Face-to-face chess : GM Illescas tries to rethink the Swiss pairing system

The Swiss pairing system has existed since 1889. It's called "Swiss" because it was invented by a Swiss man (Julius Müller) to organize the Swiss Chess Championship in 1889. This system was invented at a time when computers, online chess and all the wonderful play possibilities offered by computers and Internet didn't exist. Probably in 1889, the Swiss system was the best system for organizing a chess tournament relatively easily without a computer.

But this is no longer 1889. The world has been profoundly transformed: computers and Internet have revolutionized the way we think about the organization of human societies. Nevertheless, the organization of face-to-face chess tournaments seems to be largely unaware of this evolution, and most of them are still organized as they were in 1889, with the old Swiss pairing system, without ever attempting to question it.

This is very detrimental to the attractiveness of face-to-face chess. People who discover the world of chess through online chess, for example via the lichess platform, are often very disappointed to see how face-to-face chess is organized in a very old and boring way.

I have already devoted several articles (written in French) to this subject:
- I've encouraged the use of other pairing systems, such as the Keizer system (read this article).
- I've explained that face-to-face chess is in crisis, and should return to the true spirit of chess (read this article).
- I explained what made face-to-face chess boring and why I resigned from my chess club (read this article).

I'm glad to see that more and more people share my concerns and feel that face-to-face chess is in crisis on several levels. I discovered, for example, the initiative of the famous Spanish GM Miguel Illescas.

The Spanish GM has invented a pairing system for organizing face-to-face tournaments inspired by the Arena pairing system found on many online chess platforms, such as lichess. He called this system "Arenachess". The Internet platform he has developed enables you to organize face-to-face tournaments using this new pairing system.

I can only encourage other people, other organizers, other arbiters to participate in this reflection and to hope that the organization of face-to-face chess will finally evolve in the direction of modernity in order to make face-to-face chess a leisure activity that corresponds to what is expected of entertainment in the 21st century!