Favourite Tourney options

[kcdusk]

Whats your favourite way to play tournaments?

1. Round robin (play each opponent twice as white and black)
2. Round robin (play each opponent once)
3. Knockout
4. Swiss

 

[peterk1]

I assume this is for CM tournaments and not real tournaments which are pretty much always Swiss.

I'll take #1.

It's a little long (10 games min) , but you get a nice little bit of emotion from playing the same opponent twice in a week. If you lost the first game, you're out for revenge. If you won the first game you want to show you can dominate them. None of the other options have that until you've played a player a whole bunch of times over the long haul and they feel more like disjointed games.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

#1 for me, too. My second choice would be #3.

 

[kcdusk]

Yeah, thinking CM but any tournament really.

I'd go #1 followed by #3. But i'm going to give swiss a try.

 

[Foggy]

#1 sounds good - # 3 I like but one bad move and you're screwed

 

[peterk1]

What happens if there's a draw in a knockout? Replay? Can you do knockout where it's 2 or 4 games match instead of just a single game? That might be fun!

 

[Lurker]

Number 1.

 

[Scott Tortorice]

What happens if there's a draw in a knockout? Replay? Can you do knockout where it's 2 or 4 games match instead of just a single game? That might be fun!

That's a good question. I know Chess.com calculates a tie-break number - not sure how it works but perhaps that is used to break a tie in a KO? As for multiple games in a KO, I guess its possible. In fact, I think I've heard of 2 game KO tourneys, but not 4 game KOs.

I like KOs because they move much quicker than your standard round robin tourneys. The only downside is that if you have a big ratings spread, the lower ranked players could suffer by getting matched to stronger players.