I’m sorry for being so dense but I’m lost on how to update ratings for my tournament this weekend. I got a note that the update from the web feature in WinTD stopped working because the new site doesn’t have an API call that returns the rating. That seems crazy to me. So I’m going to have to manually go to each player’s page in MUIR and copy their rating into the app so it can do pairings?
I think what most folks do right now is to manually download the TSV (all ratings files in tab delimited format) and push the button to load the USCF ratings from what they downloaded.
I will add that this all assumes you have your WinTD preferences/directories/and which rating you are using set up.
I will also add that I know of a few folks who do still look up players on MUIR and manually transfer that data into wintd.
Are you using official ratings or unofficial (most recent event) ratings?
How current is your version of WinTD?
The player’s published rating is definitely available through the API, but the supplement files are also available and WinTD can use them, you just have to change the file name to what WinTD expects (rtglist.txt for the all player tab file, TARATSUP.DBF for the gold master DBF files.) it is true that WinTD cannot access those files directly because they’re currently only available behind the TD portal login. The question of whether to make them available to the public and where that might be is under discussion by senior staff.
It is also possible to get post-event ratings for players from the APIs, but it is at least a two-step process, first you have to find their recent events, then you have to get the standings from those events, which includes all the players in the section and their post-event ratings.
The question of which event was the player’s most recent event in terms of ratings flow is not always a straight-forward one, because the event ID is the 3rd parameter in the ordering used (section end date, section beginning date, event ID, section number. And it may not be clear from the API as to whether specific events have been rerated to put them into the proper chronological order yet.
Keep in mind that these APIs were not designed for TD usage, they are ones the MUIR system itself uses.
APIs designed for use by TDs or pairing programs are on the planning list, but I don’t know when they will be approved for the worklist.
One of the things I’ve been pushing for in staff meetings is a survey for TDs and affiliates that asks questions about tournament design and practices (like whether a TD/Affiliate is using published rating vs unofficial ratings). This could help us when deciding what features MUIR needs and how to prioritize them.
Wow. It seems to me that this is the main way that we have to retrieve ratings for our tournaments so I’m surprised it wasn’t considered at the start of the project. To your questions… I’ve always kept my WinTD up-to-date and use the most recent version. And I always have used its feature to update ratings from the web. That way, I felt that I knew I was always using the most recently published rating and I didn’t have to deal with unofficial ratings. Especially since I often have parents writing to me Friday afternoon and asking for information about the tournaments and what it takes for their children to play. Lots of times they aren’t members and I given the the USChess link and tell them how to register, and I explain that these are rated tournaments that can’t get rated if not everyone’s a current member and I’ll use the winTD update to confirm their membership & expiration date.
I’ll add this item… occasionally I’ve had a new player, usually an adult, who’s been playing online for a year, 2 years, whatever, and is playing at a 1300+ level. And they’ll come the first week and dominate the beginners and then sign up the next few weeks’ tournaments before they have a published rating. I’ve used the TD prerogative to pair them as a much higher-rated player, so that they aren’t bored and so they aren’t beating up on my real beginners.
Looks like WinTD just put a g version out there and the Update From Web now does get the new expiration date, but not the new rating (at least for me - I checked my settings and it seems like I do have main rating pointing to regular rating)
Update from Database does work with the TSV.
Not sure why you would not want to download the TSV and start from there with your workflow. Even if you loaded players from an external source the Update from Database works well.
US Chess has never offered an API or interface for accessing unofficial (latest event) ratings, in part because there’s no steady state for unofficial ratings, they can change as new events are submitted and when those events are rerated to get them into chronological sequence. (Unless a recently submitted event just happens to be the latest event for every player in that event, choosing which post-event rating is more ‘recent’ is problematical.)
Any ‘latest event’ ratings that people have been getting from 3rd party sites or pairing programs has been through unsanctioned web-scraping activities.
Also, US Chess policy is that the official published rating in effect for that event is the preferred rating to use.
That’s why I’d like a survey to find out current practices, how many events used unofficial ratings and how many used published ratings, etc.
Providing an API that offers unofficial ratings information would be challenging because until recently received events have been rerated into chronological order the ratings flow will almost always have discontinuities in it.
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Not sure what the advantage of starting from a download is.
My process is (was) that the parent registers and sends the player’s name & ID to me. Then I put it into WinTD and update the record from the web to get the latest official rating & expiration date. And when I have a bunch of players who’re already in my system register, I drag them into the new tournament and that afternoon of the tournament I do a Select All for the entries in the tournament and refresh them all from the web.
The advantage of using the download file is it is a more efficient use of network resources because then the only ones that need to be fetched in real-time are the new IDs or the ones that may have been renewed since the supplement file was generated. (Deceased players aren’t likely to show up at your event, and duplicate IDs should get caught during validation.)
I believe the current version of WinTD uses the APIs to check on membership status, but I assume it still uses the supplement rating rather than an unofficial one unless you enter the latter.
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WinTD uses the supplement rating, not the unofficial rating. That’s why I rely on it to update the ratings. I don’t have to worry about what day a new database might be published or if I’ve forgotten to download it. And since I’m generally only submitting requests for the players in this week’s tournament, well I hope 15-25 players isn’t very taxing on the system.
I should have been clearer. I don’t see how using the download file is more efficient for me. It feels like an extra step if I’m re-downloading the file every week to make sure I’m testing to see if I have the latest release or an opportunity to introduce error if I forget to d/l the file to update ratings … especially if I have to test the players to make sure all of them have valid memberships.
The supplement file only updates once a month, the cutoff is the 3rd Wednesday of the month, and the file should be available some time on Thursday but it fell through the cracks last month. It doesn’t take effect until the first day of the next month anyway.
The issue with system resource allocation isn’t one specific user, it’s dozens or potentially hundreds of users all wanting the data at the same time, like 9AM Saturday morning during on-site registration. 
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I use the published rating. Aren’t we primarily required to use the published rating according to the rule book unless a special circumstance requires otherwise such as someone not playing at full potential until money is the prize.
That’s a great quiz question. Where in the rulebook would you go to find the answer?
No. The rulebook section that has been quoted to you at least twice in the last week - 28C - notes that a TD can pick a different rating list in the TLA or similar in addition to the option of the TD assigning a rating. And the only time an assigned rating is specifically for cause is when the player already has a rating.
Maybe the better question is:
How many different sections of the rulebook could impact upon the answer to this question?
Well, I need to be able to defend your answers different than the “supplement” to a Senior TD over me. If Chessnut uses the source that is offered to programmers since MUIR has taken over instead of the former supplement that Legacy had, then we TDs have to be okay with the rule book to use MUIR option. I will investigate this further, but for now I am relegated to have to find the supplement. I want to not have to put in the TLA any deviation.
If you are saying a TD can post in the TLA a deviation, I don’t want to post anything. I just want to go by the default requirement. But if you are saying that, in fact, thanks for bringing up the point.
For the most part, the rulebook refers to a published rating instead of using the word supplement, which only appears in the online chapters of the rulebook twice in the context of ratings.
Do you agree the Golden DB is the published ratings that the rule book is referring to? Or is the rule book referring to more than one source when it declares “use the published rating(s)?”
The gold master DBF files are not the only source for official published ratings, the tab-delimited file has all 6 of them and they appear on player pages in MUIR and on other MUIR pages. They’re also available through the MUIR API.
Personally, I would not trust a 3rd party site to have accurate files, but YMMV.