SwissSys Tutorial, Version 9

Created with an evaluation copy of HelpSmith
SwissSys Tutorial,
version 9
Copyright (c) 2015 by Thad Suits

Table of Contents
SwissSys Tutorial.............................................................................................................................................. 2
Step 1 - Setting up the tournament.......................................................................................................... 3
Step 2 - Advance registration .................................................................................................................... 6
Step 3 - On-site registration and file handling........................................................................................ 9
Step 4 - Inspect the Wall Chart ................................................................................................................. 10
Step 5 - Some Options ............................................................................................................................... 11
Step 6 - Make Pairings ................................................................................................................................ 14
Step 7 - Late Registration........................................................................................................................... 16
Step 8 - Working with the Pairings........................................................................................................... 18
Step 9 - Withdrawing and Tinkering ........................................................................................................ 20
Step 10 - Standings..................................................................................................................................... 23
Step 11 - Correcting results ....................................................................................................................... 26
Step 12 - Prizes............................................................................................................................................ 28
Step 13 - Wrapping up ............................................................................................................................... 30
Step 14 - Multi-Section Tournaments....................................................................................................... 31
Step 15 - Running Team Tournaments ................................................................................................... 33
Step 16 - Setting up a database for player registration......................................................................... 35
1
SwissSys Tutorial
If you are new to SwissSys (or to directing chess tournaments) this tutorial will get you acquainted with
the basics, It steps you through some small but typical Swiss system tournaments, explaining things
along the way, By following along with the program running you will quickly become comfortable using
SwissSys.
You can print out this tutorial by loading the file SwissSys Tutorial.pdf into any public document
format reader, such as Adobe Acrobat and printing it from there. This .pdf file (37 pages long) is
located in your SwissSys folder (typically C:\Program files\SwissSys 9.0). The printable version is
provided for those quaint, loveable people who still like to hold on to what they are reading.
Tutorial Conventions:
Actions you should do to follow along with the tutorial are listed in dark blue, Side comments that may
or may not apply to you are in small type, As usual in Windows help files, links to other topics are
underlined in green, Grabbing and clicking on them takes you to a new topic, Menu selections are
listed in order separated by the "|" mark, For instance "Players|Register" means select the "Register"
menu item from the "Players" menu.
If at any time the help screen disappears, click on the toolbar icon for it at the bottom of the screen,
You may find that resizing the help window makes it easier to follow along, Try making a short, wide
one at the bottom of the screen for starters.
If this is your first visit to the tutorial, read the topic Getting Started in the help file.
Now you are ready to start your first practice tournament. Click on Step 1 to begin, or skip ahead to
wherever you left off last time.
Step 1 - Setting up the Tournament

