Nonetheless, if you want to start a heated discussion amongst chess players, questioning the accuaracy of a set of tournament pairings is a good way to go about it. In fact is some Australian tournaments, arguing about pairings prior to the last round has become so common that there is a joke that the organisers have changed their tournament schedule to refelect this eg 10am Round 6 2pm Argue about Round 7 pairings 2:30pm Round 7 (Hopefully) .
But why the confusion? While there probably isn't one single answer, the most common reason I have seen is that people don't take the time to understand the rules in the first place. Often they get as far as understanding the intent of the rules, but then don't go as far as reading the rules in detail. However I have had dealings with players (and arbiters) who having read the rules, then apply their own interpertrations.
Common confusions include
- Players in the top half of a score group can only play players in the bottom half of a score group (not true)
- Players always get the opposite colour than they had in the previous rounds (desirable but not always achievable)
- There is more than one "correct" pairing (not according to the FIDE pairing rules)
As a consequence a couple of arbiters, led by IA Gary Bekker, are putting together a submission to FIDE in an effort to clear up the confusion. Hopefully these suggested changes will be accepted in time for the next major FIDE rule revision.
2 comments:
Is "offical" a term for "offal" from official sources?
Sorry - just thought you were in need of at least one comment!
Libby
Shawn, here’s my take on this:
I have run lots of small country chess events. Typical entry numbers might vary between 12 and 36. I do this as a voluntary service to my local community. I am not a professional chess arbiter and I am not giving up my day job to become one.
When I am running a Swiss event I invariably use the Swiss Perfect computer program to do the draw. I trust this program implicitly to do the round by round draws for me. I am not aware of all the nuances of the FIDE rules and I don’t care particularly about them. Why should I? I have a program that is officially endorsed by the ACF to pair Swiss events.
In my view the draw produced by the officially approved software should never be changed and should be considered final. (I have never changed an SP draw myself).
If there is perceived to be a problem with a particular draw the arbiter should report this to the ACF and they can, if they believe it appropriate, authorise changes to the software.
At the actual event, participants should be encouraged to look on the Swiss draw as having an element of luck in it, which of course it does, as does Chess itself.
PhilD.
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