I looked into allowing late players into a RR already started by doing a model of the (larger) tournament and seeing how the original placement of participants and movements could be used to move everyone from the original tournament to the new one with minimum disruptions to everyone’s schedule. Please click on late.htm. If you use the table generator on that page, choose “Board Order” in these examples.
I’m confused here. One time when I was running a seven round RR, I had a player withdraw because of “sickness” after two rounds, and I allowed a late player in with two forfeit losses. How would you allow in a late player and keep the number of rounds the same, unless going from odd to even in which case it shouldn’t be a problem?
Alex Relyea
You couldn’t. If there are already an even number of players or you are adding two new players, the number of rounds would increase by two.
This is an interesting concept, and I’m guessing it is a way of being inclusive to people that arrive late.
Personally, I’d be quite hesitant to do this though. At our club we have a simultaneous pair of fall 8-player round robins that people qualify for and then a swiss for the people aren’t one of the 16 round-robin players. If the field of players was too small to allow a swiss option then I guess that expanding a round robin could be looked at.
The question becomes a practical one if you are running something like a single-section Friday night Blitz round-robin. These tournaments are usually run on no particular round schedule. Just grab an available opponent and begin play. “Odd vs even, smaller number has white. Both odd or both even, larger number has white.” (“Number” refers to pairing number, not rating.)
Players can arrive as much as an hour late and still have time to play all their games. Players are assigned pairing numbers in order of arrival, not by rating.
Bill Smythe
I can’t see this option being applied very often. Perhaps if a popular member of a chess club gets home from the hospital, a trip, or a tour of duty this might be helpful.
I made using late.htm a little easier since I changed crenshaw.htm to display any pairings with colors reversed for all boards.