FIDE-APPROVED ACCELERATED SYSTEMS

Approved by the Council on 28/10/2025

Applied from 1st February, 2026

0.      Preface

In Swiss tournaments with a wide range of (mostly reliable) playing strengths, the results of the first round(s) are usually quite predictable. In the first round, only a few percent of the games, in an individual competition, or matches, in a team competition, have a result other than "win to the stronger part". The same may happen again in round two. It can be shown that, in title tournaments, this can prevent players from achieving norms.

An accelerated pairing is a variation of Swiss pairings in which the first rounds are modified in such a way as to overcome the aforementioned weaknesses of the Swiss system, without compromising the reliability of the final rankings.

It is not appropriate to design an entirely new pairing system for acceleration, but rather design a system that works together with existing FIDE-defined pairing systems. This result is normally achieved by rearranging score brackets in some way that does not only depend on the points that the participants have scored. For instance, one of the possible methods is to add so-called "virtual points" to the score of some higher rated participants (who are supposedly stronger) and henceforth build the score brackets based on the total score (real score + virtual points).

The following chapters will describe the methods that were statistically proven to accomplish the aforementioned goals. The Baku Acceleration Method is presented first, because it was the first that, through statistical analysis, was proven to be good and stable (and is also easy to explain).

Other accelerated methods may be added, as long as they can be proven, through statistical analysis, to get better results than already described methods or, if their effectiveness is comparable, to be simpler.

Unless explicitly specified otherwise, each described acceleration method is applicable to any Swiss Pairing System.

1.      Baku Acceleration Method

1.1     Premise

The Baku Acceleration Method is applicable in any tournament where the standings are based on scoring point systems where the points for a win equal the points for two draws and the points for a loss are zero.

1.2     Initial Groups Division

Before the first round, the list of participants to be paired (properly sorted) shall be split in two groups, GA and GB. The first group (GA) shall contain the first half of the participants, rounded up to the nearest even number. The second group (GB) shall contain all the remaining participants.

Note:     For instance, if there are 161 participants in the tournament, the nearest even number that comprises the first half of the participants (i.e. 80.5) is 82. The formula 2 * Q (2 times Q), where Q is the number of participants divided by 4 and rounded upwards, may be helpful in computing such number - that, besides being the number of GA participants, is also the tournament pairing number ("TPN") of the last GA participant.

1.3     Late Entries

1.3.1      If there are entries after the first round, those participants shall be accommodated in the pairing list according to Article 2 of the General Handling Rules for Swiss Tournaments (Initial Order and Late Entries).

1.3.2      The last GA-participant shall be the same participant as in the previous round.

Note 1:  In such circumstances, the TPN of the last GA-participant may be different by the one set accordingly to Article 1.2.

Note 2:  After the first round, GA may contain an odd number of participants.

1.4     Virtual Points

1.4.1      The "accelerated rounds" are the ones in the first half (rounded up) of the tournament.

1.4.2      Before pairing the first half (rounded up) of the accelerated rounds, all the participants in GA are assigned a number of points (called virtual points) equal to the number of points awarded for a win.

1.4.3      Such virtual points are halved before pairing the remaining accelerated rounds.

Note:     Consequently, no virtual points are ever given to participants in GB, or to any participant after the last accelerated round has been played.

1. Examples:        
1. In a nine-round individual tournament that uses the standard scoring point system, the accelerated rounds are five. The players in GA are assigned one virtual point in the first three rounds, and half virtual point in the next two rounds.
2. In an 11-round team competition with matchpoints [*] as the primary score (2 MP for win, 1 MP for draw), the teams in GA are assigned two virtual matchpoints in the first three rounds and one virtual matchpoint in the next three rounds.

[*]  Note that if gamepoints were the primary score, the Baku Acceleration could not be used

1.5     Pairing Score

The pairing score of a participant (i.e. the value used to define the scoregroups and internally sort them - and, also, used to sort the boards, see Article 3.6 of General Handling Rules for Swiss Tournaments) is given by the sum of their standings points and the virtual points assigned to them.