a question for real OTB tournament directors or for all who know ??

Hello I am seeking to ask for tournaments that I hold and enter myself what types of tournaments are best for the number of participant so far this is what I have come up with

1.Round Ribon tournaments 4-8 participants

2.Swiss 16-32 participants

3.Knockout 32+ participants

Of course any type of tournament can be played for any number of participants but I'm asking this so my tournaments can be short and sweet. For instance I dont want to hold a tournament were theres 128 people entering and I make I ta round ribon tournament which will last forever it seems.

Even if I have to be a high ranking TD (Tournament Director to hold international tournament this is good information for me to know for nieborhood and block unrated tournaments I'll be holding) Please comment It would be helpful.

There is no hard and fast "best" tournament format, but the guidelines you wrote are not bad.  However, I would have some comments.

When deciding on format, there are lots of balancing factors.  The number of games required to finish the tournament, the entertainment value for the spectators, a desire to have a clear "best" player for a prize.  Any can play a role.  However, for the most part, the single biggest consideration is the amount of space in your hall, and the amount of time you have to play the tournament.

There is very rarely any advantage of a "knockout" tournament over a Swiss tournament, in my opionion.  For the tournament hall, you have to have enough space to hold the first round, so what is the advantage of the knockout format?  Meanwhile, the same number of rounds are needed to come to a decision in both the knockout and Swiss formats.  And what to do about draws in the knockout?  All the knockout does is create a lot of empty space in the hall during later rounds, and send people home without playing games when they could be playing people about their own rank in games they have a chance of winning.  For those of us who often start in the "bottom half", the games don't get good until round three.

There is one format that I have never seen done in a Chess tournament, but which might be an interesting workaround for some issues.  Begin with a five round SS G30 tournament on day one.  At the end of five rounds, the top eight players play a 4 round G60 Swiss on day 2.  I understand, it's weird, and TDs don't always think outside the box, but it could solve some problems.  It would be confusing to enter in the USCF web page or in WinTD, but it could be done easily enough in two sections, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't break any USCF rules.  (Now I'll have to look at the rulebook to see.)

For certain tournaments, a format you should not overlook is the ratings based quad.  In that format, the entire field is broken into groups of four in order of ratings.  Those four then play three rounds in a round robin.  I regularly attend a tournament in Ann Arbor that is run that way, and it's a great way to run some tournaments.  It gives each player what is very likely to be three good games of Chess, with no crushing defeats or easy victories.

 Nine games in two days?  With five hours one day and eight hours the next?  Come on!  You can't take it?  Dang kids these days.  In my day we would walk three miles in a blinding snowstorm just to get to a tournament where we had to play 12 hours!

Well, ok.  The specific numbers might not have been a good example.

The point I was making was that you didn't have to follow one of the "standard" formats for the whole tournament, and you could create a hybrid that would get around certain issues. 

For people trying to hold inexpensive tournaments, the big driver is the cost of the hall.  Suppose you wanted to hold a tournament, and attract some "serious" players.  They want to play longer games than the G30 games that I like.  The problem is that if you play G60 or G90, it takes 2-3 times as long, making it hard to get in multiple rounds.  If there are a lot of people, you have to spread the tournament over two days, which throws a bunch of people out right there, and the long games don't appeal very much to some of the less serious players, who make up the bulk of the entry fees you are using to pay for that hall that you are renting for two days.

It occurred to me that you could get around some problems by holding the tournament in two phases.  Day one is a "qualifier" phase.  Everyone plays in a Swiss tournament, but one with not enough rounds to establish a clear winner.  On day 2, you finish the tournament, but not everyone gets invited back to play.  Only the people who finished above a certain threshold get to return.  They play another Swiss.  This one features longer rounds.

What does this accomplish for you?  It lets lots of people play in the tournament, but on day 2, you only need a conference room, not a hall. That lowers the cost. 

Planning an event and actually making something like that work might be a challenge, but the real point is that you don't have to be stuck in a rut thinking that there are only a few possible schedules for a Chess tournament.  When planning the tourney, you have to think about the physical constraints imposed by the room, what sort and how many players you can accommodate, how much they are willing to pay, what your "market" expects for prize money, and several other factors that all affect why people will come to your tournament.  By going a little bit outside the box, you might be able to fashion an event that meets more needs.

i prefer the swiss system for OTB tournaments, and as an arbiter, they're the hardest to pair and control. Knockouts are good for high ranked players, but lower down people will want to play more than one game after losing the first. Also with knockouts, the issue with draws occurs

Round Robin is good for high ranked tournaments, but lower down, using swiss will improve entry numbers (usually)

Would be intersted to know roughly how Round Robins , not having heard of them before , are played

Round Robin is all play all, which is why it's not good for bigger tournaments.

Many thanks Clay, probably why I hadm't seen it before .

All chess.com tournaments are round robin WITHIN EACH GROUP. If there is only a single group, then the whole tournament is round robin.

certainly no knockout

That's my problem with chess.com tournaments.  I don't like playing more than 6 games at a time, so getting into a tournament where I'll be playing 4 simul. games requires a lot of planning on my part that I just don't usually do.

You won't be enthralled by 12-member groups then, especially if both games against each opponent are played concurrently = 22 NEW GAMES!

But probably, the point I should have been making was that most of the time, the "standard" is standard for a reason.  Swiss almost always works.

The tournaments I have played in have all been Swiss or quad formats.

Quads are easy to set up and run, and everyone will play against those closet to them in rating.

If a Swiss tounament has enough rounds, the top players come close to playing a round robin in the final rounds.

are quads and swiss the same if not what are quads.

A quad is a four player round robin.

If there are twelve people in a tournament, to play in a quad format, you take the 12 players, and put them in order of their ratings.  Then, the top 4 play a round robin against each other, the next four play a round robin against each other, and the four lowest play a round robin against each other.  Each round robin requires three rounds of play, for a total of six games.

If there are 14 people, then the top four play each other, the next four play each other, and the bottom 6 play a three round mini-swiss. (Just a Swiss, really, but called "min" because of the small numbers.)  Some directors would have the top six play a three round miniswiss. 

If there are 13 players you curse your luck and try to get someone to drop out, because there is no good way to play anything with five leftover players.  Hopefully, you can find one more player, or the TD can play, to round it up to six, or if there are three leftovers, up to four, although seven isn't quite as bad as five.

The quad format does not produce an overall winner.  It only produces a winner within each quad.  It's a good format for a schedule with time available for only three rounds, and low prizes.  Every player gets to play three rounds of Chess against players that are roughly equal in rank, and usually has at least a passing shot at first place within his group.

so in quads if someone wins all there games in the lowest section they still can't become the #1 in the tournament but they can for that quad ? or after all that everyone who won in there quads do they just have a round ribon and decide that way.

 They just win their quad.  It's a safe bet that they wouldn't win the overall tournament, because the winner of the lowest rated quad probably wouldn't beat the winner, or even the loser, of the highest rated quad.

At the Garden Cafe quads in Ann Arbor, they are Friday night tournaments, played in a coffeehouse with G30 controls.  The entry fee is five bucks.  The prise for each quad is sixteen bucks.  It's a great, inexpensive, casual tournament.

I remember back in Rhode Island years ago, Gus Gosselin used to run tournaments made up of 8 player sections that ran 3 rounds at Game 75 and were paired by Swiss System rules. It was pretty fun stuff.