If a TD could share if this is handled correctly, that would be appreciated. There are 10 players in 3 round Swiss for Round 1 including a Club TD which is a nonpaying house player to avoid an odd number of players. There is money to win in the tournament. Before Round 2 a new player joins the tournament. I thought the TD could take two 0 point byes for rounds 2 and 3 and let the new player be the even person. First of all, that is the right procedure for a money winnings tournament isn’t it as far as 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners. No other winners.
And also what I want to know, though, is can the TD game in Round 1 be counted as a tournament game, or should it be counted as an extra rated game? Is the tournament score for the TD: 0 Wins, 1 Loss, 0 Draws? Or nothing due to an extra rated game? How should the TD score be handled? If the TD game is counted as an extra rated game, what is the tournament score for the opponent the TD played in Round 1?
I’d leave the house player in the crosstable, just not pair that player in the rounds where there are an even number of players.
I’ve run tournaments where in a 5 round section with about 30 players, no two rounds had the same number of registered players to pair, due to byes and dropouts, and I think my designated house player wound up being paired in 3 rounds.
Did you give your house player 0 point byes, half point byes, or 1 point byes for the rounds he did not play? If you gave out trophies or medals, it may make a difference in the tie break points tallies for the opponents of the house player. We are supposed to give out money. We are allowed to have tie break games if we pre-announce it in the TLA aren’t we even though the prizes are money? Can’t we do that instead of divide up the money?
I just usually gave the house player 0 points for rounds not played in, but the ideal house player is one who would be towards the bottom of the wall chart anyway, which might mitigate any impact on tie breaks for those likely to be in contention for a prize.
Generally speaking, players with the same score share the prize money for that score group, if there are both place and class prizes that can get tricky. As I recall, the senior exam I took in 1987 had a couple of question on prize allocation where it wasn’t just a pool the money and split it evenly situation.
I am confused. In most money tournaments, tiebreaks do not matter at all since prizes are split evenly among eligible players. A tournament may override this in advertisements, but experienced players may become skeptical.
This particular tournament wishes to pre-announce “tie break games.” I assume this means playing blitz games or some other faster time control to determine prize order. Once again, standard tiebreaks (Solkoff, Median, Sonneborn-Berger, etc) do not matter.
Thus it barely matters how many tiebreak points the house player or a new entry carries.
What am I missing?
P.S. Tiebreak scores always carry significant entropy. The shorter the tournament, the worse.
You are not missing anything. It is allowed that we pre-announce tie break games for Money tournaments, right? But for non-money indivisible winnings tournaments, tie breaks matter. If I was confusing earlier, excuse me.
What I do want to know is if the house playing TD is given two 0 point byes in a 3 round tournament and a loss for the 1st round, how do we show the tournament score for the TD? Do the two 0 point byes cause any special handling in a USCF tournament report? I have not had to do a tournament report before.
Zero point byes are N (not paired) or U (unpaired) or Z (zero point) in your software and are all treated the same by the uploads.
Leaving the games in the section allows the house players opponents to potentially get bonus points for good results (at least three games are needed and even in tournaments of four or more rounds it is (almost always) better for a winning player to have the game against the house player included.
A higher rated house player should have appropriate byes to avoid an automatic blow-out of the odd man player (a big part of wanting a low-rated house player), but remember that a house player is not eligible for prizes.
If announced in advance even money prizes can be awarded using tie breaks. An example is the special senior prize ($500 for best score of a 75+ year old if there are at least two) at the Irwin tournament of states’ champions which is awarded on tie-breaks in the event of a tie.
We usually run these small local tournaments with the playing TD as a perk – So not a rule book house player.
o They do not pay EF -
o Missed rounds 1/2 point byes up to what was announced. (I remember a few H-H-Z cross tables)
o May or may not have the EF withheld from and prize won - but generally we would not - I announce prizes based on paid entries.
o We did have the playing TD get a W-H-W at least one time, took the $.
o If we got a spectator that would fit in favorably we’d offer the slot to them. I once played rounds 2&3 after the TD had played round 1. I won game 2 and came very close to winning round 3 that would have given me a clear 1st place – if there was a withdrawal for round 3, the TD & I would both be in for the final round.
o Just recently offered to enter for round 3 – I got a free entry and a H-Z and I could collect half a place prize if I won. It solved the person getting a full point and a place prize without making a move. This was a problem section to start & was made worse by allowing a 3rd round requested bye to clinch clear 1st place and which also created the odd man.
