So, the WMCQ is this weekend, and the qualifiers will give you byes into the main WMCQ event. I have not really entered byes manually into WER before. I'm not sure whether you can assign byes before pairing the rest of the round automatically, so I'd like to check how it works so I won't screw up on the day.

There are two ways that I'm aware of that you can do byes in WER.

1. Enter all players into the tournament at registration. When you pair, you break and re-pair for the players with byes, such that all players with a bye have them, and their opponents are randomly paired against others whose opponents should have had byes.

2. By not entering in players with byes with the main registration. After Round 1 ends, add the players who have one bye into the event. WER will ask you how you want the player entered, and here you can tell it to enter the player in as if last round was a bye. Repeat at the end of Round 2 for 2-bye players.

At events I've SK'd in the past which have both byes and use WER, I have used #2 exclusively; it makes the SK's job easier, but at the cost of not having players with byes on player meeting seatings. I would recommend dry-running this once yourself on a test tournament, because the option that WER presents to you is slightly confusing here.

Hopefully, WotC will have more specific guidance (or, an update this week to help with this) specifically on this, as I'm guessing you're not the only one that will have to deal with this.

Edited Jordan Baker (Aug. 11, 2014 12:24:25 AM)

The email sent to WMCQ trial organisers outlines how to do method #2 to handle the byes, so that's the way to do it.

Method #2 certainly sounds like how I'll do it. Just need to announce it properly. Thanks!

If you go with method #2, make sure that you manually set the correct number of rounds when you start the event. WER will pick the number of rounds for the number of players enrolled in the event, and the players with byes may push this over the threshold for needing an extra round.

We had this happen at an event in Seattle a couple weeks ago, and it was messy to fix.

Can you explain what the problem was? To the best of my knowledge, it's
been possible to change the amount of rounds since a good amount of updates
ago.

W dniu poniedziałek, 11 sierpnia 2014 Oren Firestein <
forum-11791-e236@apps.magicjudges.org> napisał(a):
> If you go with method #2, make sure that you manually set the correct
number of rounds when you start the event. WER will pick the number of
rounds for the number of players enrolled in the event, and the players
with byes may push this over the threshold for needing an extra round.
>
> We had this happen at an event in Seattle a couple weeks ago, and it was
messy to fix.
>
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At the event Oren references, we had 127 players without byes. Following Method #2, our SK launched the event. However, he accepted the default round count of 7. We also had 5 players with byes giving us a true count of 132 players for 8 rounds which was announced.

We didn't know there was an issue until the last entry in round 7 and the prompt for playoffs. When we tried changing the round count, WER disallowed it because we were in the final round.

The Fix:
Collect the round's pairings and results slips.
Delete the round in WER.
From the second-to-last round, correct the round count.*
Start the new second-to-last round and manually recreate matches.
Input existing results (be careful that the player order on screen may not match on slip).
Start the actual final round.

* The Weird:
What was especially strange is that the system didn't seem to be able to take the round change. Our SK got errors even after deleting the incorrect “final” round when trying to change the rounds count. The box pops up with a field for a number already populated, and clicking the field gives an error and doesn't let you replace the highlighted number with a new number…
Click next to the bad round number so there is a cursor by the number, not highlight over the number. Ex: 7|
Type the correct round number next to the bad one. Ex. 78|
Move the cursor if needed and delete or backspace the bad number. Ex. 7|8, backspace, |8
Save the new number.

Originally posted by Dominik Chlobowski:

Can you explain what the problem was? To the best of my knowledge, it's been possible to change the amount of rounds since a good amount of updates ago.

W dniu poniedziałek, 11 sierpnia 2014 Oren Firestein <
forum-11791-e236@apps.magicjudges.org> napisał(a):
> If you go with method #2, make sure that you manually set the correct number of rounds …
> We had this happen at an event in Seattle a couple weeks ago, and it was messy to fix.

Also note that WER uses a different pairing algorithm in the last round (1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, …) instead of the normal swiss (all players in the X-0 bracket against each other, all players in the X-0-1 bracket against each other, all players in the X-0-2 bracket, all players in the X-1-0 bracket…) pairing rules. If you only fix the number of rounds after pairing the last round, that rounds pairing are different than what players would expect (they won't be wrong, as policy documents don't give info on pairing info, they would just differ from expectations). Checking and manually adjusting the number of rounds in an earlier part of the tournament would be better.

Also note that players with byes change the effective attendance number for determining the number of rounds. Players with 1 round byes should be counted as 2 players and players with 2 byes should be counted as 4.

You could also say that each one round bye adds a player, and each two round bye adds 3 players.

It's probably best not to adjust the number of rounds based on byes artificially increasing attendance until/unless we're given the all clear from Wizards. I've contacted someone from wizards in the UK to ask that very question. Unless I hear otherwise though I'll be sticking with the MTR.

Originally posted by Jess Dunks:

Also note that players with byes change the effective attendance number for determining the number of rounds. Players with 1 round byes should be counted as 2 players and players with 2 byes should be counted as 4.

You could also say that each one round bye adds a player, and each two round bye adds 3 players.

That is not something that the event fact sheet tells us to do. While it is in principle correct, an official clarification should be (and has been, it seems) solicited from Wizards before changing things ourselves.

Thomas, you are correct. I should have stated that I already contacted WotC OP about this for the WMCQ I'm organizing this weekend in Oakland, and Tournament Organizers for other WMCQs should receive these instructions before the event starts.

This isn't my first rodeo.

I got an email back from Wizards OP. They're going to contact the RCs to advise on how to treat the byes. That will them be communicated out from there I suspect.

At my WMCQ this past weekend, I had all the players with byes entered before round 1, so that I could do a seat-all and collect decklists and do opening announcements, and then dropped them before pairing round 2.

To my surprise, when adding them back in after Round 1, WER did not prompt us on whether it wanted to give them losses or byes for the rounds in between. It simply entered no result for the round. The solution was to delete round 2 and manually grant byes to all the players in round 2. Since the 2-bye players would have the same problem if they were readded after round 2, and it would be impossible to go back and give them byes for round 1, we added the two of them after round 1 and manually broke their pairing and gave them byes for round 2.

So it seems that nothing is perfect, but the “drop and re-add” method would be my preferred if WER would allow those players to be given byes.

Sean, with that method would the tiebreakers be calculated correctly? Since the players didn't exist in the event for the rounds they would have been given byes, did their points match correctly?