I run mid-size scholastic tournaments (125 to 240 max). Some parents have suggested wireless reporting of individual game results to the tournament laptop so pairings can print as soon as the last games wrap up.
Is anyone doing this?
What are the specifics?
What are the +/-?
You end up having to dedicate a person to the computer in the back with no breaks possible, and at my tournaments of that size I’m often the chief and solo pairing TD. I can’t afford to be tied down like that. Setting up the connection may be more difficult than people think. I do the following instead.
Make two copies of the board by board results sheet and hang on to one. When there are just a few games left to go just circle those board numbers on the second, still clean, copy and swap it for the first one. Then enter the results from the almost finished first copy.
In my experience that saves maybe as much as 45 seconds on the entry at a tournament like the ones you’re describing. I don’t often bother doing it because of the small time savings and because in many cases the players at the long-running games like a little bit longer between games, but it does sometimes come in handy.
At the national scholastics, where there is also an additional two-person cross-check of each result against the individual games’ result slips, a section assistant is often sent with the almost complete sheet to get that cross-check done before the final games finish.
If I really want to cut down the downtime then I’ve sometimes looked at the final game(s), mentally/internally adjudicated it(them), and paired the next round based on that adjudication, hanging on to the pairings just in case the result is different than expected (make sure you have the ink and paper available to do repairings if the results were not what you expected). When the players finally finish I can tell them their new pairings while they are starting to set up the pieces and then have those pairings posted before they’ve even reached the results table. I can generally do such adjudications safely at the middle school level, and sometimes at the 4th-5th grade level, but at the lower levels only the higher boards have a good chance of actually playing in a way trustworthy enough to adjudicate (I’ve sometimes had good results on the weaker K-3 boards by using my rule of thumb that on those boards K+Q vs K is a draw 50% of the time and K+2Q vs K is a stalemate 90% of the time).
Seki,
Actually, I’m working on something to do this right now. I’ll be using it at a couple of our local scholastic tournaments in December as a beta test. My goal is to use it at our scholastic championships, where I can see it really speeding things up.
I got the idea while directing at Supernationals this year.
Mike Regan
At Supernationals V the section chiefs under me would simply have a section assistant take the 90-95% complete results to the back room (along with the results slips) and have them taken care of while the final games were still finishing. Then the section chief would only have a handful of results to be handled at the end. In the smallest section the back room TD found that things went more smoothly if the section chief waited until it was 100% complete.
At the last NYA I was a section chief of we would simply bring in the 100% results and still make the schedule.
The nationals’ final cross-checking of results slips versus entered results would preclude using Wi-Fi to send them.
Another idea for a local event is to have the pairing computer at the results table. I’ve never actually tried that myself as the 90% entry method has worked just fine for an ASAP schedule. I’ll grant that I use WinTD and do the double-entry method (if you enter a result differently the second time then it halts entry and requires a manual review/confirmation - thus catching a lot of typos). I can do the double-entry for 100 boards in about 90 seconds (first doing a 95% initial entry would drop that to about 10-30 seconds for the last five boards depending on how much scrolling is required to bring them on screen). In SwissSys the second entry simply overlays the first and you still have to do a visible review.
If I’m really pushing it I’ve been able to do the two-pass entry of 200 boards in less than 90 seconds. I learned how to type years ago on a manual typewriter when 60 words per minute (5 characters per second) was considered quite reachable. On a laptop you don’t have to worry about typing slowly enough to avoid jamming the typewriter keys, and you only have three letters to worry about (W, D, L) instead of all 26 plus punctuation.
For one event I used to organize I looked into having a computer at the results desk to enter results as they are received, but the pairing program we were using wasn’t able to share its database across a network.
I don’t know if any of the pairing programs have concurrency controls (eg, MVCC) built into them.
At Nationals, results are transcribed by a human twice: once from the results slips onto the pairing sheet and then again from the pairing sheet into WinTD. This is a waste of time and a potential source of error. My method only has one human interaction and a full audit trail to allow as many double checks as you want. The TD enters the result when they collect the score sheet and at that point the pairing software has the result entered. So it should both require less TD time and be more accurate.
I’m sure that many people are happy with the way they do things today. That’s fine, but I think my method is both cool and will help in running large tournaments. For example, if we’d used this during the Blitz tournament at Supernationals, we could have cut at least an hour off of the total time to run the tournament.
I too would be skeptical until I saw it in action. Once I do some live testing, I’ll put up a video and you can see if you think it’s useful.
