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1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 What is Swiss Perfect?
Swiss Perfect is a computer program that assists a Chess Tournament Director in
administration of chess tournaments that pair opponents in each round by Swiss
or round-robin pairing rules. Swiss Perfect is a professional program, easy to
use, providing all the features necessary to run a chess tournament. It is
fast, accurate, and easy to install. Swiss Perfect’s main features are:
comprehensive functionality of the list of participants including late entries,
withdrawals etc, automatic pairings (Swiss and round-robin), rating
calculations, calculation of standings including tie-breaks, easy entering of
results, import of player details from dBase and text files, in particular from
Rating Lists. The program is highly configurable and can be customised to your
particular needs..
2. INSTALLATION
2.1 The installation program downloaded from SP's
Home Page asks me for a second diskette. Why?
Sometimes Internet browsers do not report errors or timeouts when downloads
fail. You may end up with a partial download which may appear to be working
while in fact it is corrupted. In the case of Swiss Perfect, one of possible
symptoms is the installation program asking for a second diskette. Make
sure that the size of your downloaded file corresponds to the size indicated on
the download page.
3. TOURNAMENT SYSTEMS
3.1 Does Swiss Perfect support "multi-game" rounds?
Yes. Some tournaments use a multi-game format where participants play more than
one game against each other in a round. For example, at some double round-robin
lightning events, players play two games (with swapped colors) on each board in
every round. Swiss Perfect makes it possible to run such tournaments using the
multi-games option. On the Options / Tournament / Admin dialog box change the
multi-games value from 1 to 2, or greater depending on the number of games in
each round. Total scores, tie-breaks and even ratings will be calculated taking
into account the multi-games value..
3.2 What kind of tournaments can I conduct using
Swiss Perfect?
Swiss Perfect supports Swiss and round-robin tournaments.
3.3 Can I run team events?
SP does not support team events as such but the multi-game option provides
functionality which is sufficient for many team tournaments..
4. SWISS PAIRING
4.1 I would like to introduce a random factor in a
round-robin tournament. Can I use the Swiss pairing?
We wouldn't advise against it. Sometimes it is possible to conduct the
entire round-robin tournament using random or Swiss pairing but it is likely
that pairing will block itself before the last round. Look at the following
extreme case:
There are 10 participants. Happened so that in the first 5 rounds players 1-5
played against 6-10, without playing a single game among themselves (as if the
first five players played a scheveningen type match against the second five).
Now it appears that the sixth round cannot be paired! All possible games of the
first five versus second five have been played and any attempt to pair the
"fives" among themselves will leave 2 players unpaired..
4.2 When I call automatic pairing Swiss Perfect
tells me it cannot find a legal pairing. Why?
This is because no pairing exists that does not violate one of the main
principles of Swiss pairing. These principles are that no players meet more
than once and no player will have the same colour three times in a row (with
the exception of the last round)..
5. TIE-BREAKS
5.1 What are Tie-Breaks?
It is common that many players finish a Swiss tournament with the same score.
If it is necessary to rank the players in a strict order then some tie breaking
system must be used. For descriptions of different tie-breaking system see
Tie-Breaks in Chess Tournaments.
5.2 In the Tie-Break Options I can only choose
Berger and the number of wins. Whatever happened to Buchholz and others?
You have selected "round-robin" while setting tournament admin options. In this
case SP does not show tie-breaks that make sense in Swiss tournaments only.
6. RATINGS
6.1 While displaying ratings, Swiss Perfect does not
show expected results for some players. Why?
Swiss Perfect will not show expected results for unrated player as they cannot
be calculated. Swiss Perfect may not show expected results for some rated
players also. In that case, when a player’s rating is below the threshold set
in Options / Tournament / Ratings Swiss Perfect treats the player as unrated..
7. LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
7.1 I have sorted the list of players and it looks
like Swiss Perfect has mixed up the start numbers. What happened?
By default Swiss Perfect assigns start numbers from 1 upwards and after sorting
reassigns them so that the first player on the list has number 1, second 2 and
so on. Some users may wish however to be able to assign arbitrary start numbers
like perhaps A1, A2, B1, B2 etc. Some may want to insert a new player into the
list without affecting the existing numbers, for example inserting a player
with the third best rating half way through the tournament and they want to end
up with numbers like: 1, 2, 2a, 3 ... etc To make such number juggling
possible, Swiss Perfect allows editing of start numbers as well as setting an
option to keep start numbers while sorting (Options / Tournament / Sort, option
keep start no)..
Note: You can assign the same start number to more than one player if
you wish. Start numbers are used for display and printing purposes only. Swiss
Perfect identifies each participant by an internal unique id number unavailable
to the user rather than by the start number.
Note: You can re-sort the list of players at any time. This is one
function of Swiss Perfect that sets it apart from other similar programs.
7.2 Can more than one player have the same start
number
Yes, if you want it for whatever reason. Start numbers are used for display and
printing purposes only. Swiss Perfect identifies each participant by an
internal unique id number unavailable to the user.
7.3 When I try to import players from my database I
see empty list boxes or garbled data?
Usually this means that your field mapping is incorrect. You have to
make sure that what you map correct fields from your dBase or text files to
corresponding SP fields.
Another reason for the problem may be a corruption in the index files that is
undetected by Swiss Perfect. If in doubt simply remove database.sti and
database.spi files from the directory in question, where database
is the name of the database file you are importing from.
8. DISPLAY AND PRINTING
8.1 When I enter data some upper case letters are
converted to lower case and vice versa. Why?
To make it easier for the user, Swiss Perfect can perform automatic case
conversions in selected fields of the player data dialog box. By configuring
Options / Tournament / Data Editor appropriately you can activate such a
conversion.
8.2 I would like the half "1/2" instead of ".5"
symbol to mark a draw. How do I do it?
Swiss Perfect allows you to configure the draw symbol. Select Options / Display
/ Symbols to access a dialog which allows you to select a symbol that you want
to represent a draw (remember to check the Use draw symbol check box). One of
the selectable symbols should be the "1/2" character however on your system it
may look like a different character. This is because it is not included in some
Windows fonts. Still, you can probably find a font for your views (Options /
Font) that would display the "1/2" character.
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