The way Swiss system is used in other gaming communities is to schedule a tournament to start on a certain date and pre-specify the number of rounds. The tournament director doesn't have to worry whether the entries come in at the last second, or how many entries there are.

I suggest we use it in this way, instead of focusing on its ability to have tournament sizes that aren't powers of a number.

We have many tournaments where initial interest grabs 18 out of the required 32 players, but then entries come in very slowly. One advantage to scheduled tournaments is that they are nearly guaranteed to start. (The minimal tournament has to at least have enough players to form one game, and really should have enough for two games.)

Another advantage is that a player who loses in the first round can still have a shot at winning. This happens when the number of entries is below the elimination tournament amount. If it is really far below, then there is even more of a chance.

One detail to work out here is what a good amount of time is to leave a tournament open. (A week? A month?)

Other good ideas for improving our tournament structure (e.g. double elimination) that should be implemented first have been mentioned in the thread below:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/2079/Why_Dont_Tournaments_Fill_Up

I like your idea, Hugh.  You could establish some more parameters when the tourney is setup:

• Min players to begin tourney
• Max players
• Start Date
• Extension time

The tournament starts when:

1. Max players are signed up
2. Min players are signed up AND Start Date occurs
3. Current date is between Start Date and (Start Date + Extension) AND Min players is achieved

The tournament is cancelled if the date passes the extension and you don't have Min players.

Interesting Idea

Who would start (define) these? ..administrator(s)? ..anyone?

Which boards? ..only WarGear Warfare to start? 

Anyone who can start tournaments, on any board. The purpose is two-fold. One is to just get some of these lingering tournaments started. Many tournament hosts are very optimistic!

The other is to get some flexibility into the Swiss tournaments. (All scheduled tournaments would be Swiss because you can't guarantee how many players there would be.) If you set the max unreasonably high, you'll get a Swiss tournament that doesn't play like an elimination tournament. In other words, you could lose a game or two and still win.