First Rated Club Tournament – Am I Covering Everything?

[nolan]

Running a Hex would mean 5 rounds instead of 4. The Crenshaw-Berger pairing tables in the rulebook can be used to generate pairings, showing which players have white and which have black.

The challenge with 6 players and 4 rounds is that you might wind up with pairing a 3.0 against a 1.0 or lower score to avoid pairing someone against the same player twice. It’s also possible to box yourself in for the last round.

This is the sort of thing you can practice by hand using 3x5 pieces of paper and just randomly assigning results to a round then seeing how that affects pairing subsequent rounds. You can do it with a pairing program like WinTD or SwissSys, too, but I think it is very instructive for a new TD to do some pairings by hand so they know when not to just use the computer’s pairings.

This has come up in the forums a few times, here’s one thread that discusses it:

Pairing small Swiss System tournaments

I like to use the example of a complete beginner playing in the open section of the World Open. Alex Relyea The problem with open sections are insane parents who enter their young new chess playing children in which they have zero chance at providing any competitive games for their opponents, Or, in truly receiving much of a benefit themselves. I remember trying to encourage a dad to register his novice son in a U section, rather than the Open, and his dad furiously pointed out that his son has played 13 games in two major tournaments open sections in the last year. (lost all 13 but played them). Some organizers have a Premier section instead of an Open section. Since it isn’t open it can have a minimum rating to register. I remember one tournament I directed where the top section basically for 2000+ rated players, but was listed as open. An adult rated in the 800’s could not be dissuaded from entering it. It wasn’t a big section to begin with, and along the way there were a few withdrawals. Going into the fifth and final round two Masters and an Expert were tied for first. The only way to pair the section without pairing the same people twice was to pair the two Masters with each other (fine), and pair the Expert with the 800 rated player (not fine). The Masters fought tooth and nail and eventually ended up drawing. Meanwhile the Expert rolled over the 800 rated player in no time and took the first prize. The Masters were NOT happy.