Cumulative Swiss and 1 v. 2 pairings

Running Chess Tournaments
1

I have just successfully upload-reported a “1 v. 2 Swiss” tournament. I strongly recommend this format for small clubs with huge rating gaps.

In the dBase file specs, the 8th field of tsexport.dbf, S_TRN_TYPE has 4 possible values, S (which I used for this “1 v. 2” Swiss), R for Round Robin, M for Match, and C for Cumulative Swiss. I could find no reference to this last option in Rulebook 5th ed., all the help files, and all of the 2 relevant forums here, nor have I heard of it during nearly a half century of tournament play.

What is Cumulative Swiss? Should / could I have used it for this non-traditional tournament structure? What about other Swiss experimental systems (such as mentioned in posts to these forums)? As long as it is clearly advertised in advance, does anything have to obey “Swiss” established rules, or is the 8th field merely a data format issues (R implies columns are opponents, not rounds e.g.)?

2

Cumulative Swiss is an option that the old programming supported, primarily for staff input from crosstables, but it is not a currently supported upload format.

I think the only format supported for uploaded results is ‘S’.

As far as I know, none of the pairing programs ever created a round robin upload file, I think they always converted them to swisses, ie like a Crenshaw-Berger table.

Matches are now treated as if they were two player swisses, as opposed to entering just the total score of the match. This way we have a record of each game.

3

I still use Tnmtadmt for our annual team event (1 match per month from September to April) and upload each monthly match along with quads which run on the same day. The quads are in round robin format. For example:

uschess.org/msa/XtblMain.php?200701284141.4

(though it looks a little funny because the players are re-ordered by results rather than the original ratings order.)

4

Cool, I wasn’t sure if that format worked or not, because I didn’t have a test file to try. :slight_smile:

When you get a chance, send me the raw upload files for an event so I can add them to my test suite.

5

Team events always look strange in the MSA because you’re looking at it in score order, not the original team average order that is on the crosstable that was submitted. It’s kind of frustrating if you’re trying to look at the results by team.

I played in my 27th USATE this past weekend. I have my individual results from each year, and what board I played. I have been trying to reconstruct who was on my team and how the team did, but without results in team order it’s almost impossible to reconstruct.

It would be nice if the Win-TD generated crosstable could be posted on the USCF website so that people could see how the tournament played out for each team.

6

The upload file format doesn’t contain team data (not even the new format), and we stopped having TDs upload the crosstable because that was causing problems, mostly with the browser timing out.

Supplemental data, such as team standings or prize lists, would be nice, but would most TDs be willing to upload them?

7

For team-vs-team tournaments, it would be nice if the WinTD and Swis-Sys programmers and Mike could work together to come up with a format similar to the following for MSA. If teams 12 and 17 played each other in round 3, those portions of the crosstable could look something like this:

12. CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 1900 W20 L11 D17 W23 12a. King, Albert 2150 W20a L11a W17a D23a 12b. Queen, Betsy 2100 W20b W11b D17b D23b 12c. Bishop, Chuck 1950 D20c D11d L17c W23c 12d. Knight, David 1400 W20d L11e D17e D23d

17. SWEET SEVENTEEN 1762 L13 W22 D12 W19 17a. Rook, Elaine 1899 L13a D22a L12a W19a 17b. Pawn, Freddie 1849 D13b W22b D12b L19b 17c. Mate, George 1699 D13c ---- W12c D19c 17d. Passant, Harry 1599 L13d D22c ---- W19d 17e. Perpetual, Ira 1199 ---- W22d D12d ----
This example is for 4-player teams. Team 17 has a fifth player as an alternate.

Bill Smythe

8

I like that idea, but I just don’t understand why the crosstable can’t be put up on the USCF website. I run tournaments for the NSCF. We have a website that has all the tournament results. After I submit the tournament online I send the webmaster the final results and he puts them up on our website.

nscfchess.org/results/nr0203 … dings.html

We have results going back to 1999 on the website. We use Swiss Sys. Prior to the Fall of 2003 we used Pair Plus. (It took awhile for this dinasaur to get away from Pair Plus.) I imagine Win TD gives you the ability to save your cross table or final standings as a text or HTML file.

