Answers.Body: <p>There is a standard method which is allowed for the lower level tournaments you are suggesting. Basically FIDE recognises three levels of tournament:</p>
  <p>L1. Official FIDE tournaments (World Championship, Candidates, qualifiers, Olympiad, etc.)</p>
  <p>L2. Norm tournaments - tournaments where title norms can be achieved</p>
  <p>L3. Others - the kind that you and I play in.</p>
  <p>What you suggest is simply available in L3 tournaments. Pairings where the two players should not be drawn against each other can be defined in the pairing program and the program will obey those &quot;forbidden pairings&quot; where possible.</p>
  <p>Typically this is used when a club runs such a tournament and tries to exclude pairings between club members.</p>
  <p>This is the key paragraph from the <a href="https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/C0402" rel="nofollow noreferrer">General handling rules for Swiss Tournaments</a>:</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>The Swiss Pairing Systems defined by FIDE and not deprecated (see C.04.4) pair the players in an objective, impartial and reproducible way.
  In any tournament where such systems are used, different arbiters, or different endorsed software programs, must be able to arrive at identical pairings.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>The list of FIDE endorsed pairing programs is given <a href="https://handbook.fide.com/files/handbook/C04Annex3_FEP22.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> and includes Swiss Manager which implements the <em>Forbidden Pairing</em> functionality.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-05-01T21:32:33.533Z
Answers.Text: Do all the aproved software surport "forbitten pairing", otherwise how does it keep to "*different* endorsed software programs"?
Answers.UserDisplayName: Ian Ringrose
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Answers.Text: @IanRingrose There are another 9 approved pairing programs most of which cost money. I'm afraid I'm not going to be forking out money I don't need to answer your question. Swiss Manager, the one I've bought, is the de facto number 1 and is used for all major tournaments and almost certainly most tournaments, full stop.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian Towers
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian Towers
Body: <p>Clearly it is more fun to play someone you have not recently played who have about the same rating as you do.  Does FIDE allow a tournament format to maximise probability of this?</p>
  <p>I expect this could be done by using software to allocated the players to a set of small Swiss tournaments that run on the same day, but is there a better way?</p>
  
Tags: <fide><tournament><swiss-pairing><pairing>
Title: Is there an approved FIDE way of running a tournament that maximises players being paired with people they haven't recently played?
ThreadText: # Is there an approved FIDE way of running a tournament that maximises players being paired with people they haven't recently played?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2024-05-01)
  
  Clearly it is more fun to play someone you have not recently played who have about the same rating as you do. Does FIDE allow a tournament format to maximise probability of this?
  
  I expect this could be done by using software to allocated the players to a set of small Swiss tournaments that run on the same day, but is there a better way?
  
  **Tags:** fide, tournament, swiss-pairing, pairing
  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2024-05-01. Score: 3 | Accepted answer
  
  There is a standard method which is allowed for the lower level tournaments you are suggesting. Basically FIDE recognises three levels of tournament:
  
  L1. Official FIDE tournaments (World Championship, Candidates, qualifiers, Olympiad, etc.)
  
  L2. Norm tournaments - tournaments where title norms can be achieved
  
  L3. Others - the kind that you and I play in.
  
  What you suggest is simply available in L3 tournaments. Pairings where the two players should not be drawn against each other can be defined in the pairing program and the program will obey those "forbidden pairings" where possible.
  
  Typically this is used when a club runs such a tournament and tries to exclude pairings between club members.
  
  This is the key paragraph from the [General handling rules for Swiss Tournaments](https://handbook.fide.com/chapter/C0402):
  
  > The Swiss Pairing Systems defined by FIDE and not deprecated (see C.04.4) pair the players in an objective, impartial and reproducible way.
  > In any tournament where such systems are used, different arbiters, or different endorsed software programs, must be able to arrive at identical pairings.
  
  The list of FIDE endorsed pairing programs is given [here](https://handbook.fide.com/files/handbook/C04Annex3_FEP22.pdf) and includes Swiss Manager which implements the *Forbidden Pairing* functionality.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_0**: Do all the aproved software surport "forbitten pairing", otherwise how does it keep to "*different* endorsed software programs"?  
  > **username_1**: @IanRingrose There are another 9 approved pairing programs most of which cost money. I'm afraid I'm not going to be forking out money I don't need to answer your question. Swiss Manager, the one I've bought, is the de facto number 1 and is used for all major tournaments and almost certainly most tournaments, full stop.  
  
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