Zero-point bye

A zero-point bye (ZPB) records an unplayed round worth zero points. It can occur, for example, when a participant asks not to play a round. Under the tie-break rules of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), a requested bye can be a half-point bye or a zero-point bye, and rounds after a participant withdraws are treated as zero-point byes.

If a participant is known in advance not to play a particular Swiss round, FIDE's general rules say that the participant is not paired and scores zero unless the specific tournament rules state otherwise. The Tournament Report File (TRF), FIDE's standard tournament-report format, also recognizes ZPB as a bye type.

A ZPB is not necessarily a forfeit loss: with a bye, the participant may never have been paired with an opponent. It also differs from a pairing-allocated bye (PAB), which normally awards a win's score, and a full-point bye, which awards a full score without play.