Step 2 - Advance registration
Step 3 - On-site registration and file handling
Step 4 - Inspect the Wall Chart
Step 5 - Some Options
Step 6 - Make Pairings
Step 7 - Late Registration
Step 8 - Working with the Pairings
Step 9 - Withdrawing and Tinkering
Step 10 - Standings
Step 11 - Correcting Results
Step 12 - Prizes
Step 13 - Wrapping up
Step 14 - Multi-Section Tournaments
Step 15 - Running Team Tournaments
Step 16 - Setting up a database for player registration
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Step 1 - Setting up the tournament
Here is the scene: It is midnight, the night before your first big tournament -- The Patzer Open -- and
you are at home setting up the computer in the hopes of getting as much work done ahead of time as
possible. You have SwissSys and a box of donuts nearby to help you in this task. First, if it isn't loaded
already, get SwissSys up and running by clicking on the icon in your programs menu or desktop.
If you already have SwissSys running, bring up the Task Launcher by selecting Setup|Task Launcher.
When you run SwissSys, the first thing that pops up is the Task Launcher, which guides you through
the most common start-up operations.
Among the tasks you can choose from here are setting up a new tournament or opening an old one.
Click on the New button, which takes you to the Tournament Setup dialog.
The Tournament Setup dialog is made up of two main parts, a top half devoted to tournament
information and a bottom half that lists the sections. Let's start at the top, with the box marked
"tournament folder". This is the folder on your computer where you will store all the files associated
with this tournament.
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Normally you would be setting up a tournament from scratch and would choose or create an empty
folder somewhere convenient, so let's do that. Click on the browse button and browse to your
SwissSys "Events" folder. (Typical path: [My Documents\SwissSys\Events). Click on the yellow button
at the upper right to create a new, empty sub-folder. When prompted, key in a name ("Patzer Open"
will do) and hit Enter to create the folder. Then click OK to set this folder as your tournament folder.
Next is the "tournament name" box. Type in the name of your tournament (Patzer Open).The other
tournament fields are optional, and we can skip them for now.
You can store your tournaments anywhere you like, but in the interest of good organization you are
better off using both a working folder for your current tournament (such as we did with the Patzer
Open in the "Events" folder), and an archive folder to store files you want to save after a tournament is
done.
Next you need to enter details on each section your tournament contains. For this first tutorial
exercise we are only going to work with one section. Later on you can try some more complicated
examples. Click on the button marked "Add a section" to bring up the section setup dialog.
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In the box marked "section name" enter the name of your one and only section (let's call it "Patzers").
The boxes below are where you will enter specifics about this section that SwissSys needs to know,
For now, don't worry about all the details, since the most common (default) values are provided for
you, and those are the ones we are mostly going to use here. There are a couple of things we might
as well add, though. In the box marked "section title" type "International Patzer Open", and in the time
controls box, type "Game in 67 minutes." These will appear in printouts.
Finish your setup of this section and return to the main tournament setup dialog by clicking on the
"OK" button. This adds the section you just created to your list of sections in the box. If you want to
inspect or change the setup for this section you can click on the button marked "View/edit section".
You now have a tournament of one section ready for advance player registration. Click on the Done
button to go to the main SwissSys screen, then help yourself to another donut.
Next step: Step 2 - Advance Registration
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Step 2 - Advance registration
It is now 12:30 a.m., and you want to key in all the advance entries you have for your tournament
before going to bed. Go to the Registration dialog by pulling down the "Players" menu and selecting
"Register". (As with most of the important commands there are shortcuts you can also use. In this
case, you could have pressed the F2 key or clicked on the pencil toolbar button.)
The registration window now presents you with lots of different areas, and you can fill in as many as
you want or need. These are the registration fields, For now we can ignore most of them,
concentrating on the most commonly-used ones. Once you see how these fields work it will be easy
for you to fill in the others later on.
Unlike a lot of other software, SwissSys does not insist on your filling in all the blanks. In most cases, if
you don't care about something, neither does SwissSys.
If the player name field does not have a blinking cursor in it, click there now with the mouse to make it
the active field, Going down your imaginary advance registration list, type in the first player's name, in
last-name-first format. Let's say the first player is Paul Morphy who, having heard such wonderful
things about you, has decided to come back from the dead just to play in your tournament. So type
"Morphy, Paul", When you hit tab you are taken to the next field -- the I.D. number. Type in any
number for the former champ. When a player has no I.D. number you can just type something like
"new" or leave it blank. Hit tab twice to go to the rating field and type in a rating (try 2800 for this
tournament). If at any time you make a mistake you6can back up using Shift-Tab (or the arrow keys) to
fix it.
number for the former champ. When a player has no I.D. number you can just type something like
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"new" or leave it blank. Hit tab with
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in a rating (try 2800 for this
tournament). If at any time you make a mistake you can back up using Shift-Tab (or the arrow keys) to
fix it.
For many tournaments, these are the only three fields that are essential. (In fact, only the name field
is strictly required.) If you leave the rating blank the player is assumed to be unrated, and all other
fields will be initially blank. Later on you can read in the documentation about how to use the other
fields. For now, go ahead and register Paul Morphy by clicking on the "Accept" button or by hitting
Cntl-Enter. (This means holding down the Control key and hitting Enter at the same time.) When you
do, his name appears in the player roster next to the registration window. As you enter more players,
they will be kept sorted alphabetically and ranked by their rating.
In a real tournament you could continue in this way registering all your players who had the good
sense to register in advance. Then when you were all done you'd click the "Exit" button to return to the
Main Menu. You may be wondering, though, if there is a way to save on typing. There is, by using one
of several shortcuts SwissSys supports. Let's begin with the "Club List" importation shortcut.
A Club List is a list of players with registration details. If you have players that frequently play in your
tournaments you can keep all their registration information in a club list for easy retrieval, as
demonstrated below with the practice club list called "Club.Txt". This file is in your SwissSys folder.
Note: For most rated tournaments, you will probably end up using a database that somebody gives
you rather than a club list as the source of your player information on file, but the principles are the
same.
To access a club list, click on the "club list view" button in the lower right part of the registration dialog.
This should load the default club list, "club.txt" into the box below.
You may later want to change the default club to one of your own making. That is easy to do, but let's
not worry about it now.
In the player name field, type part of my name, "Suits, T" (without a period), As you type, you zero in
on my name in the club list window. Click on the "Search club list" button or just click on my name in
the list. Many of the player fields should be filled in automatically. The only information that may require
some updating is the rating field.
Click the "Accept Button" again to register me.
Do another club list import by typing in part of my brother's name, "Suits, D". We can safely assume
he's lost some rating points recently, so edit his rating. Click on the rating field (or just tab to it), and
change it to 401, then click "Accept".
At this point, note that if you try to register Paul Morphy again you can't without altering the name; no
identical names are allowed.
Go ahead and register the following six players in this same way (to make a total of nine registered).
Note that for most of them typing in the the first few letters of the last name gives SwissSys enough to
go on when importing.
Carlsen, Magnus
Kasparov, Garry
Kramnik, Vladimir
Anand, Viswanathan
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Seirawan, Yasser
Skovron, James
By now it's 1:35 a.m. and you are out of donuts, so click the registration dialog's "Exit" button to return
to the main menu. The "autosave" feature is turned on by default, so SwissSys should save your data
