Swiss Format Explained

The Swiss system is used in thousands of strategy tournaments through out the world every year and it is simply the best system, short of a round robin, that mankind has ever developed. In short...any other system is inferior. Modify it in any way and you have wrecked it! It involves a very simple formula designed to place the players in the proper finishing order based on their play in the tournament. This is a very important aspect as it is the reason why people play in tournaments in the first place. They want to know were they stand.1st,5th, 10th, 30th...whatever. When the smoke clears gentlemen, we are left with the "truth". Mess with the formula and you lose this important factor and in essence betray the players. The formula is simple and we don't need a program to it! lets say we have 80 players listed in order of their starting rank. We take the top half of the list and drop them down to play the bottom half of the list. The number 1 ranked player is paired against the 41st ranked player. The number 2 player will play the 42 player and so on ending with the 40th player paired against the 80th ranked player. Please note that this is not the best feasting on the worst like Sherms  system. OK this is our 1st round pairings. For round 2 we again make lists. This time we list players in accordance with their first round score and their start ranking. To do this we must simplify our scoring system: 1 point for a win or bye, 1/2 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss. (I know this opens a can of worms but this is the simplest system and does not interfere  with the players and how they choose to conduct their game) Now we take our lists and divide each in half and pair them in the same manor. Lets say we have 38 winners(1pt) and 38 losers(0pts) and 4 drawers(1/2pt).In the case of the winners list the highest ranked winner plays the 20 ranked winner, the 2nd ranked winner plays the 21st ranked winner and so on. We do the same for the losers and those who have drawn their 1st round matches. For round 3 we follow the same formula, again making separate lists for all the possible score combinations:2-0, 1 1/2-1/2, 1-1, 1/2- 1 1/2, 0-2,.Players are again placed in their start rank order on each list and each list is again split in half with the top half playing the bottom half. We do this for all the rounds in the Tourny. Now I need to further address the point system especially what is meant buy the term "draw". In this I don't mean what the game considers a draw but rather both players agreeing that they want to split the match point. By complicating what should be a very simple point system we are intruding on the players right to play the game as they seem fit. I for one will not carry out an assault on a retreating opponent merely because a major victory scores more then a minor victory. I know this issue needs debate and a vote but I would like to point out that a simple pairing system that all the players can follow and understand needs a simple scoring system. Sincerely Yours Greg(IB)