Forbidden pairings

Forbidden pairings keep specific participants from ever meeting over the board — typically players from the same club or family. They apply to Swiss tournaments only.

Creating a group

Open Forbidden Pairings from the cockpit's Configuration tab. Create a group with:

• Group name (e.g. "Club Anderlecht")
• Reason (optional, for your records)
• Participants — select at least two players; nobody within the group will be paired against anyone else in it.

Create as many groups as you need — one per club is the usual pattern. Groups can be deactivated temporarily instead of deleted, and every member must be a participant of the tournament.

How the engine applies them

Each active group is passed to the pairing engine as an absolute constraint, enforced for every round you generate from then on. Existing rounds are not changed retroactively.

Important: Constraints have a cost. In a small field, or in late rounds when the leaders must meet, avoiding club-mates can force noticeably unbalanced pairings — FIDE practice is to lift such restrictions for the final rounds. Deactivate the group when it starts doing more harm than good.

When a constraint can't be honored

If a valid pairing respecting every group is impossible and the replacement algorithm has to break one, the Pairings tab shows a Forbidden pairing constraint breached banner listing the offending boards. Fix them manually with Swap Mode if the restriction really must hold — see Adjusting pairings manually.