Two brothers that don't want to be paired

Running Chess Tournaments
41

Based on your ID# you were not around for the Dark Days of Sudden Death, after USCF approved G/30 for Regular rating and before delay-capable digital clocks arrived.

Everyone and his brother agreed that was bad—but folks have argued over the best ‘solution’ for more than 20 years.

Steve Immitt directed the first SD events in which I played. Tim Just was very polite to me at Cherry Hill 2002, perhaps because I did not take issue with ‘his’ Rulebook, then in final proofs.

I like both these guys as far as I know them and felt bad the way they sparred on the video of the Rules Workshop last week. Brother, that was depressing. We should all learn to get along.

To address your point: Our club has not had siblings play in the same event in many years, but we have several parent-child combos. We try to avoid pairing them against each other when possible, but sometimes there is no way around it.

The only one who ever complained was the club’s former TD, who refused to pair himself against his grown son. Luckily, the son was rated a few hundred points ahead of his dad, so it seldom came up. Then he moved far away, solving the problem for good.

My brother taught me the moves of chess on a Saturday morning in 1971, when Fischer boomed. He is not a tournament player but if he were I doubt either of us would have a problem playing the other now and then.

Brothers who refuse to play rated chess against each other either take chess too seriously or have issues not related to chess.

I don’t think this could fly at the pro or semi-pro level. The Byrne brothers played many times, I’m pretty sure. I suspect the Portisches did, too. The Hunts and the Cramlings might have avoided that very often, due to gender.

See: susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/01 … lings.html

I would tell brothers who did not want to play each other we would do what we could to avoid that, but if it happened, so be it. I might suggest they alternate tournaments, to make sure they would not be paired with each other.

If I felt bold or knew them personally, I might also suggest they ponder the points about taking chess too seriously and/or the need to deal with issues not related to chess.

42

Possibly. I’ve been around since 1995 and don’t remember much about this issue. but that could also be that I just never noticed. I’ve certainly only taken an interest in directing-related issues in the past couple of years.

I think it’s more a mentality of being, shall we say, brothers united against the world? No matter what else is going on, they are always there for each other.

At least one strong player at our events said that if his kids were both playing, he wouldn’t ever want them paired either.

Me, I’d be looking to take as many rating points as possible from my sister. I suppose every family is different. These kids’ parents are also against having them play. It’s not just the brothers.

This is, I believe, the current plan.

I was wondering if the solution I proposed above might be another acceptable option. (Pair them in round one but let them agree a nonrated draw if they prefer.) These are small, one day tournaments with small prizes. I don’t think anyone would see it as collusion or some such. If anything, strong players would probably be happy to see them both down half a point!

43

Didn’t Venus and Serena Williams recently face off against each other for the Wimbledon championship?

I think my inclination would be simply to enter them into the pairing software as a team. Is it possible to do that and still let all the other players enter solo?

44

Venus and Serena were bound to come up sooner or later. They seem pretty sane about playing one another. Their father we’re not so sure about!

The short answer to your question is “yes.” Actually, all players are entered as individuals, and each entry has a “team” field that can optionally be filled in. Then you select how you want to handle teams in your pairing preferences.

45

I think it all depends on how much the two relatives complain and how much it is perceived that they will no longer be customers. My personal philosophy is to “protect” if possible, relatives from playing with each other during the first half of a tournament. The second half, whatever happens happens. This almost always seems “to happen” to a father-son titled tandem in the DC area. To not pair them is to protect them from each other which isn’t fair to the field. For the CCA, it does seem like it boils down to an economic decision and how much the paired relatives complain. No complaints, it is ok; lots of complaints - something needs to be done, quick! When this happens, two other players have to play the relatives, which distorts their original pairings as well. Fair, yes and no, depending on whether you think relatives should ever be paired together.

Mike

46

How large would a section have to be before the brothers could have a reasonable expectation of not playing each other?

47

Well, if they’re similarly rated and having similar results, at some point they’re likely to need to face each other to keep the pairings clean unless the event is so big that there are multiple perfect scores at the end.

48

How large would that be? How many players in small, local tournament?

What is the probability of any two players facing each other when the number of players and rounds are known?

49

Obviously that would depend on the number of rounds. It’s probably about 50/50 (depending on their ratings) if the number of players is approximately equal to 2^(number of rounds + 1). That is if there are four rounds, it would take about 30 players to have a 50/50 chance of there being enough players with perfect scores going into the last round that they wouldn’t need to play each other. Of course if they don’t have perfect scores (or perhaps half a point off perfect), then it’s largely an irrelevant issue.

I’m mindful of a story (possibly apocryphal, as I can’t find any evidence on MSA) that the current president of the USCF once sat down at the U.S. Open to find himself playing his twin brother!

Alex Relyea

50

At the Peoria National Elementary in 1998, a player in the K-5 U900 section came to me to complain that he was paired against somebody for a second time in the event. When I went to the board to see what was going on I found his opponent that round, his opponent’s parents, and his opponent’s twin brother that the player had played in a previous round.

51

What is the probability of any two players facing each other when the number of players and rounds are known?
:smiley: :slight_smile:
I was looking for a math formula.

52

It’s also a function of the actual TD.

53

There isn’t a simple formula, because it also depends on their ratings and how they’re doing in the event.

When we were looking at estimated performance compared with actual performance, we found that there are fewer matches between with ratings with similar ratings than between players with ratings about 100 points apart. I assume that’s a function of the ‘pair the upper half against the lower half’ nature of the Swiss system.

54

Knowing the odds would help the brothers decide what tournaments to enter and know the tournament directors what would make a reasonable effort to honor their request.

55

In a 16 player 4 round event, each player will face 4 of the other players in the event and not face 11 of them.

So you could probably say that ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, two players may have 4 chances out of 15 of facing each other.

The problem is, all other things are NOT equal. If those two players are the highest and lowest rated players in the event, then assuming their performance matches their ratings they have essentially ZERO chance of playing each other. On the other hand, barring upsets the top two rated players are very likely to face each other, most likely in the last round.

That’s why just looking at the possible permutations won’t work, even though it might be convenient if it did.

56

If they are doing well and could win money, it isn’t a reasonable request for the rest of the field. If there is no chance whatsoever to win anything, most TDs could do a switch of players at the bottom of the pairings and not effect anything.

57

We know they enter different sections when possible.

58

That would decrease the odds to almost 0% unless some diabolical TD does a cross-section pairing :smiling_imp:

59

I’m mindful of a story (possibly apocryphal, as I can’t find any evidence on MSA) that the current president of the USCF once sat down at the U.S. Open to find himself playing his twin brother!

Alex Relyea
[/quote]

It was in the 4th or 5th round of the Orlando US Open 1997. About 10 min before the round we brought it to the attention of a gaggle of TDs where they immediately switched a couple of pairings around and we played strangers. Only NTD Randy Hough said “… let 'em play each other …it’s a long tourney and it’ll all balance out in the end…” :imp:
Frank K. Berry