Mike Regan
You overlooked the third step at nationals’ main event. That is the check between the results slips and the results that were already entered for the round. Two different errors would have to be made before an erroneously entered result gets through. Thus the errors at nationals are generally those where the initial result slip was filled out incorrectly.
I know that in the past there have been multiple people taking the results at the blitz or bug. That leaves one option being slowing down the results reporting by running each section through one person, or another option being to continue to have results sheets that are then entered into the system. I know from personal experience that I can do a two-pass entry of 200 boards in less than two minutes, but entering 50 results separately into the computer would take closer to ten minutes. Also, if you do not record the result on paper then you will eventually have people complain that the result was not recorded correctly. With a paper result sheet you have a permanent record you can refer to and also a record on which players can watch the result being recorded.
Thanks All for your replies.
It is for this and other reasons that I have always felt it best that there be one person as chief, and another as a chief computer operator. The two tend to be very distinct jobs. One requiring a coordination of data and data entry
between the various volunteers involved, and the other coordination between the organizer, coaches, etc, to ensure
the proper starting and management of the tournament.
Rob Jones
I don’t understand what “wireless reporting” means.
What device would be used to send the report, and what program would be receiving it? If I were to sit down and write some sort of program to do this, I could, but I don’t know if anyone has done it yet. You could do it so that all the floor TDs had a cell phone app which communicated to a laptop via a web service, or you could use a couple of other methods that had no internet reliance, just a local wireless router. However, all of those methods require someone to write a piece of software to do something.
One idea I thought about for my pairing software would be a bar code reader. On the board would be results slips that had three bar codes on them corresponding to a board number with white wins, black wins, and draw. The players put a checkmark next to the appropriate result, hand it in to the person at the results table, who then scans the code. The program would know how to interpret the result, and the value would be entered with a single scan.
There would be advantages and disadvantages, though. It cuts out one source of error, but introduces others. Someone could grab the wrong slip. It would be trivial to catch the error with a quick check of the results, but one thing about computer data entry is that if you make it super, super, easy to do, you tend to end up with complacent operators who rely on the computer system and stop using their own judgment.
As it is, I know WinTD at least is incredibly easy to use for results entry, and it requires just enough focus from the user to make mistakes a little bit less likely than a slightly more automated method.
I’ve tried or been part of many things in regards to live-reporting scores as they come in.
Blog site (WordPress.) In WinTD as results come in, select Output to Window, do a print of the games window. Copy and paste that into a blog entry with pre tags added, then hit the update button. Rinse and repeat. As a sole TD in a 22 player field I was overwhelmed in Round 4 and never did get back to it - too busy - but the kids were playing way the heck too fast.
{Something similar could be worked; a blog which only the scorers and computer room can see. Computer outputs the board table to a blog and updates then views the post, scorers table grabs entry post, edits it and enters score and periodically updates it. Computer refreshes the view-post periodically and grabs results. I’d want at least dual-monitors for the computer, one on WinTD and one on the blog interface.}
For our large tournaments, almost the same thing, but have a pre-prepared set of web page(s). Instead of C/P, save the raw text files. Use Filezilla to FTP to the website.
{Utilizing Google Docs, you could output the games window, allow the scorer’s table to enter results there, Comp room sees as document is edited.}
Have enough laptops (1 per section) and power adapters (2 per machine, 1 in comp room and 1 in scorers desk.) Laptop with the live file goes to the scorer’s desk each round. {More potential for disaster than I’d like to deal with… At minimum I’d have a USB file backup stay in the computer room.}
All of that said, I’ve never encountered this problem but that may be because if I’ve got 125-240 attendance we’ve got at least two blooded computer operators and two computers, and maybe a third. The maximum any section takes for entry is 6 minutes, double entry plus a read-down. (Maybe ten if I had a single 240 player section.) Small price to pay to avoid the inevitable errors that would creep in doing it any other way. But I’m also not a great fan of the individual result slips… It wastes paper in the extreme and bears no better an error rate than if one trains and pays scorers to do their jobs correctly with unvarying procedure, since it introduces another point of failure in the process for much unneeded labor. (Tongue in cheek, because who pays trained scorers? No, we rely on catching volunteers who may be experienced but are never trained.)
