You are more likely to run into unacceptable pairings in a small section than in a large one. For instance, in an eight player section, by round five it may be difficult, if not impossible, to pair the players without duplicating an earlier game.

 

If it is impossible to pair a section without violating one of the key rules, WinTD will try to find a solution which minimizes the violations. For instance, it will choose to pair teammates before duplicating an earlier pairing. It will choose a pairing with only one duplicate pairing rather than an alternative with two. Note, however, that WinTD will only do these if it is impossible to pair the section if the rules stand. In some cases, WinTD will produce pairings, but you will find them to be unacceptable. For instance, in an eight player-five round section, the round five pairings may have the leaders playing tail-enders, or, perhaps even worse, one leader playing someone at the bottom and another playing a much tougher opponent.

 

When WinTD produces pairings which it thinks may prove troublesome, it puts up a warning, calling your attention to the fact. The trigger for this is a pairing which has players two or more points apart playing each other. (Note that it will not do this if you are using FIDE Dutch pairings, which has specific rules for handling these types of pairings, primarily by trying to keep high score groups as intact as possible). If, upon looking at the pairings, you decide that you don't want those pairings to stand, you have several ways to handle this. You can try again using the process described in How To: Pair Players Manually to input a manual pairing for one of the boards. Usually it takes only a single manual pairing (usually either having the leaders play each other, or the bottom two play each other) to fix the problem. See How To: Redo Pairings for help on the complete process of redoing the pairings for a round. Or you can undo the pairings, and re-pair the round, this time putting a drop limit in the Miscellaneous tab in the Pair a Round dialog box. This will force WinTD to duplicate an earlier pairing or pair teammates to avoid exceeding your drop limit.

 

If you know that you have a section like this, you might think about employing one of the alternative pairing methods offered by WinTD, which, in one way or another, alter the Swiss system to prevent the strongest players from meeting all their rivals in the early rounds.

Copyright © 2026 Thomas Doan