First round of a tournament is
4 (570) vs 1 (600) result 0-1
2 (590) vs 5 (560) result 0-1
6 (560) vs 3 (580) result 1-0
Swisssys gives the second round pairings as follows:
1 (600) vs 5 (560)
2 (590) vs 6 (560)
3 (580) vs 4 (570)
why is this better than equalizing colors by doing:
1 (600) vs 6 (560)
5 (560) vs 4 (570)
3 (580) vs 2 (590)
Are the real ratings substantially different from those? If you drop 5 to get the colors right in the 1-0 score group, then 5 can’t play 2, 3 has the wrong color so to get the colors right in the 0-1, you have to float up the bottom player in the 0-1’s. If that’s too expensive a change, then you’re better off with the natural pairings (what SwisSys used) rather than 5 playing 3 and 2 playing 4 which also gets colors wrong on two of the three.
You should probably also be questioning the settings you’re using in SwisSys. (I know a few TDs who aren’t even aware that there ARE settings!)
Using the USCF default settings, it doesn’t seem to matter what the ratings of the players are, it always gives the same pairings in this situation.
I find it difficult to believe that all six ratings ended in 0, and the ratings all occurred in 10-point intervals from each other (except for one tie).
If the actual ratings were more like 905, 804, 703, 602, 501, 501, then there is the small matter of the 200-point rule to consider (transpositions should not be made to equalize colors if the rating swap exceeds 200 points).
Besides, in a 6-player section with at least 4 rounds, if colors work too well (e.g. if all colors alternate in both rounds 2 and 3), then there will be no pairings at all in round 4.
It’s best not to be too fussy about colors in extremely small sections. With 6 players, colors must be bad in either round 2 or round 3, otherwise round 4 can’t be paired at all.
Bill Smythe
With one exception, the perfect round two pairings are 1-6, 5-2, 3-4. If interchanges are set to zero then it can correct that exception (2 and 5 already played) by simply switching 5 and 6 (an interchange of zero), which is the same logic that would be followed if Harkness pairings are used (WinTD still has a Harkness option but I’m not sure about SwissSys).
If the 560’s don’t actually have the same rating (it’s not clear why one wouldn’t post the actual ratings, but I digress), then it’s possible that it didn’t want to swap both the downfloat and the upfloat just to fix colors. In the 4th edition, the rulebook language was a bit vague about whether that was permitted.
With WinTD, you can force the SwisSys pairings by checking the “Avoid Interchanges” box on the pairing preferences. Not really a good idea at all in a very small section and it wouldn’t be covered as a standard USCF pairing practice.
Is this hypothetical data or real USCF ratings?
If it’s his six player section from this weekend, the ratings actually are (or at least are on MSA) 661, 463, 101, 101, unr, unr which is, of course, a whole different kettle of fish from the OP. From what I can tell, the correct round two pairings actually should have had the 661 downfloating since the other two 1-0’s were unrated (which also gets the colors correct on all boards).
Of course if Mr. Smith used NWSRS ratings, or the higher of the two, all bets are off.
Alex Relyea
Micah, did you really use a pairing program to pair a six-player, three-round Swiss that constituted the bottom section of a quad?
If so, I think you did yourself and the players a disservice. I can’t think of a reason why a competent TD could not pair such an event by hand as well as a pairing program would—and probably faster than it would take to input the info and print out the pairings from the computer.
It’s good practice. What would you do if the laptop you run the program on crashes one day? Maybe it’s time to take the Local TD test. There are pairing questions on that test, or used to be. That’s also good practice.
From your tournament: You will rarely find a top score group where two of the three players are unrated. A section with all players below 700, three provisional—including two rated 101—and two unrateds…and I would guess all quite young…screams out “Turn off the pairing software.” It’s many SDs from the mean.
Computer pairings can be a blessing at larger tournaments, with tight and/or multiple schedules, where much is at stake. In your case, not so much.
The two 1-0’s who were unrated were family members who said they would prefer not to play each other, otherwise yes, the 661 would have been downfloated.
No
And that is the downside of honoring the “no-pair” request with a small number of entrants. I once had a “no-pair” request form a pair of brothers. They were the only two players with perfect scores going into the last round. I paired them. It was extremely unfair to the other players to anything else.
Um…that was important info that was left out of the OP. Is there some agenda here that we should know about?
If the two family members were the only two players with perfect scores going into round three, I would have paired them. However, in my scenario, it was round 2 and there was another player who was 1-0.
So what is the original post? You said you didn’t use SwisSys to do the pairings, and if you were overriding the “book” pairings anyway to avoid pairing the family members.
Yes, I gave a hypothetical
In my hypothetical, all the players ratings are within 200 points but swisssys still doesn’t do the pairings to equalize colors
That wasn’t important info. left out of the OP because in the hypothetical I gave, the 2 560’s (the 2 family members) wouldn’t be paired with each other regardless of if you have a family member restriction or not.
But you DIDN’T give the SwisSys settings you were using, which may or may not be the ‘default’ ones.
Tim Redman (Editor of the 3rd edition of the rulebook) once told me not to ever answer a hypothetical.
As you might have noticed, the fact that it was hypothetical is important info.
At any rate, since you’ve already wasted everyone’s time with a rather sloppy description of what you were asking, note that in your actual tournament, what was most relevant about the 2 family members was that they were unrated, not that they had the same (low) rating. Did you find that it mattered whether the bottom ranked 1-0’s had identical ratings, or if you jiggled them to different values, did it come up the same way? From what you described, either you’ve run across a bug in the SwisSys pairing algorithm (under USCF rules, the colors are correctable and should be corrected), or somewhere you have a setting that’s interfering with that. If it’s the former, you need to report it to Thad Suits; if it’s the latter, Thad’s probably the best person to let you know.