Having results slips also requires a larger floor staff to handle games finishing at the same time (at the NYA I’ve sometimes had five nearby boards simultaneously completing those results slips after calling me over). With good TDs the error rate is lower than a results table and I’d guess that part of the reason for that is that the kids don’t have the pressure of being in a (sometimes) long line and are unwilling to disagree with an opponent that states a result different from the actual one. Also, having a slip for each individual game can really speed up the handling of complaints when a kid tells a coach/parent a better result than the kid actually had (once a kid told his coach that he had a forfeit win, but the result slip signed by both the kid and the opponent shot down that story).
That said, nationals are the only place where I’ve had any desire to use results slips. For the local tournaments the people manning the scorers’ tables are good at verifying results with both players and things go smoothly with a smaller staff than I’d want to use at a tournament collecting slips. At least I don’t have to worry about a TD going to lunch and forgetting that he had a slip in his pocket that he hadn’t turned in yet (happens much less now that we know to emphasize what should be obvious - that TDs should always turn those slips in - and at Supernationals V, which is when we need all hands on deck to staff the event including many who haven’t worked all that many nationals, at least in my division we didn’t have any such missing results slips even though we had some of those nationals neophytes).
My application is a combination of an Android app and a Java application. The Java application is an extension of my texting program and directly reads and writes the SwissSys files. All the I/O occurs on one thread. So, as long as no one enters results via SwissSys during the round, no updates are lost. There can be any number of instances of the Android app. I’m testing it on my phone and 7" tablet and both can enter results for the same section.
I’m designing it to work for both small and large tournaments with no results slips and to work at Nationals with results slips.
For the non-results slip tournaments the productivity advantage is that results can be entered by multiple TDs and we don’t have the bottleneck of the scorers table.
For results slip tournaments the advantage is that results are entered only once and directly transmitted to the pairing computer. Double checking of the entry of the results can occur in real time and thus once the last game is complete, you can pair. This will free the section chief from their data entry responsibilities (most of what I did this year).
I’ll be using it next month at a 200 player tournament. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other TDs think.
Mike Regan
Results slips are absolutely the way to go for tournaments of 100+ players-- and it has as much to do with overzealous parents, out-of-control coaches, and frankly sometime either floor or computer data input error.
Results slips provide a clear picture
Rob Jones
What, not thumbprint scans of both players, accompanied by a videotaped declaration of the results? 
I stand corrected. It appears that one person has done it. Sounds pretty cool.
That does sound promising. I know you’re only just developing / testing, but if it proves fruitful would you consider a WinTD version? Sounds like it might be a game changer for the which-paring-program-is-best stalemate, otherwise.
Do you have a backup procedure in place should a fail occur?
They provide a clear picture when used according to an unvarying procedure by trained personnel. So do standard entry sheets. Floor or computer entry errors may be revealed by either, but in slips you have the someone-transcribes-to-scoresheet error possibilities. (Unless entry is done directly from result slip to program… I’ll stick to my touch typing from single pages when possible, thanks.) But it is that the error maker would usually be the floor section chief (in my experiences with slips to date) is what reduces error rate there. But it still happens, as does missing swapped colors on the slip. Not on my watch - I’ve been there too many times to let the section chief or computer room down (working floor with slips,) and been very lucky about sections chiefs I’ve served under in large tournaments (either method.) But I’ve seen it happen from the computer room (and made my own errors there in my time.)
And, in event of dispute, on slips one has to pull not only the computer entry sheet but also the stack-o-slips and then isolate the suspect… at least when I’ve been in computer room. Thus lengthening the time it takes to build the picture of what happened when. (And then the Computer TD gets to put it all back together and refile the schmeer, instead of just refiling the three entry pages.) In a hyper-large I guess one might have a Chief Computer managing the paper flow instead of also minding the burners on one or more section him-or-herself.
Overzealous parents and out-of-control coaches… If the Chief TD has ensured staff are properly trained and trusts them the result is the same. There will be people who accept the explanation and people who don’t, no matter the proof detail level one drills to. But, either method, that requires having scorers (whether on floor or at table) who are indeed properly trained and never make assumptions. “Now you know why we tell you that you must notate, and why you must go to the score table with your opponent.”
On the floor one does indeed get the luxury (with proper procedure) of having the board still set at ‘ending’ position in the result of disagreement at scoring. Except when the players, in defiance-or-ignorance of all instruction, go ahead and reset the board before floor staff comes up to validate slip. On the other hand, we thus train a generation of players to not have a clear result backed by score sheet before resetting a board - which bodes ill for their return in an adult playing environment after years of being away from play.
Anyway, I digress badly. I’m not making a case either way, except for regretting how much paper I burn through over the course of a year.