Forum

It's true that it doesn't say what to do if there are no saves, but...
...The basic logic in the absence of game saves is to invalidate the result. But I understand that for this situation to be considered by the Arbitration Committee (AC), someone needs to appeal to the AC. I personally am not interested, but after the ninth round, there may well be those who want to.

Our rules include the following:

6. Players must make daily saves, keep them until the end of the tournament (i.e., until the results are summarized and the winner is awarded), and provide them upon first request from the tournament organizer/judge/AC member.
If saves are missing for any reason, the organizer/judge/AC will rely on the saves provided by the opponent. Claims against the opponent and judges will not be accepted in this case.

Saves are needed by the judges when resolving controversial situations that arise between players. If one of the players appeals to the AC with a question about the game, and the other says that it was completely different, then they have to compare the saves. Fortunately, this rarely happens. For example, in the case of Coldrain and his probability calculations. I asked him to provide saves from all generations, because Heroin claimed one thing, and Coldrain claimed another. Heroin provided his saves, but Coldrain couldn't find his. The AC relied on Heroin's saves, and the probabilities changed significantly, not in favor of the accusation.

Saves are often missing. Either they forgot to check the box, or they were deleted, or they are on another computer... But in any situation, the judges can only make a decision based on evidence, not words. So be careful. The absence of saves is not a reason to invalidate a game, unless this was stated by the organizer in advance.

It is physically impossible to control whether a game has been played or not. Please understand us too. More than a dozen games are played every day. To check everything, you need to hire a special person and pay them a salary. Yes, there are reports of collusion, of fabricated games, of games played "quietly by oneself"... But you can't hide a needle in a haystack, and no matter how long the rope is, it will eventually end.

The fact that there are many problems in the Swiss system is well known. Here is Wikipedia:

In games with a significant draw rate (chess, checkers, xiangqi), artificial (collusive) draws are possible and, in some cases, desirable for players in Swiss-system tournaments. The conditions for them are created when players of approximately equal level meet, each of whom has a position in the tournament standings that suits them. In this case, the players do not benefit from playing to win, because in a sharp game, the probability of losing is higher, which means a significant loss of points. This situation provokes the opponents to a clear or "silent" agreement: start the game, play easily and without exacerbation, and agree on a draw on the second or third dozen moves, regardless of the situation. As a result, both players will receive half a point, preserving their position without unnecessary risk, usually hoping to gain points in games with weaker opponents. Of course, collusive draws are undesirable: they have a bad effect on the qualitative component of the game, reduce interest in the tournament, and, accordingly, the attractiveness of the tournaments for sponsors. Various measures have been proposed to eliminate collusive draws, such as introducing a ban on draws by mutual agreement or changing the order of scoring, but their effectiveness remains questionable.

It is unrealistic to ban draws, even if you force players to provide saves. We will simply provoke the falsification of saves. And they don't even have to try very hard. One player loses on turn 111, takes an auto-save, the other loses on turn 112, and both lose the desire to continue playing. So what should they provide?

It is possible to introduce a ban on a draw result, i.e., if the players come to a draw, then a replay. But this will affect the timing. In "Favorites," there were several replays (draws are impossible in cups), and we had to extend the deadline.

Personally, I don't like the Swiss system; it has too many drawbacks. I think it is not suitable for Heroes, primarily because of the long time limit for a game (we cannot provide results every day, we need to work), the loss of interest with a bad start, the temptation of collusion, and so on.
But I cannot offer any other system for relatively quickly identifying 5-10 of the best players out of 50-100.

Therefore, at the moment, as Artem correctly wrote, collusion damages the reputation of the players, and nothing more. Although that is also significant.