Most British Go tournaments use the McMahon system, which is designed to ensure that games in a tournament are most likely to be even. Each player in the tournament starts off with a McMahon score (or "MMS") that corresponds to his grade. For example, a 4-kyu player starts at -4, and a 1-dan player starts at 0 (there is no 0-dan!). Each win for a player increases his MMS by one, and the winner is the player with the highest MMS at the end of the tournament.
The draw program (or human organiser) attempts to pair players with the same MMS against each other. This has the effect that, if a player enters at the wrong grade, her MMS will gradually come closer to that of players of her own strength. For example, if a player declares too high a grade, he is less likely to win, and so his MMS will stay the same while other players' scores rise – until finally the player meets those of roughly the same strength.
Because a player's starting score is determined by their grade, a player who was 7 dan would have a massive advantage and the best chance to win the tournament, as such a player would start with a very high MMS. To counteract this, and to give as many people as possible an equal chance of winning the tournament, players at or above a certain rank all begin at the same MMS. This rank is called the McMahon bar. For example, if the bar is set at 3 dan (which is an MMS of 2) then no player can start at an MMS of more than 2, no matter what his or her grade: 3-dans, and all players stronger than 3-dan, also start with an MMS of 2, and are said to start "above the bar". The position for the bar is the one which gives the right number of players above it to try to ensure there is a unique winner. This in turn depends on the number of rounds to be played. BGA recommended guidelines are as follows:
| 3 rounds | 4-8 players |
| 4 rounds | 5-10 players |
| 5 rounds | 6-12 players |
| 6 rounds | 7-15 players |
| 7 rounds | 8-18 players |
| 8 rounds | 9-22 players |
| 9 rounds | 10-26 players |
| 10 rounds | 11-30 players |
The constraints on which these figures are based are
If you are using Geoff Kaniuk's GoDraw to create the draw, it will automatically set the bar according to the above table.
In effect the top players play a Swiss to determine the winner, so there should not be more than 8 players above the bar for a 3 round or 16 players for a 4 round tournament.
(Note: In some larger European tournaments, there is a supergroup, which is one or more points above the McMahon bar. This is used where there would otherwise be too many 4-dan players above the McMahon bar.)
Although the McMahon system decreases the chances of uneven games, they still occur, especially where there is a large range of entry grades. The handicap in the McMahon system is normally one less than the current difference in the players' McMahon scores, with a handicap of 1 meaning a no-komi game. If there is no handicap, colours are selected (more or less) at random. Therefore, a player may end up taking White even against someone on a McMahon score one better than them. It is normal to try to organise the draw so that, as far as possible, players play an equal number of games as each colour.
If either player declared a grade at or above the bar, then the game must be even.
It is not a requirement that the handicap be one less than the McMahon difference; it is normal in Europe to use difference-2, and some tournaments use the difference directly. You may specify what you choose. If you don't want to think about it, specify "McMahon difference minus 1".
A player who misses a round (with the tournament director's consent) sleeps for that round. For the purpose of producing the pairing, a sleeping player is deemed to have achieved an average score for each round missed. In order to prevent biassing the draw by pairing players who sleep, an extra McMahon point is awarded after every two rounds missed. This score increase does not count as a win.
In more important tournaments, players in the top McMahon group (or Supergroup if there is one) are not allowed to sleep for any round. Sleeping players who would be in the top group are removed by reducing their initial McMahon score by one or possibly two points. This prevents the lower group players from interfering with top group players in later rounds.
If a player wins by default (usually because their opponent fails to show up), their MMS is increased by one. This counts as a win for the purposes of the tournament, but not for the purposes of the EGF rating system. It is not counted as a missed round for either player. (A win by default should not be entered as a normal win, as we do not want the EGF rating system treating it as a win.)
At the end of the tournament, the winner is the player with the best McMahon score of those who started above the bar.
There may be a tie for first place (and it is very likely that there will be ties for other positions). You may consider that this does not matter, and there is no problem with sharing the first prize. This is your decision. However it is usual to want a single winner, and to ensure this, a tie-breaking system should be decided and stated before the tournament. It may consist of just one of the tie breaks listed below, but the chance of breaking a tis is greater if several tie breaks are used, in a specified order of precedence.
Some sensible options for a tie-breaking system are list below. If you don't want to think about it, just specify the first of these.
Possible tie breaks include:
This is the most commonly used tie break in the UK.
If two players start off on the same McMahon score, and end up with the same CUSS (having played all games) then their CUSP will also be the same. This follows since at any round McMahon score is equal to initial McMahon score plus winning points up to that round. So one cannot sensibly use both CUSS and CUSP as first and second level tie-breakers. CUSP is easy to calculate by hand and is therefore recommended for use as the tie-breaker in small tournaments.
There is a serious flaw associated with the concept of SoDOS. It is possible that the final ordering can change depending on the origin of the McMahon scale (i.e., whether is is 0 for shodan, as in the UK, or 0 for 20 kyu, as is commonly the case in Europe). SOS is deprecated by the EGF, and should be avoided.
You should decide in advance what to do in case there is still a tie, as even these tie breakers are not necessarily enough to separate players. For most tournaments, it is reasonable for first place to be shared. For more important tournaments, such as the Challenger's League, a play-off game is used.
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