Byes and absences

A player who does not play a round is recorded in one of a few ways. They differ in how the pairing treats the player, in what the round is worth, and in how the tie-breaks of C.07 treat it.

The kinds#

Details of the scoring are in Standings and tie-breaks.

Marking absence on the Players page#

The presence cell of a player (column Pr.) shows and sets presence, as explained in Players and rating lists:

• The four ticks of the registration form each carry a line saying what they do. They are ranked: Expelled by the arbiter outranks Withdrawn from the tournament, which outranks Absent (a player who is out for good is not also "absent"). Ticking Expelled greys out Withdrawn and Absent, and ticking Withdrawn greys out Absent; what they held is neither shown as changed nor rewritten, and comes back if you untick. Absent is for the whole event, from now on, until you untick it, and each round scores as an absence.
• Open the cell's menu (right-click, or Space with the keyboard) to set the player Absent or Present; in the registration form the checkbox Absent means absent for the whole event and the field Absent at the rounds takes the rounds to sit out, written 3,5 or 2-4 (commas, semicolons, spaces and ranges are accepted).
• Withdrawn from the tournament (formerly called Forfeit) in the registration form withdraws the player: no longer paired, and the player stays in the standings and the printed standings, marked withdrawn, with the points scored so far (Standings and tie-breaks). The presence cell shows F, the letter SWAR uses.
• Expelled by the arbiter in the registration form expels the player. The presence cell shows E. An expelled player is not paired any more and does not appear in the standings. In a Keizer tournament the expelled player keeps a place on the ladder for the games already played against them, so a win over them is worth what it was; only their own row leaves the table.
• The menu on the header of the column marks everybody present or absent at once; use this at the start of the event or the start of a round.

An absent player is not paired in that round. Their absence is scored as set on the Scoring page (Byes and absences). The Pairings page and the printed pairing list (option with absentees section) list the players who are not playing, with the value of the round for each.

Half-point byes#

An absence that the Scoring page scores as a draw is a half-point bye.

The program helps in two ways:

• When a save of the registration form would give a player a second or later half-point bye, the form shows a warning for the rounds concerned (The rules allow a player only one half-point bye in a tournament) and the Save button asks Save it anyway? The save goes ahead only after you confirm.
• The box No half-point byes for this player (formerly Not eligible for half-point byes) marks a player with conditions or free entry, who may not have one. While it is ticked, a half-point absence is refused for that player, and the box cannot be ticked for a player who already has one; the message names the rounds.

Asking the bye type#

By default a round sat out is worth what the Scoring page pays an absence, and that is all there is to it. Some events want to decide per absence: a half-point bye for the player who asked in time, a zero-point one for the player who did not. Turn on Ask the bye type for each absence on the Scoring page, under Byes and absences (advanced). It is off by default, and only an individual Swiss offers it.

With it on, the registration form shows a line for every round in Absent at the rounds that is not paired yet, with three choices: Half-point bye, Zero-point bye and Full-point bye. The one the Scoring page would give is already picked (counting the two limits), so for most absences Save is the only click. Pick another one where the answer differs.

• The pick is kept with the round. Pairing the round leaves the player out and scores the bye as picked; unpairing the round keeps it; taking the round out of the player's absences drops it.
• The FIDE report writes it with its own letter, in record 240 while the round is not paired, and an import of that file brings the same bye back.
• The half-point bye rules above count a picked half-point bye: a second one asks Save it anyway?, and a player marked not eligible cannot be given one. For such a player the zero-point bye is picked instead.
• Picking a full-point bye shows the same notice as on the Pairings page: the pairing regulations do not describe it, and it should stay exceptional. The player cannot get the pairing-allocated bye later, and once the round is paired the report writes it as F.

The same question comes up in a round already paired: Mark absent for this round on the Pairings page (see Byes by hand) shows the three choices in its confirmation, picked the same way. A half-point bye for a player marked not eligible cannot be applied there; a second half-point bye needs its own tick, I understand - give it anyway; a full-point bye shows the notice above.

