Amen.
Has the crosstable appeared yet on MSA? If so, do there appear to be any pairing irregularities?
Bill Smythe
The crosstable was made available after the event. As I mentioned in my companion question, I’d need some automated way to verify the pairings of an event this size.
This sounds very much like a normal scholastic event.
By the way verifying pairings is a tricky task; i.e., as it has been pointed out on this forum and in TD Corner, when you compare round by round pairings of the same event made by WinTD, SwissSys, and an NTD you often get different results. Those results all end up being legal. So, it ends up being a debatable question of legal “best pairings.” Since the TD, not the players, are responsible for the pairings …
As I have followed this topic I got the impression that the event in question is a scholastic event. I have noted at those events that the more standard alpha pairings sheets with the “player-board-color-opponent” arrangement has tended to confuse players/coaches that are not experienced (the most common mistake is to think that the color listed is what the opponent is playing). Perhaps this posting method was one TDs attempt to solve that problem–or not.
Tim
Even illegal pairings could have a legitimate reason behind them, I think. (e.g. a scoring error later corrected.) The software tool needed would be one that simply examined all pairing and flagged the irregular ones.
Your theory for the pairing method is also reasonable. But it still left a situation where, during the event, it was practically impossible to determine who was playing who.
We’ve had problems with scholastic players mistaking their pairing # for their board number, and in some cases I’ve had the scholastic section room monitor read off the pairings rather than post them, because that seemed to do a better job of getting players to their correct boards, in about the same amount of time. That’s with about 40 players.
However, we do post the pairings and crosstables outside the room for the benefit of the parents.
I’m not sure what you mean by “pairing number”. What I typically see is an alphabetical list with name, color, board, opponent. Sometimes the rating and score of each player is included with the name. The main problem I’ve seen, at larger events, is people finding their board. One advantage of including the opponent name is that a player, expecting to play David, can walk up to his board and say, “Hi. Are you David?” which provides an instant validation that you’re playing the right person in the right place. It also seems friendlier than asking “Who are you?” I can imagine all sorts of breakdowns (honest and dishonest) if players don’t know who they are supposed to be playing.
That isn’t typical for most tournaments. Basically it’s an option that appeared with pairing programs and probably is used primarily in large scholastics where the players aren’t familiar with the standard pairing sheet.
For pairings, you would normally see a pairing sheet of the form:
Board # - White Name - Black Name
sorted by Board #.
(possibly including rating or score with their name)
Also typically you will see the wallchart posted somewhere outside the playing area. And in later rounds the standings are often posted.
I don’t think familiarity with the standard pairing sheet is the issue here. If you have 150 boards in a section, it’s clearly inefficient to post the pairings solely by board number. The final scoresheets are separate sheets of paper and are in the format you describe.
But to clarify, my problem with the pairings was the omission of the opponent name, (coupled with the fact that they were only briefly posted) not the fact that they were arranged alphabetically.
It seemed to me that you weren’t that familiar with typical tournament practices and were viewing things from the perspective of only large scholastic events.
If you are talking about a 300-player section (possibly other sections at the tournament?), then my first question is whether this was a standard policy for the organizer. My first suspician would be inadequate equipment/supplies. Was he expecting such a huge turnout? Could he print all the necessary paper fast enough to get it posted? Were his paper or ink supplies low and he couldn’t leave the site to get more? Was there a formating problem with the printer (with the last column getting cut off) and he didn’t know how to fix it? Did he have sufficient computers? There are an awful lot of problems that can happen at a tournament that can explain abnormal postings. Sometimes, you just have to do the minimal necessary to get the rounds started and worry about other things later. Suspician about the pairings would be at the bottom of my list.
If you do want the pairings examined, you really should post a MSA link to the crosstable. However, suspicious pairings could still be explained - unreported results, incorrect results, etc that were fixed by the time the crosstable was finished.
Of course there could be. If unclear, I was soliciting comment about this as a deliberate practice.
Without knowing other details of the event, we can only speculate as to what the TD/organizer was trying to accomplish with his pairing sheets.
I can also see why people might not want to post the details (such as the name of the event) here. I could, however, see some merit in someone reporting this information to the USCF office or to TDCC so that the TD can be contacted and asked for the reasoning behind his actions.
In any event, it doesn’t sound like something most TDs would choose to do.
As several have noted, it is very difficult to retroactively ‘prove’ the pairings, because you don’t know exactly what happened at the time the pairings were being made.
For example, you could have two late entries who are paired against each other for the first round even though that would not be the ‘natural’ pairing.
Similarly, you could have merged sections, cross round or cross section pairings, players who request not to be paired against each other during early rounds (such as siblings), not to mention mistakes in the pairing data, such as the wrong ID and/or rating, that aren’t caught until after the first round is over, as well as mis-reported results that aren’t reported and corrected until after the next round.
I’ve even had players play the wrong opponent and then when I figured it out I fixed the pairings so that it showed who they actually played, not who I had paired them against.
As a player I wouldn’t be dissuaded that easily. I’d read through the whole list until I found the OTHER name playing on my board. If the round couldn’t start on time because some short kids couldn’t get to the pairing sheet fast enough, maybe he’d start posting wall charts …
(Not to imply I’m tall …)