The Old Fashioned Way....

I feel silly asking this question…

It’s been a really, really, really, really long time since I used pairing cards. So here’s the story:

I’m currently teaching a few people how to TD, and wanted them to see Crosstables, pairing sheets, etc. I also wanted them to pair by hand.

So I decided to get some index cards and download all the sheets (which are all in the US Chess Forms library.) But then I thought, rather than just giving them index cards, maybe it would be nice to give them some actual pre-printed pairing cards first, and then switch to index cards.

And then I tried to find somewhere to purchase them. Does anyone still make them??

I did find this site which had a sample card in Excel that could be printed out: chesscoachresource.com/ It seemed like a useful website.

Anyway - does anyone actually still sell pairing cards?

I thought we had a PDF of pairing cards on the forms page, but I don’t see it. Maybe Dan could come up with one.

I don’t have access to a scanner or I’d scan some of the pairing cards I have. (The Nebraska State Chess Association designed and printed its own pairing cards many years ago and I still have several hundred in a drawer.)

But I did find this:
chess.ca/sites/default/files/paircard.pdf

It also looks like there’s a company in the UK that sells cards:
chessdirect.co.uk/acatalog/ … --SPC.html

I still use pairing cards regularly. When I was close to running out, I just took a few to a local print shop and had them make me 1000 copies. That ought to last a while, and when those run out, I’ll do the same again.

Thanks, Mike. I also found the UK site, and ordered from there, although they are a slight variance to the old standard US Chess cards. Close enough to teach and then have them make their own using index cards. (I can remember using index cards and felt-tip pens by the late 1970s and teaching “Uncle Tim” how to pair.)

There is a copy of a pairing card on page 86 of the Rulebook. You can reduce the size a bit and make a few copies. 5 of the cards will then fit on an 8x11 sheet of paper. Copy as many as you need and cut them out. You can do the cards in various colors to distinguish sections. They used to produce cards in pink, blue, green, goldenrod and white. I still have a bunch of pairing cards in goldenrod color. The master sheet of cards plus other forms can be placed in sheet protectors and put in a binder with other masters, like different scoresheets, how ratings work, tiebreak methods, entry forms, rating report forms, and signs you post in the playing room on game day. We also used to place a list of club members, other local players, their ratings, and expiration dates in the binder, too. Some things would be updated for each tournament. One run to a copy store would allow you to make as many forms as you needed.

It was a common practice to have the wallcharts and the pairing cards the same color. Sometimes the pairing sheets were also the same color. The reasoning behind it was avoid mix ups of the cards. When you did cross pairings it was easier to see which sections were involved. Players also found it easier to see where their pairings and results were.

At one school grade (13 sections) there were only five colors available. I used a different color for each round’s pairings so that it was easy to see at a distance whether or not new pairings had gone up for a section (granted, that was using a pairing program).

I’m not sure what I’d do if I had to direct a large scholastic tournament, but for open (“adult”) events I prefer to use different colors for different functions rather than for different sections. For example:

yellow for pairing sheets
white for wall charts (in rating order)
blue for standings (in score order)
green for advance entry lists
salmon for alphabetical pairings (if any)

(Of course, with pairing cards you wouldn’t have the third and fifth items above.)

That way, you can tell players to post their results on the yellow pairing sheet, not on the white wall charts.

Bill Smythe

I stopped using colored stocks for posting when I learned that about 25% of the players in my events had a form of color blindness that made it next to impossible for them to differentiate between most of the colors I was using.

The color differentiation in cards, wallcharts, etc. was mostly for TD convenience. Many of the old TDs still used white cards. That was because they usually ran one section events no matter the size of the entry. After class tournaments with multiple sections became more usual did I see varying colors used.

One piece of advice was to put a small rubber band on each set of cards and keep the cards on the TD’s person rather than leave them out on the TD table. This allowed you to take the cards with you to mark them as results occurred. The main reason, however, was to keep the cards away from the players after an incident when a disgruntled player walked off with all of the cards. Today, I have seen TDs lock down their computers to the table or have the computer(s) in a secured room. It would not be the first time that players were yelled at for sitting at the TD desk looking at pairings or monkeying around with software analyzing their games.

I believe a TD laptop was stolen at a major tournament in LA back when laptops very very expensive. Staged commotion broke out in tournament room/hallway. Tournament staff ran out of the TD room to deal with the issue; confederates of the criminals ran into the TD room.

I thought it was at one of the US Opens.

Speaking of the old fashioned way, does anyone have a source for sealed move envelopes for adjournments?

Not sure if there are any in the U.S.

chessdirect.co.uk/acatalog/ … AE_50.html

They also have a 100 pack.

Also, given that the link I provided will show you info needed, and you can see similar links by searching online and seeing pictures of sealed move envelopes, its probably easier to create a template and print a few at a time.

I doubt if anybody still makes them (other than as a special order). If it ever came up I’d just take a normal envelope, put an 8x8 grid on the front, add the move number, whose move it was, the players, the round number and the clock times, and then wrap the scoresheets in a piece of paper so the move could not be read from outside the envelope (seal it and have the players initial the envelope before the TD takes charge of it).
Nowadays with scorebooks and ENDs not being able to fit into the envelope (or be used in the next round because they are stuck in the envelope) you’d probably have to settle for having a copy of a scoresheet in the envelop with the player’s move added to it (giving you some back-up if there is a question about the position written on the envelope and the players coming to resume the game had inadvertently left their scoresheets at home).

I still have about 20 of the cards used for adjournments. They would be placed in a normal envelope. The card had a chess board to write the position on and a few lines to write the sealed move. The person sealing usually would sign the card to verify the sealed move. The envelope required writing the date and time for resuming the adjournment and the signature of the TD that he received the envelope. This was an alternative method to using a special adjournment envelope in which a sheet of paper or a scoresheet with the sealed move would be placed. I probably have a few of these special envelopes, too.

I’m just curious, but with a lack of scoresheets, how do you rule on any future 50 move/3 fold claims?

Alex Relyea

I provided information to Louis in a PM about where to get the materials.

I may be assuming too much here, but I would expect the players to have their original scoresheets when they come to play the adjournment. Placing the actual scoresheets inside the envelope doesn’t seem practical when half of the players are using ENDs or scorebooks. The last few times I did adjournments, I just recorded the position, times, what result each player was playing for, etc., and had the sealing player write his move on the inside of the flap (this was with the old-style “official” adjournment envelopes, of which I still have a couple). However, I sincerely hope to never have to adjourn a game again. I think it is an obsolete practice (not least because of the ubiquity of chess engines).

Repeating time controls (no sudden death) brought about the initial need for adjournments. Nowadays such time controls are very, very few and very, very far between but increment time controls still provide a rare need for adjournments (especially if there are site constraints).
Even in the days of pre-Fritz adjournments there was still the possibility of a “brain trust” looking at the position (one of the duties of a player’s second in a match) and analysis and books were always allowed (prohibiting them would only adversely impact the people that followed that prohibition).