Pardon my French, but this is total crap. If you take my money, you give me my game. BTW: I know of no such requirement in the rules to give notice of being late. One reason a player pays in advance is so that (s)he, absent advance notice to the contrary, can be guaranteed a first round pairing, and has, therefore, 60 minutes to arrive before being forfeited.
Terry,
There is nothing in the rules about pre-registered players having a right to play in the first round. They do have a right to play in the tournament, so long as their actions (or inactions) don’t merit withdrawal by the TD according to the rules.
Pre-registration are absolutely essential for getting larger tournaments started on time. However, as you point out, they do introduce some complications. This is how I reduce the complication of forfeit points in the first round due to pre-registered no-shows.
I consider a pre-registered player to be like a determined move. In exchange for a reduced entry fee in most cases, they are helping the TD and organizer by providing their registration information in advance. However, some options do still exist, similar to draw offers and the like which may happen between move determination and completion of the move by hitting the clock.
In the case of pre-registrations, they may still elect to have a first round bye, or even not show up. They actually “complete” their entry in the tournament by checking in before the start of the round. If they wait too long, it’s as if they waited for their clock to run out of time before completing the move. At least the late arriving pre-registered player may have the opportunity to play an unpaired odd player or house player in the first round, and they certainly have the right to play in following rounds.
Cheers,
Mike Swatek
Senior TD
If you’ve paid your entry fee, you have the right to be paired for any round that you did not explicitly state you wanted to sit out (ignoring byes, of course). I’m not too likely to play in any Oklahoma events anyway, but with the way you interpret pre-registration I’m quite sure I wouldn’t want to, even if you are an excellent TD in every other respect. In the absence of a rule to the contrary, the presumption should certainly be that he who pays, plays, unless of course there is a reason to expel them. Being five minutes late for round 1 doesn’t seem to qualify.
So let me see if I understand correctly. You would rather that I have players sitting around waiting for their hour to pass before a forfeit point, unable to play each other, so that you can take your sweet time getting there, or maybe not. It seems that your claimed right is seriously infringing on the rights of other players who paid to play, and actually did show up.
I’ll have to respectfully disagree with your opinion, since it has no basis in the rules,
Mike Swatek
Senior TD
Please show me the rule that says a TD can refuse to pair a properly registered person who has not otherwise done something to warrant expulsion. I’m not a TD so I have no idea if such a rule exists. I do know that I have never seen a TD interpret this issue the way you do. But then, I’ve never seen first round forfeits at the rate you are describing. Moreover, I’ve seen them occur on the Sunday morning round just as frequently, and no one is suggesting players have to show up before the start time then.
Assuming that there isn’t anything in the rules to support your position, I suspect that our difference of opinion here is that you believe the TD can refuse to pair advance registrants if they are not present before the start of round 1 since there is no rule saying they have to, while I believe advance registrants must be paired unless there is a rule stating otherwise. If I have correctly stated your position, we will indeed have to agree to disagree. Please note that I am not questioning your abilities as a TD, merely stating that my belief on this particular issue is strong enough that it would be sufficient to keep my from playing in your events.
By the way, I have NEVER forfeited any game in 30 years of play, except for the one time the TD failed to notice my 1/2 bye request. I have on occasion been up to 15 minutes late for a first round.
Mike,
Your interpretation is really bad here. To be sure, there’s nothing in the rules that suggest that pre-registered PAID players don’t have the right to be paired. In the absence of pre-ad policy to the contrary, paid players absolutely have the right to be paired for the first round: players have 60 minutes or the first time control period, whicheve is less, to show up before being forfeited.
My idea of accepting advance entries is that I can pair the players without worrying about what to do: pair them or take them out. Unpaid entrants do not get paired.
Terry,
I prefer to run the risk of a pre-registered late player maybe being upset about receiving a half point bye in round 1. This is much better than a paid on-time player having no opponent at the board and paying to watch a clock run down, especially when another player has received a full point bye.
The latter happens more often using your method, compared to the former happening with my method. The dissatisfaction of the players with your method is squared when there are two watching their clocks run down, wondering why they aren’t playing each other.
I frequently direct large tournaments and initially did as you suggest, which was indeed easier. My current method works better based on fewer dissatisfied players. In fact, nobody has been upset about it.
