Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 02:35:08 11/30/99
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On November 30, 1999 at 04:27:47, David Blackman wrote: >On November 30, 1999 at 02:01:16, Dann Corbit wrote: >(some stuff, suggesting you can't do a Swiss tournament without accurate seeding >information.) > >Actually you can do a randomly seeded Swiss ok. That's how the original Swiss >tournaments worked, and i think the British chess federation still does some big >tournaments that way. > >The only thing to keep in mind is that you should have plenty of rounds. For a >accurately seeded Swiss, you need about log (base 2) of the number of players. >Maybe one or two more rounds if you're expecting some hard fought draws among >the top seeds. For a randomly seeded Swiss, you need an extra 2 to 3 rounds on >top of that. With 50 players 9 rounds would probably be enough, but 11 or 13 >might be safer. > >After a few rounds players start to find their level in the tournament. If you >have enough rounds the top players will finish on top. If the second best player >gets drawn against the best in round 1 and loses, that's ok. They don't get sent >home like in tennis. They just turn up for the next few rounds and get easy >games crushing patzers. If they really are the second best, they have a >reasonable chance to win all the rest of their games and finish second. You make an excellent point and I will even concede that the method works. However, the problems that I mention (top players facing each other etc.) still hold. Further, what is the precise number of rounds required for an accurate rating? I think that is very much in doubt, especially if the seeding is really random. Depending upon the "badness" of the seeding, a much greater number of rounds could be required. Now, if you have thousands of competitors, then you can't use a round-robin. There would be just too many contests. So compromise is inevitiable in those cases. In those cases, you generally know something about the seeding. And in the case of computer chess tournaments, there are generally a small number of competitors. I have seen (however) a large and widespread reluctance by chess programmers to play a large number of lengthy games. I am curious also about how many different formats are actually used for chess tournaments. Is single or double elimination ever used [obviously very unfair but makes for a great deal of excitement]? What other alternatives have been tried?
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