How has it come to be that a weekend tournament has an odd number of rounds? Since it is a fact that the player with the White pieces has an advantage, it would seem only logical to have an even number of rounds, would it not?
Some years ago the irrepressible tournament promoter Thad Rogers decided to try a four round tournament in Atlanta. Much grumbling was heard about not having enough rounds to determine a clear winner. As I recall, it transpired that there was a clear winner in every section! Because the players realized there were fewer rounds the games were particularly hard fought and there were fewer draws. In spite of this, the experiment was not tried again. Tournaments soon had a Friday night round, followed by two games on Sat & Sun. That was changed to an opptional first round on either Friday night, or Saturday morning. As time went on it became obvious there were not enough players for the Friday night round, and sometimes for the Saturday morning round, oftentimes with only one player in a section, who would receive a full point bye because of not having an opponent in his section.
It has further devolved to faster time limit games in the early rounds. As one delegate said to me at the recent US Open, “G/60 in the US Open is an abomination!” The reason given for the faster time limit games is to get more players to attend. Unfortunately it has not worked out the way it was intended.
It comes down to quality versus quanity. More chess does not translate to better chess. An odd number of rounds gives an advantage (theoretically) to the player having an extra White. Since quanity has been given preference for some time, maybe it is time we gave some consideration to quality chess.
The reason that many, not all, or even most in my neck of the woods, tournaments have an odd number of rounds is actually what you thought it was: fairness in colors. It’s simply impossible to guarantee every player in an even round tournament, especially a four round tournament, an equal number of Whites and Blacks. It’s much better to have a fifth round, where no player expects an equal number, and have, say, three Blacks and two Whites, rather than three Blacks and one White. If you can do that so it doesn’t effect the players in prize contention, then so be it, but if you have two players in contention for a prize, and one of them has had two more Blacks than Whites, he’s liable to be pretty upset, or if the other one has had three Whites and one Black. It’s very rare to have to have four Blacks and one White in a five round tournament.
Alex Relyea
An even number of rounds does not guarantee that any particular player will have 2 white and 2 black. But I can almost guarantee that someone in contention will have 3 blacks and raise Cain
Just explain to them that will be ABLE to have 3 whites and 2 blacks when they are the higher ranked player and also due the extra white. 
Cute! 
But I think it would be Abel
Alex, it would seem you are saying it would be better to hold a tournament where everyone knew in advance the color allocation would be unfair, as opposed to having an even number of rounds, where, theoretically, everyone would have an equality of colors.
Granted, because of players withdrawing, etc., there could possibly be players who would have three Blacks in a four round tournament. It is also possible they could get ‘upset’. Is it you contention it would be better to hold a tournament with an odd number of rounds, where it is a forgone conclusion EVERY PLAYER who plays all five rounds will have an uneven color allocation, simply to give the TD an excuse to mollify the ‘upset’ player? Would it not be better to have an equal number of rounds, whereby MOST players would have an equal number of colors?
Michael,
I don’t think you understand what happens in a four round tournament. You seem to think that everyone will have 2 whites and 2 blacks unless something weird messes up the pairings. In fact, a significant fraction will have a 3/1 split (my guess is 1/4 to 1/3). Look at any crosstable and you will see this is true. The point that Alex was making is that rather than have a lot of 3/1 splits it is better to have everyone have 3/2 splits.
Mike
It’ll likely depend on the number of players. If there are fewer than 20 players in a 4 round tournament, there are probably going to be a larger percentage of 3-1 splits than if there are 100 players in that tournament. Of course, if there are 100 players there are probably going to be a lot more perfect scores, too.
It’s worth noting that 4 rounds is the most common length of an event. Around 1/3 of the sections rated since 1/1/2008 had four rounds. The average number of players in those events was 14.7
If I factor out quads entered as RRs (so the crosstable is 4 x 4), the average size of those 4 round events is 17.4.
Yes, you are correct. That’ll teach me not to borrow Harry’s spelling guide again! 
Just teasin’ ya Harry ol’ pard!
You can take a simple example of 16 players. If you assume no upsets, every game being decisive, and six transpositions to alternate colors, then after three rounds you have 1-2 at 3-0, 3-8 at 2-1, 9-14 at 1-2 and 15-16 at 0-3. The top and bottom score groups are fine but the two middle score groups of six player each can only be paired in one of the following ways:
A) have the top two players play each other
B) have the bottom two players play each other
C) give one player a third white and another player a third black.
Unless the ratings are close, the normal pairing would result in 25% of the players have three of one color and one of the other.
If there is an upset on one of the top two boards in round three then the top board will feature a player getting three of one color and one of the other.
- Having 3 Blacks and 1 White (which has a high probability of occurring in a 4-round tournament) is a lot worse than having 3-2.
- A lot of people feel that the value they get from an entry depends on the number of rounds.
- This is subjective, but when I was playing a lot, I much preferred 5 rounds to 4 because 4-1 had a good chacne at a prize, while 3-1 generally did not.