I completely agree and at our club we almost always use the good 'ol pairing cards. I just want to point out that in my particular case:
Key word being test.
Pairing programs are nice though, mostly because of thier speed. But there is no doubt that all TDs need to understand the how and why pairings are made - and should be able to change a pairing when an error is noticed.
I dont agree with the USCF policy of Computer-assisted Club TD’s being able to hold larger events. – but thats just my own opinion.
Steve, do you have either the JDK or JRE installed? As a Java app, TDX requires a java runtime to be installed - you can get one for Linux for free at java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html
Club TDs have never had to demonstrate that they know how to pair by hand in order to become certified TDs. But that’s the whole point, the goal is for club level to be the ‘training grounds’ for advancement to higher levels, preferably under the watchful eye of a more experienced TD.
I sometimes wonder how many of those more experienced TDs still remember how to pair by hand, though.
I also wonder whether the local or senior exams adequately test a TD’s ability to pair typical tournament scenarios, much less the really complicated ones.
As a secondary consideration, club TDs are a way to help get things started in areas that don’t have any TDs in them.
I think I have mentioned this before but here goes again. Are there any test suites available for prospective TD’s to check their pairing skills against? It would also be a good test for the pairings programs.
I know that you cannot cover all possible scenarios that can crop up, but a “typical” set of scenarios would probably suffice. The suite should contain (fictious) name, id, rating; pairings and results for all rounds in the suite. The suite could contain byes, late comers, withdrawals, and whatever else would be appropriate.
Steve, can you post the console output you see that contains this error? I just downloaded a fresh copy of tdx.jar from my web site and ran it on my PC at work, which has never had TDX installed, and it seemed ok. I’m not sure what could be different on your computer, but if you can provide the console output that should help.
I am unaware of any test suite to validate pairing programs or to check a TD’s skill at pairing by hand.
That would probably be something that the Rules Committee and/or TDCC would have to develop, and it would probably take a lot of work to prepare such a suite.
I will download the latest version this evening and see if the error still occurs. If so I will follow-up with you in the private message section of this forum.
I downloaded the TDX jar file again and it worked this time. Don’t know what the problem was the first time. Now I’ll read the documentation and see how it works.
I have just finished my new tool that generates the uscf report in DBIV format. It is freeware, crossplatform (dos, windows and linux) and open source vegachess.com/distrib/alpha/ .
Although it works with the program Vega the executable convert.exe maybe used with whatever program that produces the equivalent intermediate files in text tab delimited format.
The freeware version of Vega can be used as a separate tool to enter a tounament made with any possible system (even round robin) via the manual pairing and then generate the report for the uscf.
The problem is that I’m not a TD affiliate and cannot test myself how good the dbf files are.
Can somebody help me? He should run two or more test sections and then run the report tool to generate the report of the whole tournament. Alternatively I can send him three typical dbf files for the succesive upload test.
Thank you very much in advance for the collaboratio,
thanks to the help of several certified TDs that tested the program, I can announce that the new version of the crossplatform program Vega (linux, windows and dos) is now able to generate the 3 dbf files for the rating report and online submission to USCF.
It can be freely used to enter a tournament with whatever pairing system in order to produce the rating report.
