Egyptian Format

Each player plays as many games against as many players as they like. Each player has a rating, which increases when they win, and decreases when they lose. The player with the highest rating at the end of the tournament wins.

Each player has a card that they pin to a board which has three sections: waiting, playing, and resting. Players waiting to play, pin their cards in waiting. When a court becomes available, the tournament director assigns a game from the pool of waiting players, and moves their cards to playing. After a game, each player records the results on their card, and moves their card to either waiting or resting (if they want to take a break).

The tournament director usually avoids pitting players against each other more than once.

Each player starts with an rating of 100, or some other rating based on their rank or handicap. After each game, the winning player's rating is increased, and the losing player's rating is decreased, by an amount that depends on the rating difference between the two players.

For example, Player A with a rating of 110 plays Player B with a rating of 90. Their rating difference is 20 (110–90). If Player B beats Player A, then Player B's rating is increased by 7 to 97, and Player A's rating is decreased by 7 to 103.