Thoughts on replacing Swiss system tournaments with McMahon

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RioM2

McMahon is far better.

  • In Go tournament I whole time played with players more or less with my rating. In last chess tournament (9 rounds) I played only one game with player +-200 rating.
  • Go tournaments in Europe are played during weekend, because 5 games is enough.
  • McMahon is more interesting for weaker players, because there are often prizes when you get 4 points (from 5) or more. Everybody has chance to get price and without cheating with ratings.
  • I hate swiss tournaments separated by rating. My son play with rating 1703 in some tournament (>1700), where he was far weakest player, almost all game he losts, but was not possible for hm to play in tournament where were weaker players.
jetoba
IM_Tissir wrote:

Is it the same as Accelerated swiss?  I remember that it was applied in Cappelle la grande chess tournament in France as the number of players exceeds 700...

I think its a very good option to play tournaments with these systems, I agree the mismatches really annoying. 

An accelerated Swiss is designed to reduce the number of perfect scores and the acceleration is turned off after the second round.  I've had a number of people want accelerated pairings because the round one mismatch is avoided, but it comes back in round three for the middle 3/4 (not quite as large of a rating difference) and the rating differences in rounds 4 and 5 (for the middle group) are larger than without accelerating.  It sounds like McMahon keeps that acceleration on (think of a 7-round tournament using a pairing program where the tournament is set up as a 12-round tournament with the first five rounds being used to set the zero/half/full point byes to do the McMahon differentiation.

I'd figure that most tournaments large enough to use McMahon might also be large enough to be sectioned (in the US most organizers either allow playing up one section or have sections with overlapping rating limits like u1400, 1200-1599, 1400-1799, 1600-1999, 1800-2199, 2000-2399, 2200+ which allows a 1603 to play as a bottom rated player in 1600-1999 or as a middle-rated player in 1400-1799).

RioM2

Because unlike go there is a rating in chess, we can make a type of tournament that is based on the rating. Rules:
1. Players who are closest to each other in rating will always play.
2. After a game, the players will somehow calculate a new rating for that tournament. For simplicity's sake, 50 will be added when winning and subtracted when losing. Of course, a better calculation based on the rating of the players or even taking into account the colour of the pieces could be introduced.

Here below is an example from the Tata Steel 2023 tournament, which would be played over 5 rounds, always with a ranking after each round. The problem of final ranking for prizes is not very important for amateur tournaments. For go, it is done by giving the strongest players (say 8 players for a 5 round tournament) the same rating. For example, in this case, the top 8 players would have a rating for the tournament of 2725, which would mean Abdusattorov would be third at the end.

2859 Carlsen Magnus

2811 Ding Liren

2766 Caruana Fabiano

2764 Giri Anish

2760 So Wesley

2740 Rapport Richard

2735 Aronian Levon

2725 Gukesh D

2722 Erigaisi Arjun

2719 Maghsoodloo Parham

2713 Abdusattorov Nodirbek

2696 Keymer Vincent

2684 Praggnanandhaa R

2681 Van Foreest Jorden

1. round

Carlsen-Ding 1/2

Caruana-Giri 1/2

So-Rapport 1/2

Aronian-Gukesh 1/2

Erigaisi-Maghsoodloo 0-1

Abdusattorov-Keymer 1/2

Praggnanandhaa-Van Foreest 1-0

2859 0.5 Carlsen Magnus

2811 0.5 Ding Liren

2769 1.0 Maghsoodloo Parham

2766 0.5 Caruana Fabiano

2764 0.5 Giri Anish

2760 0.5 So Wesley

2740 0.5 Rapport Richard

2735 0.5 Aronian Levon

2734 0.5 Praggnanandhaa R

2725 0.5 Gukesh D

2713 0.5 Abdusattorov Nodirbek

2696 0.5 Keymer Vincent

2672 0.0 Erigaisi Arjun

2631 0.5 Van Foreest Jorden

2. round

Carlsen-Maghsoodloo 1-0

Ding-Caruana 1/2

Giri-So 1/2

Rapport-Aronian 1/2

Praggnanandhaa-Gukesh 0-1

Abdusattorov-Erigaisi 1-0

Keymer-Van Foreest 1/2

2909 1.5 Carlsen Magnus

2811 1.0 Ding Liren

2775 1.5 Gukesh D

2766 1.0 Caruana Fabiano

2764 1.0 Giri Anish

2763 1.5 Abdusattorov Nodirbek

2760 1.0 So Wesley

2740 1.0 Rapport Richard

2735 1.0 Aronian Levon

2719 1.0 Maghsoodloo Parham

2696 1.0 Keymer Vincent

2684 1.0 Praggnanandhaa R

2631 0.5 Van Foreest Jorden

2622 0.0 Erigaisi Arjun

3. round

Carlsen-Gukesh 1/2

Ding-Giri 0-1

Caruana-Abdusattorov 1/2

So-Aronian 1/2

Rapport-Maghsoodloo 1/2

Keymer-Praggnanandhaa 1/2

Van Foreest-Erigaisi 1-0

2909 2.0 Carlsen Magnus

2814 2.0 Giri Anish

2775 2.0 Gukesh D

2766 1.5 Caruana Fabiano

2763 2.0 Abdusattorov Nodirbek

2761 1.0 Ding Liren

2760 1.5 So Wesley

2740 1.5 Rapport Richard

2735 1.5 Aronian Levon

2719 1.5 Maghsoodloo Parham

2696 1.5 Keymer Vincent

2684 1.5 Praggnanandhaa R

2681 1.5 Van Foreest Jorden

2572 0.0 Erigaisi Arjun

4. round

Carlsen-Giri 0-1

Gukesh-Caruana 0-1

Abdusattorov-Ding 1/2

So-Maghsoodloo 1/2

Rapport-Keymer 1/2

Aronian-Van Foreest 1/2

Erigaisi-Praggnanandhaa 1/2

2864 3.0 Giri Anish

2859 2.0 Carlsen Magnus

2816 2.5 Caruana Fabiano

2725 2.0 Gukesh D

2763 2.5 Abdusattorov Nodirbek

2761 1.5 Ding Liren

2760 2.0 So Wesley

2740 2.0 Rapport Richard

2735 2.0 Aronian Levon

2719 2.0 Maghsoodloo Parham

2696 2.0 Keymer Vincent

2684 2.0 Praggnanandhaa R

2681 2.0 Van Foreest Jorden

2572 0.5 Erigaisi Arjun

5. round

Giri-Gukesh 1-0

Carlsen-Caruana 1-0

Abdusattorov-So 1/2

Ding-Rapport 1/2

Aronian-Praggnanandhaa 1/2

Van Foreest-Maghsoodloo 1/2

Erigaisi-Keymer 1/2

2914 4.0 Giri Anish

2909 3.0 Carlsen Magnus

2766 2.5 Caruana Fabiano

2763 3.0 Abdusattorov Nodirbek

2761 2.0 Ding Liren

2760 2.5 So Wesley

2740 2.5 Rapport Richard

2735 2.5 Aronian Levon

2719 2.5 Maghsoodloo Parham

2696 2.5 Keymer Vincent

2684 2.5 Praggnanandhaa R

2681 2.5 Van Foreest Jorden

2675 2.0 Gukesh D

2572 1.0 Erigaisi Arjun

Trout1000

I keep playing swiss turnements of chess.com but get paired with people on averadge of 4 times my elo.Could sombody explain.

Slayerofbishopsandqueens
The only problem with McMahon is sandbaggers