The GGEZ guide to Swiss brackets

Swiss is the format that promises everyone a fair schedule and delivers everyone a hard one.

The rules in one breath

Win and you play winners. Lose and you play losers. Three wins advances, three losses goes home.

Buchholz, briefly

Your tiebreak is the sum of your opponents’ scores. Beating good teams is worth more than beating lucky ones.

Why round 4 hurts

• Every 2-1 team is one loss from an elimination match.
• The pairing pool is smallest exactly when the stakes are highest.
• Float-downs mean someone always plays up a weight class.

The full pairing rules — byes, floats and the repeat valve — are in every Swiss event’s rules tab.