Alex Holowczak wrote:Traditional acceleration in the UK uses quarters; so you get something like 1 v 3, 4 v 2, 5 v 7, 8 v 6 in round 1. Why quarters?
In the 1970s with plenty of practical examples with which to experiment, Stewart Reuben tried a variety of methods. Whilst quarters was the eventual outcome, I don't know the reasoning. For a while in the 1990s the then Hastings Challengers divided itself into four natural quarters, so you had "established" players, potential seekers of Norms, other rated players and players in search of ratings. Ratings cut off was 2000 in the period I was thinking of. Earlier than that, perhaps only half the field had ratings with only the top eighth having established titles, so a top quarter v second quarter pairing was necessary to preserve Norm chances.
It's been the case that mass events in the style of the London Classic Rapidplay were rarely organised in the UK with players of lesser standard being discouraged from the main event by rating based entry fees and encouraged to enter parallel events.
If it's accepted as a premise that giving a bye to the lowest rated player on the lowest score group is undesirable, there's a fix available in the Dutch System without having to resort to theexplicit float of the median. You have fictional "arbiter's friend" who is always seeded last. This hypothetical player is only placed in the pairings when there is otherwise an odd number of players. I believe the computerised pairings would always pair this player against the lowest ranked median. Perhaps you need one potentially for each round to stop any colour bias.Alex Holowczak wrote: The Dutch System, used by FIDE, already has top-up bottom-down floating, so this isn't something they need to spend time on.
