Pairings & Standings
This page explains how PlanesForge pairs rounds and calculates standings — and above all, why. It is written for players who want an answer at the table, and for organizers who have to give one.
The short version:
- We pair using the Swiss system and follow the Magic Tournament Rules (MTR), even though our tournaments are not sanctioned.
- A round is calculated as a whole, not table by table.
- There is no random number involved. The same tournament state produces the same pairings — every time.
- Where the MTR says nothing, we chose the option you can explain at the table.
- Our numbers can differ slightly from other platforms'. That is known, deliberate, and explained below.
What we follow — and what we don't
Our reference is the Magic Tournament Rules by Wizards of the Coast. They define what a match point is, what the tiebreakers are called, and how they are calculated.
Two things about that which rarely get said out loud:
First, the MTR do not legally bind an unsanctioned tournament at all. A Pauper evening at a store or a club is not a WotC event. We follow them anyway, because that is what players know and because a house rule would make any comparison between two tournaments worthless.
Second, the MTR regulate less than most people assume. They mandate the Swiss system, the tiebreakers and the shape of the top cut. But they do not say who sits against whom within a point bracket, and they do not say which player leaves a bracket downwards when the numbers do not work out. At those points every platform decides for itself. Below we say where we decided and why.
How a round is built
After round one, players sit in point brackets: everyone on 3 points, everyone on 0 points, and so on. The goal is to pair each player against someone from their own bracket.
All tables at once, not one after another
Many tools work down the list from the top: first table, second table, and so on. That is simple, but it creates avoidable problems — the last two players have often already played each other, and by then it is too late.
PlanesForge calculates all tables simultaneously and looks for the best overall solution. Every possible pairing is scored, and the procedure finds the combination with the best total score. A rematch at the last table can be avoided by seating two tables further up differently.
Three rules, in this order
The scoring is built so the rules apply strictly in sequence. A lower rule can never override a higher one — it only decides what the higher ones left open.
- No rematches. Two players who have already met are not paired again.
- Pair down as little as possible. When a bracket holds an odd number of players, someone has to play against a lower bracket. That gap is kept as small as possible — several small ones are preferred over one large jump.
- Seating. Only when rules 1 and 2 allow several equally good solutions does seating within the bracket decide.
Why am I facing someone on fewer points?
Because your bracket is odd. With 5 players on 6 points, only 4 can play each other; one has to face the bracket below. That is not a fault, it is the only way to seat everyone.
It can cascade through several brackets: the 6-point bracket sends one player down, which makes the 3-point bracket odd, so it sends one down too. That is also normal.
Who gets paired down?
The last player of the bracket — the one the standings show at the bottom within that point group.
The MTR is silent here, so this is our decision. We made it because it can be explained at the table in one sentence: "the last player of your group plays down."
Who sits against whom inside a bracket?
The upper half of the group plays the lower half, in order: with eight players, 1 against 5, 2 against 6, 3 against 7, 4 against 8. This is the slide from the FIDE Swiss system.
The MTR does not prescribe this either. There are three common methods — the slide, adjacent (1 against 2) and first-against-last (1 against N). We use the slide for two reasons.
It spreads evenly. First-against-last would produce rank distances of 7, 5, 3 and 1 in a group of eight: the top player would get the weakest opponent in the group while ranks 4 and 5 wear each other down. With the slide every pairing has the same distance. That is not cosmetic: everyone in a point group holds the same record, so their order comes purely from the tiebreakers — and early in a tournament those say very little. In one measured test event, ranks 1 through 6 held identical OMW, GW and OGW values and were separated alphabetically. Handing someone the easiest opponent on that basis rewards noise.
It has a source. The FIDE Swiss system is the only formally worked-out Swiss system there is; no MTG tool defines within-bracket seating at all. When someone asks why the seating is what it is, "the FIDE method" is an answer with a citation behind it.
What the slide keeps: the two leaders of a group cannot meet early — both sit in the upper half. Other platforms choose differently; all three are rules-compliant.
Rematches
A rematch only happens when there is no way to pair the entire field without one. In small fields that is inevitable: with six players over six rounds, everyone has met everyone after round five.
When it happens, the pairing is not made quietly. The organizer sees a warning in the round overview naming the table and stating that no better solution existed.
Always the same result
The procedure contains no random number. The same tournament state always produces the same pairings. That also means: when an organizer re-pairs a round that has not been published yet, the same result comes out — unless a result has changed in the meantime.
The bye
With an odd number of players, one player gets a bye.
