Board Game Arena

In Swiss tournaments you have to decide how many points to give a person who gets a bye. I had been setting it to full points for a win. I mostly host two-player games, so full points is just the points for beating one person.

Now I'm reconsidering. In Group 1 of this tournament someone with no wins but who got the points equivalent to a win from a bye advanced over someone who had a "real" win. That doesn't feel right to me, although the player who advanced did nothing wrong, so I'm not shaming them.

If I had set a bye at 1 pt instead of 2 pts, the player with a win would have advanced. I've looked into what is standard in IRL tournaments and full points for an involuntary bye and 1/2 points for a voluntary bye is the norm. Of course, all byes on BGA are involuntary, but if full points leads to the outcome above, I'm willing to deviate from the norm.

Thoughts?

I don't think there is a right way to do it. If you give partial points, it's unfair for the person with the bye. If you give full points, it's unfair for the person without a bye.

I find Swiss system tournaments problematic for a lot of reasons, and the concept of ignored players is one thing that doesn't make sense about them. If it were me I'd just have set up the number of players per group to be such that there are no ignored players.

tbhp wrote: ↑26 April 2026, 18:25 I don't think there is a right way to do it. If you give partial points, it's unfair for the person with the bye. If you give full points, it's unfair for the person without a bye.

I find Swiss system tournaments problematic for a lot of reasons, and the concept of ignored players is one thing that doesn't make sense about them. If it were me I'd just have set up the number of players per group to be such that there are no ignored players.

Given that only players with one of the lowest ratings receive bye, bye affects the winner of the tournament only in the first (rarely second) round. In addition, playing with bye reduces the amount of opponents' points, which is used as the main tiebreak, so bye has a strong negative effect in tournaments with a large number of players.

I participated in draughts tournaments and there bye on any round was considered unlucky and reduced the chances of getting Top3

So full points is only option in middle to big size tournaments and still better then other swiss options in low size ones.

tbhp wrote: ↑26 April 2026, 18:25If it were me I'd just have set up the number of players per group to be such that there are no ignored players.

I'm not sure you read the part about these being two-player gsmes. How exactly do you avoid a bye with an odd number of players? Not only can you not control how many people join the tournament, you can't control someone withdrawing from the tournament. Either can result in an odd number of players.

Depending on the popularity of the game, you can realistically set up the tournament so that it will only start if it's full.

People can always withdraw after the tournament has started, but at this point, that's something that would cause issues no matter the tournament settings. I mean, it would be the same problem in a round robin tournament where someone withdraws after they've already completed some games. Those things happen and make things unfair for the remaining players, but there's nothing we can do about this specific case unfortunately.

For now this issue is decided by the BGA tournaments framework. I just set up another tournament and tried to assign 1/2 regular win points for a bye and it won't allow it for two-player games.