Tournament Types
When setting up a tournament and confirming the setup for first round pairings, you must tell SwissSys what kind of tournament it will be. The Tournament Setup menu supports the following options:
Available Tournament Types
1. Regular Swiss
Standard Swiss system pairing for individual players.
2. Individual Team Swiss
Swiss tournament where players are assigned to teams but paired individually.
3. Fixed-Roster Team Swiss
Works like a regular Swiss but using team-by-team pairings instead of individual players. When Team A is paired against Team B, the players from Team A are matched head-to-head against the players on Team B.
4. Round Robin
All players play against each other (maximum 20 players). SwissSys will ask you to choose between:
- Crenshaw tables - More commonly used in the United States
- Berger tables - More popular in Europe
Both table types provide equally fair pairing schedules.
5. Ladder
Tournament format where players challenge those ranked above them.
6. Teams-Only Fixed Roster
If you only want to track team results without managing individual players on the teams, this is the tournament type you want. This eliminates the extra work of entering each player and switching between team and player views.
Changing Tournament Types
If you accidentally pair the section using the wrong tournament type and SwissSys will not let you change it, try one of the following:
- Reopen an earlier state of the tournament or a backup file
- Write your players to a club list and read them right back in
- Use Pairings | Backup to a previous round… option with a round of zero
Special Tournament Formats
Double-Round Style
You can declare any tournament in double-round style (labeled “Dbl” in setup), where players play two games each round - one as white and one as black immediately afterwards. This format is sometimes called “double blitz” because it’s commonly used for blitz events, but works with any time control.
Key features of double-round tournaments:
- Each pairing appears twice in the charts (once per color)
- Results can be entered as combined scores (0-2 points) or individually
- Special result characters ($, #, %) indicate combined results
- Bye values are automatically doubled
See Double-Round Tournaments for complete details on setup, result entry, and scoring.