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Swiss tournaments

There are now Swiss tournaments on lichess! We can now discuss how they can be improved.

Some ideas that were mentioned in one of the Swiss tournaments:
- Only let players join the tournament until the start of the third round (they can only skip the first two rounds).
- Players who withdraw from tournaments lose tournament points (and if it's a rated tournament also rating points).
- The tournament has a number of rounds instead of a duration (but an estimate of the duration is given and the tournament could get terminated if no pairing was possible for a certain amount of minutes).

Other ideas:
- Only players who complete at least 75% of their tournaments can join tournaments where the creator of the tournament has chosen that option.
- Instead of once, each player can get paired against the same player twice (preferably once with white and once with black).
- A tie for first place is followed by a tie-break match.
To clarify what the main issue is, maybe: a rule for pairings in Swiss tournaments is that two players cannot play against each other more than once.

If too many players leave the tournament before its intended end, the remaining players are punished because they cannot play anymore. This is in contrast to Arena tournaments (what has always been on lichess), where players get paired against each other many times.

There is another, much more subtle, issue with late-joiners. The tie-breaking score is computed as some combination of the scores of your opponents (to favor players who had to compete against stronger opponents). If people late-join, the players who get paired against them are disadvantaged, as they will automatically face people with lower tournament score regardless of their true ability. Preventing people to join too late removes this unfairness.

All in all the pairing rules for Swiss tournament are rather subtle, and more adapted to tournaments with many players who intend to playing from the beginning to the end.
I like the tournament system on ChessFriends.com. I play only here (more) and there. Please look at these tournaments.

Tournaments will begin according to the schedule.
There is no possibility to join the tournament when he has already begun.
Players who don't start the game or withdraw from tournament lose the game and rating points.
The tournament has a number of rounds instead of a duration.
At the end of the tournament in the profiles are added virtual medals (1st place - Gold, 2nd - Silver, 3rd - Bronze)...
I think Swiss tournament should have a number of rounds instead of a duration.
Kind of off-topic, but I went and tried out chessfriends.com, and, wow, do we have it good on lichess. "Export to PGN requires premium membership", well of course it does.

This being said, I agree 100% that Swiss System tournaments should be round-based, and not time-based. I'm also in favor of penalizing early departures, but am still not sure how exactly.

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