Amidon37 wrote:

I also don't enjoy playing out tournament games for which I have no chance of winning the tourney.

I think Swiss should be melded with an elimination type system.   (Basically if, after playing out the regular number of swiss games, there is a tie then more games are played by the top players until there is no longer a tie.) 

The one spot I see Swiss currently being used, possibly happily, is when a new board hits the market and players are happy to gain the experience. "A trophy would be nice, but let's play," is an attitude I _sometimes_ see for those. But, I too prefer to see elimination numbers.

Regarding non-elimination numbers and Swiss: the whole system was designed for scheduled tournaments. Large chess clubs have things like "Thursday night G/30 4 round Swiss at 6pm". Everyone knows when it runs, but there's no way to predict how many show up. I believe this is the situation it was designed for; this is where the system shines. We may not be ready for "Thursday night 4Play 5 round 1 day timer Swiss starting at 5pm EST" tournaments, but if we ever get there, Swiss will be there to deal with the weird non-elimination numbers.

I do like the "play until tie is broken" system.

Amidon37 wrote:

 but I don't like the idea of losing a tie-breaker in Swiss because I randomly drew a "weaker" schedule.

..but isn't that what exists regardless?  As it is currently set up you can still randomly (on a round by round basis), draw a weaker schedule. 

I also don't enjoy playing out tournament games for which I have no chance of winning the tourney.

Neither do I, but it beats a round robin. It sounds like you don't want to modify the Swiss; you just want a straight elimination tourney.

I think Swiss should be melded with an elimination type system.  

I'm pretty sure this solution has been suggested before. I can't remember why it was nixed.  It's not like a the Thursday night Bridge/Chess tourney with time limitations, and it does seem like the optimal solution to me.  Perhaps it's difficult or unrealistic to code the creation of extra games on demand.

If we implement a new Tournament structure I'd like to see a "World Cup" style tournament.  This would be an initial Round Robin (or Swiss, really, for odd-number players) in the Group stage that determines seeding for a knockout stage.

AttilaTheHun wrote:

If we implement a new Tournament structure I'd like to see a "World Cup" style tournament.  This would be an initial Round Robin (or Swiss, really, for odd-number players) in the Group stage that determines seeding for a knockout stage.

+1 with round robin for the first round.

Also I would like a round robin  with 2 legs games. Not a new idea.

I like how Swiss allows for many different numbers of players, but if I were to make a 5-person game with 3 rounds I would need 125 players.  Such tourneys don't run now - 

I would like to run it with 40 payers with Swiss rules for 3 games.  At the end, if there is a tie (multiple people who went 2 - 1) then have everyone who one at least 1 game play another round and do so until there is a clear winner (using win-loss record). (Note: some people who never won would have to be included to round out the games.)

This hurts team tourneys (which I like to play) even more.  Most team tourneys are 1 team vs 1 team (to keep small enough to fill) and those games, as we know, frequently come down to luck.

Was just looking at the leader-board in a Swiss and noticed that the order of players listed (after record) is random.  Regardless of how this discussion pans out, it would be nice if SOS and SOSOS were additionally consulted for order as necessary.