[tournament-org] Things a Tournament Director hates

[Geoff Kaniuk]

Agreed re title.  Ten things TD would like to see?

GoDraw tries hard to pair players below the bar from different clubs The 
player annoyance seems to get more intense the closer you get to the 
bottom of the draw.

The only alternative is to offer a handicap game instead of same club. 
GoDraw has a handicap bar that the DM can set - its default value is 10k.

It means that for grades below the handicap bar, players will be paired 
with higher handicaps rather than same club where an even game+other 
club is not possible.

Once the draw is done GoDraw provides a comment on each pairing giving 
the DM a change to try to modify the pairing if a same club game seems 
to be unreasonable.

Note that a player who enters as No Club will happily play any other 
player even another No Club player.

So although I agree that we prefer to play even, if the same club 
pairing is an issue then in my experience forcing an even game can lead 
to great unhappiness.

Geoff

33 Ashbury Close, Cambridge CB1 3RW 01223 710582

On 05/04/2023 18:30, Matt Marsh via tournament-org wrote:
> Colin,
> 
> On Wed, 5 Apr 2023, at 13:49, Colin Williams via tournament-org wrote:
>>
>> For the next BGJ but one I’d like to write a short article about the 
>> top ten things that a Tournament Director hates, with the intention to 
>> help educate or remind people in order to make our life easier.
>>
> 
> Education is always good - though I do hope it will be given a different 
> title than "top ten things that a Tournament Director hates" - I'd 
> "hate" it to come across as though all TDs are constantly miserable and 
> disgruntled about all the attendee behaviour...
> 
>> Please let me have any pet peeves you have around people entering or 
>> attending tournaments and I’ll try and pull something together.
>>
> 
> Not so much a "hate", but one thing I've noticed come up numerous times 
> from players is an annoyance when they are paired against someone from 
> their own club. Some education on why this happens wouldn't go a miss...
> 
> I think the point to try and get across is that when they enter most 
> normal UK tournaments, which might have 30-40 people, there aren't that 
> many players around their strength to match them with. Pairing programs 
> like GoDraw are primarily trying to pair people based on MMS (and making 
> sure they don't play the same person twice!), and whilst they will try 
> to avoid same-club matches, it's a lesser objective and often 
> unavoidable to some extent. The alternative would be more handicap games 
> - which seems like a worse alternative in general to me.
> 
> Hope this helps,
> Matt
> 
> -- 
> *Matt Marsh*
> matt at crazedbytes.net <mailto:matt at crazedbytes.net>
> +44 (0)7795 297779 <tel:+44-7795-297779>
> 
> 
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