[nige1]

sfi, on 2017-January-30, 07:09, said:

Maybe for the winner, and I'm not convinced even for that. However, the big problem is the unequal weightings for each round, and your final standing in a Swiss event depends enormously how lucky you are in your draw for the last round.

I've consistently stated that I would happily skip the first round of a Swiss tournament and sleep in. In exchange, the directors can assign me any number of victory points from 0-20. My claim is that the value of those victory points is essentially nothing and I would gain by the additional rest and lack of stress. Sadly the regs don't allow me to put this into practice - they remove whatever penalties are applied after doing the draw, so I don't gain the benefit of easier opponents.

A Swiss is dreadful for accurately sorting a field.

IMO, in sfi's thought experiment,

• A simulation would prove that your expectation of winning overall would be greater after winning rather than after losing the first-round.
• The ranking order in a Swiss is likely to correlate better with "God's ranking", than in competitions with other scoring-formats.

For a BAM Swiss pairs, I advocate a simple scoring system. e.g. for each 64-board match you score winning boards + 50 (say) if you win. (i.e. winning or losing is more important than the winning-margin).

The popular and prestigious SBU Winter 4s and EBU Spring 4s rely on a format called double elimination -- similar to a knock-out -- but you continue until you are beaten twice. IMO, a Swiss is similar, except that you aren't eliminated.

Incidentally,

CONGRATULATIONS TO PAUL GIPSON,

who won the SBU Winter 4s last weekend, against formidable opposition!