English Chess Forum

1. What are people's experience of Swiss Pairing Software?

2. What specific computer pairing programs are in common use in the UK?

3. How do they compare regarding cost, accuracy, reliability, ease of use, instructions and help, submission of results to ECF/FIDE for grading?

4. Are there any published comparative studies to identify the "best" program?

Any advice based on real experience of using them in weekend tournaments would be most welcome.

Swiss Master costs €50 from the Dutch Chess Federation, though it is in English language. It does Swiss parings perfectly according to FIDE rules. It produces great html files for your website, and a FIDE rating file. It does not do British pairings, nor does it produce an ECF grading file, though it is relatively easy to produce a grading file from a rating file.

Swiss Perfect is Australian and costs £40. It produces html files (not as good as SM in my opinion) but it's pairings are truly awful. To be avoided in my opinion.

The favourite in England appears to be Tournament Director. It costs £50. It does British and FIDE pairings. I can't comment on the British pairings but when I tested the FIDE pairings they were wrong. That was 18 months ago though so may have been fixed now. It will produce rating and grading files. It produces web output, but it appears to be clunky text file stuff which is not very use friendly.

Personally, I use Swiss Master. Overall, I find it simplest to use, and I think the web output is second to none.

I used Vega Chess last night for our internal club Xmas Handicap tourney. It's free and works for FIDE and ECF tournaments. I cannot comment on how good it is, suffice it to say it's better than I am at pairing and producing crosstables at the end, and it's much faster (which isn't saying much, but there you go).

What Sean said, plus Tournament Director (when I last looked at it a couple of years ago) did dire ECF pairings as well. As an example, it had player A on 4/4, B on 3.5/4, C on 3/4, D on 2.5/4, so gave A v D and B v C, rather than AvB and CvD, which worked and gave the right colours. Unless the arbiter overruled it for reasons of his own.

My favourite overall is Swiss Master, although Tournament Director has a few features in its favour - I prefer its crosstables, and it allows you to enter byes for future rounds. A piece of software that combined the best features of the two programmes would be very nice.

Thank you all for your helpful comments.

Swiss Master seems to be the strong favourite. It is in widespread use and attracts many favourable comments. Ease of publishing results on the tournament website is a strong plus.

Vega looks interesting. The Vega website allows free download of the Unix version and quotes a 50 Euro registration fee for the Windows version.

Does anyone know if there is any software which works with Windows 10?
I will be using it to run unrated tournaments, so compatibility with rating systems is not important.

Bob Clark wrote:Does anyone know if there is any software which works with Windows 10?
I will be using it to run unrated tournaments, so compatibility with rating systems is not important.

My preference is for Swiss Master.

I have avoided upgrading to Windows 10, but it would be easy to you confirm that Swiss Master runs satisfactorily by downloading a free trial version before paying any money.

Information on FIDE endorsed pairing programs and links to download them is available on the FIDE website: https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/C04Annex3_EPLIST.pdf

Looking back on this mostly old thread from two years ago, I'm interested to see that no-one mentioned Swiss Manager at all.

The current situation amongst Swiss Manager, Swiss Master and Vega reminds me of the Videotape Format War a generation ago amongst VHS, Betamax and Philips. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotape_format_war)

I have listed things in the above orders deliberately. VHS won then. Swiss Manager is winning now.

As something of a technonumpty, I struggle somewhat with all these programs. I've lost at least one international arbiting appointment because of a lack of familiarity with Swiss Manager. No-one outside England has ever asked if I was familiar with anything else.

Does that mean that Swiss Manager uses the FIDE pairing system, but other programs are better with our pairing system?

When it comes down to it there shouldn't be any difficulty in using any of the FIDE accredited pairing programs. Each of them have their qwerks which can easily be overcome by taking time to familiarise oneself with their workings before using them in a live tournament.

Swiss Manager as David mentions is probably the leading program for International Tournaments of all descriptions. If desired its results can be uploaded to chess-results.com website.

Tournament Director (now upgraded and renamed UTU Swiss), which is the only program that claims to do British Swiss pairings, hasn't made it onto FIDE's latest list.

David Sedgwick wrote: Swiss Manager is winning now.

I suggest the tie-in with the chess-results server is the killer unique selling point. chess-results having become a standard for the presentation of results.

From a participant's viewpoint, why do some tournaments using it, the London Classic FIDE Open being a case in point, not show the rating performance?

Roger de Coverly wrote: From a participant's viewpoint, why do some tournaments using it, the London Classic FIDE Open being a case in point, not show the rating performance?

That's down to the organisers of the tournament not the software which will output it if requested.

Mick Norris wrote:Does that mean that Swiss Manager uses the FIDE pairing system, but other programs are better with our pairing system?

It might be the other way round. The more traditionally minded arbiters at this year's British were alleged to be using their pairing card based system. Evidence in favour of this was the occasional sighting of pairing boards, the avoidance of an early Pert v Pert pairing and the late publication of some day's pairings. The results and future pairings were always made available in chess-results format, so this may make the input of home made pairings easier than some of its rivals.

This year's Hastings looks as if it will continue to be using Swiss Master.

There is a thumbnail comparison of the different programs on the chess arbiters web-site.
http://www.chessarbitersassociation.co. ... views.html

Vega and Swiss Master use the same third-party pairing engine and so should produce identical pairings.
Vega and Tournament Director/UTU are the only programs that interface with the ECF grading system both for player input and output of grading files.