Rollare

Swiss and Swiss + knockout

No eliminations: each round pairs teams with similar records. Add a knockout for the top cut. 4 to 128 teams.

Swiss is the big-field format without eliminations: everyone plays every round, standings stay meaningful, and nobody travels hours for a single game. Rollare supports pure Swiss (4–128 teams) and Swiss + knockout (4–64), which adds a playoff for the top-ranked teams.

How pairing works

  • After each round, teams are paired against opponents with similar records — points are the sorting key, so leaders meet leaders.
  • No repeated pairings: the pairing engine never books the same matchup twice within the Swiss phase.
  • Pairing is deterministic: the same results always produce the same next round, so you can preview pairings and re-open them without surprises.
  • Byes — with an odd team count, one team per round sits out. The bye is scored as a win without an opponent, and the engine rotates who gets it.

Rounds

As a rule of thumb, log2(team count) rounds are enough to produce a clear ranking — 7 rounds for 128 teams, 4 rounds for 16. Rollare recommends a value when you configure the event; you can set anywhere from 2 to 16 rounds. Fewer rounds are faster but tie the field more tightly.

Standings

Swiss standings use the same configurable points as round robin (default 3/1/0), plus two Swiss-specific columns: opponent points (strength of schedule) and byes. The tiebreaker chain works like round robin — see Standings and tiebreakers.

Swiss + knockout

When the Swiss rounds finish, the start knockout action takes the top-ranked teams into a single-elimination bracket:

  • The advance count defaults to the largest power of two up to 8 (e.g. 8 for a 32-team field) and is editable before you start.
  • Qualifiers are seeded by Swiss ranking, so the top two seeds can only meet in the final.
  • Starting the knockout locks the Swiss standings — Swiss results from then on are read-only.

When to choose it

  • Large fields (20+ teams) where a knockout would send most players home early.
  • Gaming communities that expect a ranked day plus a top-cut playoff.
  • League nights where standings accumulate across weeks — pair with leagues for cross-event standings.