Canadian Open Pairings

[Jamin Gluckie]

Can someone clarify how the pairings are being done for this year's Canadian Open?
Here is my situation:

I am rated 2096 and I was given two ghost points going into the first round. I won my
first round game and therefore in round two I lost one ghost point, leaving me with 1
real point and one ghost point. I won my round two game as well, which means that I
should have 2 real points going into round 3 and no ghost points.

However, I am being paired against GM Friedel in the third round, who also has 2 real
points, but still has 1 ghost point (because he started with 3 ghost points). Why am I
being paired in the higher point group?

Incidentally, a rather bizarre incident occurred in my first round game and this is
part of the reason I'm posting this message. I was supposed to play David Itkin in
round one. I have never met David Itkin, but I understand that he was playing in the
CYCC U14 group (so I assume he is approximately 14 years old) and was paired for the
first round even though he had requested a bye. When I arrived at the tournament site
for round 1 I checked the pairings again and I was still scheduled to play David
Itkin. Upon sitting at my board I noticed that my opponent looked a lot younger than
14, but on the score sheet he had wrote his name as "Davy", so I assumed that my
opponent was David Itkin.

After I won the game and was filling out the result form, my opponent informed me that
he was not David Itkin! Davy was David's replacement, but no one had told me of this
change, and more importantly, the official pairings sheet was incorrect. When I asked
Hal about this he told me that the organizers replaced David Itkin with Davy but
specifically requested that my pairing on the official sheet still say "David Itkin".

I can understand why a Davy was substituted for David Itkin, but for the life of me I
can't understand why no one told me about this change prior to the game, especially
going so far as to deliberately mislead me by not updating the pairings sheet!

For the record, Hal apologized to me for not informing me of the situation before hand,
and explained that he was only acting in accordance with the Organizers' wishes.
Perhaps one of the organizers can explain their reasoning, either on this board
or via email. I can be reached at jgluckie at gmail dot com.

[Erik Malmsten]

Re: Canadian Open Pairings

The pairings are still accelerated for rounds 3 and 4, you (and half of the players) still have 1 ghost point. Perhaps this should be announced at the beginning of every round.

The day before the round it was pointed out on the discussion board that David Itkin had a bye. In the first round there were changes to two pairings, and they didn't want to screw up the already announced pairings by trying to alter the computer. But we shouldn't have assumed that you would recognize David Itkin or see his name on his scoresheet (David uses a Monroi). With two of the organizers playing, and the main one speaking, everyone had many things on their mind. Sorry for the poor communication.

[Jamin Gluckie]

Re: Canadian Open Pairings

Thanks for the response.

I'm still confused about these ghost points. In round 1 I had 2 ghost points. In round 2 I had one ghost point. In round three I should have zero ghost points, correct?

GM Friedel had 3 ghost points in round 1, 2 ghost points in round 2, and 1 ghost point in round 3. Given that he has won both his games, he has 3 points total (2 real and 1 ghost). Since I started with one ghost point less I should have 2 points for round 3.