submit rating reports via a spreadsheet (e.g. Excel)
obtain official ratings by querying some database in batch form? I.e. through a spreadsheet listing all the club’s players?
I suspect neither is possible today. However, I’m certain these functions could be made available.
The benefit of (1) would be a standard, common interface that every club owner who uses a computer probably already owns and is likely familiar with.
The second would save considerable time. We begin a new 3-5 week tournament on the first Monday of every month. One of our club officers is kind enough to look up the ratings of some 30 individuals who might show up, and tabulate them. Why not just submit a list of player IDs and have “the computer” send the ratings in one shot?
These would be two very helpful functions that USCF need only institute once and maintain, as it does its other great software features.
Rating reports are capable of being submitted in an automated format using SwissSys or WinTd. They both produce the output files necessary to upload into the TD/Affiliate section of the website. Both programs are far superior to using an Excel spreadsheet to do the work. My personal preference is SwissSys.
Using a tournament software like SwissSys or WinTd you can load the rating supplements / golden databases in there which provides you with offline access should you not have Internet access at the tournament hall. The rating supplements / golden databases are not the most current rating that you would see in the MSA area but what the official rating was for that monthly supplement. If you are going to use the ‘rating from last event’ then you would have to manually look those up, however those ratings don’t take into account, at all times, errors that were discovered, late tournament submitted that would affect rating, re-rates, etc. Depends on when you look up the ratings between supplements of when the ratings would be reflective of fixes that were implemented.
Other TD’s can chime in but personally I find it overall safer to use the rating supplements rather than ‘current rating’. Sure one or two might slip by but for 99% of them it’s more accurate.
I am not sure if this next technique will address your concerns or not; however…
Instead of looking up a batch of players one at a time you can enter their ID #s separated by commas (I think a space will also do) into the “member search” box and you get back an entire list of the players you just entered. Further, you can easily do a copy - paste from any word processor into the “member search” box. (you can even create your own macro for first copying the ID#s taken from a spreadsheet – pasting them into Word and cranking out a list that can then be copied and pasted into the “member search” box.) Once your list is generated you can copy-paste it into any word processor.
Of course old versions (can you say discounted?) and new versions of WinTD and/or SwissSys can do fancy stuff like this for you if you just jump through a couple of hoops and download the monthly supplements into those programs.
Or, download the tab delimited text file from the “TD/Affiliate” area and jump through a couple of hoops (or create a macro) to get the info you want in a spreadsheet.
I can just imagine the problems we’d get into with standardization issues. Of course if you log on to TD/Affiliate you can upload the tournament manually by filling in a “spreadsheet” of sorts.
For the second I agree with Mr. Muardian. It’s just as easy to download everyone’s ratings as it is five people’s. This way you’re safe if someone new comes to the club, or an old player you’ve forgotten about.
The commercial pairing programs are expensive, proprietary and the learning curve is quite steep (in my experience). Also, they are completely unnecessary when you’re pairing 8-12 players, and they require that someone have a computer on site.
Everybody has excel. Why can’t USCF offer two years free membership for someone to write a proper chess spreadsheet, and offer it free to TDs. Then someone spend a few hours figuring out how to port the spreadsheet results into the current database.
I’m not saying these are trivial projects, but they should be done in my opinion.
There’d be no standardization issue if we had a standardized spreadsheet whose cell structures could not be altered. USCF should create such a spreadsheet and distribute it for free or at nominal charge.
To download “everybody’s rating” for a club that struggles to have six games per round is a bit of overkill.
If the event is so small that it’s simple to pair, use pairing cards. If you need computer assistance, use SwissSys or WinTD. I haven’t used WinTD, but I don’t think SwissSys is difficult to use.
The commercial pairing programs are $99 and can be used for very long periods of time. I’ve used both WinTD and SwissSys and by far SwissSys is much better laid out of a program and easier to use than WinTD.
Your argument also of not having a computer onsite doesn’t mesh with using an Excel Spreadsheet. How will you do the pairings in Excel if your computer is not onsite? Use your phone that may have Excel on it or use it as a Google Doc through your phone. Of course then you’ll have to deal with printing issues? How will you print out the pairings or do you plan on telling the pairings verbally? What about having a official record of the results which would be the pairing sheets and the results marked on it? Or perhaps how much time will you spend manually inputting the event into the TD/Affiliate area for rating purposes?
As Bob said, you could always go back to using pairing cards of course, but I’ll take it a step further. Then you’ll have to learn the pairings rules properly and hand write the pairings onto a piece of paper. Then you could just drop the pairings into the mail to the USCF office and pay a higher fee for having them manually input everything and delay the rating of the event, not to mention potential loss of the documentation. This way you’ve avoided touching technology at all. Still possible but highly inefficient and ineffective.
I mean honestly, if you’re going to organize rated tournaments for people, make the investment in the proper tools that are used today. We’re not talking about investing thousands of dollars. But there is some minor investment some of which you might already have at home - a laptop and a printer. Yes you have to lug it around. Just like the rest of us. At this point your only other cost is the $99 for the software. I’ll bet if you ask those 10 players to chip in $10 each they would considering they see that you’re giving your time to do all of this for them to be able to play in a rated club tournament.
Before I started using SwissSys I always mailed a photocopy of the wallchart to the USCF and kept the original. Sevan is right, though, that it’s better to use SwissSys or WinTD. Even if you make the pairings at the tournament using pairing cards and leave your computer at home you can enter the results into SwissSys afterwards and submit the rating report on the web site. I haven’t tried this but it might also be possible to enter the results directly on the web site.
I think that I understand your request. You want the lower rating fees and faster response times of reporting the tournament electronically, but without being forced to purchase a pairing program. I believe that the USCF has met this need by allowing a tournament to be entered online. I have not used this option, but if it is too difficult then I think that it would be better for the USCF to improve this existing method instead of creating something for Excel.
Does anyone know whether the specifications for the upload files are available free of charge? If so, then ADP also has the option of using Excel or any other method of creating these files.
This question is answered on the FAQ page for the TD/A support area. Once at the FAQ page, look for “What are the file formats for the 3 upload files for rating reports and for the rating supplement files?”
I mean, honestly, if you’re going to run for office have a bit of empathy for the people you are hoping to serve. The busy people who take on the thankless chore of running clubs – and thereby justify/validate your personal/political aims – and also have spouses, children, older parents, homes to run, businesses of their own, other responsibilities, and are just looking for ways to make the chess administration part of life a bit easier.
My objective is to submit results in the same format in which I plan to report them to our participants every week, in Excel. And of course not to have to learn or purchase WinTD.
I already use the online submission form, which in my opinion is clunky and cumbersome.