Hutton System

The Hutton System organizes a large team competition without making every member play every member of every opposing team. The International Correspondence Chess Federation, abbreviated ICCF, defines it as a system in which each team plays all the other teams, while each player takes part in only one match against an opposing team.

It helps to separate the team level from the player level. At the team level, every team-to-team encounter is represented. At the player level, those encounters are distributed among the boards. One player may cover the team's meeting with a particular opponent, while another board represents the team against a different opponent. This produces complete competition among teams with a limited workload for each person.

The number of games, color assignment, and board count depend on the event regulations. In one documented application, each player contests two simultaneous games, one with each color, against a single opponent. A fixed board order can matter because it gives the organizer a stable way to distribute team encounters among the players.