Swiss Pairing Software

[Michael Flatt]

When I set the tournament up, I deliberately set the option to allow the manual input of the result of a player with the bye, or players excluded from the pairings. That avoids the problem.

That's fine if you know about that setting, can find it and remember to select it. Anyone using the program for the first time without a Swiss Manager expert to call upon is likely to run into what, at the time, appears to be an insoluble problem. It's a shame because this hidden feature will cause potential users to avoid the program and choose another they have more confidence in controlling and using.

Swiss Manager is possibly the only pairing program that offers this sort of customisation with defaults set so that the user is inhibited from introducing new players and manually setting byes. I assume that the programmer must have a good reason for doing it that way.

[Alex Holowczak]

When I set the tournament up, I deliberately set the option to allow the manual input of the result of a player with the bye, or players excluded from the pairings. That avoids the problem.

That's fine if you know about that setting, can find it and remember to select it. Anyone using the program for the first time without a Swiss Manager expert to call upon is likely to run into what, at the time, appears to be an insoluble problem. It's a shame because this hidden feature will cause potential users to avoid the program and choose another they have more confidence in controlling and using.

Swiss Manager is possibly the only pairing program that offers this sort of customisation with defaults set so that the user is inhibited from introducing new players and manually setting byes. I assume that the programmer must have a good reason for doing it that way.

Before I ran my first tournament with it, I spent some time looking at all the available options, and running "mock" tournaments with it to make sure I knew what I was doing, and could cater for any situation thrown at me. Indeed, the user can introduce new players mid-tournament easily, and can either exclude the players from given rounds (a temporarily withdrawal), and can even allocate a player the pairing-allocated bye before doing the pairings.

The features are there, and I use them regularly. I don't think any of the features you mentioned above are hidden at all. I just think "Oh, it must be here somewhere" and I try things in advance. I don't see why that's difficult at all.

[Michael Flatt]

Before I ran my first tournament with it, I spent some time looking at all the available options, and running "mock" tournaments with it to make sure I knew what I was doing, and could cater for any situation thrown at me. Indeed, the user can introduce new players mid-tournament easily, and can either exclude the players from given rounds (a temporarily withdrawal), and can even allocate a player the pairing-allocated bye before doing the pairings.

The features are there, and I use them regularly. I don't think any of the features you mentioned above are hidden at all. I just think "Oh, it must be here somewhere" and I try things in advance. I don't see why that's difficult at all.

It's horses for courses. I don't have the time to make such a thorough validation of all programs I use. If it does what I want in a way I find acceptable I'll use it. If the program throws up what I consider to be unnecessary difficulties I'll look for something better.

In my view Swiss Manager requires too much of my time to investigate how to use it efficiently. The program designer could make it easier for mere mortals to use.