I've been told that is common to allow players in a tournament to skip
a round and take a half-point bye. Anyone know about this?

www.iinet.com.au/~ray

Ray Johnstone wrote:
I've been told that is common to allow players in a tournament to skip
a round and take a half-point bye. Anyone know about this?

It's common in England to allow each player to skip a single round
(but not the last, IIRC) as a half-point bye. There's usually a space
on the entry form to indicate which round, if any, one wants to take
as a bye. I'm not sure if they allow you to do this at any point
later than the entry form -- I suspect they do, so long as you give
sufficient notice (i.e., tell them before the start of the preceding
round).

The idea is to allow people who have some other commitment the weekend
of the tournament to still be able to play. It's also quite popular
with the older players, who often take a bye in the third round to
avoid having to play late on Saturday night.


Dave.


--
David Richerby Addictive Happy Chair (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a chair that makes your troubles melt
away but you can never put it down!

On 24 Jul 2007 09:03:38 +0100 (BST), David Richerby
wrote:

Ray Johnstone wrote:
I've been told that is common to allow players in a tournament to skip
a round and take a half-point bye. Anyone know about this?

It's common in England to allow each player to skip a single round
(but not the last, IIRC) as a half-point bye. There's usually a space
on the entry form to indicate which round, if any, one wants to take
as a bye. I'm not sure if they allow you to do this at any point
later than the entry form -- I suspect they do, so long as you give
sufficient notice (i.e., tell them before the start of the preceding
round).

The idea is to allow people who have some other commitment the weekend
of the tournament to still be able to play. It's also quite popular
with the older players, who often take a bye in the third round to
avoid having to play late on Saturday night.
Thanks. I've since found that is just what happens at Hastings.



Dave.


www.iinet.com.au/~ray

This is fairly common in the US, too. You usually can't take a
voluntary bye in the final round, and you usually have to give advance
notice at least a round or two in advance. Most tourneys post the
details of available byes when they post tournament details.

--Richard