for you automatically. Tell it to save the players if you are prompted.
If you are like me and you get tired of begin prompted to save data, you can change the autosave
setting and/or the setting that requires you to give SwissSys a confirmation before overwriting and
updating a file after you make changes. These settings are in the Environment options dialog
(Options|Environment|Files and Databases)..
You are now done with advance registration. In the morning, you will go through the same registration
process as described above for all the last-minute registrations.
Next step: Step 3 - On-site Registration and File Handling
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Step 3 - On-site registration and file handling
It is now 8:15 a.m. on the day of the Patzer Open, and you have just gotten your computer up and
running at the tournament site. Before you can accept any on-site registrations you will have to
reopen your tournament. You can do this either from the Task Launcher as before, or from the File
menu itself. Exit and reenter the program (or just click on Setup| Task Launcher) to simulate a
startup at the tournament site. In the list of available files on the Task Launcher you should see your
new tournament, "Patzer Open.tmt". Double click on it to reload the tournament and its one section.
A little terminology at this stage may be helpful. SwissSys works with two main types of files:
Tournament files and section files. Tournament files, which keep track of the big picture items like
section names and locations, get the extension ".tmt" to mark them as such. Section files, on the
other hand, are the ones that hold the actual player data and results, and there is one current section
file for each section in your tournament. These files use as their names the section name you
requested followed by a coded extension, You'll see how that works in a bit, For now just remember
that every time you make major changes to any section, that section needs to be saved.
Fortunately, SwissSys helps you with this task by saving data automatically at key moments, such as
when you switch to another section or make pairings. This feature should keep all but the most
determined computer klutzes from losing data.
SwissSys lets you open section files independently, bypassing the tournament files that go with them,
but usually it is easier to manage sections by loading the corresponding tournament files.
If you followed the instructions in Step 1 you should have nine players registered when you get back
to the main menu. (The count of active players is listed in the status panel that runs along the bottom
of the screen.) You should also see these players in the main view,
At this point you could continue accepting registrations. For our purposes, let's leave the tournament
with nine players. (You may have trouble meeting your $50,000 guaranteed prize fund, but you can
find more backers later.)
You have now gotten familiar with file basics in SwissSys and are ready to go on to Step 4 - Inspect
the Wall Chart
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Step 4 - Inspect the Wall Chart
Before the tournament starts it's a good idea to post a wall chart so that players can find their names
and check for typos, Before doing that you should inspect them yourself carefully.
The main view should still be showing all your players arranged by ranking (pair number), Use the
scrollbar or the page up and page down keys to view any players that don't fit on the screen, Let's
assume everything looks right to you; you'll see how to fix typos and other errors in a minute.
Now get set for your first printout. Make sure your printer is on and has paper. (And that it's plugged
in. I blush to confess I actually called for technical help once under similar circumstances.) Click on the
"Print" button. If all goes well, you should have a hardcopy to post for player inspection,
There's nothing fancy yet. Let's try a couple of adjustments using the Format options dialog, as
described in the next step.
Click here to go to Step 5 - Some Options
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Step 5 - Some Options
You have a lot of flexibility when it comes to how the charts look. Most of these are controlled from the
"Format options" menu. Go there now by selecting Options| Formatting (the shortcut is the
checkbox toolbar button.)
Options that affect the system setup rather than the appearance and format of data are mostly kept
in the Environment Options dialog.
Let's say at first you wanted to list the players in the wall chart alphabetically, either to make it easier
for them to search for typos, or to encourage them to learn the alphabet better, You could set that
here by changing the "primary sort" option to "alphabetical", Do that now, and click OK to return to the
main view.
A second change you can easily make is to alter the size of the lettering in the printouts. As it is now,
the wall chart is plainly visible to you, but if you posted it that way players would have to squint to find
their names.
Let's make the chart more visible now. Reopen the Format Options dialog as before and then click on
its "Print and other options" page. Down at the bottom you will find settings marked "print
magnification" -- one for normal use and a special one for the pair chart. Try setting the normal print
magnification to 1.3. This means that printed fonts11
for most charts will be about one-third-again as
Let's make the chart more visible now. Reopen the Format Options dialog as before and then click on
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settings marked "print
magnification" -- one for normal use and a special one for the pair chart. Try setting the normal print
magnification to 1.3. This means that printed fonts for most charts will be about one-third-again as
large as they appear on the screen.
The default fonts, as adjusted for printing with the print magnification feature, make for quite
professional-looking charts. Nevertheless, some people like a little more spice, so for them there is the
Fonts dialog.
Select the Options| Fonts menu or click on the cursive "F" on the toolbar. The master "Fonts dialog"
that appears shows you all the fonts which you can adjust for all the tables. You can change the
appearance of any category of information listed in the grid -- giving you a high degree of control over
the final appearance. To make a change, just find the row in the grid devoted to the wall chart and
click on the name field.
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You can also select from the list of ready-to-go fonts packaged for you in the "Quick fonts" box at the
top of the page. Try that now. Select "Roman_Medium_Maroon", then click OK to return to the main
view of the wall chart and admire the changes. Do another printout if you like, to see the improvement
in visibility. When done, return the listing to its more usual pair number sorting by going to the format
options dialog as you did before
The Format Options dialog is chock full of useful features that control what information is shown and
how it is displayed. Experiment with all these options to find the chart appearance that suits you best.
Click here to go on to Step 6 - Make Pairings
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Step 6 - Make Pairings
It's now 9:53 a.m. and players, in anticipation of the start of the tournament, are beginning to circle
you like hyenas, Time now to make the first round pairings, Pull down the Pairings menu and select
"Pair Next Round" (shortcuts are the shiny pear on the toolbar or hitting the F5 key).
This brings up first the section setup again for confirmation prior to first round pairings. We are going
to be doing a pretty straightforward Swiss type section, so you can accept these defaults, but you
won't always do that. For instance, if you were running a team tournament, or wanted to start seating
for this section with a different board number, you could do that here. If you are unsure of what any of
these settings do, just let the mouse hover over the box in question and up will pop a helpful hint in a
bubble.
Click OK to confirm these settings.
Since most players resent traveling a long way just to find themselves paired up against their
neighbors, SwissSys may ask you if you want to avoid pairing players from the same club against each
other in round 1. (The club fields were filled in for you during registration when you loaded players from
the club list.) Just say "No" or "No to all" here.
The next dialog you see is the "Pairings Setup" dialog, from which you have the option of forcing any
pairings, byes, and board numbers you want to do manually before letting SwissSys take over, For
now just accept whatever pairings SwissSys decides upon by clicking the "OK to Pair" button.
Assuming autosave is still turned on, SwissSys immediately saves this section to a new file, The name
it gives is "Patzers.S1A" -- the extension standing for "round one, results not reported yet." Unless
such a file already exists on your drive the autosave feature will not trouble you with a confirmation of
this action.
Now is where the file naming conventions SwissSys uses come into play. With this new round paired
up you will two separate section files saved for this one section: The current one, "Patzers.S1A" and
a slightly older backup, "Patzers.S0C". Usually you don't need to worry about the exact filenames
since SwissSys loads the most up-to-date sections for your tournament automatically. But if you ever
