Answers.Body: <blockquote>
  <p>I had recently participated in a tournament and I think there is some manual pairing hidden inside which causes my friend to play against me.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>You are wrong. To a trained arbiter the pairings are very obviously correct. With 128 players, all but 4 of them unrated (and those 4 ratings are not FIDE ratings, they are likely estimated ratings), nobody in their right mind is going to try pairing by hand and nobody in the organization of such a large event cares anything about two insignificant players out of 128. Running a tournament with 128 players is an enormous amount of work and fiddling with the pairings is only going to make it worse.</p>
  <p>Let me explain the 5th round pairings.</p>
  <p><a href="https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&amp;art=1&amp;rd=4" rel="noreferrer">Here</a> is the position after 4 rounds. You will see that 7 players are on 4/4 and 2 players are on 3.5/4 and the players on 3.5/4 actually <a href="https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&amp;art=2&amp;rd=3" rel="noreferrer">played each other in round 3</a>. Your friend has the lowest starting rank of the 7 with a starting rank of 124. Of the two players on 3.5 you have the highest start rank of 38.</p>
  <p>If you check the scoring of each of these players including colour, which you can do by clicking on their name in the list, you will see that 4 of the 7 players on 4/4 have the colour sequence WBWB and so are due white in round 5. Three have the colour sequence BWBW and so should have black in round 4. The 3 players expecting black are paired against the top 3 players expecting white according to start rank number. The odd one out is you friend who is expecting to play white.</p>
  <p>So, your friend is down floated to the 3.5 score group. If we look at the colour sequences for the two players there we see that <a href="https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&amp;art=9&amp;fed=MAS&amp;snr=38" rel="noreferrer">you</a> are expecting black and the <a href="https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&amp;art=9&amp;fed=MAS&amp;snr=126" rel="noreferrer">other player</a> is expecting white. You and the other player on 3.5 played each other the round before. You cannot be allowed to play again. Your friend is expecting white and you are expecting black so the two of you are paired against each other and the other player is down floated to the 3/4 group. If the colour history for you and the other player on 3.5 were reversed then the other player would have been paired against your friend and you would have been down floated.</p>
  <p>The pairings are exactly as would be expected.</p>
  <p>If you want to check the pairings yourself then you will need a copy of Swiss Manager, the pairing program that was used. You can order a copy <a href="https://swiss-manager.at/order.aspx" rel="noreferrer">here</a>. You will need the full version costing 150 euros because there are more than 50 players in the tournament. You will also need the help of somebody familiar with the program because it is not very intuitive.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2023-07-31T14:17:18.010Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2023-07-31T14:17:18.010Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian Towers
Body: <p>I had recently participated in a tournament and I think there is some manual pairing hidden inside which causes my friend to play against me. Since my friend had a higher score, I had to give up and let my friend win for the team. This is the link of the tournament and I am no.10. Is there any code that can check manual pairing and can someone help me to check? Thanks for helping.</p>
  <p>Link: <a href="https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&amp;art=1&amp;rd=7" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&amp;art=1&amp;rd=7</a></p>
  <p>PS This is my first time using this web. If I had done something wrong, I would appreciate any guidance or feedback to improve my experience and interactions here. Please feel free to let me know how I can use this platform more effectively or if there are any specific guidelines I should follow. Thank you for your support!</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-07-31T11:41:53.267Z
Comments.Text: (1)You gave a link to round 1, but it sounds like your concern is with some later round. (2)Letting your friend win sounds very inappropriate. People are relaxed about arranged *draws* in many situations, but deliberately *losing* is very different and would generally be regarded as bad abuse. (3)Organisers do intervene to adjust pairings manually for all sorts of reasons. Ironically, a frequent case is precisely to avoid pairing people from the same club, team, country, etc, in various situations. (Or I think they may pair them *early* in a tournament to avoid this kind of problem later?)
Comments.UserDisplayName: James Martin
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-07-31T11:44:02.677Z
Comments.Text: See Brian Towers' answer here for various relevant comments including avoiding pairing locals together: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/29787/how-can-i-know-if-the-chief-arbiter-has-cheated-in-the-pairings-and-possibly-r?rq=1
Comments.UserDisplayName: James Martin
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2023-07-31T12:58:50.360Z
Comments.Text: but the tournament's tiebreak make me that if I draw twice. I won't had a high tiebreak, and my friend is stronger than me in a lot of tournaments and we want to have a quick rest. Btw, the round I am concern is round 5 board 4. He pair me against my friend which is in the same school. The organiser knows we are quite strong cause we won a lot of other tournements before. Will they manipulate the pairing to make my friend and I had a disadvantage?
Comments.UserDisplayName: 314
Tags: <software><cheating><swiss-pairing>
Title: Manual pairings in tournaments
ThreadText: # Manual pairings in tournaments
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2023-07-31)
  
  I had recently participated in a tournament and I think there is some manual pairing hidden inside which causes my friend to play against me. Since my friend had a higher score, I had to give up and let my friend win for the team. This is the link of the tournament and I am no.10. Is there any code that can check manual pairing and can someone help me to check? Thanks for helping.
  
