As my club tournaments have grown from an average of around 6-10 to 17 this past week I am realizing what a pain it is to pair it by hand. I do have a laptop but I don’t like to take it to the chess club for a weeknight tournament because I’d have to leave it in my car all day plus it’s a shopping mall.
I’ve been thinking of getting back into the handheld world again - I owned a Palm Professional in 1997. I was thinking Palm or PocketPC, although the new PSP’s are rather interesting.
Is there any kind of pairing program that runs on any of these platforms?
Yes. There are Bluetooth adapters available for some printers. A Bluetooth-enabled PDA should be able to print to such a printer.
It’s not such an outrageous idea. It may not be “ready for prime time” yet, but it would be so convenient.
On a marginally related note, I would like to encourage strongly that the USCF consider publishing the Official Rules of Chess as an e-book. I’d give the equivalent of a queen and both rooks to be able to load the rulebook in PalmReader on my PDA and literally have the rules in my pocket.
I have no idea whom to lobby, though. Any suggestions are welcome.
Feh. I’m not surprised. Mike, based on your reply, it sounds like they’re not really interested in listening to begging or pleading.
I assume the publisher holds the copyright, meaning that the USCF can’t just get another publisher to publish an e-book version?
If there’s a sixth edition (shudder!), I’d lobby either for negotiating with the current publisher to get an e-book published or to change publisher. (But that can be its own can of worms, I guess.)
The current publisher is McKay. The USCF signed a contract with them back in the “book only” days of publishing (eons before cyberspace). That contract gives them the first right of refusal for publication. That means no one else gets to publish the rulebook unless McKay signs off on it. It was great deal at the time. An effort was made to get an e-copy of the 5th edition published. McKay considers this a reference book. They are not interested in publishing those kinds of books in e-format. I hope they change their philosophy by the time the 6th edition comes out.
Right now if you want an e-copy you have to jump through the scanner hoops.
Even then I am not sure what the legalities of such a copy would be.
I have said it before on this forum and here it goes again: The USCF needs a good copyright lawyer to look over the orginal agreement to see what can be done to get McKay to allow at least a partial e-version of the rulebook to be published. Or, find some way to restructure the contract. Or, simply get out of the contract with a win-win for all parties involved. To make it all cost effective the work would have to be pro bono.
There is two pairing programs, WinTD and SwissSys. Do not see the market having a 3rd pairing program just for a Palm, or any other small unit. The sales of the pairing programs are very small, as the program can only be used as a tool only for a director. As the USCF sales department as much as I understand, only sells the SwissSys 6.0 without supporting WinTD.
Could understand back in the 1990’s the USCF would support a pairing program for a Palm. In fact they were supporting every little novality book or chess set around. Just to make the number of units for a pairing program worth the time to produce, it could take 3 or 5 years before they are gone. With it being dead stock, then become a out-dated program within a few years – the program would be a money loser.
I just put out the beta of a free swiss pairing program written in Java. I’m also a PalmOS developer, so I might consider porting it to PalmOS if enough interest is shown. That version would also be free.
to be able to load the rulebook in PalmReader on my PDA and literally have the rules in my pocket.