Step 7 - Late Registration

You’ve just made first-round pairings and are about to print them out for posting. At this point a man walks in the door and asks to join the tournament, hoping you’ll let him play in round one. Since you have an odd number of players and since this fellow’s name is Aron Nimzowitsch you agree to let him play.

Two Options for Late Registration

You could either redo pairings from scratch, which would only take a minute, or since this is just a casual tournament you could decide to let Mr. Nimzowitsch play my brother (who had a bye) and leave the other pairings as they are. Since it is important to be comfortable with both these methods, we will do them both now.

First, let’s assume some games have already started and you just want Mr. Nimzowitsch to play the bye player. Go to the Register dialog as before (try the toolbar pencil shortcut from the main window) and enter some player information like you did earlier.

Although you have reason to believe he is a strong player, Mr. Nimzowitsch has no published rating so you leave that field blank. Click “Accept”, then “Exit”. SwissSys asks how many bye points to give to this player. Since you plan on pairing him up, click OK to give him the default of zero points.

Return to the pair chart (using the magnifying glass toolbar button as a shortcut) and activate the “Replacement player list” by clicking on the far right toolbar button. Locate Mr. Nimzovitsch in the list.

Then click and drag his name from the list to the spot on the pair chart next to the bye player, Damian Suits.

When you release the mouse button to drop this name, you should see Nimzowitsch listed as the bye player’s opponent.

To be fair you should have them flip for color. Let’s say Nimzowitsch gets white, so you have to switch them. Go into switch mode by clicking the toolbar button marked with the S.

Click on Nimzowitsch to select him as the first switch player, then click on Damian, his opponent, to complete the switch. Their colors should now be reversed.

This illustrates a rule of thumb for adjusting pairings: The switch button is a handy way to switch any two previously-paired players. Use the “Replacement player list” to fine tune pairings involving any unpaired players.

Method 2: Redo Pairings

If you haven’t posted the pairings and no games have been started, it’s often easier just to redo the pairings. Here’s how:

Select Pairings|Back to previous round. In the dialog that appears, enter 0 as the round you want to go back to.

Alternative: Use Backup Files

A third approach would be to reload a backup file as mentioned above. Finally, redo the pairings by clicking on the shiny toolbar pear icon, re-saving the file if prompted. You are now ready to go on to Step 8 - Working with the Pairings.