This documentation has been translated from Czech.
Roman Vincze: English is not my native language, texts may contain mistakes.
You found a mistake? Please correct it and send the new document to Roman Vincze (e-mail: vincze@ji.cz)
Simplified rules of the Swiss system
- This version is based on the rules contained in the book "The Rules of Chess" (valid from 1 January 1986),
which includes a chapter entitled "The FIDE Swiss System"
(published by Olympia (1986) as its 2278th publication).
- The rules of the above book have been significantly simplified (by Roman Vincze).
Technical excellence is achieved, not when there is nothing to add, but when there is nothing to remove.
Introduction
- All participants play in one group.
- The number of rounds is set before the tournament.
- The ranking of the auxiliary evaluations (if points are equal) is determined in advance (selection: Buchholz, medium Buchholz, Sonneborn-Berger, Progress, number of wins, more black pieces, lottery).
- At the beginning of the tournament, the player is assigned a starting number based on the rating (elo).
Assignment is made in descending order, ie the player with the highest rating gets the starting number 1.
For players without rating (ie at the end of the starting list),
it is recommended descending order according to age - or order according to arrive number - or order according to alphabet.
If the tournament organizer allow player to enter during the tournament,
the new player will receive the starting number, that he would have received at the start of the tournament
(it is therefore necessary to renumber the starting numbers of all subsequent players).
Basic rules
- Two players can play together only once.
- Players with the same number of points form a so-called score group.
- If the number of players in the tournament is odd, then the player with the lowest ranking in the lowest score group will receive (without play and without colour assignment) the bye (1 point as a win). A player can get it only once.
- A player, who announces (before next round) to the organizer, that he/she does not want/cannot play,
is not paired in this round, has no asigned any colour and has no awarded points.
Pairings
- Pairing is done from the highest score group to the lowest (pairing from above).
- In score group, players are sorted in ascending order by starting numbers.
- Subsequently, the score group is divided into upper and lower half. If there is an odd number of players in the score group, then the lower half is larger.
- For the first player of the top half of the score group, we select the opponent in the following order:
- first (then second, third, ..., last) player of the lower half of the score group
- last (then penultimate, ..., third, second) player of the top half of the score group
- first (then second, third, ...) player closest lower score group
- first (then second, third, ...) player of even lower score group
- after finding a pair that is permissible
(ie players have not played together before (tip: also watch at this stage, if you will be able to assign players colours
so that no player plays the same colour for the third time in a row)),
both players are take out from score group. The score group with reduced number of players is sorted
in ascending order by starting numbers, divided into upper and lower half ... and the procedure is repeated.
Example: If a score group consists of eight players, then for 1st player is opponent searched in order 5-6-7-8-4-3-2.
- If pairing leads to a dead end, ie. the remaining players in the lowest score group cannot be paired in a permissible way,
then some already assembled pairs must be canceled. Proceeding is in reverse order: first, the last pair is canceled
and alternative pairing is tried (according to the rules above). If the procedure continues to lead to a dead end,
other pairs (from the last paired up to the first paired) are canceled. If necessary, the player with bye must
(for an odd number of players) be exchanged for another (ie the player with bye will not be the last player
in the lowest score group, but the penultimate, ...).
- If the pairs cannot be assembled in any permissible way, then the tournament ends.
Assignment of colour
- Colours are not considered when pairing. Colours are assigned only after pairing is completed.
- If it is possible, player's colour is changing.
- A player must not get the same colour 3 times in a row - this is the only case when (some) pairs
in a completed pairing have to be changed (but if this would make it impossible to assemble the allowed pairs in any way,
then the rule of 3x of the same colour will not apply).
- In the first round, the colour for the 1st deployed player is random. In the upper half of the starting list,
players with odd starting numbers will be the same colour as 1st player, players with even starting numbers will have the opposite colour.
- In the next rounds, the colours are assigned in the following order:
- the player, who played by the same colour in the previous two rounds, must get the opposite colour
- the player with a higher difference of colours gets a colour, that compensate the (current) difference in the number of colours
- the player with a lower starting number gets a colour, that compensate the (current) difference in the number of colours
- the player with a higher starting number gets a colour, that compensate the (current) difference in the number of colours
- the player with the lower starting number will change the colour
Example of a suitable player card (for pairing by paper cards without a computer)
Name: |
Starting number: |
Elo: |
round |
opponent |
colour |
result |
current number of points |
st.no |
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