When running a regular tournament with WER a player who got a bye in the course of the tournament (due to an odd number of players) apparently also can get a bye in the last round. I was under the impression that this is not intended, but it seems to happen more often in the last months. However, that may be just my personal perception.

I would like to have some clarification on whether it is intended or not that a player can get two byes in the same tournament.

Thanks!

Edited Jasper König (May 3, 2014 09:14:12 AM)

It is not indended. WER tries not to do it, but it is not the top priority
while pairing. More important than prevent a player from getting second bye
is ensuring, that the top players play against people with roughly same
amount of match points.

Therefore, it can happen, that players receives 2 byes at tournament. It
usually happens at tournament with unstandardly high number of rounds.


2014-05-03 16:14 GMT+02:00 Jasper König <

If the tournament is a standard Swiss tournament, a player should never have more than one bye in Swiss rounds. What should be done in such a circumstance is an exercise left to the HJ at the event it occurs within.

WER's pairing algorithm, from my experiences with it, has shown itself to be one which can “give up” more easily than it probably should, which means that “invalid” pairings (such as two players playing each other twice in an event, or a player receiving a second bye) seem to occur on rare occasion.

Originally posted by Jordan Baker:

If the tournament is a standard Swiss tournament, a player should never have more than one bye in Swiss rounds. What should be done in such a circumstance is an exercise left to the HJ at the event it occurs within.

I've HJed a GPT where a player got his second Bye during the last round of the tournament. He was still at 3 points at that round and there was another player with 0 points, so I tried to make a manual pairing and sort things out before starting the final round.
I discovered that the no-points player had lost with all the low-classified participants during the previous rounds, including the 2-byes player. The only reasonable outcome was to build the pairings the same way the WER was offering – unless I forced two players to rematch in the same tournament, which seemed even worse to me.

If you catch it in time, that is before you post pairings, you can redo the pairings and it usually catches it the second time around. At least in my experience. Ive noticed this happening more often as of late.

Originally posted by David Delgado:

If you catch it in time, that is before you post pairings, you can redo the pairings and it usually catches it the second time around. At least in my experience. Ive noticed this happening more often as of late.

We tried this, and it didn't work. The problem was reproduced when repairing and it was also reproduced when re-entering the whole tournament in a non-sanctioned event (just for curiosity, didn't report it). Luckily, the player with 0 points (who did not get a bye) decided to drop, so the number was even in the end so the other player wouldn't end up with a second bye.

It usually happens at our non-sanctioned highlander tournament series, even when not using an unstandardly high number of rounds, but I guess that is just a coincidence.