A McMahon system tournament is a tournament design for games such as go and chess that attempts to generalize and improve upon the Swiss system. As in a Swiss tournament, all players compete in the same number of rounds against various other players. Unlike Swiss, the players do not all start with zero points, but are awarded initial points based on their rating prior to the tournament. This gives starting advantage to higher rated players, but they will play tougher opponents from the very start. The system features an "upper bar", set to a specific rating, so that all players rated above that are considered to have a chance to win the tournament, and start with the same number of points.