Enrichment · Passion Projects
Enter the players and choose a Swiss, a round robin or a knockout bracket. The page pairs every round, takes the results with a tap, keeps the standings with tie-breaks, and prints the pairing sheet for the wall.
The page opens on a made-up club Swiss in its last round. Enter the two results still to come and watch the standings settle, then start your own.
Loading the tournament. If nothing appears, turn on JavaScript.
Worked example. A made-up club Swiss: eight players, round 3 of 3 with two games still to finish. Enter a result to see the standings move. Your own tournament starts blank.
Enrichment · Passion ProjectsFree
Round robin, Swiss and knockout, and how ties are split.
In a round robin everyone plays everyone. It is the fairest format and the longest: a field of 8 needs 7 rounds. The pairings come from the Berger tables that the International Chess Federation (FIDE) publishes, which also spread the White and Black games evenly. In a Swiss nobody is knocked out. Each round, players with the same score are paired, so a large field sorts itself in a few rounds. A knockout is the bracket most people picture: lose a match and you are out. Seeding keeps the top two apart until the final, and when the field is not 2, 4, 8, 16 or 32 the top seeds get a bye in round 1.
Players are ranked by score, then by seed. Within each score group the top half plays the bottom half, and no one meets the same opponent twice. With an odd number, the lowest-ranked player who has not had a bye sits out and scores a point (or half a point, if you set it that way). The player who has had White less often gets White; if they are level, colors alternate from the last round. This follows FIDE’s basic rules for Swiss tournaments but is a simpler method than the full pairing systems rated events use: it does not re-pair to avoid a third game in a row with one color, it flags that for you instead. For a rated event, use pairing software your federation approves.
Buchholz is the sum of your opponents’ scores: it rewards a tougher road. Sonneborn-Berger adds the scores of the opponents you beat and half the scores of those you drew with. A Swiss is ordered by points, then Buchholz, then Sonneborn-Berger, then wins; a round robin by points, then Sonneborn-Berger, then wins. On this page a bye adds nothing to either tie-break. Federations treat byes and unplayed games in more detailed ways, so state your tie-break order before round 1 and use the federation’s own rules when a title or a rating depends on it.
Before each release the round-robin pairings are compared with the published Berger tables, and the pairing, scoring and bracket rules are run against the same rules written a second time on 4,250 simulated rounds, tables and brackets. A Swiss pairing that repeats an opponent is accepted only when a search of every other pairing shows there was no way to avoid it.
The example club, its players and their ratings are made up. This page pairs casual and club events; it is not rating software and is not affiliated with FIDE or any national federation. For a rated tournament, follow your federation’s rules and use the pairing software it approves. Support: team@caveatacademic.com.