Being a chess player (not a very good one), I’ve always been intrigued by Swiss Tournaments. They are so practical, and ensure that even a lowsy player like myself, can play the same number of rounds as any other player. That’s being inclusive!

I’ve played some knock-out tournaments (to me it meant being kicked off in the second or third round), and, given their nature, not-so-good players tend not to attend these tournaments (since their fun will, almost surely, end before long).

Well, to solve a very similar problem, but not in any game championship, a co-worker suggested we could use a Swiss Tournament system. I liked the idea, but not being sure it could really solve the problem, I had to quickly implement something to test our data with… so Ruby to the rescue!

In no time we were up and running, and apart from minor issues that were being fixed along the way, I guess it’s a pretty good implementation. You can checkout the code to get a feel of it. Of course, it doesn’t follow any rules from any Chess or Go association (Wikipedia, after all, was my guide here), but it serves our goal. Being a “proof-of-concept” code, feel free to improve it (just tell me about it, will you?).