Molter tables
The Molter system is a pairing method for team tournaments played over a small number of rounds. It takes its name from Charles Molter, who set the idea down in documents dating from 1978. The tables French arbiters have relied on ever since were drawn up in November 1991 by international arbiter Jean-Claude Templeur, from Molter’s originals and under his supervision, and have been distributed by the Fédération Française des Échecs since.
Those tables are now changing. Working closely with the Fédération Française des Échecs, the Sharly Chess team defined the hard criteria and quality requirements expected of a good modern Molter table. Sharly Chess now provides validated tables for every supported configuration, so the correct table is selected for you automatically.
What problem does it solve?
Imagine a small team event — a handful of clubs, four players each, two or three rounds in an afternoon. You want:
- everyone playing every round (nobody sits out),
- balanced colours for each player,
- each team to meet a fair spread of opponents,
- and you’d rather not run a full Swiss engine or an all-play-all.
Molter answers this with a fixed table: a precomputed schedule that says, for every round, which player faces which — board by board, across the teams.
Unlike Team Swiss (which pairs whole teams by standings) or Round-Robin (every team meets every other), Molter pairs individual boards across teams from that fixed table. Each team lines up its players on boards 1…P (board 1 = strongest), and the table decides who plays whom.
When should you use it?
Molter is the right choice when:
- the number of teams is small relative to the number of rounds;
- each team has an even number of players;
- and you want a fixed schedule rather than pairings driven by standings.
Odd team counts are the original hard case: a naive schedule would force someone to sit out each round, and Molter is designed precisely to avoid byes. Even team counts are supported too; in that case the table keeps players on their own board number and no floater is needed.
Typical example: a 3-team club cup with 4 players per team over 2–3 rounds, or a 5-team phase. If you instead have many teams, or you want pairing driven by running standings, use Team Swiss; if every team must meet every other, use Round-Robin.
How it works
- Each team fields P players on boards 1…P, board 1 being the strongest.
- For each round the table fixes, board by board, who faces whom — always a player from a different team, never a team-mate.
- Over the schedule each player meets a distinct opposing team each round, and colours remain tightly balanced.
- With an odd number of teams, one player “floats” to the neighbouring board so that nobody is left without an opponent — the floater — and this duty is shared evenly across the teams.
The result is a balanced, complete schedule with no byes and no pairing decisions to make during the event — the table is fixed in advance.
Validity and quality
Every shipped Molter recipe is checked before it is used. A table is rejected if it breaks the hard rules:
- every player appears exactly once per round;
- no player faces a team-mate;
- no player faces the same opposing team twice;
- player colours stay within bounded drift and never repeat three times in a row;
- floaters, when needed, are only between neighbouring boards and do not repeat the same role for the same player.
Among valid tables, Sharly Chess then prefers the best quality it can obtain:
- opponent spread: teams should meet as many different teams as possible early in the event;
- floater balance: ascending and descending floaters should be balanced by team;
- floater spread: the descending duty should be shared evenly;
- round-pair balance: a team should not be asked to float too often within the same pair of rounds;
- per-round spread: a team’s boards should not all be concentrated against the same opponent when a better spread is possible;
- team colours: exact per-round team colour balance is kept when it does not damage the stronger opponent and floater objectives.
The current recipe set is deliberately capped in the app to keep this quality high.
A small example
Take 3 teams (A, B, C) of 4 players over 2 rounds. Each round has 6 games, written White – Black (so A1 is team A’s board-1 player):
| Round 1 | Round 2 |
|---|---|
| A1 – C1 | B1 – A1 |
| C2 – B1 | C1 – B2 |
| B2 – A2 | A2 – C2 |
| B3 – A3 | C3 – B3 |
| A4 – C3 | A3 – C4 |
| C4 – B4 | B4 – A4 |
A few things to notice:
- Everyone plays in both rounds — even with an odd number of teams, nobody sits out.
- No one is paired with a team-mate — the two teams in a game are always different.
- Colours even out: A1 has White in round 1 and Black in round 2.
- Because 3 is odd, a game sometimes pairs players from neighbouring boards (
C2 – B1): that’s the floater at work, and it’s what lets everyone have a game.
Sharly Chess produces this table for you — you don’t transcribe anything.
Using Molter in Sharly Chess
- Create a team tournament and choose the Molter pairing system.
- Set the players per team and the number of rounds.
- Sharly Chess selects the table automatically for the chosen size (currently 3–20 teams, with an even number of players per team up to 12).
- Generate each round’s pairings as usual; you can still adjust a team’s line‑up between rounds.