Pairings oddity in online tournament

A new round has just begun in an online tournament I'm in, and a very odd pairing arrangement has occurred. Could someone from chess.com check it out? The tournament and round can be found here:

http://www.chess.com/tournaments/pairings?id=61538&round=5

No interest in this? Unlike money, bugs don't earn interest.

Hi Steve, I did read this the first time you posted it, but I looked at the tournament and didn't notice anything obviously odd. Could you please describe what you are seeing?

Hi Menamow ...

The tournament is a 3>1 design, and there were 3 players remaining after Round 4. I expected that all three would be in a single group for Round 5, but instead one player was set into a group by himself and is not playing at all.

Okay, that I can explain, but hopefully clearly. The reason is that if the largest group in any round of the tournament is less than the original settings for maximum group size, then the maximum group size is reset to the new number of players. In your tournament, the maximum group size is 3 with 1 advancing, but because both groups in Round 4 had two players each, the new maximum size for the tournament is 2 players with 1 advancing. That doesn't show anywhere, but that's what's going on behind the scenes.

The other issue here is that since the group size is now set to 2 players, if you any your opponent both earn one point, the tournament will advance to the next round, where two will play again with the other person still having a bye.

I hope that was helpful! Perhaps v3 will have some changes to how online tournaments are run. In the meantime, here is a link to another thread where this came up: 

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/tournament-wont-proceed-correctly

Thanks -- I had speculated on that possibility, but guessed that a desire for efficiency (minimization of rounds) would rule the other way.