In this tournament 2023 Rounds Survival Lomis has received a large number of byes. I think best practice would be to evenly distribute byes, possibly starting at the weakest players.
Github bug report here: Byes assigned to the highest-standing player repeatedly in the same tournament · Issue #2412 · online-go/online-go.com · GitHub
Possibly it is a practise carried over from some other competitions, where byes happen in earlier rounds and are granted to the stronger players who thus enter the tournament in a later round.
But in most OGS tournaments where byes happen as a result of odd number of players, the fairest is random? In the interest of finding the winner, it is better to give the weakest the bye, but this must get just as frustrating for the lone DDK in a tournament as it currently is for Lomis.
Random would be fine. Or even to give it to the strongest players (as is typical in fewer rounds), but more than one bye for one player when other players haven’t had a bye seems strange. People enter tournaments to play games, and this is not giving certain players games.
Sounds like byes should go to the strongest player not to have had a bye?
Any solution that distributes them evenly would be fine, I think.
I realize this tournament is a special case with thousands of rounds, but the behavior started early, even after only 20ish rounds.