decide to reload a backup section file, look for the one with the extension matching the round you are
interested in.
Inspect the Pairings
The pairings you made appear automatically when they are done. (The will also appear to the right of
the main view, but that simpler listing is just for inspection and does not allow editing or entering
results.) Take a look at the pairings now. They should look reasonable.
14
With nine players you should have a bye player at the bottom (the lowest rated player you have --
presumably my brother) and the others should be paired according to Swiss system rules. If you have
any doubts, check the wall chart again to make sure the ratings correspond to the ones you intended.
Click OK to return to the main menu.
Click here to go on to Step 7 - Late Registration
15
Step 7 - Late Registration
You've just made first-round pairings and are about to print them out for posting, At this point a man
walks in the door and asks to join the tournament, hoping you'll let him play in round one, Since you
have an odd number of players and since this fellow's name is Aron Nimzowitsch you agree to let him
play.
There are two options here, You could either redo pairings from scratch, which would only take a
minute, or you could just decide to let Mr. Nimzowitsch play my brother (who had a bye) and leave the
other pairings as they are, Since it is important to be comfortable with both these methods, we will do
them both now.
First, let's assume some games have already started and you just want Mr. Nimzowitsch to play the
bye player. Go to the "Register" dialog as before (try the toolbar pencil shortcut from the main window)
and enter some player information like you did earlier.
Although you have reason to believe he is a strong player, Mr. Nimzowitsch has no published rating so
you leave that field blank, Click "Accept", then "Exit". SwissSys asks how many bye points to give to
this player. Since you plan on pairing him up, click OK to give him the default of zero points.
Return to the pair chart (using the magnifying glass toolbar button as a shortcut) and activate the
"Replacement player list" by clicking on the far right toolbar button. Locate Mr. Nimzovitsch in the list.
Then click and drag his name from the list to the spot on the pair chart next to the bye player, Damian
Suits. When you release the mouse button to drop this name, you should see Nimzowitsch listed as
the bye player's opponent.
To be fair you should have them flip for color. Let's say Nimzowitsch gets white, so you have to switch
them. Go into switch mode by clicking the toolbar button marked with the S.
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Click on Nimzowitsch to select him as the first switch player, then click on Damian, his opponent, to
complete the switch. Their colors should now be reversed.
This illustrates a rule of thumb for adjusting pairings: The switch button is a handy way to switch
any two previously-paired players. Use the "Replacement player list" to fine tune pairings
involving any unpaired players.
Now for method #2. If you haven't posted the pairings and no games have been started, it's often
easier just to redo the pairings, Here's how:
Use File| Open (or use the "open" toolbar button, or hit F4) in order to retrieve a prior state of this
section, You want to load the backup tournament file you had just prior to making pairings, namely,
"Patzers.S0C" (the extension means 0 rounds paired.) This opens a standard Windows Open File
dialog, Here you can either type in the name "Patzers.S0C" or you can click on that filename, You can
also just use the File| Reopen menu pick to open recently-used files. Choose your retrieval method
and reload the file "Patzers.S0C."
Now you are ready to register your new player, Aron Nimzowitsch, as described above. Of course, you
just registered him when practicing the first re-pairing method above, but if you were using this second
method you wouldn't have done that yet, Click Accept to register him again and click Exit to return to
the main menu.
Note that now when autosave asks you to save the file it's OK to overwrite the old "Patzers.S1A", but
be careful whenever you do this that you aren't overwriting something important.
Finally, redo the pairings by clicking on the shiny toolbar pear, re-saving the file if prompted,
You are now ready to go on to Step 8 - Working with the Pairings
17
Step 8 - Working with the Pairings
By now it's 9:58, so after re-inspecting the pairings, get ready to print them out for everyone to see. To
make them more visible you can change either the pair chart "print magnification" or the font size as
you did before. Click on the checkbox "Format" button at the top of the chart. Go again to the "Print
and other options" page and change the value of the pair chart print magnification to 1.8 -- almost
double normal size -- for easy viewing.
Since high magnifications usually works best with the printer set to landscape printing mode, we may
want to do that as well. It is simple enough to do that manually by clicking the File| Print setup menu
option and changing the page orientation to "landscape". But unless we want all our subsequent
charts to be setup that way, it's easier just to let SwissSys decide prompt us on a case-by-case basis
whenever it thinks the switch might be a good idea.
Before printing the pairings, inspect them with the Chart| Print preview command. If your columns
are too wide to fit on the page, SwissSys may ignore your magnification setting or reduce all the
column sizes proportionately to give a printout that looks reasonable.
The printouts may look OK, but follow along with these next adjustments in any case. Sometimes, with
the big printing fonts or wide columns, there isn't room for everything as you have it set up. It's easy to
make things fit better. First click the cancel buttons to return to the pair chart. Next reduce the width
of the name columns (there was a lot of wasted space there) by moving the mouse cursor to the top
right border of white's name column until you see the cursor change. Then click the mouse and drag
the column border to the left a little to reduce its size. This automatically resizes both name columns.
Try a print preview again. If you reduced the column sizes enough you should now see the entire table
on one neat page with a suitable magnification level. If not, experiment a little with the columns until
you get a page that looks good to you. You can click the print icon in the preview screen to get a
printout, When they are done, pull them out and post them with your usual fanfare. It's 10:00 and you
are starting right on time.
Enter the Results
As results come in you can enter them one at a time, but experience proves that by entering them all
at once when the round is over you can avoid silly mistakes. Mark on your printed pairings sheet some
fictitious results: I won, of course, and my brother lost, as usual. Paul Morphy went home complaining
about the lighting, so he lost by forfeit and is not expected to return, Other than that, enter whatever
results you like. Take down the pairings sheet and return to the computer to enter the results there.
If you are not already at the pair chart dialog, go there by clicking on the magnifying glass toolbar
button. Go down the list now, entering results one match-up at a time. There are a couple of ways to
enter results here, but it's usually easiest to keep the cursor on the left side of the chart, typing the
result code for that left-side player, either a "W", "D", or "L". This gives both players the numeric score
that goes with their results.
Use the pointer toolbar button (the arrow on the far left) to disable entry of results. Other buttons (and
their corresponding keys) are available here too, Among these are "S" for "switch players", "A" for
"adjourn" and "U" for "update an adjourned game", but you can practice with those later.
To mark Morphy's game as a forfeit, first click the forfeit loss toolbar button (marked with the "F"), then
click on his game. (Or select his game with the arrow keys and hit the "F" key.). Continue entering the
results if you haven't already finished. Click OK when done or hit Esc. Before you leave this screen the
program asks if you want to withdraw all players with forfeit losses, since a forfeit loss usually means a
no-show. Answer yes, whereupon SwissSys will save 18 this file automatically as "Patzers.S1C" -- the C
click on his game. (Or select his game with the arrow keys and hit the "F" key.). Continue entering the
results if you haven't alreadyCreated
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or hit Esc. Before you leave this screen the
program asks if you want to withdraw all players with forfeit losses, since a forfeit loss usually means a
no-show. Answer yes, whereupon SwissSys will save this file automatically as "Patzers.S1C" -- the C
meaning results are completed from that round.
Round one is over, You are ready for Step 9 - Withdrawing and Tinkering
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Step 9 - Withdrawing and Tinkering
Withdraw a Player
Disgusted with his quick defeat, my opponent in round one informs you that he is withdrawing from
the tournament and quitting chess forever. (If you entered all the players from Step 1, my opponent
should be Kramnik). This is a good use for the "player roster."
From the main menu, select View| Show roster (the shortcut is the roster button on the far right of
the toolbar.)
In the list of players that pops up, find Kramnik.

