How would you know?
Alex Relyea
My point.
But also, you do what you advertised. You do not advertise one thing, and then do “what we’ve always done” differently. You do not make up rules on the fly about how many (0,1,2,…?) 1/2 point byes are available to players and when they can request them. If you advertise “registration closes at 8:30” - then you close registration at 8:30. If you want to allow late-comers into the event, then you say so in the advertising. If you want to give Masters 1/2 point (or…I’ve seen it…1 point) byes for missing the first round, but give 0200 players a 0 point bye - then you determine this policy BEFORE the event, and not after you see WHO the player is who is asking for the late entry with a non-zero bye.
and, most important - you do not make 100 people wait while you process entries for a line of players still arriving 10 minutes after the first round was scheduled to begin. If you do, some of them start thinking “Why should I show up on time next month?” and others begin thinking “Why should I show up next month?”
In my opinion, if you do not have an advertised policy on HOW MANY 1/2 point byes a player can have and WHEN they can request them, then a player who shows up after the advertised “close of registration” gets zero points for the first round. The only exception might be if the “Please Wait” player is still available and that pairing is equitable to the rest of the players already playing.
Otherwise, you create a privileged class of players who ALWAYS show up late anad feel entitled to special treatment. I’m thinking here of Masters who tell you at the club “I’ll be playing Saturday” and then show up only half the time - and when they show up (late) are upset that they haven’t been paired. I’m thinking also of Scholastic coaches who show up 5 minutes after registration closes with a hand-scribbled list of 10 players (only 2 of whom have arrived, yet) which is missing half of the crucial information on most of the players…and claiming that 3 of the kids already registered are playing for their team…and, by the way, are the team pairing sheets available, yet?
Now…some TD’s may claim “none of my players ever complain when I delay the first round to take late entries”. They are right. Most players who consider that they have been treated rudely will simply never come back. Maybe that’s why these TD’s think that they have to make so many concessions to the late-comers in order to keep them as a player - they’ve already lost so many other players.
As I’ve been reading the thread, there’s one other factor that can come into play: needing sane scheduling intervals (e.g. one shouldn’t plan for a G/30 with rounds at 10:00, 11:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00.) There does have to be enough cushion between the rounds to enter the results, save the tournament, pair and print the next round, and a fudge factor for the inevitable inter-round problems. The interval is depedent on tournament size, though.
Even with sane registration cutoff and intervals, there will still be late rounds for some events.
One common schedule in scholastics here is to have the K-3 at G/30 with a 9 AM start and ASAP schedule with rounds possibly starting at 9:10 (after announcements are finished), 10, 10:50, 11:40, 12:30 and trophies at 1:30 (I’ve occasionally seen trophied begun at 12:15).
We add in 10 or 15 minutes between rounds for paperwork. We also add an extra half-hour after either round 2 or round 3 so adult players can get lunch.
We’re not as strict about starting on time as we should be; you all have inspired me to aim higher on that front. Once we get the first round started, I calculate round times, then put up signs with the round times. Clocks start whether players are seated or not. We find once round one gets started, we stay on the posted round times.
I start my tourneys on time (ok, I’m sometimes 3-5 minutes behind). I’ve gotten into the habit of a little bit of a later start time than we did several years ago, usually starting around 10 or 10:30, so that people coming in from out of town don’t have to be up so early to get here at 9. I’ve also taken to building in a lunch break between rounds 1 and 2. The trade-off is shorter games. What do you guys think? Would you rather have a relaxed schedule of convenience (not too early, plenty of time to eat) at the expense of shorter (or fewer) games? Or would you rather play slower games even if it means a more stressful schedule?
I’m not sure what kind of time controls you’re talking about here, but with a slow enough time control, it’s generally not an issue. Especially with multiple controls, you’ll have very few games going the whole time, so that if you’re doing a 40/120, SD/60, you’ll have most games done within five and a half hours anyway, and then you can offer late finishing players a late start time for the next round. This won’t work so well with a GAME/30, for example. Actually, we’ll be doing an interesting experiment later this month. The next NHCA tournament will be going from the above time control to 40/100, SD/60. We’ll have to see how that works.