  Link: <https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=7>
  
  PS This is my first time using this web. If I had done something wrong, I would appreciate any guidance or feedback to improve my experience and interactions here. Please feel free to let me know how I can use this platform more effectively or if there are any specific guidelines I should follow. Thank you for your support!
  
  **Tags:** software, cheating, swiss-pairing
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: (1)You gave a link to round 1, but it sounds like your concern is with some later round. (2)Letting your friend win sounds very inappropriate. People are relaxed about arranged *draws* in many situations, but deliberately *losing* is very different and would generally be regarded as bad abuse. (3)Organisers do intervene to adjust pairings manually for all sorts of reasons. Ironically, a frequent case is precisely to avoid pairing people from the same club, team, country, etc, in various situations. (Or I think they may pair them *early* in a tournament to avoid this kind of problem later?)  
  > **username_1**: See username_2 username_2' answer here for various relevant comments including avoiding pairing locals together: https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/29787/how-can-i-know-if-the-chief-arbiter-has-cheated-in-the-pairings-and-possibly-r?rq=1  
  > **username_0**: but the tournament's tiebreak make me that if I draw twice. I won't had a high tiebreak, and my friend is stronger than me in a lot of tournaments and we want to have a quick rest. Btw, the round I am concern is round 5 board 4. He pair me against my friend which is in the same school. The organiser knows we are quite strong cause we won a lot of other tournements before. Will they manipulate the pairing to make my friend and I had a disadvantage?  
  
  ---
  
  ## 1 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2023-07-31. Score: 5 | Accepted answer
  
  > I had recently participated in a tournament and I think there is some manual pairing hidden inside which causes my friend to play against me.
  
  You are wrong. To a trained arbiter the pairings are very obviously correct. With 128 players, all but 4 of them unrated (and those 4 ratings are not FIDE ratings, they are likely estimated ratings), nobody in their right mind is going to try pairing by hand and nobody in the organization of such a large event cares anything about two insignificant players out of 128. Running a tournament with 128 players is an enormous amount of work and fiddling with the pairings is only going to make it worse.
  
  Let me explain the 5th round pairings.
  
  [Here](https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&art=1&rd=4) is the position after 4 rounds. You will see that 7 players are on 4/4 and 2 players are on 3.5/4 and the players on 3.5/4 actually [played each other in round 3](https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&art=2&rd=3). Your friend has the lowest starting rank of the 7 with a starting rank of 124. Of the two players on 3.5 you have the highest start rank of 38.
  
  If you check the scoring of each of these players including colour, which you can do by clicking on their name in the list, you will see that 4 of the 7 players on 4/4 have the colour sequence WBWB and so are due white in round 5. Three have the colour sequence BWBW and so should have black in round 4. The 3 players expecting black are paired against the top 3 players expecting white according to start rank number. The odd one out is you friend who is expecting to play white.
  
  So, your friend is down floated to the 3.5 score group. If we look at the colour sequences for the two players there we see that [you](https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&art=9&fed=MAS&snr=38) are expecting black and the [other player](https://chess-results.com/tnr795955.aspx?lan=1&art=9&fed=MAS&snr=126) is expecting white. You and the other player on 3.5 played each other the round before. You cannot be allowed to play again. Your friend is expecting white and you are expecting black so the two of you are paired against each other and the other player is down floated to the 3/4 group. If the colour history for you and the other player on 3.5 were reversed then the other player would have been paired against your friend and you would have been down floated.
  
  The pairings are exactly as would be expected.
  
  If you want to check the pairings yourself then you will need a copy of Swiss Manager, the pairing program that was used. You can order a copy [here](https://swiss-manager.at/order.aspx). You will need the full version costing 150 euros because there are more than 50 players in the tournament. You will also need the help of somebody familiar with the program because it is not very intuitive.
  
  
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