This weekend will be my first time doing a tournament with two schedules, a 2 day tournament with a 1 day option. What is the best way to handle that in SwissSys? Seems like I should set up two sections and then merge them, but I don’t know how to merge sections. Suggestions?
From the help file in SwissSys:
Merge - Utilities Menu
This tool lets you combine two (or more) sections into one merged file, making it easy to use SwissSys with a merged tournament format.
Choose two or more section files to merge using the Select file button. You can use the trick of clicking one file in the dialog that pops up, then pressing Ctrl while you click another to select multiple your files at once. Click Merge when you are ready to merge all the files in your list and give the merged file a name when prompted.
The merged file will have all the players from both old files in a new, resorted file you can read in with SwissSys, This utility merges files at any round, but make sure all results have been reported in files before merging them.
When you merge files, SwissSys examines the players from the merging sections to see if any of them are re-entered players (players who withdrew from one section after a bad start in order to re-enter another section at a faster time control.) SwissSys needs to do this to set the “original pair number” for these players to avoid pairing them against any opponents they met before they re-entered. This process is automatic, but for it to work automatically, you must spell the names of players who are re-entering the same way you did when you first registered them. You may optionally add the re-entry abbreviations “r/e” or “(r/e)” at the end of their names, although this practice is now discouraged since SwissSys will mark them for you automatically as described below.
SwissSys will add an asterisk to the end of the name of any re-entered players who it finds if they are not already marked with an asterisk or with the r/e abbreviation If you use any other abbreviation when you register players as re-entries, you will need to mark their “original pair number” values manually after the merge using the “Tinker” dialog. Using the default system is strongly encouraged.
So how do you know which player is still active after the merge? Using the automatic system SwissSys provides it is easy. The more recently-active player “identities” are the ones with the most asterisks, and the original player will be the one with no asterisks at all. They should also be sorted chronologically in most cases.
Important note for fixed-roster merges: There is one limitation to keep in mind if you merge fixed-roster tournaments. The two files you merge cannot have any team names in common.
When you are ready just go to the pull down menu utilities->merge and follow the instructions.