Article

(2012)

Old Version

2012 Pairing Rules

New Version

2021 Pairing Rules

Note

1

The basic pairing system shall be the Controlled Swiss System Pairings using Match Points for both Pairing and Scoring.

The pairing system will be a Swiss System.

The points about Pairing and Scoring are covered later.

3

If the "C" team is paired and plays round 1 it shall remain in the tournament to the conclusion even though a team or teams dropping out or a new team or teams arriving subsequently results in an odd number of teams still in competition.

2.2          If the "C" team is paired and plays round 1, it shall remain in the tournament to the conclusion even if teams joining or withdrawing during the tournament results in there being an odd number of teams.

No change of substance: English improvement only

4

The teams in the open championship are composed by four players, the teams in the women’s championship are composed by four women players. One reserve player may be nominated per team.

This is not a pairing rule, this is covered in the specific rules for the tournament.

5

Obtain a list of all teams participating and full names of all players of each team, including their board order, one month before the start of the Olympiad.

The list of names and the order of the players can be changed only with the approval of the President of FIDE.

This is not a pairing rule, this is covered in the specific rules for the tournament.

6        

Record the FIDE rating of each team member having such a rating.

The ratings to be used will be contained in the tournament specific rules.

7

Assign an arbitrary rating equal to the FIDE rating floor (minimum FIDE rating) to team members who have no FIDE rating.

The ratings to be used will be contained in the tournament specific rules.

8 & 9

At the start of the championship all the teams are ranked in order of the average of their four highest FIDE-rated players. The team with the highest average rating shall be assigned Pairing Number 1, the second highest, Pairing Number 2, etc.

If two or more teams have the same average rating, they are ranked according to

1. the rating of the fifth player

alphabetically.

3.1          The teams shall be ranked in the following order for the purpose of assigning an initial pairing number:

3.1.1      Descending order of the average rating of its four highest-rated players

3.1.2      The rating of the fifth player

3.1.3      Alphabetically

No change of substance: English improvement only

10

For pairing of all rounds the teams are ranked in the following order:

1. Match points
2. Game points

Ranking number according to article 9.

3.2          Before the start of subsequent rounds, teams will be ranked in the following order:

3.2.1      Descending order of matchpoints

3.2.2      The initial pairing number as per article 3.1

10b has been removed from the sorting order, so now after matchpoints, it goes straight to seeding order. TAP and SPP came to the same conclusion independently that this was an improvement over the existing rule, where scoregroups are re-sorted by Gamepoints.

11

The number of rounds in the Open and the Women`s Olympiad shall be 11.

This is not a pairing rule, this is covered in the specific rules for the tournament.

12

If there is an odd number of teams a bye should be given to one team which arbitrarily would be credited with 1 match point and two game points.

The team given the bye in the first round would be that team ranked last. For example:

If there are 85 teams, then the team ranked as No. 85 would receive the bye in the first round.

The team given the bye in subsequent rounds would be the last ranked team of the group with the lowest total number of match points.

No team shall receive more than one bye.

4.1          If there are an odd number of teams to be paired, then a bye is allocated to the lowest ranked eligible team.

4.2          A team is ineligible to receive the bye if:

4.2.1      It has already received the bye

4.2.2      It won a match by default in a previous round because the opposing team did not arrive

4.2.3      It joined the tournament after the round 1 pairings were published

4.3          The team with the bye will be awarded 1 matchpoint and 2 gamepoints for that round.

The “new” 4.2 relocated from the old Section H.

13

Unfinished games shall be considered as draws for pairing purposes.

5.1          For pairing purposes, if a round needs to be paired before the previous round has ended due to unforeseen circumstances, unfinished games will be considered drawn.

5.2          Pairings published in the circumstances described in article 5.1 will not be changed once the actual result of the game is established.

We were not really sure why this section should ever be needed, but if it is there is now additional procedural clarity.

14

The position of teams that finish with the same number of match points shall be determined by application of the following tie-breaking procedures in sequence, proceeding from (a) to (b) to (c) to the extent required:

a) the sum of Sonneborn-Berger points, which are calculated as follows:

match points of each opponent, excluding the opponent who scored the lowest number of match points, multiplied by the number of game points achieved against this opponent; in case there is more than one team with the lowest number of match points the team with the lowest number of game points is excluded.

b) by the number of the game points scored;

c) by the sum of the match points of all the teams opponents, excluding the lowest one.

For tie-break purposes a bye or an unplayed match - if the opponent team does not appear on time – are counted as a drawn match against a virtual opponent. At the start of the round this virtual opponent has the same number of match points and game points as the team present. Then the result of the unplayed match is added (1 matchpoint and 4 gamepoints in case of an unplayed win, 1 matchpoint and 2 gamepoints in case of a bye, 0 matchpoints and 0 gamepoints in case of an unplayed loss) and finally for each subsequent round 1 matchpoint and 2 gamepoints.

This is not a pairing rule, this is covered in the specific rules for the tournament.

15

A pairing number is assigned to each team as per Section C.

It was felt that the old Section C, included as 3.1, made it sufficiently obvious that this was the purpose of the rule.

16

b) A team having scored without playing will not receive a bye in subsequent rounds. This is the case when a team has received a bye due to an odd number of teams or when one of the opponent teams did not appear on time.

Moved into the “Byes” section

20     

Team pairings are made without regard of colour.

It seemed an unnecessary thing to say given there were a further 9 rules after this one, explaining how colours would be allocated, in a Section entitled “Colour Allocation”.