Just curious if a local club is holding a USCF tournament is there a minimum amount of people that have to participate we are having one coming up but only a few people have sign up to play… four to be exact at this point…
you could always make it a 3 round round robin or a 6 round double round robin (then you get to play each color once).
obviously the more the better to make pairings correct. but with 2 you could still have a rated match.
Yes, the minimum is 2. 
You can still run the event with just 2 players, but may need to contact the office to get a waiver of the match rule restrictions, depending on what the ratings of those two players are.
Mike how crucial is something like that? In our last scholastic tournament we only had two players in the 9-12 section so we had them play 3 games. When I submitted it the submission process wanted them to be a match so I went along with it. I figured that it didn’t make that much difference. Was I right?
The match restrictions were put in place to try to avoid certain types of ratings manipulation. We assume that any event or section with just two players in it and 2 or more games is a match. The office can override that if given an explanation of the circumstances.
Players may only play in a match if they both have established ratings and if they are rated within 400 points of each other.
Also, players in a match may not earn bonus points and are limited as to the total number of points they can gain or lose in that event and in matches over a period of time. While the office can waive the established rating and 400 point requirements, the restrictions on the number of points earned cannot be waived. (In general, any time two players face each other more than twice in an event they cannot earn bonus points anyway.)
If you only have 2 players in a scholastic section you may want to combine those players with an adjoining section for pairing purposes, but still award the 9-12 their own prizes.
What happens if those players wind up never meeting? Would people (mostly parents) see that as being a fair way to decide which of the two gets the first place prize?
I believe most parents would prefer the diversity of players over whether their child gets a 1st or 2nd place trophy in a 2 person tournament.
I dunno, Jon. The question I get asked the most by parents has to do with helping them figure out whether their kid is likely to earn a trophy or not, and which ones they’re in the running for.
Seriously, how many parents ask questions about the high school section? Said another way, how many high school kids allow their parents to stay at a tournament? Very few. The only exception would be if one parent is also the school’s coach.
I could see the high school players themselves asking questions about trophies, but not the parents!
Michael Aigner
Saratoga High School coach
If you’re worried about the high school kids not facing each other if they’re mixed in with the middle schoolers, why not just force a pairing between the two in the first round?
Ties between players who haven’t played each other happen all the time so I wouldn’t worry about it. Forcing them to play each other could skew the pairings for the middle school players.