Players 8. A 4 rd swiss.
1-1803
2. 1793 withdrawn for rd 2, 3, 4.
3.1796
4. 1503
5. 1500 floor
6. 1339
7 unr new player was higher than #8. (1200 for pairing purposes.)
8. unr
9. unr new player for rd 2
RD 1. winners of rd 1 ( 1, 2, 3,4)
1-5
6-2
3-7
8-4
player 2 had to withdraw. Replaced with unrated player
is the pairings look correct for RD 2.
3-1
4-5
9-6
7-8
Thanks for the input.
No. The 3-4 swap is >200 so wouldn’t be correct to fix the color. BTW, the fact that the 1500 is on a floor isn’t relevant.
If he announced Harkness pairings (drop the middle) then 3 would have been dropped to a zero-pointer. I was wondering why 6-7, 8-9 when 7 is being treated as a 1200 for pairing purposes. I would have then expected 6-9, 8-7.
But if you assigned the 7 a 1200 rating, he’s then third of your 0 pointers; he sticks with your assignment. Your assigning a rating (for pairing, not prizes, with an unrated) is OK AFAICT, but you then stick with it.
#3 becomes your drop because the color consequences of dropping #4 are not acceptable [29D1 a) and b)]
1st of your 0 points absorbs the drop. Player 7 faces the bottom rated player… which can be #8, the unrated, which gets you out of the color problem doing the natural pairing of 6 and 8.
(You duplicated player 3 in your original pairing above, btw, so we assume player 4 played 8 first round.)
I see your round two as:
4-1 [Only two 1 pointers not dropped or withdrawn]
5-3 [3 became drop because 1-3 has a color problem]
7-8 [you assign a rating, he’s 2nd rating in score not absorbing drop, you’re stuck with it.]
9-6 [8 and 9 are same rating, natural 6-8 gave color problem]
[edited, fixed ordering but didn’t change pairings.]
29D1b still references 29E5, so a switch for colors is still limited to 200 points. 3 and 4 are 293 points apart (actually I’m going to guess it is really 290 and you have the number 2 1793 and number 3 1796 with their ratings switched around). 1 and 5 are 303 points apart. If 1 and 4 are paired it is not due to 29D but rather due to Harkness pairings (drop the middle).
This looks best, even if the colors are not perfect. 3-1 4-5 7-6 9-8
You are certainly correct, across the board. Not easy to discern given the first round pairings and the rating order, either.
But with eight players and the rating spread, I might be inclined to apply the last paragraph of 29E5c out of context (since the flexibility to alter the 200 point rule ‘somewhat’ is given as a rule for large groups and and minimizing cascading swaps - more a problem for pairing by card than by computer.) My experience has been that small tournaments yield worse problems, though it can be easier to anticipate them. I’d rely on the sentence, “If the colors in the group are substantially improved, it is acceptable for the limits to be exceeded somewhat.”
Is adding an extra 90 points in this situation and tournament really more heinous when the rest of the context is missing (how many rounds remain to equalize, how many drops are we going to have to go for final round, are any of the players going to truly care, etc.?) That’s a legitimate question: I’m not trying to justify my position, only looking for the point where a smart director might - or might not - apply wiggle room to pairing rules.
The main wiggle room, in a small tournament or section, is to make the colors not work too well in the earlier rounds.
If the colors are perfect in round 2, that’s fine, but then you’d better hope a few of them are bad in round 3. Otherwise, you are setting up two camps, those who started with white and those who started with black, and you have made only inter-camp pairings, no intra-camp pairings. You will soon run out of decent inter-camp pairings, with the result that round 4 pairings will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.
My rule of thumb: With 8 players, if colors alternate perfectly in round 2, you should have a couple of bad colors in round 3. Without these, round 4 becomes unpleasant.
To start with, you should set the alternation limit to 0 instead of 80 in your pairing program. Keep the equalization limit at 200. Don’t transpose (in a small tournament) merely to alternate colors!
And if, even then, colors come out perfect in round 3, you might even want to make a transposition to make the colors worse! Life then becomes much easier in round 4.
With 6 players, it’s even worse. If colors alternate perfectly in rounds 2 and 3, there will be no pairings at all in round 4. With 6 players, you must have some bad colors in either round 2 or round 3, or you’re in deep doo-doo.
Bill Smythe