World Class Open with county class pairing administration

[Guenther]

Isle of Man Open : 'The strongest open tournament for 2017'
http://iominternationalchess.com/

It is incredible that such a tourney cannot be conducted normally according to the pairings.

- Round 1 random pairings at all!! (I wonder why no one protested strong enough and forced a repairing? - Caruana vs. Kramnik in an Open in round 1 is ridiculous...)

- They managed now to pair Hou Yifan the fourth time in a row against a woman (doesn't that sound familiar after Gibraltar? How would she not develop paranoid feelings against FIDE?)

I am more than surprised how such things can still happen today.
Even in my local club we have at least a couple of players who can manage
pairings software perfectly according to tournament standard.
(Well just adjust all relevant settings right before the start of the tourney)

[carldaman]

Isle of Man Open : 'The strongest open tournament for 2017'
http://iominternationalchess.com/

It is incredible that such a tourney cannot be conducted normally according to the pairings.

- Round 1 random pairings at all!! (I wonder why no one protested strong enough and forced a repairing? - Caruana vs. Kramnik in an Open in round 1 is ridiculous...)

- They managed now to pair Hou Yifan the fourth time in a row against a woman (doesn't that sound familiar after Gibraltar? How would she not develop paranoid feelings against FIDE?)

I am more than surprised how such things can still happen today.
Even in my local club we have at least a couple of players who can manage
pairings software perfectly according to tournament standard.
(Well just adjust all relevant settings right before the start of the tourney)

The organizers are experimenting with random pairings in Rd#1 to keep things "interesting" (usually the fist round in a swiss is all about mismatches). Can't say I like their idea too much.

I've noticed the same thing about Hou Yifan's pairings. I would be paranoid, too.

[Dirt]

The organizers are experimenting with random pairings in Rd#1 to keep things "interesting" (usually the fist round in a swiss is all about mismatches). Can't say I like their idea too much.

I very much do like it. Instead of what looked to be a pointless first round there was an exciting game in it. I don't think it matters that much if they meet in the first round instead of a later round.

[jhellis3]

Surprised nobody seems to have picked up on this, but the problem with "random" (non-deterministic) pairings is that whoever is responsible can just run the algorithm over and over until it spits out pairings he/she wants, then claim it is simply the result of the algorithm, which it is but....

I imagine this is what happened to Hou.

Tournament pairing needs to be deterministic with reproducible results in order to prevent abuse. Sad we live in a world where this is necessary, but it clearly is.

[zenpawn]

Surprised nobody seems to have picked up on this, but the problem with "random" (non-deterministic) pairings is that whoever is responsible can just run the algorithm over and over until it spits out pairings he/she wants, then claim it is simply the result of the algorithm, which it is but....

The random pairings were only in round 1 and were drawn from a "tombola" by the players themselves.

[jhellis3]

What software was used for the subsequent rounds?