Who: the lowest-standing player who has not had a bye yet. Only once everyone has had one does anyone get a second. This too is deterministic — not drawn by lot.
What it counts as: a match win of 2-0, so 3 match points. The two games do not count towards your game win percentage (GW%), though. Otherwise a bye would distort the tiebreakers.
The standings
Match points
3 points per match won, 1 per draw, 0 per loss. That is the first sort.
The four tiebreakers
On equal points, the sort continues in this order:
- OMW% — your opponents' match win percentage. It measures how hard your path was. Facing strong opponents helps you here, even when you lose.
- GW% — your own win percentage across individual games, not matches. A 2-0 is worth more here than a 2-1.
- OGW% — your opponents' game win percentage.
- If everything above is still equal, a fixed, stable order decides. It is deliberately arbitrary but always identical — the standings and the pairing engine see the same order, otherwise "the last player of the bracket gets paired down" would hit someone other than the one the table shows.
How a drawn game counts
Game win percentage is not calculated from games but from game points: 3 per game won, 1 per game drawn, 0 per game lost, divided by three times the games played.
A match ending 1-1 with a draw therefore scores 4/9 — not 1/3. That is a noticeable difference, and it is the calculation the MTR prescribes.
The 0.33 floor
Every opponent percentage is floored at 0.33. A player who loses everything is therefore counted as 0.33, not as 0.
The reason is fairness towards third parties: without that floor, a player who drops after their first loss, or plays on without a chance, would drag down the tiebreakers of everyone who faced them. Nobody picks their opponents, so nobody should be punished for them.
Players who drop still count
When a player drops mid-tournament, they do not vanish from the calculation. The results they achieved stay on the books and keep feeding their opponents' tiebreakers. Anything else would change the standing of whoever happened to face them early.
Why our numbers can differ slightly
Anyone also running the same tournament on another platform will see small differences in the tiebreakers. There is exactly one cause, and we know it.
The MTR prints the floor as 0.33 — three times in prose and once substituted into its own worked example. Some platforms use an exact third instead (0.3333…). We use the value the rulebook prints.
We measured how large the effect is: on a 64-player tournament, the order shifts by 12 to 31 positions depending on the round, reaching positions 7 and 8 in the final round — so it can touch the top 8 cut line. Set both systems to the same floor and every figure matches exactly, for all 64 players across all rounds. The divergence comes down to this one constant and nothing else.
We deliberately chose not to align with another platform here. "We use the value the rulebook prints" is an answer you can give a player. "We do what the others do" is not.
The second possible difference is seating within a bracket (see above). Since the MTR says nothing about it, both variants are rules-compliant — the pairings differ, the standings do not.
What does not differ: rematch avoidance and the size of pair-downs. On everything the rules actually mandate we agree with other platforms — we differ only where the rules are silent.
Top cut
The Swiss rounds can be followed by a knockout stage. A cut size is only recommended once there are enough players:
| Field size | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| up to 8 | no cut |
| 9 to 16 | Top 4 |
| 17 and up | Top 8 |
Behind this sits a single rule: a cut to C players is recommended from 2C+1 participants. A Top 8 with 12 players would be two thirds of the field — at which point the Swiss rounds barely matter.
An organizer may deviate; they get a warning, not a block. The only hard block is on what cannot work at all — a cut with too few players to fill it.
The bracket is seeded from the final standings: 1 against 8, 4 against 5, 2 against 7, 3 against 6.
What the organizer controls — and what they don't
They control when a round starts. PlanesForge never pairs on its own. Even when the last result of a round is in and the round closes automatically, the next one only exists once the organizer creates it. That is deliberate: a round that appears by itself takes the organizer's control over their own evening away.
As long as a round is unpublished, they can also re-pair it, delete it, or change individual pairings by hand: swap two players — who then trade opponents — or swap two table numbers. Such changes are recorded, so that in a dispute it can be established what was changed by hand. Publishing fixes the pairings; after that no swap is possible. Results of a running round can be corrected.
They do not control the calculation behind it. No setting changes the rules above — the proposal in front of them is produced the same way at every tournament. Departing from it is a deliberate decision, and one they can account for.
If something looks wrong
Ask. A pairing that looks wrong at first glance almost always has an explanation — and where it does not, we want to hear about it.
Useful for us: the tournament name, the round number, and what you would have expected. Organizers can reach us through the contact form; as a player, start with your organizer, because they have the round in front of them.
Shorter answers to individual questions are in the FAQ. How to get through a tournament as a player is in the player guide; how to run one is in the organizer guide.
