GMTonyKosten wrote on 03/13/11 at 13:51:10:


They make you play?  Why?

You asked earlier whether knockouts are more fair than Swiss tournaments.  Both are fair up until the determination of colors, after which both become unfair.  The color choice is a big lottery in chess, as you know, and there is know easy way around it.  2-game matches replacing single-game rounds would go a long way, but I believe it would still be a significant advantage to have White in the first game of the match.  The color advantage disappears in chess only as the number of match games increases, it seems to me.  But even though two-game matches would eliminate most of it, that would be a difficult system to implement widely.

I believe you could show that the probability of a low-seeded player winning any given event is somewhat greater in a knockout section than in a Swiss section, so in that sense I think the Swiss outcome is likely to be a better test of the players.

Stigma wrote on 03/13/11 at 21:36:57:


See my post above, which I extended while you were answering.  There is no handicap because tiebreaks don't determine anything.

I am not challenging what you said as a statement of fact.  I'm wondering why anyone in whatever country would consider early withdrawal from a Swiss event to be unsporting.  I guess it's true that there's an effect on tiebreaks, but tiebreaks are never pretty no matter how you slice them.  If tiebreaks are a serious problem, the answer is more rounds or separate sections, not a more perfect method of calculating tiebreaks.  There ain't no such animal.  In this country, essentially never are tiebreaks used to determine cash prizes; instead the prizes are split equally among the tied score group.

I never heard that it's considered unsportsmanlike to withdraw from a Swiss if you're results aren't good.  It's quite a common occurrence here in the States.  If perchance you're highly seeded but 0-2 in a 5-round event, you're guaranteed of playing far down in your last three games, and with scant chance of winning anything.  Furthermore the Swiss format very well accomodates withdrawals, so it's no skin off anyone else's nose.

It's in Round Robin events where withdrawals are to be condemned, because it totally screws up the results.  The fairest thing to do is to forfeit all of withdrawing player's games, but this is too bad for those who had to work to beat him.

@TN: Your position seems extreme in several ways, especially if you're talking about amateur chess.  You can sort out a big Swiss field with five games or six games; you can sort out at most seven Round Robin players.  Further unless you play a double round robin, you still have the luck of the color draw.  

If the primary object of an event is to identify the single best player from a fairly small field, there is no doubt that the Round Robin is the best way to do it, and the double RR the best of all.  But it has no clear application to large fields of players.

For 10 years I ran the "Indianola K-5 Round Robins," a scholastic event here in Columbus.  We typically had 70-100 players.  We split them into eight-player sections and played seven rounds at G-30 in a single day.  For the top section this was extremely grueling, but at least it was "fair".  The problem comes at the margins of the sections.  A player who might have won Section 2, and had a very pleasant day if seeded in there, suffers defeat after defeat as the bottom seed in Section 1.  Or some underrated player gets seeded into Section 5 and totally beats up on everyone, when he could have won Section 4 with comparative ease as well.  In general the kids had great fun at our Round Robin events, but these are some of the problems of trying to apply a Round Robin format to a large field of players.

Stigma wrote on 03/13/11 at 19:58:20:


And how do you account for their absence from the board in the scoring? Don't tell me you want the people who withdrew to forfeit their matches, that would be incredibly unfair and ruin the tournament for the others. It would come down to whoever was luckiest enough to "play" against the most people who withdrew.  
  
If they withdraw now I think they do forfeit their games, but also face strict penalties such as hurting their rating and maybe other penalties. If it was just "sportsmanship" they were considering I'm sure they would all be on the first plane after they lost... 

What about a World Cup type system, with round-robin first and then knock-out? Then everyone gets a chance to play at least get a few games, rather than a pure knockout. A knock-out consisting of two-games seems a bit fairer (like home and away, black and white), maybe two five minute blitz games if the score is still even. (and to make people feel better about wasting all those hours playing blitz ). 
   

Maybe there should be more acceptance for simply withdrawing from swiss tournaments that aren't going well. Now it's considered a bit unsportmanlike (unless one is ill or has to attend to something urgent), at least in some countries.

I once played in the ZMD open in Dresden where they used an innovative system, both KO and swiss in one tournament: 

All the games are knockout games until you lose (and rapid games are used to break a tie). As soon as you lose you're suddenly in a swiss tournament where you take all your previous games (except the rapid games) with you. A bit complicated, but it seemed to work well. Combine that with a lenient attitude towards withdrawals, and you have the best of both worlds!?

Edit: One obvious consequence if withdrawals become more widespread: It will get harder to score IM and GM norms in swisses. But is that good news or bad?

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 03/13/11 at 12:50:59:

In France they are mostly 9 days long, so you could be out of the tournament by round 3, say, but still have to turn up and play meaningless games for another 5/6 days.
If you went into work at an office and after 3 days they said they didn't think you work was up to scratch so they weren't going to pay you, would you still keep going in until the end of the week working for nothing?