Pairings

The process of ordering or placing participants before play, usually using rating or another criterion defined by the event.

A participant's position in the tournament's ordered starting list before results begin changing the standings.

The Tournament Pairing Number, or TPN, identifies a participant's initial position in the ordering used by the tournament pairing system.

A predefined table that turns pairing numbers into a complete round-robin schedule.

A restricted tournament-number draw table designed to help keep players from the same federation apart in the final rounds.

One of FIDE's approved Swiss pairing systems, using scoregroups and ordered priorities for opponents, floaters, and colors.

A FIDE Swiss pairing system that tries to balance the average strength of opponents faced by players who have the same score.

A Swiss pairing system designed so players on equal scores have faced opposition of roughly comparable strength.

A Swiss pairing system that processes scoregroups from both ends of the standings and pairs the median scoregroup last.

A Swiss-system variation that modifies early pairings to reduce highly uneven matchups in the opening rounds.

An acceleration method that changes early Swiss pairings with temporary virtual points to reduce highly uneven first-round matchups.

The set of participants who have the same score for pairing purposes at a given point in a Swiss tournament.

A temporary group of players that a Swiss system processes together while forming pairings for a round.

A Swiss-pairing marker associated with movement between score levels, usually when opponents with different scores are paired.

The label given to a player from a lower scoregroup after playing an opponent from a higher scoregroup.

A label usually given to a player from a higher scoregroup after playing someone from a lower one, and also assigned by FIDE in certain no-game cases.

A player belonging to the scoregroup that creates a pairing bracket in the FIDE Dutch system.

A player who could not be paired in one scoregroup and is carried into the next lower bracket by the Swiss pairing algorithm.

A reordering of the resident players in S2 to test a different candidate pairing in the Dutch algorithm.

A Dutch-system operation that swaps equal-sized groups of resident players between two subgroups to seek a valid pairing.

The process that decides which player receives White and which receives Black after a pairing has been formed.

Color history records the sequence of tournament games in which a player had White or Black.

Color difference is the number of games played with White minus the number played with Black.

Color preference is the color, White or Black, that a pairing system should ideally give a player in the next game.