Hi guys

I know a little about chess but not too much and am helping to run a cub-scouts' chess tournament. I've done it before and they have asked me if I know any computer program that will arrange the pairings.

There are various cub packs of different sizes playing and they try to organise the matches in the following way:

-nobody plays anyone from the same cub pack unless it's for the championship game.
-players in round 2 onwards play people with similar records
-an even distribution of playing black and white

There are roughly 32 players and roughly 5 rounds

Anyone got any ideas for software or even just a convenient way of working this out on the fly by hand since they currently do it by trial and error and it can sometimes take a while or not be optimal.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

The best available (but pricey, for the circumstances) option would be http://swisssys.com/

You're looking for any Swiss System pairing software that includes functionality for designating "teams", and if you find a good free option, do let me know!

do all players play the same number of rounds, ie more like a round-robin/tournament hybrid than an actual tournament?

seems simple enough that i could write a script for it if i had detailed reqs.

Just IMO, but Swiss-Manager is >>>> SwissSys.

But it is also pricey, though light version should be enough to run something like this.

http://swiss-manager.at/

Should have specified that I didn't want to pay for anything. This is a twice a year thing run by volunteers who get the kids to bring along their own chess sets even.

@iver yes everyone needs to play the same number of rounds.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I'll look into them all

Free options for Swiss pairing include www.swips.eu (it's free for 'small' tourneys only, I'm not sure how many players maximum), www.rrweb.org/javafo/JaVaFo.htm (totally freeware), www.vegachess.com (it's just a GUI for the same JaVaFo; the Linux version is totally freeware, the Windows one is free up to 30-player tourneys only), http://oswiss.ryuu.eu/ (free, under the BSD licence). I haven't tested either of them. Don't believe that 'aoslm' spammer who upvotes SWIPS and downvotes other pairing software at all comparison websites.

But the big problem is that your requirement 'no one plays anyone from the same pack' (not even in the second or further rounds) is so non-standard that the usual Swiss tourney software is likely unfit for satisfying it because there's hardly ever such a requirement in serious tournaments.

It's a relatively common structure in scholastic events: exclude pairings (as much as possible) between kids representing the same school (or same team). All the expensive commercial programs should be able to handle it. But as I assumed (and as OP confirmed) this isn't something they would want to spend money on. Unfortunately it is a functionality that's a lot harder to find in a free pairings program...

And YKW, yeah, Swiss-Manager's all right I guess

I just wanted to cite one commercial option and not be overwhelming, but you are probably right that Swiss-Manager is better than SwissSys. I just default to the latter because I'm a dumb American

This criteria might make it very difficult to find adequate software without spending money.

When I ran tournaments (up to 25 players) many years ago, I did the pairings manually (using specialized cards). If you know the rules, it's simple to do.

That's how it's always been done in the past and it works ok but the guy who was in charge died and now someone younger is looking for a way to modernize/simplify things.

I actually think that for such a small event using paper pairing cards will be simpler than trying to jury-rig a pairing software with this funny stipulation about cub packs.

Just colour code the cards by team to keep it simple.

Hi coon74,

I organised around 10 chess tournaments in my life and I tried to use more than 5 tournament management/pairing software. None of them could provide what I was looking for: online, easy to use, fast and reliable.

For example, if you want to use swiss-manager you have to attend training how to use it. Have you tried swips? Did you miss something? Is my post somewhere not true? Did you try the software I downvoted? If there is some post which is not true I will delete it in a second.

If yes please let me know, if not please do not call me a spammer.

Thank you and best regards,

Peter