If a BYE is awarded in a Swiss, to some player who is not wanting it, who should eventually receive it? Currently, it is always the player at the bottom of the ranking/position list. This leads to the players from the bottom quartile to bear it’s unfairness [see other BYE thread]. If the unfairness is to be shared. how should it be allocated. Here are some methods:
1. Randomly
2. Randomly among those players who have not had a BYE in a rated tournament in the previous 12 months.
3. Randomly to concession and junior players - after all they are paying less to enter.
4. The highest ranked player in Round 1 second in the second - after all they were going to win anyway. But it also deprives middling players a crack at the elite. Subsequent round BYEs to be awarded by some random method.
There is no justification that I know of that leads to the BYE being the near exclusive burden of the bottom quartile. If none can be found, it is desperately unjust to continue with the current practise of awarding it to the lowest player. Our chess administrators must then rectify this unfair system.