Pairing System: Teams and Clubs |
WinTD offers the ability to avoid (either completely or partially) pairing certain players, whether they are from the same team, same state, same family, etc. These are controlled by choices in the Pairing Preferences tab in the Add/Edit a Section dialog.
These are all "Pairing Rules for Players with..."
Same Team Codes
This applies when two players have the same Team Code. You have three options:
•Ignore. This is the default, and means that the team codes are ignored by the pairing process.
•Don't. WinTD will do whatever it can to not pair teammates. In a large section, there is usually no problem with this. In a small section, however, it may produce pairings which are far from what players would expect in a Swiss System. This is not a problem with WinTD itself—if most of the players at either the top or the bottom of a small section are from the same team, you can either pair teammates or you will have to live with pairings which have players with very different scores playing. If you stick with "Don't" and a late-round pairing produces games between players two or more points apart in the standings, WinTD will warn you of this, so you can take action if you wish. See Downgrading when Pairing a Round below.
•If Required. This is an intermediate setting. WinTD will try to pair a section without pairing teammates. But it will not shift players out of a score group just to avoid pairing teammates. If a score group has eight players, five of whom are from a single team, WinTD will pair two of the teammates with each other, and the other three with players from other teams.
Downgrading when Pairing a Round
Even if you put one of the preferences in place, you have the option to downgrade it when you pair a round, perhaps just for high scores. For instance, it's a common rule in Individual/Team tournaments to allow natural pairings of teammates in late rounds for the top score group or groups. When you do Section>Pair a Round with the team pairing preference set to Don't or If Required, the Pair a Round dialog will include the Team Pairing tab. This allows you to downgrade the preference for scores at or above a certain level. For instance, if your rule is to ignore team codes for scores greater than +2, when you are pairing round 6, you would put in 4 for Pair Teammates At or Above (with 5 rounds done, 3.5-1.5 is right at +2, so since it's at or above, you want to make it 4) and select "Ignore Teams Completely". Note that for players with less than 4 points, teammates would not be paired at all, while for 4 and above, teammates and non-teammates would be treated equally. You might want to do the lesser downgrade to "If Required", which would try to avoid pairing teammates within a given scoregroup. For instance, if the 5.0's had 4 players and players 1 and 3 were from the same team and 2 and 4 were from different teams, the natural pairing would be 1 vs 3 and 2 vs 4 and, if colors work, that would be the pairing if team codes are ignored. On the other hand, if downgrade just to "If Required", it would probably pair 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3, avoiding pairing the teammates.
In Team v Team Tournaments
If you are running a team vs team tournament, you can use the Team Code field to prevent "A" and "B" teams from the same school or organization from playing each other. The teams themselves are actually considered to be separate individuals so the Team Code field is free for this type of use. For instance, with two teams from Central High, you might have teams with names Central High A and Central High B, and give them both a team ID of CENTRL. Then use Don't for the teammates pairing preference.
"Club codes" offer a lower level preference—usually for smaller groups where the pairing preference is a courtesy (such as avoiding pairing family members), or for larger groups where a weaker preference is appropriate (such as players from the same club who play each other frequently). One of the reasons to use a strong preference (the Don't level) for Team Codes is that there is a often a separate parallel team competition in combined tournaments. It is common to simply turn the club preferences off after a certain number of rounds—you can also do it selectively based upon scores when pairing a round.
The choices for Same Club Codes are
•Ignore. This is the default, and means that the club codes are ignored by the pairing process.
•Avoid. WinTD will try to pair a section without clubmates. But it will not shift players out of a score group just to avoid such a pairing. If a score group has eight players, five of whom share a club code, WinTD will pair two of the clubmates with each other, and the other three with players from other teams. As with Team Codes, you have an option when pairing to downgrade the club pairing preference at or above a given score.
•Force. This is a completely different use which uses the club code field in a very different way. Force means that it actually tries to pair players who share a club code. There aren't many natural uses for this, but it's available if you would like to force certain classes of players to play, typically in a late round.
The Same State/Country keys off the players' State/Country fields. This is often done as a courtesy in a large national or international tournament to avoid pairing people from the same area early on. In practice, it is almost always turned off part way through the tournament. The three choices for Same State/Country are:
•Ignore. This is the default, and means that the State/Country codes are ignored by the pairing process.
•Avoid. A pairing of two players with the same State/Country code is treated as a pairing flaw on a par with a color equalization failure. So long as score groups are fairly large, the effect of this preference is simply to change the set of swaps used to correct colors.
•Avoid (if <25%) Any pairing of two players with the same State/Country code will be avoided (as described under Avoid) as long as that State/Country code is shared by fewer than 25% of the players being paired in the section.
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