings, and the experts have not always agreed with each other, let alone with the computer. Are FIDE pairings (or at least FIDE pairings for this caliber of event) somehow more black-and-white than USCF pairings?
Yes. FIDE pairings are completely deterministic (theoretically).
Alex Relyea
I did a quick check last week and found that at least four of the rounds where she was paired with a woman it was a completely correct FIDE pairing. No player was moved out of rating order except to balance color. In other words, the top half players due while played the bottom half players due black in exactly rating order. The same was true for the other half of the players.
Mike Regan
In our scholastic tournaments where team prizes are involved, but no individual awards are given we do not pair teammates under any circumstances. If there are also individual awards we adhere to US Chess rule 28N1 (Plus-two method). We publicize this in advance so that people will know what to expect.
It can be argued, and some have, that there are special circumstances where a variation of either of those procedures would be better, but when you start jimmying with the system you invite charges of favoritism. Pandora’s Box is best left unopened.
In this case, it was actually the second quartile (roughly) that had a remarkably high percentage of women. The top quartile was almost all men, and the low rated players that didn’t have to play in the top section were mainly men as well.