  We analyze entanglement swapping (ES) of partially entangled pure states with
arbitrary Schmidt rank from the perspective of quantum state discrimination. It
is shown that the standard deterministic ES protocol is related with an optimal
minimum-error strategy. In this case the amount of entanglement of the states
resulting from swapping is, in general, lower than the maximum achievable for
the quantum channels involved. In this regard, we show that the ES protocol can
be probabilistically improved resorting to optimal maximum-confidence (MC)
discrimination strategy. Additionally, we show that the success probability of
achieving entanglement above a prescribed value from standard deterministic ES
can be increased by applying sequential MC measurements.
