Due to the tournament format, the number of players had to be a multiple of 4. This year was the first year where this condition was achieved on a natural way. Therefore it was not necessary to recruit fill-in players. That meant also that the Friedrich-designer was not playing out of competition as the last years – but was merely organizer and spectator.

Who was playing against whom was decided by drawing lots. Like in the previous years, every player could meet each player only once in the tournament. Furthermore, a second condition was introduced this year: The lots were pre-sorted into pots in such a way that players coming from the same could not meet each other.