In Spain, recent Premodern Nationals have been run with a structure of Swiss rounds followed by a Top 16 playoff. This article is about the structure itself: what changes versus a Top 8 with the same Swiss portion, and what happens if, instead of adding one more elimination round, you add one extra Swiss round.
(For reference, the 2023 Nationals used Top 15. I wrote a separate analysis here.)
To make things concrete, I will use a large-event example: 284 players. Under the usual Swiss-round table, that corresponds to 9 Swiss rounds.
1) The system: 9 Swiss rounds + Top 16
The Swiss portion works as usual: each round pairs you against opponents with similar records, and you accumulate points. After 9 rounds, the Top 16 advance to the playoff.
The playoff is:
- Round of 16 (Top 16)
- Quarterfinals (Top 8)
- Semifinals (Top 4)
- Final (Top 2)
The Round of 16 pairing is the standard bracket: 1 vs 16, 2 vs 15, 3 vs 14, and so on. In addition, the higher seed has an extra practical advantage: they choose whether to play first or draw in game one of each match.
2) Top 16 vs Top 8 with the same Swiss portion
Compare:
- 9 Swiss + Top 8 (quarters, semis, final)
- 9 Swiss + Top 16 (Round of 16, quarters, semis, final)
2.1) With Top 16, “being in” matters most, and finishing very high in Swiss is rewarded less
In a Top 16 with no byes into later rounds, the practical goal is to qualify. The difference between finishing 1st and finishing 16th exists, but it is small compared to simply making the cut.
That pushes late-Swiss incentives toward securing a spot, rather than fighting for every position inside the cut.
2.2) Top 16 tends to increase intentional draws in the last Swiss round
With a deeper cut, more players reach the final Swiss round in situations where taking one point is optimal:
- players for whom a single point makes qualification very likely,
- and players who are already qualified even with a loss, and gain very little by playing that round.
In practice, this produces a last Swiss round with many matches not being played. As a result, very few players are actually “playing for their life” into the playoff during that final round, which can make that last Swiss round feel almost unnecessary.
3) A clean comparison: Top 16 vs Top 8 plus one extra Swiss round
For 284 players:
- 9 Swiss + Top 16: 9 + 4 = 13 total rounds
- 10 Swiss + Top 8: 10 + 3 = 13 total rounds
Same total. The difference is where you place the “extra” round.
3.1) Who gets to play the extra round
- With Top 16, the extra round is an elimination round, and only 16 players play it.
- With one extra Swiss round, that extra round can be played by everyone who wants to keep playing, purely for fun, even if they no longer have realistic chances to make the cut.
3.2) Draw incentives: with 8 spots there are far fewer “one point is enough” situations than with 16
If only 8 players make the playoff instead of 16, there are far fewer available spots. That directly means far fewer tables near the top where an intentional draw is optimal for both players.
In addition, an extra Swiss round tends to push those “safe draw” scenarios upward and later, because you need to maintain a stronger record for longer in order to be comfortable drawing.
3.3) Selection: an extra Swiss round reduces variance and benefits stronger players
With the same cut (Top 8), adding Swiss rounds has a clear effect: it reduces variance.
- With more Swiss rounds, it is less likely that a clearly weaker player qualifies purely off a short hot streak.
- And stronger players have more room to absorb a stumble without missing the cut.
In other words: if the goal is to determine the best player in the tournament as reliably as possible with the time available, investing the “extra” round into Swiss is often more efficient than investing it into an additional elimination round.
4) Conclusion
Moving from Top 8 to Top 16 buys more playoff spots, but it also pushes Swiss toward a dynamic where:
- the main objective is to qualify, and finishing very high in Swiss is rewarded less,
- the last Swiss round contains more tables where drawing is the rational choice,
- and the eventual winner must clear one additional no-mistakes elimination round.
If the goal is to play more games while also reducing variance so that results reflect skill more reliably, a natural alternative is to keep Top 8 and invest the “extra” in Swiss: one extra Swiss round makes Swiss matter more, creates many more games for people who simply want to play, and makes the cut reflect the day’s performance more accurately.