I became a club TD so that I could set up some local tournaments and not have to travel so far to play rated games. I just wonder how much of a hassle it’s going to be to direct and play a tournament at the same time.
Richard
I don’t do it. I think it’s a really bad idea in larger tournaments or where there is much money at stake, but it can be OK for smaller tournaments without a big prize fund. I’m just uncomfortable with the idea, since I know that I will do neither one my best, and the other players are my customers. Some people think it is OK to be a house player so that there is no odd number, but I usually make my assistant TD be the house player. I hate to give byes (full point). I know that there are TDs who have had no problem being playing TDs, but I’m not one of them.
I think the best option is to get someone else to become a club TD as well and then take turns.
Alex Relyea
Your stated purpose in TDing these events is to have some tournaments to play in, so it would defeat that purpose if you did not play.
Playing in your own tournament is probably OK as long as the turnout is small (20 players or less) and the prizes are not significant (top prize $100 or less).
Make sure everybody has a delay- and increment-capable clock!
Bill Smythe
Moderator Mode: Off
In a perfect world not playing while being the TD would be best.
I have both played and not played in events that I ran as a TD. I agree that if the event has more players, say over 28, not playing is the best regardless.
I too became a TD so I could have events to play in. And yes, it is harder to play well while being the TD.
Today, with the pairing software being so good the TD job isn’t as difficult if the group is small and at least 60% - 70% of the players are experienced tournament chess players. I run some fun, get together events that are usually quads or small Swiss events. It’s a word of mouth thing, so I pretty much know all the players coming beforehand. The pairings are simple due to the small size and there are hardly ever any disputes to handle. When it’s like this, I find I can play just as well as if I weren’t directing the event.
I do remember one of these events with something like 18 players. If I remember right we broke it into 2 sections of a 3 round Swiss. I lost rating points horrendously in that event because I was distracted from running it. The last event I ran we had 2 Quads or 8 people. The lowest rated was 1530 and the event, with the computer and SwissSys ran itself. I won all my games and gained rating points in that event.
Of course in our Monday evening chess club, either Wayne or I will be the TD of record but the people are all experienced and there really are no problems with our rated events that would stop the TD from playing. Pretty much everyone in the club knows SwissSys to the point where they actually put the game results in the program themselves. And all but a few are experienced tournament players so there are no rule violations to speak of.
I wish that happened in my tournaments. I had a player yesterday who had played in over 800 tournaments who tried to claim a time forfeit in a non-sudden death time control with an incomplete scoresheet.
Alex Relyea
This is always a tough question, especially if you’re trying to grow a player base, which is what it seems like you’re doing. (Thank you for that, by the way!)
My personal belief (of course, YMMV) is that, if you are not completely comfortable with playing while directing, don’t do it. As a general rule, I don’t do it, for two reasons. One, I don’t think I play as well as I normally would…though one could easily argue that my play couldn’t possibly get worse under any circumstances. 
Two, and more important to me, I think players are discouraged from getting me if they need help and see that I’m in a game myself.
That said, I have made a few exceptions to this. (In these cases, obviously, I was ineligible for prizes, and took zero-point byes in any round where I was not paired.)
Make sure all players know that they can approach you with claims or non-frivolous questions as you play your game, and you may stop your clock if needed to attend to TD duties.
Not all players know this, and it has come up in games at a club where I play and direct at the same time once in a blue moon.
Have fun!
I think a TD can play in his own tournament in a club environment. When you start advertising your tournament outside your club, have outside players showing up to participate, or get above, say, 12 players, directing the tournament is going to consume enough of your attention that you shouldn’t play except as a house player. Above, say, 24 to 30 players, depending on how good a multitasker you are, you shouldn’t even try to be the house player. And not just because your primary responsibility is to be an observant, responsive, effective and impartial TD, but also because your own games are going to suffer.
At some point it should probably be noted that it has been brought before the delegates the past two years that a TD not be allowed to play in a Grand Prix tournament. Whether for implementation issues (which Mike Nolan has gone on at length about) or other issues, the delegates have soundly defeated this proposal both times.
Alex Relyea
Chiming in with thoughts similar to others already posted.
If it’s a small tournament without a significant amount of prize money, then it is better for a TD to play than to have to have an odd number with byes. I always play if there is an odd number, never if by playing I would create an odd number.
Exception: At my last tournament, I left my computer at home. 
Since I had to pair manually, I did not attempt to play, even though that meant I was stuck with giving byes to players in a 19 player tournament.
If you do decide to play, practice a lot with your pairing software before the tournament. Make sure you know how to add players in the middle of the tournament, subtract them in the middle, and erase pairings and re-pair sections. These are the kinds of things that can add many minutes of unscheduled time between rounds, and make your life miserable while it happens. Of course, you should be able to do those things even if you aren’t playing, but if you are playing and directing, you won’t have much time to look at software manuals or help files or just try out different ways of doing things. As a player and a TD, being able to spit out the next round’s pairings quickly becomes doubly important.
Or, just use pairing cards. 20 players? Who needs a computer?
With pairing cards, anomalies are easy to handle – late-entering players, cross-round pairings, replacing earlier-round byes with actual games – whatever happens.
And it’s no sweat to handle 20 players with pairing cards, even while you’re also playing.
