Chesslang supports the following 3 BYEs in Swiss format tournaments:
- Unpaired Bye
- Half Bye
- Zero Bye
1. Unpaired Bye
The ‘Unpaired Bye’ is a common bye in chess tournaments. It means that the player gets a BYE (1 point) because the player did not have an opponent to be paired with. It usually happens when the tournament has an odd number of players.
In the above image, you can see that there is a total of 17 players – 16 players are playing against each other in 8 boards, and one player gets an Unpaired Bye since he/she has no opponents to be paired with.
Note: In some rare cases, the player(s) might also get an Unpaired Bye in tournaments with even number of players because they might not be paired with each other correctly. However, a player gets ONLY ONE Unpaired Bye in a tournament.
2. Half Bye
The ‘Half Bye’ means that the player gets 0.5 points for the first round ONLY as he/she has joined late and has missed the first round.
Note: You can find more information about players joining late here – LINK
3. Zero Bye
The ‘Zero Bye’ means that the player gets 0 points; this will be given for those who are not a part of the tournament (either because the player has exited or did not join since the beginning). This basically means that the player was absent for that particular round.
