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The following information is an excerpt from the U.S. Chess Federation's Official Rules of Chess (5th Edition), and is provided as a resource to explain the pairings procedure for this tournament. The following information is not intended to be a complete explanation of the pairing process. For the definitive listing of all the USCF rules and exceptions, please refer to the USCF's Official Rules of Chess.

27A. Basic Swiss System Rules. The following rules are listed in order of priority from 27A1 for the highest priority to 27A5 for the lowest. If it is not possible to adhere to all rules in making pairings, the director should generally follow the rules with the higher priority. However there are cases in which 27A4, Equalizing colors, or 27A5, Alternating colors, have priority over 27A3, Upper half vs. lower half, and even a variation in which 27A4, Equalizing colors, can have priority over 27A2, Equal scores.

27A1. Avoid players meeting twice (highest priority). A player may not play the same opponent more than once in a tournament. Even this most basic of all pairing rules must be violated when the number of rounds is greater than or equal to the number of players.
27A2. Equal scores. Players with equal scores are paired whenever possible.
27A3. Upper half vs. lower half. Within a score group, i.e., all players who have the same score, the upper half by ranking is paired against the lower half.
27A4. Equalizing colors. Players receive each color the same number of times, whenever practical, and are not assigned the same color more than twice in a row. In odd-numbered rounds, the objective is to limit the excess of one color over the other to one.
27A5. Alternating colors. Players receive alternating colors whenever practical.

28N. Combined individual-team tournaments. Players are paired individually and team standings are determined by adding the scores of the each team's top scorers, usually the top four. The director should try to avoid pairing teammates against each other, but an absolute prohibition of such pairings can give an unfair advantage in the individual standings to players on strong teams, who may be "paired down" against players with a lower score rather than facing each other.

28N1. Plus-two method.
1. If a score group can be paired among itself without players from the same team facing each other, this should always be done.
2. For score groups of less than plus two (plus two means at least two more wins than losses), if there is no way to pair the score group without players from the same team facing each other, these players should be raised or lowered into the nearest appropriate score group to avoid pairing teammates.
3. For score groups of plus two or greater (at least two more wins than losses), players should not be removed from their score group in order to avoid playing those from the same team.

For information, contact TD Lon Larson LonLars@gmail.com.
For information, contact Brian Thompson ndchessnut@yahoo.com.