Bernard Malfliet 14.09.2024
Over the last year, Bernard Malfliet has reworked his PairTwo tournament management software. You can read the latest release notes below. PairTwo is available for download from the Software page.
We are happy to announce that Pairtwo has returned. A fully functional alternative to other Pairing Programs like Swar.
This version 1.16 has been fully evaluated and tested in several tournaments like for instance the Belgian Blitz championship help this month in Huizingen with 130 participants.
Here is a short intro. Before you start (but after you download Pairtwo) open the options and indicate where on your computer you want to put tournament files and where you have sored the KBSB and FIDE databases (sqlite). Also make sure you have a pdf reader on your computer to be able to print pdf files, which is the preferred printing output of Pairtwo.
This is all you need to start. First thing is that you need to enter the tournament details. Most important is the name as this will be used as filename for saving tournaments. No need to enter the number of players, Pairtwo will add them as you go. Also no stress if you enter a wrong number of rounds, you will be able to adapt this at any time during the tournament You do need to enter the Pairing type (Round Robin, Swiss, others) and the Tempo type (Standard, Rapid, Blitz).
Also enter the start and end date, after this Pairtwo will already make a best guess of the dates of each round, but you can adapt them afterwars
OK, next step is to enter the players. The easiest here is to make a text file which countains the ID numbers of all participants, one per line (you can choose to put Belgian or FIDE ID, pairtwo will detect which one it is). When this file is ready you can upload all players in your tournament via Ïmport Players from ID file” and all data will be recovered from FIDE and KBSB databases automatically. If more players arrive last minute you can add them again using an ID number or you can search on part of the name.
So all players are there you can start the tournament, but first save your tournament and do this each round. Pairtwo will save each round in a new file which allows you to go back in time if something went wrong. The files have extension “.p2_rX” where X is the round number
Absent players can be entered as you go or you can enter already in the beginning (or after some rounds) in which round a player is absent and if a half point or nothing is given to the absent player.
Now just do a pairing, play games, input results and so on until the end of the tournament.
At the end you want to export ELO files, Pairtwo will do this for you and also propose to send them directly to the responsible, you’ll get a copy in your own mailbox (if you entered your e-mail address in the tournament data) to confirm that it was sent.
Finally something a lot of clubs are looking for, for their internal championships. You can send the results of your club championship in different parts for KBSB ELO. When you send the results Pairtwo will ask if you are sure that you want to send an unfinished tournament and you say yes. Pairtwo will then send the file to the ELO administration. It will also remember which games were already sent. So next time you can send the remainder or just a second part, Pairtwo will ask if you want to send the remainder or everything. So even if some results are missing in round 1, you can still go ahead.
If you want to know more you can read the help screen which opens automatically each time you start the program and explains all functionalities
Finally, I can announce that our federation IT specialist has promised that by December the results of Pairtwo will be published alongside Swar and in the same way on the KBSB website