Merge - Utilities Menu
This tool lets you combine two (or more) sections into one merged file, making it easy to use SwissSys with a merged tournament format.
Note: The Merge utility works with sections from the same tournament. If you need to merge sections that span separate tournaments, you must first use Section | Import to add these outside sections to your current tournament.
How to merge sections
In the dialog that appears, select two or more sections from your tournament and move them into the right-hand box with the right arrow key.
Click Merge when you are ready to merge all the files in your list.
Result of merging
The merged file will have all the players from both old files in a new, resorted file that will then be added to your tournament as a separate section.
This utility merges files at any round, but make sure all results have been reported in files before merging them.
Tracking re-entered players
When you merge files SwissSys will want to keep track of any players who withdrew from one tournament schedule in order to re-enter another after a disappointing start.
SwissSys is smart enough to recognize that this is what is going on, and it will mark the re-entered player’s “original pair number” field accordingly.
This prevents them from being paired against any of the players they met in the original section before withdrawing.
You can check this value by going to the Tinker dialog for any re-entered player.
Be sure to use the old pair number as shown in the current wall chart, not on the old wall chart listings, since the merge will have resorted all the players.
Using the automated player renaming system (described below) makes identifying the original player a simple matter.
Player naming system
If SwissSys encounters two players with the same name during the merge, it will append asterisks to the end of the active (non-withdrawn) player’s name — one asterisk means one re-entry, two asterisks means two re-entries, and so on.
This makes the more recently-active player “identities” the ones with the most asterisks, and the original player as the one with no asterisks at all.
They should also be sorted chronologically in most cases. This means you can just enter the player names as usual when re-entering them in a different schedule.
Note for mixed FIDE and non-FIDE events
If some of your sections do not qualify for FIDE ratings but others do, click on the “Exclude sections” button of this dialog to tell SwissSys which sections in the merged file should not be included in the final FIDE rating report.
Boxes will appear next to the sections, and you can check any section that should be excluded.
Any games played in the pre-merge flagged section will be excluded from the Krause rating report for FIDE, whereas games from the other sections will be listed in the FIDE rating report that SwissSys generates.
Important note for fixed-roster merges
There is one limitation to keep in mind if you merge fixed-roster tournaments. The two files you merge cannot have any team names in common.
Adjourned games
Lastly, note that if the files you are merging have adjourned games, these games will not be saved in the merged file. You will have to update it using the Edit features of the main view as results come in.