**The likelihood of having to become a playing TD increases as the size/complexity of the tournament increases. Also, if there are no other TDs at the tournament or if you got a poor night’s sleep.
Below is the preliminary pairing for Round 3 of a Swiss tournament.
The ratings are shown along with their 1st and 2nd round colors and
their total points scored after 2 rounds. The 1532 house player gets
a 0 point bye for Rounds 2 and 3. The only pairing matched where both
players are not due White is 2303 BW 2p vs 1900 BW 2p. This needs
to be dealt with.
2303 BW 2p vs 1900 BW 2p
2200 WB 1p vs 2082 BW 1p
2016 WB 1p vs 1656 BW 1p
1500 —B 1p vs 1707 WB 0p
1347 WB 0p vs 1376 BW 0p
1532 W— 0p
However, all the other pairings are fine as is. The question is, must
the first pairing be fixed if it definitely will break the >80 and >200 point
transposition rules to fix it? Should Players 2303 and 2082 be interchanged
despite being 221 points apart resulting in the final pairings of:
2200 WBW 1p vs 2303 BWB 2p
2082 BWW 1p vs 1900 BWB 2p
2016 WBW 1p vs 1656 BWB 1p
1500 —BW 1p vs 1707 WBB 0p
1347 WBW 0p vs 1376 BWB 0p
1532 W-—- 0p
Can the 1st pairing properly be fixed any other way without disturbing
the second pairing? If so, or if not, please comment on this last question. Why didn’t the software just restate the first pairing 2303 as having Black for round 3 and give 1900 White even though it is a 403 point transposition? The actual computer pairing was a 221 point interchange and ended up changing other pairings. By just changing the first pairing by force, at least every one else is left alone.
How many rounds? If it is 4 or more, you might be better off pairing it more like a RR because otherwise you may box yourself in for the 4th round.
I’m not the expert at doing this, but I think there have been past threads explaining the issues trying to make valid Swiss pairings when the number of rounds is close to the number of players.
Hopefully someone will link to these threads, I’m in the middle of the Delegates Meeting (lunch break) at this time.
As a side note: a playing director who doesn’t pay money to play in the tournament is there for the sakes of the other tournament players even to cause them to earn their tournament winnings without having byes to help. This director assures the equality of the tournament winning chances and resigns himself or herself to no personal winnings. This director remains idealogically selfless and is a help rather than a hindrance to a successful tournament. He or she is actually a required aspect of the “fulfilled tournament.”
The tournament is in 3 rounds. It can be changed to 4, however, since there are 11 players in the tournament. I was just wondering if the pairing software had paired that first and second pairing correctly for round 3 in the previous example. Why didn’t the software just restate the first pairing 2303 as having Black for round 3 and give 1900 White even though it is a 403 point transposition? The actual computer pairing was a 221 point interchange and ended up changing other pairings. By just changing the first pairing by force, at least every one else is left alone.
P.S. Did the Correspondence Rules changes not get passed? Are they now referred to the Rules Committee?
It passed but not by the 85% margin needed to implement a rule change in one year, so it goes on the advance agenda for 2026 and needs to pass with a 2/3 majority that year.
IMHO, there are a few flaws in the motion (one in particular on cumulative days of thinking time) but I think those can be cleaned up for next year.
Without seeing the full crosstable it is difficult to determine the pairings below board 1 as players may have already played each other. However, your top matchup, which sees the only two players on 2 points playing each other, is not a transposition. That is the natural top half vs bottom half pairing of the only two players within the 2 point scoregroup. The only thing to determine in their case is the color which each player will get, and with color history of both players being the same, the higher-rated player will get their due color, in this case they should get black to alternate BWB, meaning the lower-rated player gets White.
You should note that most pairing software should do the correct pairings in its “out of the box” settings, but sometimes there are settings that are unwittingly selected when setting things up that will make it do unexpected things.
The point of the 85% majority rule or 2 years of 2/3 majorities is to PREVENT the Delegates from trying to fix or create a rule change on the fly during the meeting, because that’s when we make the most mistakes by failing to look at the unintended consequences and edge cases.
It goes to the Rules committee and hopefully they will consult the author (our correspondence director, I believe) on it. If Rules doesn’t want to deal with it in substance (they’re more focused on the OTB/online rules) the EB might have to create a temporary committee to specifically look at that motion. We used to have a standing correspondence chess committee but it is hard finding people to serve on that.
I’m not sure there is one at the moment, that committee, when we had one, wasn’t very active and it wasn’t on the list of chairs announced by the EB at today’s open session.
You could certainly contact the ED or EB and volunteer to help out on correspondence issues.