What Is the Best Way?

Running Chess Tournaments
1

In Peoria, Illinois we have an annual city championship. The goals that we have for this tournament include:

  1. Find the currently strongest Chess player in the area.

  2. Give all those participating a good number of rated games.

  3. Increase participation over the year through qualifying events, as this is an invitational event.

We have had 12 participants in the past and have had two sections play a round robin with the winner of each section playing a two out of three final to determine the champion. The section pairings have been the standard ABBA style with the first section having numbers 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12.

We are looking to increase the number to 16. We are planning to have four groups of four play a double quad with a game of each color against each opponent.

How would you order these four groups for the best competition and be the most correct for tournament seeding?

2

If you want to maximize competitiveness, do 1,5,9,13 etc. It might be more interesting to draw lots for which quad to play in. That is there are four slips that say A, four that say B, etc.

Alex Relyea