Click and drag this name up to the Withdraw toolbar button. (It's the one marked with the "W/D".)
Confirm the withdrawal and resave the file when prompted.
You could also accomplish this by going to the Players|Withdraw menu and moving Kramnik to the
withdrawn players list, or by selecting a player either in the player roster or in the wall chart itself, and
then right-clicking the mouse to bring up a pop-up menu that includes the option to withdraw the
selected player.
If a player has no games played when you do the withdrawal, then SwissSys will give you the option of
deleting that player entirely from the roster.
Fix a Player Name and Give an Advance Bye
You are about to set pairings for the next round when two players come up to you -- my brother and I.
My brother informs you that he has legally changed his first name to "Roach" and wants the charts to
be corrected. I request a half-point bye in round three so I can go make a few phone calls to
guarantee peace in our time, You can handle both20 requests with the Tinker dialog. Go there now by
selecting Players| Tinker, or clicking on the wrench toolbar shortcut.
You are about to set pairings for the next round when two players come up to you -- my brother and I.
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My brother informs you that he with an
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name to "Roach" and wants the charts to
be corrected. I request a half-point bye in round three so I can go make a few phone calls to
guarantee peace in our time, You can handle both requests with the Tinker dialog. Go there now by
selecting Players| Tinker, or clicking on the wrench toolbar shortcut.
As with the withdrawal operation above you can use the player drag and drop shortcut with the Tinker
toolbar button or use a right mouse click. Double clicking a player (either in the roster or in the main
view chart) is yet another shortcut for this common command.
Find my brother in the Tinker roster and click him. You can now tinker with all the player information
that you typed in at registration.
Make the name field the active one by clicking in it or tabbing to it. Move the cursor to his first name
with the arrow keys, then type "Roach" in place of "Damian". Although this is all he asked you to do,
you decide to take another twenty points off his rating for good measure, (Highly irregular, of course,
but if you knew him like I do you wouldn't hesitate.) When you are done, click the "Confirm" button
after you've made sure the changes are correct.
You can change most registration data directly in the main view as well. That topic will be covered in
Step 11, when you will correct some mistaken results.
Now it's time to give me that half-point bye (assuming you think guaranteeing peace in our time is a
valid excuse for missing a game.) Get my information21 in the revise player data window by double
clicking on my name, either in the main view or in the roster. Find the "Bye rnds" field with its two
Now it's time to give me that Created with
half-point byean evaluation
(assuming copy
you ofguaranteeing
think HelpSmith peace in our time is a
valid excuse for missing a game.) Get my information in the revise player data window by double
clicking on my name, either in the main view or in the roster. Find the "Bye rnds" field with its two
halves - the top for half-point byes and the bottom for zero-point byes. Here simply click on the upper
"3" to give me an advance bye in the round I requested -- the third. Click on OK to return to the main
menu, saving the new state of the tournament with these changes when the autosave prompts you.
Click here to go on to Step10 - Standings
22
Step 10 - Standings
After just one round the standings won't be that meaningful, but let's look at them anyway. The
multi-view standings chart appears in the middle of the main view, and that is a great way to get a
quick, simple view of the standings at any time, but by changing the main view itself from wall chart
mode to standings mode, you have more options. Select View| Standings (or click on the artist's
toolbar rendition of an Olympic medallist's podium.)
The standings appear, but something is missing; there are no tiebreaks.
Click the "Format options" button (the one with the checkbox) and find the "Show tiebreaks"
checkbox. Check it and click OK.
23
Still no tiebreaks showing. This is for the very good reason that you have not set any yet. Do that now
by clicking on the Setup| Tiebreaks menu. You are then presented with a list of the most
commonly-used tiebreak systems, as explained in the USCF and FIDE handbooks and in this help file
under the topic Tiebreak systems.
Click on "average opposition" in the left-hand box, then click on the right-pointing arrow to move it to
your selected tiebreaks list. Do the same with "Kashdan". You can always change this tiebreak
preference later.
24
You could choose up to six tiebreaks, but don't bother with that now. Two or three is all that is
necessary in most cases, so click OK and view the standings again.
Printing the standings works just like printing the wall chart, Change some fonts if you want to, then
preview the page, or just click the print button.
Continue with the Tournament
Do a couple more rounds now, following the steps outlined above: Make pairings, enter results, etc. In
making pairings this time, try some of the pairing options you are allowed to force, such as forced
byes, pairings or board numbers, If you try something impossible you'll get an error message. In round
three observe that I am given the half-point bye I requested earlier.
With a small tournament like this it won't take long for you to exhaust the legal pairing possibilities, at
which point SwissSys returns a message that it could no longer obey Swiss system rules. For
purposes of illustration, call the tournament quits after three rounds.
The tournament is over. You are ready to go on to Step 11 - Correcting Results
25
Step 11 - Correcting results
Rare is it that a tournament does not have some mistaken results posted or entered. Fixing mistake is
easy in SwissSys thanks to the ability to edit results in the main view in two different ways.
Switch to the standings view if you are not in standings mode already. (Click on the Olympic podium
button to do this.) Let's say that in round one, my brother, Roach, actually defeated his opponent, but
that you had just naturally assumed he lost without checking the posted results. He doesn't figure out
anything is wrong until round three, at which point he brings this miracle to your attention.
Before making changes to scores, it's convenient to switch the standings sort to "pair number" so that
players are not switched out of your view as they are resorted by standings. You could do that as
usual from the Format Options dialog, but let's use the shortcut method: Do a right click of the mouse
on the screen to bring up a popup menu. Included in your choices here are some common options.
Click on "pair number sort" to change your primary standings sort.
There are two ways to change results. We will try them both here and you can decide
which works best for you in any given situation.
Met hod 1: Edi t t he main view
To make the change to the result using this method, first go into "Edit mode" by checking the
Edit| Edit mode menu pick (or click on the toolbar button with the key on it to get out of "locked"
mode and into "edit" mode with a pencil tip showing.)
Click on the result for my brother in round one, then hit Enter or click it again. Using the arrow keys,
move the cursor to the "L" and change it, however reluctantly, to a "W". Hit Enter again to finish
editing this result. The prompt that appears reminds you that the result for this player's opponent will
be automatically updated (which you can bypass in special cases if you want.) Click OK and observe
that the result of my brother and of his chagrined opponent are both updated, as are their scores.
A convenient shortcut is available from a pop-up menu when you do a right mouse click on a result. At
the top of this popup menu you can choose to give the player a win, draw, or loss.
Met hod 2: Bri nging up t he Res ult s Edit or

