Step 15 - Running Team Tournaments

There are three kinds of team tournaments which SwissSys supports: Individual team, Fixed-roster team, and Teams-only fixed-roster style.

These are among the different “event types” you can choose from when declaring your sections in the Tournament Setup dialog.

In many ways you can handle them in SwissSys just as you do a regular Swiss type section.

Among other things, you register the players on the team just as you do players for a regular Swiss, the only difference being the need to include a code for their team along with their other registration information.

Individual team tournaments in particular require very little explanation, because they are exactly like regular Swiss events with these exceptions:

Players on the same team don’t play against each other. (An exception here is if “Plus 2 pairings” are allowed. See the topic Rules for Pairing for more on this.)
The team code registration field becomes important. Use a short (up to 25 characters) code as a mnemonic for the player’s team when entering them.

You can expand this team code to a full team name using the Team | Expanded team names option.

SwissSys keeps these expansions on file and loads them for you every time you start it up.

Team results are calculated based on the scores of the highest-ranking players from each team.

The number of players on a team that qualify for having their scores added in to the team total varies from tournament to tournament, and is set in SwissSys on the Team menu at any time before requesting team standings.

Furthermore, some reports and charts which are not relevant to a regular Swiss are useful for Individual team events.

These options (such as a pairing list by team) are to be found in the Team menu.

So much for Individual team tournaments.

Fixed-roster team events

Fixed-roster team events are a very different kind of tournament, and SwissSys treats them accordingly.

Roster size and scoring

Only a small number of players is allowed on each team — four is the most common, with one or two alternates.
SwissSys automatically chooses the correct number of players when making pairings, but the TD must ensure a team does not have too many alternates participating.
Each team plays as a unit against the members of another team.
The match point winner of a round is the team with the most individual wins.
Game points (the margin of victory) are frequently used as a tiebreaker, and can also drive pairings (see Pair teams by game points).

Toggling between team and individual views

Both team statistics and individual statistics matter in fixed-roster events, so you need to toggle between them at any time.

Switch views from the main window with View | Team based views (shortcut: Ctrl-T). This option is only available when running a fixed-roster event.

Team-based vs. individual actions

Before taking any action on a player, consider whether it applies to that single player or to the whole team. If it applies to the whole team, switch to team-based mode first.

Switching pairings — If you try to change individual match-ups in the pair chart, SwissSys will prompt you to switch to team-based mode instead.
Byes — Giving an individual a bye only removes that player from the round; the team still gets paired. To give the whole team a bye, switch to team-based mode and assign the bye from the Tinker dialog or the Pairings Setup dialog.

Teams-only fixed-roster events

Teams-only fixed-roster events are a simplified version for cases where you don’t need to track individual results.

Enter team names and ratings (instead of individual players) at registration time.
The tournament runs like an individual event, except SwissSys prompts for the margin of victory (game points) when you enter results.
Accumulated game points can serve as either a tiebreaker or a replacement for match points, just as in a regular fixed-roster tournament.

Hands-on practice

Load Fixed Roster Demo.sjson from the SampleEvents folder (Documents\SwissSys\SwissSys 11\SampleEvents\) to try a fixed-roster event (four players per team) after two rounds.

After a little experimentation — particularly toggling between team-based and normal views — you should get a feel for running a successful fixed-roster event. Try the various team menu options, especially Team | Team roster/Standings, which shows a combined team and individual standings chart.

For more information on fixed-roster events, see Fixed-roster tournaments. Or better still, run your own simulated tournament — for most of us, that’s the quickest path to confidence.

Final step: Step 16 - Setting up a database for player registration