People sometimes get puzzled when they read in the papers that a chess player has lost a game and then find the next day that the same player is still in the tournament and has won a game. The reason for this is that they are only familiar with the knock out type of tournament system.Well the fact is there are different types of tournaments for chess players. This article seeks to throw some light on them. It will look at 1) the Swiss system, 2) the round robin and 3) the knock out tournament and 4) the simultaneous exhibition.
Swiss system
A Swiss system tournament is a commonly used type of tournament in chess, bridge, Scrabble, squash and other games where players or teams need to be paired to face each other. This type of tournament was first used in a Zurich chess tournament in 1895, hence the name “Swiss”
The pairing procedure
The principle of a Swiss tournament is that each player will be pitted against another player who has done as well (or as poorly) as him or herself. The first round is either drawn at random or seeded according to rating. In Goa the seeding procedure followed is as under - the Elo or FIDE Rated players are seeded first, and then the past performance of the player in All Goa Open State Selection Tournament and Age Category Selection tournaments is taken into consideration.
Players who win receive a point, those who draw receive half a point and losers receive no points. Win, lose, or draw, all players proceed to the next round where winners are pitted against winners; losers are pitted against losers, and so on.
In subsequent rounds, players face opponents with the same (or almost the same) score. No player is paired up against the same opponent twice however. In chess it is also attempted to ensure that each player plays an equal number of games with white and black, alternate colors in each round being the most preferable, and a concerted effort is made not to assign the same color three times in a row.
The basic rule is that players with the same score are ranked according to rating. Then the top half is paired with the bottom half. For instance, if there are eight players in a score group, number 1 is paired with number 5, number 2 is paired with number 6 and so on. Modifications are then made to balance colors and prevent players from meeting each other twice.
The detailed rules of how to do the pairing are usually quite complicated and often the tournament organizer has access to a computer to do the pairing for him. If the rules are strictly adhered to, the organizer has no discretion in pairing the round.
The tournament lasts for a number of rounds announced before the tournament. After the last round players are ranked by their score, if this is tied a tie break score (such as the sum of all their opponents’ scores) or the Buchholz chess rating can be used: see Tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments.
Tie-breaking in Swiss system tournaments
Tie-break systems are used in chess Swiss system tournaments to break ties between players who have the same total number of points after the last round. If the players are still tied after one tie-break system is used, another system is used, and so on, until the tie is broken. The Cumulative or Progressive Score, the Cut Progressive, Speed play-off games, single fast game and the coin flip are some of the methods commonly used to break a tie.
Cumulative or Progressive Score
To calculate this, sum the running score for each round. For example,if a player has (in order) a win, loss, win, draw, and a loss; his round-by-round score will be 1, 1, 2, 2.5, 2.5. The sum of these numbers is 9. This system places more weight on games won in the early rounds and the least weight on games won in the final rounds.
[edit] Speed play-off games The tie is broken by one or more games played with fast time control, or Fast chess.
Speed play-off games
The tie is broken by one or more games played with fast time control, or Fast chess.
Single fast game
FIDE rules provide for a single fast decisive game. Black gets five minutes on the clock whereas White gets six minutes but must win (i.e. a draw counts as a win for Black). The player who wins the draw of lots may choose which color he wants.
Coin flip
As a last resort, ties are broken by a random process such as a coin flip.
But there are other methods like the Median; Modified Median; Solkoff; Result between tied players; Most games with the black pieces; Kashdan; Sonneborn-Berger; Opponent’s performance; and the Average rating of opposition. These could begin to be used as computer software can handle these systems quite easily.
Analysis, advantages, and disadvantages of the Swiss system
Determining a clear winner (and, incidentally, a clear loser) usually requires the same number of rounds as a knockout tournament, that is the square root of the number of players rounded up plus one. Therefore three rounds can handle eight players, four rounds can handle sixteen players and so on. However it is not uncommon to have more players than this, and, if fewer than the ideal number of rounds are played, it can happen that two or more players finish the tournament with a perfect score, having won all their games but never faced each other.
Compared to a knockout tournament the Swiss system has the inherent advantage of not eliminating anyone. That means that a player can enter such a tournament knowing that he will be able to play in all rounds, regardless of how well he does. The worst that can happen in this respect is being the player left over when there is an odd number of players. The player left over receives a bye, meaning he does not play that particular round but receives a full point as if he had won a game. He is reintroduced in the next round and will not receive another bye.
Another advantage compared to knockout tournaments is that the final ranking gives some indication of relative strength for all contestants, not just for the winner of the tournament. As an example, the losing finalist in a knockout tournament may not be the second best contestant; that might have been any of the contestants eliminated by the eventual tournament winner in earlier rounds.
A Swiss system tournament does not always end with the exciting climax of the knockout’s final however. Sometimes a player may have picked up such a great lead that by the last round he is assured of winning the tournament even if he loses the last game. One fairly common fix for this dilemma is to hold single elimination rounds among the top scorers.