26
In many cases this approach is easier and more foolproof, even if typing directly into the chart might
seem more natural. With the Edit mode restored to "locked" (click on the toolbar button with the
picture of the key again), double click on the result for Damian that you want to change. This brings up
the results editor that shows round-by-round results, colors, and opponents. Change the minus sign
(-) that appears in the result column for round 1 to a plus sign (+), signifying a win. The result for
Damian's -- I mean Roach's -- opponent will then be updated to a loss. click OK to return to the main
view.
Both methods work for other kinds of information too, not just results. (Exceptions are editing results
for rounds not yet played, which is not permitted, and giving advance byes, which is done from the
Tinker dialog, as you saw in Step 9.) Using method #1, just enter your revised data in the standard
format for the chart you are editing. If you are in doubt about what that standard format is, just match
the format SwissSys is showing for other players in the same chart, or read the help topic Editing the
main view for specifics. Using method #2, click on the player's name rather than a result to bring up
the Tinker dialog and make your changes there.
When done with your editing, it's a safe practice to validate your changes by clicking on
Edit| Validate. If you have made some mistakes that lead to inconsistent results showing, this
feature will catch them. Try that now, and make sure SwissSys reports "no errors found."
Remember that you can edit the main view when it is in either wall chart or standings mode. If you
needed to change colors as well as results, you would either have to edit the wall chart view or turn on
the option to display colors in the standings chart, but otherwise you can choose whichever seems
most convenient to you.
Next Step: Step 12 - Prizes
27
Step 12 - Prizes
With the tournament done you need to find out who gets your big prizes, so click on "Reports|Prizes"
to go to the prizes dialog. This is a three-part dialog in which you describe for SwissSys what prizes
you are offering. The first page is where you enter prizes for place (1st place, 2nd place, etc.). These
could be either cash awards or non-divisible awards like trophies. The second page lets you list class
prizes -- prizes that only players in a given rating range are eligible for. Page three shows a couple of
other special awards that are sometimes given.
Let's say that your guaranteed prize fund of $50,000 is allocated as follows:
1st place - 40000
2nd place - 9999
3rd place - 1
First set the number of place prizes to be awarded to 3 (adjust this value using the box at the top.)
Then, in the grid marked "cash prizes" enter the above numbers.
You also have promised to give the first place finisher an original Picasso, so in the grid marked
"Trophies and other non-divisible prizes", type "Picasso" in the first-place spot. Leave the others blank.
For this tournament there are no class or special prizes, so you can skip the other pages of this
dialog. Click the "View winners" button to see who got what. Look this over carefully before you write
the checks.
Note: If you award prizes based on rating (class or "under-" prizes) or on age or grade, you can do that from the "class
prizes" page of the prize dialog. In the case of cash prizes, you also have the option of entering the total cash award for
place or class prizes in the boxes provided and entering percentages of the total instead of the actual cash awards.
SwissSys will do the calculation for you.
You may want to award prizes based on some specific category such as sex, club/federation or any of
the other registration fields. As with many things in SwissSys there is more than one way to do this.
One way is just to scan down the standings list, making note of the top player in each category,
Alternatively, you could set another listings option to make things stand out a little more clearly, like
this: You can sort the standings and wall chart in any of several ways, including by sex or
club/federation. Any players with the same age would then be broken down by your secondary sort
(which is standings by default). This lets you do a quick survey of the winners in each category. You
can read more about this option (and hundreds of others available to you) at your leisure in the help
file.
28
(which is standings by default). This lets you do a quick survey of the winners in each category. You
Created
can read more about this option (andwith an evaluation
hundreds of otherscopy of HelpSmith
available to you) at your leisure in the help
file.
Next Step: Step 13 - Wrapping up
29
Step 13 - Wrapping up
The tournament is over. It's time for some final touches.
Get Other Reports
Use this tournament to try out some of the many other dialog and report features, including ratings
and upset results. Among others, practice with these:
File| Club list| Write to Club List

