Earlier today I got a phone call from a TD who is thinking about using the Vega program to run his small tournaments.
I have no experience with Vega, I don’t know that anyone in the USCF office does, either.
Vega claims to be able to handle USCF rating supplement files and prepare USCF rating report files.
Has anyone used it for USCF-rated events recently?
It’s my plan to try to use Vega for some small events, at least until I need (can afford) something like WinTD. I need to start by saying I haven’t submitted an event yet. I’m also new to TD and USCF ways and thinking. New to using Vega also, so take anything I say with caution.
I’ve been testing uploading event files from Vega. I just created a 1 section tourney, 3 rounds, 7 players and uploaded the rating report files. I did have to edit the “thexport.dbf” file by hand, which I really hated to go into. I would get something like “Header file format incorrect” over half the time. Finally got it to upload. Vega doesn’t like my scholastic affiliate’s ID and refuses to let the ‘H’ go into the numeric id field. I added it by hand in the dbf file, with a text editor. Would have been nice to finished the upload and then change the Affiliate ID later under ‘Edit Tournament’, but the upload aborts (wink, wink).
It went to ‘Ready to Submit’ and shows ‘No Errors’ on the Pending Event list. I do get ‘Note: Possible Bad ID, Reasons:S’ – ‘S - State is different than most players’ on all the players, which is odd because they’re all ‘MI’. . . . Okay, ignore that. Vega scrambled the state/zipcode from ‘MI 49068’ into ‘M I49068’. Edited and re-validated okay. Well, the ‘S’ codes went away.
The other data from the upload looks correct…names, ids, ratings, etc… But this was a very small test file. I’ll be double checking the data very closely when I have a ‘real’ tournament to submit. I don’t know what else might be a problem if I actually submitted this.
Vega could pull info from the USCF rating files, Gold0902.txt and RS0902T.TXT. Search function works but took a little getting used to.
Vega does NOT have USCF tie-breaks. Besides FIDE/Europe using different names for similar tie-break methods, they count un-played games differently. Trying to understand Vega tie-breaks with the USCF rulebook in the otherhand was a big mistake.
Feel free to pass my e-mail or phone # on to whomever. I’d like to hear from any others using Vega.
Dwight
After reviewing the Vega website it’s interesting that the program uses the Dubov pairing system. Quite different than current USCF rules as due color is second pairing step in Dubov, right after calculating the average of opponents’ rating (thus practically requiring a program for pairings). Could make a difference even in a small tournament (Vega is free for files of less than 30 players). For tournaments that size I’d be tempted to hand-pair and then create my own upload files.
There’s a “Swiss USCF” option in Vega and this from the manual:
Trouble is, I’m still learning what a ‘correct’ USCF pairing looks like.
I’ll be doing pairings by-hand, along side Vega, to learn how it works and practice with made-up events. At this point, I wouldn’t know for sure when I was doing it wrong, or Vega was. In scanning thru past topic threads, it sounds like there can be many ‘legal’ pairings, and just about as many opinions on what the best one is. I’m still looking for a ‘Dummies Guide’ or more ‘How would you pair this round?’ sort of thing, like I’ve read at soccer ref sites. Examples with answers on what a good, bad, or typical paired round would look like. Maybe a future topic for the 80/20 TD ! 
I haven’t run any tournaments in the last couple of years, but I used Vega for all the tournaments I ran in 2005-2006 (about 20 total). I uploaded all the reports with very few issues.
The programmer is very responsive. If you have an issue, you can write to him and usually get a quick response. For the few issues I had, I got versions with fixes maybe a day or two after I reported them.
It is true that even though the default is Dubov, you can pick USCF-style pairings. I believe those use USCF tiebreaks, but you can choose any tiebreaks you want to use in any case.
I would advise you to send bug reports to the programmer to get the state-zip code and the scholastic id issues fixed.
Overall, Vega is a great option for small to medium sized clubs. And you can’t beat the price.
if you are only running 3 round events, it may be best to download the trial copy of Swiss Sys which can run save/upload events of 3 rounds or fewer for free. (last time I checked at least). It is very user friendly as well. I use it and wintd.
The challenge is that the rulebook has no defined hierarchy when equal conflicts within the rules come up. Sometimes, especially in smaller events, TDs are forced to choose which rule to break in order to make the pairings. One example: Not breaking up score groups VS colors in a row VS the 200 point switch VS … Well, you get the idea. Each time the task of creating a hierarchy comes around “the powers that be” choose up sides and give example after example to prove that their version of the hierarchy is more correct than the other side’s version.
Pairings programs have their own quirks. I have noticed, but can’t prove, that color is an overriding factor in influencing many of the “rules conflict” choices that pairings programs make. Pairing programs will not fudge on the 200/80 rule, but TDs often do in order to solve pairings conflicts with “colors in a row.”
Your point is well taken and perhaps I will come up with a list of pairings guides to follow that will get TDs through most situations.
I used the Vega program in my first tournament at the end of March. So, my views are as a first time TD and with really no experience with other programs. I tested out a few other free or free to small tournament programs and settled on Vega.
For pairing purposes everything worked really well. As has been mentioned, there is an option to use USCF pairing and from what I can tell it worked correctly. There is an option within the program to manually pair after automatic pairing if you need to do that.
The only problem I had was when it came to submitting the results. I haven’t extensively worked through the process but it didn’t work without manual intervention. It could be that I was doing something wrong, something wrong with my laptop, or that it just doesn’t work correctly. I plan on testing it more fully before my next tournament and contacting the developer if I find it is a problem with the software.
Here are the problems I ran into:
Overall the program seemed good and I hope to get some time prior to my next tournament to test out the issues I had to see where the actual problem is located.