Question about pairing in USCF event

Sort:
Indie_Pro

I'm playing in a 5 round swiss tournament for USCF and won my first game as black.

Five players won with white four won with black and one player received a free point from a bye because he was the odd man out. Of the four players who won with black my rating is lowest does that mean I will face the second highest rated White player who won? Im assuming the player who received a point from a bye will play white tomorrow to even things out and his rating is lower then mine. 

Anyone know the answer to this?

KeSetoKaiba

I'm not a Tournament Director, so I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think it pairs purely by rating seeds in the middle rounds. I'm pretty sure it is then by game results and the players with more points more likely to face others with similar number of points in the event. In a case like yours, I think the Tournament Director just pairs people in a way to try and balance the number of who gets what color how often and tries to avoid repeating too much. Otherwise, I think they typically just draw randomly who plays who (either by drawing names out of a bag or by using an online random number generator). 

Again, I'm merely a chess player - I don't direct events, so I'm not certain. I'm only going off of the USCF rated swiss events I've participated in and observing what I think happens (but maybe there is some more formal method I'm just unaware of). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Indie_Pro

Yeah I know i'll match with someone who won there first round with white since I won with black. I was under the impression that for every round players play against opponents with the same score if possible. Of those groups (same score) they're split half and half with the highest player of the first half playing the highest of the second and the second highest in the first half playing the second highest of the lower half etc etc.

KeSetoKaiba
Indigo_Profound wrote:

Yeah I know i'll match with someone who won there first round with white since I won with black. I was under the impression that for every round players play against opponents with the same score if possible. Of those groups (same score) they're split half and half with the highest player of the first half playing the highest of the second and the second highest in the first half playing the second highest of the lower half etc etc.

That sounds right, but again I'm not really the best with that kind of stuff.

I just let them figure it out and play any opponent they tell me I'm playing grin.png

Indie_Pro

For example lets say five players won the first round as white with ratings of 10,20,30,40,50 and four players won with black the first round with ratings 15,25,35,45. One player also got a point from a bye lets say his rating is 5. In this hypothetical if I'm the player rated 15 would i not match with the player rated 40 in the next round?

Martin_Stahl

Each round, after the first, the pairing algorithm breaks players up into score groups. The players are sorted by rating and top-half plays bottom half. Color allocation will be due color, where possible and the player with the first round bye doesn't have a due color. As long as the groups are even, as in your example, there shouldn't be any need to move a player to a different score group to even things up. 

 

There's a possibility some alterations in the pairings can occur, to try to alternate colors, but that early in the event it may not happen. 

 

In your example

50 (b) vs 25 (w)

45 (w) vs 20 (b)

40 (b) vs 15 (w)

35 (w) vs 10 (b)

30 (b) vs 5 (w)

This is assuming regular Swiss pairings are being used. This is also for an OTB event.