I’m hoping to execute either option A or option B. What you proposed is exactly what I had decided to do.
Part of the problem with my tournament (other than not having enough elementary kids) is that it is unrated. I think of the entire 49 kids I now have registered, 2 have USCF ratings. Therefore, I really don’t know who of the three elementary students I have is actually the “weakest” player. In fact, the only thing I know about these three players is that my only 2nd grader did very well in the region’s “UIL Chess Puzzle Competition”.
If I had a house player available at this point, I would already have made them a Player.
Actually, I do have a high schooler in our chess club that doesn’t know it yet, but I might make a house player in the high school section. He didn’t want to play because he wanted to volunteer to assist with the tournament because he wanted the community service hours (our school requires 100 community service hours to graduate). If I have an odd number of HS players, his community service very well may be playing to remove byes.
Great suggestions…hopefully I don’t have to wrestle with the later options. I’ve reached out to a community center that runs an elementary chess program. They had said they were bringing 6 players a month ago (which would largely solve my problem), but I haven’t heard back from them. I’ve even offered to pay their entry fees out of my own pocket (part because I love what they are doing for these kids, but also I REALLY need 3 players).
Swiss pairings are designed to sort out players by strength fairly quickly, usually by round 3. The first round often has a lot of mis-matches because it’s upper half vs lower half, so nobody’s playing anyone near their own strength, if you pair the first round randomly (which is essentially what you’re doing if nobody has a rating), that doesn’t interfere with the sorting out process too badly.
If the event isn’t being US Chess rated, you can run your own ratings system, how complex it is depends on your interest level and computer skills. Something as simple as tracking the percentage of wins will, over the course of two or three events with most of the same players attending, give you a pretty good idea who the stronger players are.
If you want to get a bit fancier, use something like the old ratings approximation formula (used before about 2000.)
Start everybody at some number, say 1000.
Each game the winner gets 16 points plus or minus 4% of the ratings difference between the two players (up to a difference of 400 points.) The loser the same amount.
So if a 1000 player beats a 1200 player, the 1000 player gets 16 + .04 x (1200-1000) or 24 points,
while the 1200 player loses 24 points.
If a 1200 player beats a 1000 player, then the 1200 player gets 16 + .04 x (1000-1200) or 8 points, while the 1000 player loses 8 points.
For a draw, the higher rated player loses 4% of the ratings differential, the lower rated player gains that amount. (In other words, the 16 point term goes away.) So if the 1200 player draws the 1000 player then the 1200 player loses 8 points and the 1000 player gains 8 points.
The transition to the logistic rather than linear formula was earlier than 2000—the Clipper code from 1991 used a logistic-based lookup table. I remember the rating difference being capped at 350 so the winner would always gain at least 2 points (at K=32).
I wasn’t sure exactly when the formula transition took place, but as I recall the 4% approximation was still more or less usable for players under 2100 during the era where K was limited to 3 values–32 for players under 2100, 24 between 2100 and 2400 and 16 above that. These days it doesn’t work in large part due to the way K is computed, though based on the email I see complaining about ratings changes some people still use it.
I would sign a service hours credit for that - the kid is still volunteering to help out at the tournament. And he could round out the elementary if needed.
Good news is that I just had two more confirmed registrations last night for my elementary section. I currently have an odd number in my 5-8 grade section, so I will have the two byes play each other in extra games so that everyone gets to play 5 games.
Better yet, a community center in town has 3 registrations in the mail (so I’ve been told) that might bring me to 8 elementary students which alleviates a lot of issues. (Including what I did with the section team trophies. If the three are elementary, I now have two teams which is really convenient since I have 1st place and 2nd place team trophies for each section).
New Question: In WinTD, when I print off a x-table sorted by score, does the program apply the tie-breaking metrics automatically each time it sorts by score?
Thanks so much for all of the help everyone has provided.
You could try searching for events where the original poster served as a TD. (On TD/A.)
It shows one event for him, in May of this year. I don’t know if that’s the event he was asking about. It seems likely, all 8 players in it were unrated.
I apologize for not responding much earlier than this.
The tournament that I ran which this thread was about was in April of last year. However, it was NOT a rated event. I ran it according to USCF rules, but nearly none of the players were USCF members and I did not submit the tournament to USCF.
My one tournament listed by USCF was a JTP that I ran internal to my chess club at my high school. I have another that just concluded that I will be uploading soon and we are currently playing another. But these have been all JTP.
I’m weighing the options of making our tournament this April be USCF. But I’m afraid that I will scare students away from paying for a $10 membership voucher and then the entry fee for the tournament.
A player needs four games in to get an official rating (and 26 - in most cases - to make it an established one), so only two of the eight players have publishable ratings.
In the future you may want to do an extra-games section for players that are getting forfeit wins. (for that matter you may have wanted to do it in this tournament but the time constraints were such that the time frame where you knew there were going to be forfeits was too late to start any extra games).