The pairing-allocated bye (odd number of players)#

If the number of players to be paired in a Swiss round is odd, one of them gets the pairing-allocated bye.

The player is shown on the Pairings page as a board with bye, and the explanation page says why that player was chosen and what each other candidate would have cost (Pairing a round).

The bye is scored as the Pairing-allocated bye value (Settings, Scoring): a win by default, but it can be set to a half point or to another value.

In a round robin with an odd number of players, each player sits out one round (the Berger table pairs the "highest number" against nobody). The program records that round as a zero-point bye for that player. In Keizer a player without an opponent scores half of his own rung.

Byes by hand#

In a paired round, the Pairings page lets you change who plays whom or who sits out. The Hand edits menu (right-click a player's name in the round) offers:

• Mark absent for this round: the player's seat is emptied and the player moves to the Not playing list; with Ask the bye type for each absence on, the confirmation asks which bye it is (Asking the bye type);
• Pair with another player who isn't playing: puts two players of the Not playing list in a board of their own;
• Give the pairing-allocated bye (on a player of the Not playing list): gives that player the bye, scored as the Scoring page says;
• Award a bye to the remaining player: gives the pairing-allocated bye to the player left alone on a board whose opponent was removed;
• Put in an empty seat, Swap with…, Delete this board.
• Give a full-point bye… (on a player of the Not playing list): the player scores a win for the round without playing. The FIDE report writes it as F, and the player cannot get the pairing-allocated bye in a later round. Take back the full-point bye… makes the player absent again.

Every hand edit first shows a confirmation with the boards as they are now and as they will be, and warns, with a tick, when the bye would go to a player who already had one, won a game by forfeit or had a full-point bye. Hand edits are made in a session that is checked when it is finished. See Pairing a round.

A half-point or zero-point bye for a coming round is requested by marking the player absent for it: the Scoring page decides what it is worth, or, with Ask the bye type for each absence on, the registration form asks (see Asking the bye type).

Organiser's bye preferences#

Some events want to keep a bye away from a player (a long journey), or want to give it to a particular player.

To use them turn on Bye preferences on the Features page (Account menu, Features, Belgian pack). The player's form then offers one control, Pairing-allocated bye, with one choice:

• FIDE rules decide (the default);
• Never gets it - the player is excluded from the bye in every round;
• Not in certain rounds - excluded in the rounds you type, and, if you like, a preference for the other rounds (the rounds of the tournament that you did not name);
• Rather not, Rather gets it and Must get it, if a legal pairing allows, each for all rounds or certain rounds.

Before this release the form had a tick Exclude from the pairing-allocated bye beside a select Pairing-allocated bye preference, which allowed contradictions; what was stored is read as the same choice. A player stored as never getting the bye and with a preference is shown as Never gets it, with a note, and saving the form drops the preference (the exclusion has always won). The choices are listed only when their switch is on; a stored value stays on the list. On a FIDE-homologated tournament the preferences are not offered and a stored one is shown as ignored.

• Must get it, if a legal pairing allows - the player gets the bye whenever the round has one, provided the rest can still be paired legally and the player has not had one before (FIDE rule C2 is never overridden);
• Rather gets it and Rather not - decide among the players on the score that gets the bye, never lifting it to another score.

Never gets it and Not in certain rounds mean the player is treated as one who already had a bye: the engine never gives it to them. When no legal round can keep the bye away from every excluded player, the Pairings page says so and offers Pair anyway, ignoring the exclusion for <name>.

All of these apply to individual Swiss tournaments only and are recorded in the round's explanation, the audit trail and the notes of the TRF export, because the round no longer is what a FIDE-endorsed program would pair.

Byes in the FIDE report#

The TRF report (see Sending to FIDE) writes each kind with its own code: U for the pairing-allocated bye, F for a full-point bye, H for a half-point bye, Z for a zero-point bye or an absence, - for a forfeit loss and + for a forfeit win. A bye the arbiter has already granted for a round that has not been paired is written in record 240.