I was looking to order pairing cards to help improve my knowledge of Swiss pairing rules, but I don’t see any for sale on the uscfsales website. Does anyone have a vendor of choice for pairing cards?
There is a pairing card illustration on page 116 of the Official Chess Rulebook, 6th edition. Copy it. Align several on a sheet and make copies of as many as you need. About 5 or 6 will fit per page. If you use cardstock, the cards will be a bit sturdier than plain paper. If you are going to have more than one section, print the pairing card master out in different colors. White, goldenrod, and light green were popular colors in the old days. Light blue and pink were also used. We do small events and make 5 or 6 copies of the pairing master for every tournament. If you do not like the USCF card, make your own.
For two bucks, you can make a hundred cards, a lot cheaper than the British cards. A TD I know keeps an old pack of 200 cards with a rubber band around them in his briefcase on the off chance his pairing program will crash.
If you’re actually going to use pairing cards at a tournament, rather than just for practice, you might want to make them double-sided. The reverse side can contain registration information – fill-in blanks for player name, address, phone, email, USCF ID, expiration, rating – and of course section name. (Of course, you’d want player name and rating on the “business” side (the side with the pairings) as well).
On double-sided cards you might want to make one side portrait and the other landscape, to save a few milliseconds per card in noticing which side is which. Personally, I’m partial to landscape on the business side, to allow room for extra comments such as “do not pair against X, Y, Z”, or up- and down-arrows to indicate upfloats and downfloats so you can avoid floating the same player twice if you want to, etc.
Oh, and use heavy card stock, to make them easier to manage at pairing time. I’m not sure of the pound # number, but it should be significantly heavier than typical index cards bought at office supply stores.
Bill Smythe
If you’re just doing that to test your knowledge, use a computer to handle the input of games, and (if the pairings aren’t obvious), print out a wall chart and cut out the player records that you need. (There are usually only one or two score groups where there’s any real issue).
I may become a vendor of pairing cards if US Chess Sales (which still calls itself USCF Sales, by the way) is no longer selling them. Not having pairing cards on hand in case of computer failure is prima facie TD malpractice.
(color added)
I never carry pairing cards. I figure that I can pair round one without them just going by ratings. Then during round one I can create pairing coards from sheets of paper sliced in half. I’d be ready by the time I need them in round two, and I don’t have to worry about transporting them unnecessarily to a couple hundred tournaments in the meantime (assuming they don’t end up getting torn, dirtied or otherwise mangled in the trunk while waiting to be used). Since people don’t print supplements any more the hard part would be going to the website to get the rating, ID and expiration date for everybody entering on-site (I will make the assumption that the advance entries were printed).
At one of my first-ever directing assignments outside of the club where I “grew up”, I used neither a computer nor pairing cards. (This was around 1970, way before computer pairing software existed, and even before most people had computers in their homes.)
There were only 24 players for a 5-round Swiss. I found it very easy to make each round’s pairings just by looking at the wall chart (which was already on the wall for the players to see).
The organizer who had hired me to direct the event was amazed that I did not need pairing cards.
Bill Smythe
I always carry pairing cards. They came in handy when at our High School Team tournament this year my computer decided to commit suicide. Yes, you can cut up sheets of paper and use them as substitute pairing cards, but real card stock cards are much better. Trust me; I’ve tried it both ways.
When I go to play in tournaments, I take a binder with tournament forms and information with me, as well as a Rulebook. Inside the binder are masters for pairing cards, pairing sheets, wall charts, different types of score sheets, registration forms, USCF membership form, USCF report form, final results sheet, a tournament accounting sheet, and other forms which are kept neatly in sheet protectors. I also include information on how to set clocks, on ratings, and various other stuff for running tournaments and clubs. Takes up little space and has been handy on several occasions.
Doing pairings in your head is easy. Levitating the pairing sheets to the wall unnerves the players. It is best not to do that too often.
The prima facie case can be overcome by resourcefulness, which you amply demonstrate in the process you describe.
That said, I share Mr. Parker’s preference to use index cards if I have to use paper at all.