Bill Smythe
That may be true for you and me (and others who were TDs in the '80s and earlier), but a lot of today’s TDs just do what the program says without really understanding the pairing rules. Also, the pairing rules have gotten a bit more complex (particularly with the addition of full color history).
It’s true that pairing by hand is rapidly becoming a lost art. And it’s too bad. More TDs should actually understand pairing procedures and the reasons for them. Helps a lot with common sense.
And how often has a TD avoided doing something reasonable (such as a cross-round pairing) because he is not well versed enough in doing such things with his pairing program?
And, how often do TDs these days bother to keep the wallcharts updated, game by game, as the results come in? If you’re pairing by hand, this is a natural act, because you have to do it sooner or later anyway. With a computer, it’s easy to just get lazy and wait for the computer to spew out next round’s wallcharts.
Keeping wallcharts up to date, game by game, is a service to the players, especially in the later rounds.
Bill Smythe
I think this is where the idea of splitting up the rulebook makes a lot of sense. It would provide a little more space to explain certain pairing concepts.
Probably more often than I’d like to think about. But all of this is a consequence of technological progress, no?
I agree that keeping wallcharts up to date during a round is a good thing. I disagree with the (implied) statement that it doesn’t happen that often. A director who doesn’t update wallcharts will find himself swarmed asunder by players demanding to know current standings - or will find players updating the wallcharts themselves.
I do this, but also have noticed players doing it themselves for their own games. I don’t figure it’s a big deal because I’ll print out a new one after the round anyway. It is bad, though, when they don’t realize that they should be using cumulative scores.
Alex Relyea
At a small club event, or small local tourney, it’s okay, but I tend to discourage it on principle even there. At a larger tournament, players marking a wallchart leads to two bad things: mistakes, and improperly posted withdrawal notifications.
The mistakes are a real problem, especially if it’s during the last round, because you’re trying to determine what prizes you can distribute while the round is still in progress. An error on a manually updated wallchart could result in a significant prize distribution error. Withdrawals posted on the wallchart get missed, because players are expected to withdraw directly with a TD at the tournament HQ. So someone ends up with a forfeit win in the following round - and that someone is typically unhappy.
It was certainly instructive trying to follow all the pairing rules without the aid of a computer. In the first couple of rounds it was very simple, but as rounds 4 and 5 came around, trying to do proper color assignments and avoiding playing players again became more and more difficult.
One thing I suspect has changed is the gap between rounds. I don’t schedule any. Why should I? With the computer, pairings take less than one minute from the time the last game ends until the time the new pairings are printed. There’s no way to be that fast with pairing cards, so I found myself going as fast as I could, but I’m not sure that I did everything absolutely correctly. I can say safely that if I hadn’t spent time working on that pairing program late last year there is no way I would have gotten it even close.
I also found myself in a bit of a quandary during round 5. The most likely outcome would have resulted in about seven players tied for third with 3 points each. I was trying to look up the exact definition of “modified median”, and then precompute scores based on possible outcomes. I was grateful when there was yet another upset, leaving one player with 4.5 points, one with 4, and one with 3.5, then all of the threes.
I suspect that in the pre-computer days, no TD would ever schedule the rounds with zero time in between rounds.
Given that time constraint, playing in the tournament just wasn’t an option, although I have done it before when I was using the computer, and had no real difficulty.
I would never schedule zero time in between rounds now.
IMHO, scheduling that way is just begging for trouble, even in a small event. Always give yourself a little time, even if it’s just 5-10 minutes. You never know what might come up. Also, it gives you time to review things…such as pairings for the next round. It can’t hurt to take a minute or two and review what it spits out. Maybe the program did something funky, like “forget” to withdraw a player. Maybe you forgot to avoid pairing two people you promised you wouldn’t pair. And maybe a dozen other “maybes”.
The only reason I can imagine ever scheduling an event with no spacing between round times is if there was some bad combination of limited time available at the site, no way to change the tournament schedule or format, and no other feasible site available in the area for that day.
Now this is where computers come in really handy. Just pre-define the order of tiebreaks in your tournament settings, and at the end of the tournament, the program will give you standings in tiebreak order. I believe both SwissSys and WinTD use by default the order of tiebreaks in the 5th edition rulebook (though I’ve not used WinTD in about eight years, so that might be wrong).
Even if you print the next pairings immediately remember that it takes time for them to be posted, read, and players to get to their spots.
Depending on the participants you can sometimes get away with essentially scheduling rounds to overlap ([size=150]DON’T [/size]actually do that, just run an ASAP schedule).
For local scholastics and single-evening quick events I generally use an ASAP schedule. Last Saturday a G/30 event had rounds in one section starting at 10 AM, 10:45 AM, 11:20 AM, Noon, 12:45 PM (five potential hours of play finished in less than three and a half hours of clock time) while another section went 10 AM, 11AM, noon, 1 PM, 1:55 PM and the slowest section went 10 AM, 11:25 AM, 12:20 PM, 1:15 PM, 2:10 PM.
In the pre-computer days it took a little longer between rounds, but fairly often it was about the same time. The trick then was to pair score groups as you could so that by the time the last game finished you had all but a half-dozen games paired and written with the pairings ready to be posted once those last few games were determined. This often required an essentially dedicated back-room TD, so you couldn’t count on that person for any floor availability.
Once computers became common that trick was enhanced to having the probable pairings (based on an educated guess about the final result) printed and ready to post as soon as the players agree to a result.