This is where you can create your own list of players to choose from when registering later
tournaments, Club lists are convenient (especially for smaller clubs) since they are so easy to setup.
For larger clubs, and for accessing the USCF database of players, you will want to take the trouble to
learn how to work with databases. You can create a club list from the current roster of players by
selecting File|Club|Write to club. This will store all the registration information on these players without
the tournament results.
Reports| Ratings
This shows performance ratings and unofficial new ratings, They will be less accurate if you have many
unrated players.
Prepare Ratings for the USCF / CFC / FIDE

If your tournament was a rated one, you will want to do one thing as soon after it's over as possible:
Submit a ratings report on diskette to your parent organization. Do this with the ratings report menu
choices on the Tools. Click here for the helpfile instructions for filling out this dialog for the case of the
USCF reports.
Clean Up
Now that the tournament's done, you have a lot of files on your disk drive, most of which are backups
and are no longer needed. You can safely delete all but your very last tournament file. (The section
files are the ones whose extension is "S" followed by the round code.) Do this with the File| Clean up
menu selection. Click on your tournament file (Patzer Open.tmt) and SwissSys will automatically erase
all but the most up-to-date files for your records. Answering "All" when prompted deletes all the files
except the one it will skip for your archives, which SwissSys never erases. Of course, you could also
delete your backup files just as you would delete any group of files from Windows Explorer. Just be
sure you have correctly identified and saved the final section file(s) for your records.
It is 2:27 a.m. You can now exit SwissSys, pack up the computer, and go home to bed. Be sure to
stop by a donut shop on the way home.
30
Now you are ready to try a slightly more complicated example involving more than one section at a
time.
The easiest way to keep track of multiple sections is to use the section panels which SwissSys
automatically creates for you when you use the Tournament Setup dialog. The steps below show you
some of the highlights. As usual with SwissSys there is more than one way to skin a cat, so as you
explore the program you may discover other ways of doing things that suit your style better.
Let's open up a two-section tournament. Our sections will be called Invitational and Booster. Both
these sections are already set up for you as sample files through three rounds in your Events\Demo
folder. This saves you the step of having to register all the players and key in the results.
In your SwissSys "Demo" folder, open the file Demo1.tmt. Two section panels should appear,
labeled "Invitational" and "Booster". A colored panel means this section is the active one. Click on
"Invitational" to activate it.
Notice that these sections have also been added to the Section Box in the upper right of the main
window. Selecting a section from this list is another way to activate it.
Suppose you want to register a new player in a section. You can either click on the appropriate
section panel and then go the the registration dialog, or you can go straight to the registration dialog
and select the appropriate section for this player from there. Since usually you are registering players
for all your sections at the same time, this second method is usually the most convenient, so let's do
that now.
Click on the pencil toolbar button to go to the registration dialog. Enter "Karpov, Anatoly", any old ID,
and a rating of 2690. In the section box just above the name, select the section he wants to enroll in
("booster"), and click on "Accept". You get a warning that the rating is out of bounds for this section
(this is one of the options you can set in the section setup dialog.) Ignore the warning, then click "Exit"
to return to the main view. Note that the section you chose is now the currently highlighted section.
You can tell SwissSys to register players automatically in a given section based on their ratings. This
"Ratings registration rule" is one of the environment options you can set.
Now let's say Karpov changes his mind and decides to play in the Invitational section after all. Click on
the player roster button if the roster is not already showing. Find his name, and click and drag it to the
section panel that corresponds to the invitational section. Confirm this as a "move" (not a "duplication"
in this case) when prompted.
All the operations you perform on a tournament deal with the current, highlighted section. You could
proceed from here to pair one section, click a different section panel to do its pairings, go to a third
section, and so on. All the usual SwissSys commands will apply to whichever section you have
activated.
Many common operations like print-outs can be done in a batch. If you have more than one section
declared, SwissSys will give you that option where appropriate. Otherwise, running a multi-section
tournament is not much different from running a single-section tournament. You just need to activate
whichever section you are interested in by clicking on its section panel or selecting it from the section
box.
31
This is a basic introduction to running bigger tournaments with SwissSys. For more details about
multi-section tournaments, see Multi-Section Tournament Setup, Section Box, and Section Panels.
Next step: Step 15 - Running Team Tournaments
32
Step 15 - Running Team Tournaments
There are three kinds of team tournaments which SwissSys supports: Individual team, fixed-roster
team, and "Teams-only" fixed-roster style. These are among the different "event types" you can
choose from when declaring your sections in the Tournament Setup dialog. In many ways you can
handle them in SwissSys just as you do a regular Swiss type section. Among other things, you register
the players on the team just as you do players for a regular Swiss, the only difference being the need
to include a code for their team along with their other registration information.
Individual team tournaments in particular require very little explanation, because they are exactly like
regular Swiss events with these exceptions:
1. Players on the same team don't play against each other. (An exception here is if "Plus 2 pairings"
are allowed. See the topic Rules for Pairing for more on this.)
2. The team code registration field becomes important. Use a short (up to eight letters) code as a
mnemonic for the player's team when entering them. You can expand this team code to a full team
name using the Team| Expanded team names option. SwissSys keeps these expansions on file
and loads them for you every time you start it up.
3. Team results are calculated based on the scores of the highest-ranking players from each team.
The number of players on a team that qualify for having their scores added in to the team total varies
from tournament to tournament, and is set in SwissSys on the Team menu at any time before
requesting team standings.
Furthermore, some reports and charts which are not relevant to a regular Swiss are useful for
Individual team events. These options (such as a pairing list by team) are to be found in the Team
menu.
So much for Individual team tournaments. Fixed-roster team events, on the other hand, are a very
different kind of tournament, and SwissSys treats them accordingly.
To begin with, only a small number of players is allowed to be on each team. Four is the most common
number, with usually one or two alternates allowed. (Note: SwissSys will automatically choose the
correct number of players when making pairings but it is the TD's responsibility to ensure that a team
does not have too many players participating as alternates.) Secondly, each team plays as a unit
against the members of another team. The winner of the round (the "match point" winner) is the team
with the most wins. "Game points" -- that is, the margin of victory -- is frequently used as a tiebreaker,
but can also be used for determining pairings (see Pair teams by game points).
By far the most important thing to keep in mind with fixed-roster events is that both team statistics and
individual statistics are important, so you need to be able to toggle between them at any time. In
SwissSys you do this from the main view with the View| Team based views menu (the shortcut is
Cntl-T). This option is only available when you run a fixed-roster event.
In general, before taking any action on a player, consider whether what you are doing applies only to
that single player or to the whole team. If it applies to the whole team, you will usually want to switch to
team-based mode before doing it. For instance, to switch team pairings, you could try to view the
individual pair chart and laboriously change a lot of individual match-ups, but SwissSys will complain.
This is because it knows what you are up to and tells you to change to team-based mode first. Or to
give another example, think about byes. If you give an individual an advance bye, that just means that
player is out for the round, even though the player's team will still get paired. If you want to give the
whole team a bye, don't give everyone on the team a bye. That doesn't change the team pairings at
all. Instead, switch to team-based mode and give the whole team a bye from the Tinker dialog or from
the Pairings Setup dialog when you make pairings.
33
whole team a bye, don't give everyone on the team a bye. That doesn't change the team pairings at
Created
all. Instead, switch to team-based withand
mode an evaluation copyteam
give the whole of HelpSmith
a bye from the Tinker dialog or from
the Pairings Setup dialog when you make pairings.
Teams-only Fixed-roster events are a simplified version of fixed-roster events for those cases where
you don't need to keep track of individual results. Typically you would enter team names and ratings
instead of entering individual names and ratings at registration time. The tournament is run exactly like
an individual tournament except that when you enter wins and losses, SwissSys will prompt you for the
margin of victory (game points). The accumulated game points can then be used either as a
tie-breaker of in place of the match points, just as in a regular fixed-roster tournament.
To get hands-on practice with a fixed-roster event, load the tournament, TeamDemo.tmt from the
Events folder. This is a fixed-roster event (four players per team) after two rounds. After just a little
experimentation, particularly with the alternation between team-based and normal views, you should
get a feel for how to run a successful fixed-roster event. Experiment with the various team menu
options, especially the Team| Team roster/Standings menu pick, which shows you a combined
team and individual standings chart.
Of course, this information is intended only to give you an introduction to the topic. For more
information on fixed-roster events, look in the help file under Fixed-roster tournaments. Or better still,
run your own simulated tournaments. For most of us, that's the quickest path to confidence and
mastery of any software.
Final step: Step 16 - Setting up a database for player registration
34
Step 16 - Setting up a database for player registration
If you receive a database or list of players from the USCF, FIDE, the CFC, or any other group, or if you
maintain your own list of players in a database, you may be wondering how it could help you save time
and effort. Here is an introduction. For more specifics, read the various help topics dealing with
database use and customization.
Databases come in different formats. The USCF, for instance, publishes lists in several different
formats, the most commonly-used of which is the dBase format. FIDE publishes a list in text format,
and the CFC uses Access format.
The database Wizard quickly sets you up to work with any of these lists. (To use other customized
formats, you will need to bypass the Wizard and tell SwissSys some details about the database
structure in the Database|Database setup dialog.)
Let's use the USCF list as an example. If you have already downloaded a complete and up-to-date
membership list, there is very little more you need to do. Click on Database|Database wizard. In the
dialog that appears, click on the appropriate format (USCF in this example).
This takes you to a dialog from which you will navigate to the folder containing your database. Once
you have chosen the folder, click OK. If SwissSys finds a valid database there, you are done. (The
program may prompt you to index the database, in which case you should say yes.)
The other formats work similarly.
Enough talk. Let's play chess.
End of Tutorial. Click here to return to the Contents
35
Index
T
tutorial, 2
36

