Requested bye

A requested bye is a round that the participant asks not to play. A bye is a round without a game. The request usually has to be submitted before a deadline set by the organizer, for example because the player will not be available.

Under the tie-break regulations of the International Chess Federation, commonly known as FIDE from its French initials, a requested bye may be a half-point bye or a zero-point bye. Each tournament decides whether requests are allowed, in which rounds, by what deadline, and how many points they award. A zero-point bye adds nothing; a half-point bye adds the same score as a draw.

It is different from a pairing-allocated bye. That bye is assigned automatically when a Swiss round has an odd number of available participants and normally gives the points awarded for a win, making it a full-point bye. Because there is no real opponent, opponent-based tie-breaks such as Buchholz apply special treatment to the unplayed round.