Compared with a round-robin tournament, a Swiss can handle many players without requiring an impractical number of rounds. An elimination tournament is better suited to a situation in which only a limited number of games may be played at once, e.g. tennis. In a Swiss system, all players can be playing a round at the same time.
The Round Robin
A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a type of group tournament in which each participant plays every other participant an equal number of times. In a single round-robin schedule, each participant plays every other participant once. If each participant plays all others twice, this is frequently called a double round-robin.
The term round-robin is derived from the French term ruban, meaning “ribbon”. Over a long period of time, the term was corrupted and idiomized to robin.
In sports with a large number of competitive matches per season, double round-robins are common. There are also round-robin chess tournaments; the World Chess Championship was decided in 2005, and again in 2007, in an eight-player double round-robin tournament, where each player faces every other player once as white and once as black.
Evaluation
In a round-robin format, the element of luck is seen to be reduced, given that all competitors face the same opponents, and a few bad performances need not cripple a competitor’s chances of ultimate victory.
Disadvantages include the existence of games late in the competition between competitors with no remaining chance of success. Moreover, some later matches will pair one competitor who has something left to play for against another who does not. This asymmetry means that playing the same opponents is not necessarily equitable: the same opponents in a different order may play harder or easier matches. There is also no showcase final match. The ability to recover from defeats, while rewarding overall consistency, may also be seen as a crutch for competitors who lack the temperament to handle the pressure of a knockout tournament.
Further issues arise where a round-robin is used as a qualifying round within a larger tournament. A competitor already qualified for the next stage before its last game may either not try hard (in order to conserve resources for the next phase) or even deliberately lose (if the scheduled next-phase opponent for a lower-placed qualifier is perceived to be easier than for a higher-placed one).
Swiss system tournaments attempt to combine elements of the round-robin and elimination formats, to provide a reliable champion using fewer rounds than a round-robin, while allowing draws and losses.
Knock Out or Single-elimination tournament
Example of a single-elimination tournament bracket A single-elimination tournament, also called a knockout, cup or sudden death tournament, is a type of tournament where the loser of each match is immediately eliminated from winning the championship or first prize in the event.
(However, it does not always mean that the defeated competitor will not participate further in the tournament (in some such tournaments, consolation or “classification” contests are subsequently held among those already defeated to determine the awarding of lesser places, for example, a Third place playoff.)
Seeding
Opponents may be allocated randomly; however, since the “luck of the draw” may result in the highest-rated competitors being scheduled to face each other early in the competition, seeding is often used to prevent this. Brackets are set up, so that the top two seeds could not possibly meet until the final round (should both advance that far), none of the top four can meet prior to the semifinals, and so on.
Evaluation
The single-elimination format enables a relatively large number of competitors to participate. There are no “dead” matches (perhaps excluding “classification” matches), and no matches where one competitor has more to play for than the other.
The format is less suited to games where draws are frequent. In chess, each fixture in a single-elimination tournament must be played over multiple matches, because draws are common, and because white has an advantage over black. In soccer, games ending in a draw may be settled in extra time and eventually by a penalty shootout, viewed by many fans as an unsatisfactory conclusion to a fixture, or by replaying the fixture.
Another perceived disadvantage is that most competitors are eliminated after relatively few games. Variations such as thedouble-elimination tournament allow competitors a single loss while remaining eligible for overall victory
Simultaneous Exhibitions
Finally we can take a look not at a tournament in the strict sense but a chess event where one player takes on a number of other opponents simultaneously. A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display (often abbreviated to “simul”) is an event where one player (commonly a chess master or grandmaster) plays multiple chess games at a time with selected players (usually below master strength).
In a regular simul, no chess clocks are used. The exhibitor walks from board to board in a fixed order. Usually the boards are arranged in a large circle or square. The opponents are expected to make a move when the exhibitor arrives at the board. The exhibitor may pause a little before responding, but too many long pauses will drag the exhibition out for too long. Regular simuls are often played with several games, often twenty or more. As games are finished off, they are usually not replaced, meaning that towards the end only a few games remain. At this point clocks are sometimes introduced with each side getting a fixed amount of time. In most, but not all simuls, the exhibitor plays white in all the games.
In clock simuls all the games are played as normal tournament games, timed by a clock, apart from the fact that the exhibitor is playing on all boards. Since time pressure can become quite severe in such simuls, they usually have fewer players than a regular simul.
Occasionally, grandmasters have given blindfold simultaneous displays. In such displays, the exhibitor does not look at any of the boards, but retains all the moves of the games in his or her head. The opponents are supplied with board and pieces in the usual way, but their moves are communicated verbally to the exhibitor by an arbiter or intermediary. To conclude I hope this article helps give you an overview of different types of chess competitions.
[This material was largely accessed and edited from wikipedia the free online encyclopedia]
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