SwissSys Tutorial, Version 9

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Created with an evaluation copy of HelpSmith

Copyright (c) 2015 by Thad Suits

Step 1 - Setting up the Tournament

Next step: Step 2 - Advance Registration

Click the "Accept Button" again to register me.

Next step: Step 3 - On-site Registration and File Handling

Click here to go to Step 5 - Some Options

Click here to go on to Step 6 - Make Pairings

Click OK to confirm these settings.

Inspect the Pairings

Click OK to return to the main menu.

Click here to go on to Step 7 - Late Registration

You are now ready to go on to Step 8 - Working with the Pairings

Enter the Results

In the list of players that pops up, find Kramnik.

Fix a Player Name and Give an Advance Bye

Click here to go on to Step10 - Standings

The standings appear, but something is missing; there are no tiebreaks.

Continue with the Tournament

The tournament is over. You are ready to go on to Step 11 - Correcting Results

Met hod 1: Edi t t he main view

Met hod 2: Bri nging up t he Res ult s Edit or

Next Step: Step 12 - Prizes

Next Step: Step 13 - Wrapping up

Get Other Reports

File| Club list| Write to Club List

Prepare Ratings for the USCF / CFC / FIDE

Step 14 - Multi-Section Tournaments

Next step: Step 15 - Running Team Tournaments

Final step: Step 16 - Setting up a database for player registration

The other formats work similarly.

Enough talk. Let's play chess.

End of Tutorial. Click here to return to the Contents

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