22C6 A full-point bye should not be assigned to a player who has previously taken or committed to a half-point bye unless all others in the score group have already had a bye or a no-show forfeit win.
Consider the above rule for the following round 3 pairings for a small section. All “bye” after round 2 are half-point byes. These are all the players in the section. As I read the rule, regardless of scheduled half-point byes, if you are then only player in the lowest score group without a full point bye or forfeit win, you get the full point bye if one is required, i.e. Sherman. Do you agree with this POV?
If you agree that this is the intent of the rule, do you think it should be modified in this case or if it is a rule that should be reconsidered. I discovered that both SwissSys and WinTD gave the bye to IM Tegshuren. Needless to say, there were many complaints about giving the IM a full point bye in round 3.
Note! Sherman’s byes are in rounds 7 & 8 and Paragua’s is in round 3. If it matters, the merge is for round 5
Since Paragua wants a bye in Round 3, and has previously been granted a half-point bye for that round, why wouldn’t you just give him his bye, and then pair the 6 remaining players? How does the issue of to whom to give the bye in Round 3 even arise?
I could see if there were only 6 players in the section, and the 3rd round Paragua bye made it 5, requiring one more bye in that round. But there are seven players in the sction, and Paragua’s scheduled bye leaves an even number of players – i.e. no more byes needed.
This isn’t asked as a challenge, but rather in the interests of me being educated.
Alex, this would perhaps violate the rule, since Sherman has already committed to half-point byes in rounds 7 and 8. Rule 22C6 says that Sherman shouldn’t be given any more byes, unless “all others in the score group” are in the same situation. Now Sherman is in the bottom score group, by himself. There are no others in the lowest score group, and Sherman already is committed to two byes. So how do you interpret 22C6? Both WinTD and SwissSys move up to the next lower score group, and find that two of the three players on 1.0 have already had byes. That means next up for a bye is Tegshugan, who is the only person on 1.0 without previous or committed byes. That seems a reasonable interpretation of the rule from WinTD and SwissSys.
The only way to give the bye to Sherman in Rd 3 is to reason that the lowest score group always gets the bye, even if all people in it have already had or committed to byes. So, someone in the lowest score group gets another bye even in that case, meaning Sherman. Is that how it is supposed to work? Does the bye always go to the lowest score group, irrespective of the bye situation of the people in the lowest score group? If so, Sherman seems fated to be getting quite a lot of byes in this section.
Don’t forget 28L3 “A player must not be given a full-point bye more than once, nor should one be awarded to a player who has won an unplayed game due to the opponent’s failure to appear.”
There is an argument to be made that he didn’t commit to a half-point bye, but rather to multiple half-point byes, and thus should be ineligible for the full-point bye, but that is not an argument that would make me think anybody other than Sherman should get the round 3 bye (and that would be the last one he’d get in the event).
If nobody wanted a bye, there were an odd number of players, and the number of rounds exceeded the number of players, then I could see somebody getting multiple full-point byes. It might also happen if the people withdrawing at the end of the tournament left behind only an odd number of players, all of whom had already received a full point bye.
I believe there is another rule affecting some of these cases as well. When a player receives a full point bye and then is paired with a house player or has a player from some other section, they should not receive another full-point bye assignment. Swiss sys does not internally mark the “Never receives the bye” at this point and it is left up to the TD to remember to check off this status. Would seem easy enough for the program to mark off this boolean as soon as anyone is assigned a full point bye and leave it there no matter what else happens…
Exactly as it reads. Since he is in the bottom score group by himself, everyone else in that score group (the null set) have already had a bye or a no-show forfeit win, so he receives the bye.
I haven’t used WinTD, but that is not true for SwissSys. If you use the USCF defaults, then the setting for “Byes for Half-point Bye Recipients” is set to “Prefer to avoid full-point byes”. It seems that you have it set to “No full-point byes” which would not be standard.
You seem confused about the difference between half-point and full-point byes. Sherman can only get one full-point bye, but he can also have the tournament-defined limit on half-point byes. You do move up from the lowest score group if everyone has received a full-point bye, but not if some have committed to half-point byes.
One question that I would have, should someone committed to one half-point bye get the full-point bye before someone with multiple half-point byes? Under current rules that wouldn’t be considered, but it would make some sense.
I generally don’t have an issue with that because I usually create an extra games section for those games while leaving the full point bye in the original section.
I guess if two half-point byes were actually entered as one zero-point bye and one full-point bye then it would avoid assigning another full-point bye.
Taking that approach would open up multiple cans of worms though: what happens if the bye for one of the rounds is later cancelled; which bye would be used for pairings if the byes are not in consecutive rounds; what should the effect be on cumulative tie-breaks if they are needed; etc.
That is the one advantage to the extra games section. I don’t create them, much preferring that a players rated game count for the tournament. Just a matter of preference…
On the rare occasions I actually have a house player, the game is in the section.
For cross-sectional pairings I create an extra games section. After all, a game can only be put into one section and thus would not count in the tournament for at least one of the players.
I’m not sure if it will work, but maybe you could give a round N+1 full point bye (in an N-round tournament) once a player has been switched to a cross-sectional game (or switched from a bye to a house player).
That might suffice as your flag. After the final round is paired you can remove the N+1 byes.