[tournament-org] TournamentEntryGrades

[Geoff Kaniuk]

Should tournament entry grades be automatically set to current rating at 
the time the tournament starts?

I have been thinking about this issue for a while. It has been quite a 
long process, and I feel that I cannot adequately discuss the idea in a 
few lines.  I know people are busy, and if you are strapped for time 
please just skip to the SUMMARY and SOLUTION sections below.

I am interested in your view on this issue. If you agree with the 
solution suggested, would you actually use it?

PLAYER STRENGTH IN McMAHON TOURNAMENTS
The BGA advises players to enter at a grade obtained by rounding the 
players' current strength as shown in the rating list. This is good 
advice, because most of our tournaments are run on the McMahon system. 
It tries to match players by strength and performance below the bar. 
Where the individual grade groups are reasonably well populated, we find 
that the average win rate for the group is about half the number of 
rounds.  The average grade of opponents in the group is also not far 
from the group grade. The individual player can expect to win half of 
his or her games, and meet opponents of roughly similar grade.

All this makes for a satisfactory outcome for players, but it does 
depend on players entering at a realistic grade. Although the majority 
of players do enter appropriately, it seems that about 10% to 20% of 
players don't. Entering at an unrealistic strength gives the player a 
false impression of individual strength and can adversely affect the 
rating adjustments of the player's opponents.

Some tournament directors are careful to check entry grades shortly 
before the tournament, but not everybody does so.  Understandably this 
is a time consuming process.

THE PLAYER LIST FILE FOR GODRAW
Most tournaments in the UK are run using the GoDraw pairing program. 
This reads a file containing a list of players to make it easy to enter 
players manually with just a few keystrokes. Again, not everyone 
downloads the latest version. In any case the entry grade expressed in 
the file is just the grade at the last tournament attended by the player 
and that may well be out of date. So there are calls for that entry 
grade to be automatically set according to your latest rating.

I have been reluctant to do this on the grounds that there are many 
reasons why one's grade or rating can be out of date. It is not current 
BGA policy to do this automatically. Nevertheless it is true that many 
players do enter at their rated strength, so some way should be found to 
ease the burden on TD's and players.

ENTRIES COLLECTED BY EMAIL OR TD WEBSITE
Some TD's collect entries purely by post or email, others via a form on 
their own website. In all these cases data has to be manually 
transcribed either to cards, a spreadsheet or directly into GoDraw. If 
its on a spreadsheet, columns for Name, Grade and Club will be present, 
but the Grade column data will have been provided by the player, 
probably based on their last tournament entry.

At some point in time, the entry has to be manually input into GoDraw, 
so we are possibly seeing two time consuming processes:
email -> spreadsheet -> GoDraw.
Unless of course the TD uses the GoDraw 'Import register' feature. This 
loads a text file easily created by selecting the relevant columns in 
the spreadsheet.

ENTRIES COLLECTED BY TOURMAN
Some TD's collect entries via the Tourman system. This allows players to 
search EGD to automatically fill in the majority of fields in a 
configurable entry form provided by the BGA.  The Grade field is also 
just the previous entry grade of the player and there have been calls to 
change this to the grade derived from current strength.

One change that has been made is to highlight the Grade in Blue in the 
hope that the player will be stimulated to look at the displayed 
strength field and make adjustments if needed. It is not known how 
effective this 'nudge' mechanism is!

There are a significant number of players who don't use the search 
facility. Some of these are not rated, but some are using https: to 
access the form. EGD currently does not support https: so no search is 
possible.

Each submitted entry results in an email sent to the TD, but now there 
is no need to manually enter players into GoDraw.  There is already a 
web application which can produce a registration file for GoDraw on 
demand. No spreadsheet is needed for this process.

SUMMARY
1. McMahon tournaments rely on realistic entry grades.

2. Many players do enter at realistic grades, but not all.

3. The entry collection process is quite drawn out.  There seems little 
point in adjusting entry grades as these may change from time of entry 
to time of event.

4. Ideally TD's will check every entry grade shortly before the event. 
Some do, but understandably this is a very time consuming process.

PROPOSAL FOR A SOLUTION
The BGA provides a 'Make Rated Register' web application for TD use.

1. The TD submits an entry list via a text file in a standard format. 
This file is easily created from a spreadsheet page.

2. Make Rated Register searches EGD to derive an entry grade from 
current playing strength.

3. It produces a register list for GoDraw. The NOTE field is annotated 
to show which grades are adjusted and which player names are not recognised.

4. The TD can activate the tool at any time and download the register 
list for importing into GoDraw.

BGA SUPPORT
There are some security concerns that will need to be addressed by the 
Online Committee. Only TD's should be able to access the tool.

A mechanism would need to be set up to allow known TD's to upload an 
entry list for processing.

-- 
Geoff

33 Ashbury Close, Cambridge CB1 3RW 01223 710582