Alex Relyea
In my case, G/80 and G/90 have been supplanted by G/60 and G/75.
I’ve never had too much of a problem with non-USCF members. I don’t have to copy their USCF ID#, I don’t have to see whether their membership has expired, and I don’t have to look up their current rating, since they don’t have any of these things. I simply ask for their name and birthdate, and then hand them a membership form and ask them to fill it out. In my experience, USCF members who show up unannounced take more time to process.
Bob, ever had someone show up who claims not to have a USCF ID and rating but who does have them? It happens to me all the time. (Last year, one of them was even a current member.)
In one case, we had a mother who was ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that her son had never played in a USCF rated event. But when we checked, the name was identical, the address was identical and the birthdate was identical. We even had the right home phone number.
It depends on whether your using the paper supplements or a computer pairing program with the latest golden database (I don’t bother with the monthly-change supplements any more, I just upload the most recent golden) and either have only one section or are you are entering directly into the computer (multi-sections with the ability to play up sections combined with delayed entry risks the person signing up for a section different than the one that would have been preferred if the player realized that the section was one the player would be eligible for). With the golden, the only USCF members that you don’t have are the ones that joined since the last golden was generated (which happens every month).
If you’re not using a computer then adding an unrated is easier than adding a rated person. Of course, then you have to worry about the occasional sandbagger that is hoping to enter a section with an upper rating limit lower than the person’s official rating.
Funny you should mention that! At the last tournament I directed, a teenager showed up who claimed not to be a USCF member. But when I tried to enter his membership online, it kicked it back and said it already knew about a player with that same name living in that same town. It turned out that he had played in a rated tournament about 5 years earlier, but he and his family had forgotten about it. He had only played 3 games, so he didn’t even have a published rating. It wasn’t really a big deal, since it was just a matter of reactivating an old membership rather than creating a new one.
The birthdate is a more reliable indicator than the town, since the player could have moved, but their birthdate isn’t likely to have changed. But the warning message only mentioned his town - not his birthdate or street address.
There are privacy concerns with the birthdate and street address. We’ve had several instances of TDs using the tournament entry system to extract information about members that they didn’t need to rate their events.
Birthdate, like other data, is only as accurate as the information we get. Every week we record dozens of changes of birthdates.
I agree that TDs should not be able to extract members’ street address and birthdate at will. But what would have been helpful in this case (and saved the need for a (toll) phone call to the family) would have been to have the warning message tell me whether the street address and/or birthdate I entered matched those in the record that was already on the file.
Telling you that the birthdate doesn’t match still allows a persistent TD (or an automated process) to figure out the birthdate.
Is there any reason for wanting to keep the birthdate confidential other than to keep the member’s age confidential? If not, it should be possible to have the warning message state whether the birth month and day match.
Yes, there is. The warning message was enough to allow a determined entity to learn a birth date.
This is not “tinfoil hat” paranoia. This has happened, and that incident was the reason for the change. (No, I will not provide details.)
I don’t think you understood my question.
What I mean by “birthdate” is month, day, and year, and I can understand why a player who was born, say, on August 4, 1952 might not want a TD to be able to figure out that he is 57 years old (e.g., this might be used as a basis for age discrimination). The question is whether there would be any harm in having a warning message that says:
Potential duplicate member, possible matches given below
12345678 Exp:06/2005 JOHN H SMITH , PHILADELPHIA PA, AUGUST 4, Ratings: Reg: 1264/3
There is no way that any TD could determine from this message what John Smith’s age is. They could determine, if they were persistent or clever enough, that John was born on August 4 of some year, but the question is whether there is any reason this information needs to be kept secret.
The security experts recommend against giving out ANY birthdate information. It’s not that hard to figure out someone’s birth year. (And if that person has a FIDE rating, or possibly just a FIDE ID but not enough games to have a FIDE rating yet, FIDE’s site will have their birth year.)