I had a pairing for the third round. Player A had a 1/2 point bye in round 1 and a win with black in round 2.
Player B had a win in round 1 with white and a win in round 2 with black.
I would have thought that player B would have been due his color because of the higher ranking of 2 points vs 1.5 but the computer gave White to Player A, the player with the bye that had never had white.
Player A needs white to equalize colors while Player B needs white to alternate colors. Equalizing colors is higher priority than alternating them, so Player A should be white in round 3.
The rule “higher-ranked gets due color” is only the last rule in a list of rules that determine color allocation. It kicks in only if no other rule decides the issue. In other words, it kicks in only if both players have had the exact same color history throughout the tournament.
In this case, the rule that decides the issue is that color equalization has priority over color alternation. Player A’s color history was xb, player B’s was wb. Player A needed white to equalize, player B needed white only to alternate. So player A gets the nod.
See rule 29E4, beginning with “Pairing players due the same color”. In the 6th edition this is on page 151.
Some players (and some TDs) seem to think that “higher-ranked gets due color” is the only rule. In fact it is the 5th rule on a list of five.
Due color to higher ranked only comes into play if the players have exactly the same color history. For instance, if xxBW plays BWBW, the second player gets B because if you walk backwards, the first round they differ is 2, where player 2 has W.
I kind of had a hunch that I was wrong which is why I didn’t change the computer pairing. I just wanted to verify it. Thanks
(This may be an example where the computer pairing that we have nowadays is superior.)
It’s superior if the TD doesn’t know the rule and is thus more likely to err. By paiding manually and checking with the computer you filled a gap in your understanding. And by sharing it here you may have filled a gap in other TD’s understanding too.
It was actually the reverse of that, pairing with the computer, then questioning that with what I thought it should have been, but same result. Again thanks.
In general I think it is a bad idea for the average TD to assume that a computer program has made a pairing error. Today’s pairing programs are quite sophisticated. If the TD thinks the program has erred, it is more likely that the TD has erred in his assessment of the situation.
Even thoroughly experienced TDs need to be wary of “correcting errors” made by pairing software.
Some years ago – it might have been the 2002 Illinois Open (state championship) – in the final round, the TDs pressed the “print pairings” button, ripped the pairings out of the printer with the ink barely dry, and posted them without looking at them.
Almost immediately, one of the players in the top score group objected. Indeed, the pairings did seem a bit strange at first glance. It was one of those situations where almost everybody has already played almost everybody else in the score group.
The TDs (mostly NTDs and ANTDs, I believe) tore down the pairings, and after much discussion, came up with a different set of pairings. The round eventually started, perhaps only 30 minutes late or so.
Later analysis (well, my analysis at least) revealed that the original computer pairings were probably better after all.
In the 2003 Illinois Open the back room TD did print the pairings, looked at them (without posting them), and then came to me because they looked weird. I looked through all of the conflicts and wrote down my manual pairings for the top boards. The back room TD looked at what I wrote down, made one setting change, and then re-paired the round getting exactly what I had done manually. Nobody noticed any delay.
With the correct settings the pairing program (WinTD in this case) can be incredibly good. Nowadays most TDs don’t realize when a setting needs to be fixed and that is generally when a pairing program will make sub-optimal pairings.
Perhaps a few examples of this would be most educational. Identify the symptoms of a suboptimal pairing, then diagnose what setting, if any, drove that pairing. Of course the ability to discern why what the computer did is better than your manual pairing is also an essential skill.
In the case that started this thread, it is highly unlikely that any setting would have made a difference. For one thing, the computer pairing was obviously correct in the first place.
By contrast, in the Illinois Open case we are now discussing, a change in setting could well have made a difference.
I’m pretty sure the one I am remembering was either 2000 or 2002, not 2003. For some reason I have some old documents on my computer relating to the 2000 and 2002 versions, but none for 2003.
I’ll do a little more research and get back here shortly.
EDIT: It was neither the 2000 nor 2002 Illinois Open. It must be something else I am remembering (or misremembering).
I disagree. It is easy to create poor pairings by tweaking the settings. Whether this particular pairing could have been messed up likely depends on the program Mr. Zimmerle was using, but I think it is likely.
It’s also challenging answering questions with less than full information about the pairing being questioned.
Presumably the 1.5 player who was paired with the 2.0 player was the highest 1.5 player in the group, but we don’t really know that. It might have been reasonable to pair the 2.0 with a different 1.5 player if the colors worked out better.
The original question did not concern itself with the reason those two players were paired, but rather, with the colors assigned once they were paired. Is there a setting in either of the major pairing programs that would result in a violation of “color equalization takes priority over color alternation” simply to give due color to the higher-ranked player?
To me, the decision of which players to pair against each other is fairly tightly linked with the decision of which color to assign to each player. Your mileage may vary.
The 2003 case had a setting accidentally set to avoid interchanges and an interchange resolved all sorts of problems, so in that case (which you were not referring to) the setting change made a difference.