First post here, so apologies if this is the wrong section.
I’ve been working on a tournament/club management site called Chess67, mostly after running into friction organizing local chess events. I'm a dad of a 7 year old chess player and found some terribly old software being used at the local events I was volunteering at.
I recently became a USCF TD, and I’ve seen a few cases where different tools seem to handle the same situation differently, especially around things like byes, withdrawals, late entries, color allocation, odd numbers of players, small sections, and scholastic events where players may come and go.
I realize this forum is more computer-chess focused than local club administration, but it seems like there are a lot of people here who have spent years thinking carefully about chess software, tournaments, and edge cases. That’s why I wanted to ask here. Again apologies in advanced if this is the wrong forum.
For those of you who have worked with pairing software, written pairing logic, or directed tournaments:
What are the pairing or standings edge cases that software most often gets wrong?
I’m especially interested in examples like:
- a situation where two pairing programs produced different results
- cases involving byes, withdrawals, or late entries
- small Swiss sections where the “obvious” pairing feels wrong
- color allocation issues
- tiebreak or standings problems
- USCF vs FIDE differences that are easy to miss
- things that look simple until you actually try to implement them
Any specific cases, war stories, or pointers to rules/docs worth studying would be appreciated. My software tries it's best to follow the USCF rule book to a T but I know there have been some edge cases that the rulebook doesn't always encounter...
Thanks,
Danny