Swiss-system tournament - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The principle of a Swiss tournament is that each player will be pitted against another player who has done as well (or poorly) as him or herself. For the first round, players are paired either according to some pattern or randomly (according to common practice in that type or game or sport). For subsequent rounds, players are sorted according to their cumulative scores and players are assigned opponents that have the same or similar score to that point. One proviso is that the same players never oppose each other twice. There may be adjustments made to the natural order. For instance, in chess the pairings may be changed to equalize the number of times a player has been White and Black.