9

As I said before, Polly, we stopped having TDs upload crosstables of events along with their rating report files because it produced nothing but complaints and problems, and to my knowledge we never used them.

I would have no problem with some kind of supplemental upload which could contain prize lists, team scores, etc, but that would probably be separate from the rating report submission process itself. That’s one of the things that a redesigned MSA could support.

10

The TD or organizer can simply email them as an attachment. The scholastic nationals put pairings and standings up during the event. The USATE is the biggest non-scholastic tournament of the year. It just seems like the cross table should be on the website somewhere. It seems to me Jennifer could get the file in HTML format from the computer TD.

11 
 It's definitely in the Top Two.
12

The 2007 Amateur Teams aren’t rated yet, but here are all of the events in the past 6 years (2001 through 2006) that drew 700 or more adult players:

[code] tnmt_name tnmt_end_date tnmt_players

WORLD OPEN 2006-07-04 1461
US TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP EAST 2006-02-20 1131
WORLD OPEN 2005-07-04 1128
FIRST ANNUAL HB GLOBAL CHESS CHALLE 2005-05-22 1629
US TEAM 2005 2005-02-21 1187
32ND ANNUAL WORLD OPEN!! 2004-07-05 1229
2004 NATIONAL OPEN 2004-06-20 746
CHICAGO OPEN 2004-05-31 728
2004 US TEAM-EAST 2004-02-14 1143
31ST ANNUAL WORLD OPEN!!! 2003-07-06 1352
NATIONAL OPEN 2003-06-15 791
CHICAGO OPEN 2003-05-26 782
US AMATEUR TEAM CHAMP - EAST 2003-02-17 1088
30TH WORLD OPEN!! 2002-07-07 1251
CHICAGO OPEN 2002-05-27 747
US AMATEUR TEAM EAST 2002 2002-02-18 1051
29TH WORLD OPEN!! 2001-07-08 1255
10TH CHICAGO OPEN!! 2001-05-28 841
2001 NATIONAL OPEN 2001-03-11 868
US AMATEUR TEAM EAST 2001-02-19 892

[/code]

13

How about without re-entries?

14

OK, here’s unique USCF IDs, so that excludes both re-entries and players who were in multiple sections, either by choice or because they were moved by the TDs:

tnmt_name | tnmt_end_date | count -------------------------------------+---------------+------- WORLD OPEN | 2006-07-04 | 1315 US TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP EAST | 2006-02-20 | 1131 WORLD OPEN | 2005-07-04 | 1066 FIRST ANNUAL HB GLOBAL CHESS CHALLE | 2005-05-22 | 1507 US TEAM 2005 | 2005-02-21 | 1184 32ND ANNUAL WORLD OPEN!! | 2004-07-05 | 1204 2004 NATIONAL OPEN | 2004-06-20 | 717 CHICAGO OPEN | 2004-05-31 | 726 2004 US TEAM-EAST | 2004-02-14 | 1143 31ST ANNUAL WORLD OPEN!!! | 2003-07-06 | 1319 NATIONAL OPEN | 2003-06-15 | 787 CHICAGO OPEN | 2003-05-26 | 768 US AMATEUR TEAM CHAMP - EAST | 2003-02-17 | 1088 30TH WORLD OPEN!! | 2002-07-07 | 1220 CHICAGO OPEN | 2002-05-27 | 734 2002 NATIONAL OPEN | 2002-03-10 | 675 US AMATEUR TEAM EAST 2002 | 2002-02-18 | 1051 29TH WORLD OPEN!! | 2001-07-08 | 1217 10TH CHICAGO OPEN!! | 2001-05-28 | 825 2001 NATIONAL OPEN | 2001-03-11 | 859 US AMATEUR TEAM EAST | 2001-02-19 | 892