English Chess Forum

At the Uxbridge Premier (9 rounds) we have 2 players on 3/3. Consequently they will of course meet in round 4. It's entirely possible that all the leading contenders will have played each other by round 7 when of course you really want these games to occur in the final rounds.

That led us to discuss the invention and use of decelerated pairings for events like this so that the leading players meet in later rather than earlier rounds.

One way to achieve this would be to split the players into a number of groups (perhaps 2, 3 or 4) and, for the first 5 (or so) rounds pair each group as a separate swiss. Then merge everyone together (carrying forward points scored) for the final rounds. I'm sure there will be other ways. It may have already happened for all I know!

Discuss!

That should work, if you split the groups into 5/6 players by seedings

Depending on entries, you should get the top 8 seeds playing each other in the remaining 5 or 4 rounds

You could also have small extra prizes (free entry or £30) for finishing 1st or 2nd in your group

This is obviously only for 9rd tournaments

It might open a bit of a can of worms too - I remember playing a tournament in coventry where the organiser tried to pair everyone up to make it an even contest but which resulted in me having to play every top player in the tournament and some much lower rated guys ending up on more points then me.

Contrary to popular belief, most strong players do not want to be bombarded with hard opponents round after round, and if they are having to face each other they would rather take on a difficult challenge midway through the tournament where there is a bit less pressure riding on the result.

You could try the system used for the World Cup. There are 128 players. 1v128, 127v2 and so on. But that is a knockout. The same was tried in a Swiss in Birmingham many years ago. That was in all rounds on every score group; very top v the very bottom. I was one of the top 7 players who finished in the top 6. This unfair experiment was not repeated.

Stewart Reuben