One Game A Week

[Dayman]

Our club wants to start running 8 round tournaments in which you play one game per week (Friday night) for 2 months. I understand this is a common practice. Two questions:

1. How do you handle byes? What do you do with no-shows? What about someone who comes for the first time, on say, week 5? Can you just randomly assign byes in order to create a “fair” pairing?

2. How often should we submit the results? Once a month?

[nolan]

The usual recommendation is to submit the event in two parts (eg, after round 4), but there’s nothing inherently wrong with submitting it just once, after it ends.

If your players aren’t playing in other events, it won’t make a lot of difference, but if they’re active they may want to see the results of the first few rounds affect their ratings before the event ends. So do what keeps your players happy.

The rules give you quite a bit of discretion with regards to how you handle byes, no-shows and late entries, do what works best for your players. (You’ll probably get lots of suggestions.)

[Scott_Strattner]

Regarding byes, here are the general rules set up for our club (we also meet once a week); the numbers in brackets refer to the section in the 5th edition rulebook:

Byes
For those registered to play in a Swiss tournament, but who are not able to play a particular round, half-point byes are available [22C] during the first half (and middle) of a tournament [22C1]. Half-point byes are NOT available for the 2nd half of a tournament, unless posted in the Schedule listing for that event or announced by the TD prior to the start of the first round [22C]. For example, in a 4 round Swiss 1/2 point byes are available in rounds 1 and 2. In a 5 round Swiss 1/2 point byes are available in rounds 1, 2, and 3. If a player is unavailable to play a round in the 2nd half of the tournament, zero point byes are available (as an alternative to withdrawal). Byes are not available in Round-Robin tournaments (including Quads); non-appearance for a round will result in a forfeit [22A].

For those who have not registered at the start but wish to join a currently running tournament, half point byes may be awarded for unplayed rounds, at the discretion of the TD [22C, 28K]. Consideration for byes will be based on the entrant’s playing strength to ensure equitable pairing in subsequent rounds.

vassar-chadwick.com/club/?page_id=94

[nolan]

Back when I was running one-game-a-week tournaments at the Lincoln Chess Club, I’d make up unofficial pairings on Wednesday (the club met on Thursdays) and assume there was at least a 50-50 chance I’d have to re-pair at least once between then and when the round started on Thursday. This was pre-Internet, but players could call me for the unofficial pairings on Wednesday.

I also was very tolerant about not removing no-shows from subsequent rounds and fairly quick to arrange a substitute opponent for a no-show before the 1 hour forfeit. Yeah, that bit me in the backside a few times, but the players all knew it could be them sitting waiting for an opponent next week.

[timjust]

At our club we would only pair the players that showed up by a designated time. The TD’s contact info could be used to let them know if a player intended to attend but would be late for the designated time. Yep, that can also bite you; however, all that has to happen is for a player to pull that stunt once before their request for such a pairing is not honored.

Appropriate byes are given to the players not in attendance.