Full point bye and players with forfeit wins

[ppwchess]

@jwiewel

There is an old thread that Bill Smythe started about point-count pairings that is marginally relevent. In that there was an attempt to figure out how “bad” each variation from a perfect pairing would be (where perfect would be considered what the pairings would be if there were no color considerations and no considerations about players previously meeting). In some circumstances it is “better” to violate some pairing rules so that it is easier to obey others. As an extreme example, in a 16-player blitz tournament around round 9, you may need to pair the tournament leaders with each other even if they have already played (probably because they both already played the next half-dozen players in the standings).

I had a situation like that. I was running a 10 round “insanity” (though ours was more civilized since it went from 11 am to midnight) Going into the last round a number of players had taken last round byes, so there were 12 players still active. In round 10 the tournament leader with 8.5 was paired against a 2.5. The 2.5 was the highest score he had not played yet. Other odd pairings were a 4.5 vs 2.5, 4 vs 2.