I’m not sure if it’s even necessary to state in the TLA that pre-registered players will not be paired until they check in for their first round. If so, I’ll do so to keep more players happy. It boils down to whether a pre-registered player is considered a late entrant if they arrive after their first round is paired. Tim Just, what’s your opinion on this?
Cheers,
Mike Swatek
Senior TD
My experience has been similar to Mike’s which is why I favor this approach. However, I do believe it is important to make this policy clear in all TLA’s and announcements.
My guess is that the difference of opinion here is based upon scholastic vs adult tournaments. In scholastic tournaments you have lots of pre-registered players who don’t show and who don’t know that they need to contact the td (and presumably don’t know that they would get a refund on their entry fee if they did contact the td before the first round is paired). In contrast this is very rare in adult/open tournaments. Those players in general do contact the td before the first round (though the first round of the 2nd day can be a problem since they no longer have an immediate financial incentive to contact the td). So while in scholastic tournaments you would probably have more happy players by repairing, in adult events you will have a lot more unhappy players as they show up 10-15-30 minutes late.
My experience came specifically from our state open championship event. Two years in a row we had several people sitting with running clocks in round one. Now we have this new policy and clearly announce the requirement for pre-reg’s to check in with the TD in order to be paired.
Our scholastic coaches actually do a pretty good job of handling the last minute stuff that comes up with the kids.
If you’re referring to the Michigan Opens it looks like about an average of 2 forfeited games in the first round for about 150 entrants. In our area, we generally have about 2/3 to 3/4 advance entries, so that would mean having 100+ people show up and check in - wasting 10-15 minutes of their time each - assuming the tds could handle processing 100 check-ins that quickly. It seems like the net time wasted goes up with check-ins - though everybody suffers equally.
The advantage in scholastics is that normally you don’t need to have everybody check-in, but instead just grab the players without opponents and pair all the extras in the section.
I recall the last Open I directed I had four open boards to start, that were eventual no shows. For one player, it was the second year in a row it happened to him. Thereafter, we started requiring the check in. With two TDs and a couple of volunteers at registration, the check in process has not been a problem.
We have tried check-ins with K-8 scholastics in the past. What we found was that there were many players who were present that did not check in and many absent players whose coaches checked them in (doing an entire team at once) It seemed that for every four players there were properly removed, there were three players who were either erroneously removed when present or who were not removed though absent.
That check-in and changes delayed the start of the first round by 20-40 minutes. We finally reached the conclusion that we may as well simply pair everybody that was registered and then re-pair the games with no-shows after about 15 minutes had passed in the round.
The state K-8 organization has codified that re-pairing into their rules.
I’m always interested to hear how other organizers plan their tournaments but to me having a “check in” for pre-registered players just doesn’t make any sense.
If a player pays an entry fee then that is more than enough commitment for them to show me they are serious about turning up to play in round one. I indeed thank them for pre-registering and not having to waste my valuable time just before the start of the tournament, unlike the last minute entries who get charged a fee on top of the regular entry fee. They (the pre-registered players) get paired and are expected to show up and play in round one. If they don’t show, yes we end up with the unfortunate forfeit situation and they are withdrawn from the tournament. The entry fee is pocketed and still very welcome to the overall tournament income!
As for what happened in the situation at the start of this thread, I’m in the “no pay, no play” pool and unless you have paid an entry fee you don’t get paired. I’ve had a couple of players burn me in the past on this and I’ve paired them to have them not show up. Never again!
Chris Bird
I have tried just about everything brought up in this thread. I have settled on what Chris does; i.e., only paid entrants get paired for round 1. I double check the pre-entrants to make sure I have logged all the requested byes. I WD all no shows for round 1. If a pre-entrant does not tell me about their need for a round 1 bye then they get a WD and are re-entered with no more than (if they are lucky with a good explanation-or I made a mistake) a half point for the missed first round and zero points for any other possible rounds they did not get paired for (they often show before round 2 starts). Is there a down side to this system? Heck, there are down sides to any system that depends on people feeding other people info, following through on that info and then getting it entered into a computer or on a pairing card correctly??!!
No there is nothing in the rulebook about this procedure. Why? Different TDs have found many different ways to effectively, for them, deal with situations like this. No one method is better than another, just different. Find what works for you as the TD/Organizer that makes you and your customers happy and use it!
