The typical bughouse tournament is a double round Swiss. For a fairly small tournament, you probably need to do little more than make sure that the Games per Round field in the Add/Edit a Section dialog box is set to 2. See How To: Run Tournaments with Multiple Games per Round for a description of the special operations needed when running a double Swiss.

 

The biggest hassle in a larger bughouse tournament is managing the entries. Some players enter as teams of two, but pay separately; others enter as individuals and need to find partners. WinTD offers a special section type which will help with this: the "Pairs" type. The only difference between a pairs section and an individual section is in the handling of the drag and drop operation. You can drop two individuals onto the player window from a pairs section and it will form a team from them. Follow these steps:

 

1.Create two sections. The section you will use for running the tournament will have a section type of "Pairs", and Games per Round of 2. If ratings aren't going to be used in pairing, set the Pairing Numbers By to Random Assignment. The other section will be an "individual" section which will be used for the individuals who are not yet members of a bughouse team. This second section is where you will put the players to start. We'll call this the source section.

2.Create players windows for each section, and make them both visible on the screen. It will be helpful to set the window for the source section to show only the active players. (Use Edit>Change Layout).

3.Select two players in the source window who are to be made into a team. (Click on one, <Ctrl>+Click on the other is the simplest way). Drag them onto the player window for the actual bughouse section. When you drop them, the following will happen: a new entry will be formed in the bughouse section using the names of the two players (alphabetically by last names), with a rating formed as the average of the players' ratings, and the two players will be "checked out" of the source. If the source section players window was set to show only the active players, this means that these players will no longer appear in the list; your source list will only show unpaired players.

4.If a team already in the bughouse section needs to be broken, the simplest thing to do is to delete the entry in the bughouse section and re-activate the player or players in the source section. Repeat 3 with the new teammates.

 

If some of the teams are set in your advance entries, you can code that information into an otherwise unused field. The club field seems a likely choice. Give the advance teammates the same club code. Then, in step 2, sort the source players window by club. If you drag a block of players from the source to the bughouse window, WinTD will pair them up in order. Make sure you have two of each club code before you do this. If you have just one AAA, then two AAB's, the AAA will go with the first AAB, then the second AAB will get paired with the next player down the list.

 

Copyright © 2026 Thomas Doan