The Stable Roommates Problem and Chess Tournament Pairings

In many chess tournaments the number of players is much larger than the number of rounds to be played. In such tournaments the Swiss pairing system is usually used. This means that players with equal or almost equal scores so far are played against each other. Moreover, each player should alternately have, if possible, white and black pieces, and every pair of two players is allowed to play at most once against each other. This paper shows how the well-known stable roommates algorithm can be used to determine the pairs in a pairing system similar to the Swiss system.