Tim
As usual, Tim’s posts are filled with common sense and resonableness. To me, these qualities are the most important for a TD. A TD may know the rules inside and out, but if they don’t apply common sense and resonableness, they will not be as good.
I’d just like to add one item on “no shows”. Sometimes in my tourneys after about 1/2 an hour if I feel that the likelihood of someone not showing up is high (they haven’t called to say they are running late or they have a past history of being a “no show”), at that point I will sometimes try to find an extra player to give the person with a “no show” an extra rated game. I’ll have those 2 players start the extra rated game, but warn them that if the “no show” shows up within the hour, their extra game will stop and not count and the player with the “no show” opponent will have to go back to their original game.
A very reasonable solution, Jon.
Really do appreciate the discussion about all of the different ways people handle the situation that led to the original question.
For what its worth, here are the details of how I do things at registration to implement the method described to avoid forfeit byes in the first round.
At open events for all ages, which are smaller in my area (20-60 players) I have players fill out a contact form when they arrive, so we can send them any prize they may leave early without. The relatively few pre-registered players have a form waiting for them that is partially filled out. When the pre-registered player arrives, the form is verified, passed to me and they are checked in. When ready to pair round 1, the forms for pre-registered that haven’t been acknowledged by the players are still at the check-in desk. We do a quick check to see if any slipped in without being noticed. Those who are not there receive a half point bye and are put down for zero point byes after that until they check in.
For the large scholastic events that average 200 and may approach 300 for the championship this year, we have a different system. 90-95% of the players are pre-registered. So we have a check-in area with 2-3 lines based on last name. The pre-registered players are listed with team code and some flagged as needing to address USCF membership in an adjacent line. Those on the larger teams are color coded to make it even easier for the coaches to go down the list quickly. There is a separate line for door registrations, right next to the TD or someone with a PC with USCF membership data to confirm memberships. A lot of registration help (6-7 people) with a short training session just before we get started is the key to getting everyone processed quickly and accurately.
We ask the coaches to please only check-in the ones they have actually seen. Yes, there have been a few cases of them checking in a player that really wasn’t there. We make a point of sharing all the grief this causes with the offending coach, and very few have repeated the problem. At the conclusion of check-in time (30 minutes before the start of round 1 as published in the advertising) the names of the missing are announced with a notice that if they don’t check-in immediately, they will not be paired for round 1. Then we proceed with all the announcements while the missing players are given their byes and the first round pairings go up. After running around to all of the rooms to make sure everything is OK with the section TDs, it’s time for a few quiet minutes to relax and get the stress level a bit closer to normal.
On average, we rarely have a player with a missing opponent for an open tournament’s first round and maybe one on average for the 200 player scholastic tournaments. This is much better than it used to be, and we get tournaments started on-time better than ever. No shows in later rounds are now a bigger issue.
At scholastic events without scheduled round start times, requiring players to check-out and check-in when they leave for any significant length of time has helped with later rounds. They know they are put down for byes the rest of the day and have to check in with the TD to have them removed.
My biggest remaining challenge with no shows is later rounds at open events with scheduled round starting times. Fortunately these are at the relatively smaller events for all ages, which are a relaxing walk in the park compared to directing a large scholastic event 
Back to the original question. I would not have paired the player that had pre-registered and didn’t show up on time (regardless of whether they pre-paid) and would have handled them at my event according to rule 28K regarding late entrants. That would have only allowed her a half point going into round 3 and the title problem at the end would have been avoided. If the player did manage to get the unplayed points in your example from a half point bye plus forfeits and end up in a tie for a secondary title award, then tiebreaks as posted must be used.
Cheers,
Mike Swatek
Senior TD
Mike,
For a scholastic tournament I would not waste all the time checking all the players in.
If someone’s oppponent hasn’t shown up for the 1st round after about 10 minutes, I would just repair the player manually with another player.
Jon,
The check-in process helps to address all of the USCF membership issues that need to be handled for pre-registered players. Having about a dozen no shows or more isn’t uncommon for a 200 player event. I think that not pairing them in the first round is more graceful than dealing with it after the start of the round. That’s just my personal preference based on doing quite a few of these.
Thanks for the suggestion,
Mike