Pairing System: Alternative Methods |
WinTD offers several alternatives to the standard pairing methods of the Swiss and Round Robin. Most of these are used when a section is an awkward size: too large for a round robin, too small for an effective Swiss.
You select these with the Pairing Style box in the Add/Edit a Section dialog box. Note that the only one of these that is available under the FIDE Rule Set is the Scheveningen.
The Scheveningen system (pronounced roughly SKAIF-en-ing-en) splits the players into two "teams" and has all members of one team play all members of the other. This can be used in a true team vs. team competition, or in a small tournament where you want some block of players to avoid playing each other. The pairings work best (for color allocations) when you have either four or eight players per team. To use Scheveningen pairings, choose two team codes, and make sure all players on one team are given one, and all players on the other given the other. When you pair round one, WinTD will assign the players random slots within each team. There is then a systematic pairing system which generates the pairings for all subsequent rounds. You can force a particular order for each team by using Section>Manual Pairing Numbers before round one. Note, however, that this doesn't give you much control over the pairings beyond round one. (In round one, the players on the two teams pair off in pairing number order).
In this pairing scheme, "natural" pairings have the highest ranked player playing the second highest, third playing fourth, etc. This is a "fun" tournament format—the stronger players will generally play stronger opposition than the weaker ones will. It shouldn't be used if any real prizes are at stake, as it is expected that at least some players will have fairly good scores with few games against the top players. As with standard Swiss pairings, the ranking of players after round one is based first upon score, then upon rating. WinTD will do switches from the natural adjacent pairings to avoid duplicating earlier rounds, and also will switch to correct colors, subject to the same rules that govern Swisses. An alternative to this is the Ladder method.
This can be useful in a situation where you have a relatively small number of players for the number of rounds (for instance, eight players in four rounds, ten in five), but it's important to get reasonably fair standings at the finish. The problem with a straight Swiss in such a situation is that the strongest players will generally meet in rounds two and three. Late round pairings may turn into "pick a victim," where some players in the top score groups are paired way down in order to get a full set of pairings which work. With decelerated pairings, in rounds two and three, the bottom half players are treated as if they have an extra point. (Note that unlike accelerated pairings, this kicks in for rounds two and three, not one and two). This generally delays pairings between the top players for one round. (Round two pairings look a lot like round one and round three like normal Swiss round two pairings).
This pairing method is useful when you have too many players to run a round robin, but too few to use Swiss system pairing rules reliably. (Eight players, five rounds, for instance). A Swiss system, in a case like that, could easily leave you with no way to pair round five without some players playing each other a second time. Now, in a situation like that, you could run a standard round robin and just cut it off after the desired number of rounds. However, if you do that, you could have a situation where (because of the random pairing numbers) the top players are scheduled to meet in the rounds that you've cut off.
The hybrid tournament combines the "plan ahead" scheduling of the round robin with some of the pairing techniques of the Swiss. It works by pairing the first round as a standard Swiss. When you pair round two, it assigns round robin pairing numbers to the players so the actual round one would be round one on the round robin schedule. It then takes the highest ranked player and finds him the highest ranked available opponent. The RR table is then searched to find which round would give that pairing. That column is used to pair this round. You might, for instance, use the round five schedule for round two. Because the rounds aren't going in normal order, the table is used only for pairings—the colors are assigned using standard Swiss techniques. This process is repeated in each subsequent round. The highest ranked player always plays the highest ranked available opponent. Now, you may notice in doing this that the #3 player may play a player near the bottom. However, something like that is inevitable in a situation like this. For instance, if you pair an eight player-five round tournament as a Swiss, the bottom player will probably play #4-#6-#7-#5 in the first four rounds, leaving only the top three players as possible opponents in the last round.
This is an experimental system for dealing with informal "tournaments" within a club where the primary goal is to give everyone a reasonably competitive game. The scores are only one factor in determining pairings (in, for instance, 1-2, 3-4 pairings, pairings are still based primarily upon score); closeness is ratings is also considered. And repeating earlier pairings is permitted. This can be useful for managing pairings in weekly club meeting where the number of players available on any given week may be unpredictable.
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