High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A Swiss-system tournament is a commonly used type of tournament where players or teams need to be paired to face each other for several rounds of competition. This type of tournament was first used in a Zurich chess tournament in 1895, hence the name "Swiss system". The Swiss system is used when there are too many players to play a round-robin tournament. It is also preferable to an elimination tournament if all of the players can play at the same time (e.g. as in chess but not in tennis, due to a limited number of tennis courts).