Yes, so far, we use the Swiss Pairing System feature in the Sevilla software, i.e. the ranking list from the previous rounds will be used for the pairing in the next round except Round 1 as all players are having the same ranking.

Regarding the pairing for Round 1, 卷心菜 could use a method to predict the pairing or even 先后手. (his prediction may be wrong.:P)

The working committee will discuss the pairing methods for Round 1 on 27 Feb 2008.

The random generator could be used as one of the methods, in addition to date of birth, ratings(say Top 8, Top 17, Top 29 etc, i.e. top few players do not meet in the first round or first few rounds). As mentioned, we have no graded players in this coming event.

We are using 2007年第4届碧山象棋会会员分级循环一局赛 and 2008第3届碧山杯全国象棋个人赛 as two examples 对外公开 (in 悟入棋途) the whole preparation processes. These could be useful to those who plan to organise internal/external xiangqi events for the first time.

In general, most of the xiangqi activities are planned with regular intervals, say once in one year, 2 years, 3 years or more. I hope that our (Bishan) active participations in 悟入棋途 since mid May 2007 (with me in my personal capacity) have generated some interests at least for a few players. We may set one year as our active participation period due to most of the activities are yearly affairs, i.e. we will pay attentions to those new activities but not the yearly repeated events.

Personally, I wish SIXGA can develop such platform soon for all Singapore xiangqi lovers.