As many of you are now noticing, WinTD cannot download the February ratings database. Neither can SwissSys. At present no pairing software can download the February database. It is unclear how many days, weeks, or months it will take for this issue to be fixed.
What’s a TD to do? I dunno for SwissSys, but here’s an easy set of instructions on how to download and install the February database into WinTD.
I put the December and January files on the legacy server (secure2), but we’re hoping to be able to shut that server down this month, so that’s not a long term solution.
I’ve raised this issue with both the developer and senior staff.
Has Chessnut solved this problem? Also, if the files are on the Legacy Server, does that make them usable for WinTD and Chessnut if obtained from that server?
It makes them usable for WinTD if you just ask it to get the December or January files by date. For February you just have to manually download the TSV and then have WinTD install from it; it’s fine.
This forum system isn’t working right. I click on the proper arrow to respond to a person’s post, but my response doesn’t get recognized as sent to them directly as a return post because there is no icon picture with their initials in it.
@KenFarrar Chess Nut is able to consume the rating files from USCF. Since it is cloud based, we import the ratings one time each month and all of the 1500 clubs using Chess Nut then have access to the latests (and older vintage) ratings without any uploading or work on their part
You can see for yourself by searching for any player on Chess Nut:
The system will look at your event dates to figure out the proper vintage to use. There is nothing you need to do unlike what others here are going through.
If you enable live ratings, that refresh button is available which lets you pull the latest. We store those ratings so we don’t have to keep re-polling USCF for them. When a live rating update is available, the rating gets that green badge.
Keep in mind that live post-event unofficial ratings on a 3rd party site will usually be behind live ratings on the US Chess site, because every time we do a rerate we update many records and we’re adding new events as they’re paid for. And we’re doing a two-month rerate every night to get recent events into chronological order.
IMHO the challenge with using unofficial ratings is that they change, so you’re likely to get questions about when you pulled them, especially if, like many TDs, you prep your advance entries a day or two ahead of the event. Most of these rerate changes are small but that isn’t always the case, especially if a new event is received out of chronological sequence or a correction to an event is received.
If you are running ratings-based sections and someone’s rating changes at 3AM because they played in an event late Friday night that pushes them over, say, the under 1600 threshold for a section, are you going to force that player up a section?
An advantage to using published ratings is that players know in advance which ratings-based sections they’re eligible for.
I personally like using the published ratings more for this reason. But a lot of people would prefer the noise for more recency. I find this is especially true for events with many younger kids that are 750 going on 1750.
It’s a tradeoff, organizers and TDs using current ratings need to make an informed choice to do that, considering the plusses and minuses.
And although it’s seldom a problem with the 750 going on 1750 crowd, when using unofficial ratings using a lower unofficial rating than someone’s published rating needs to be well-publicized in pre-event publicity and on-site as that is a significant exception to the rules.
Are you clicking on the player’s icon then selecting ‘message’ or ‘chat’? I believe neither of those create a new message in that topic, those are intended for one-on-one messages.
I’ve never clicked on a ‘reply’ link and had it create a one-on-one message instead.
For me it would need to be a very compelling reason to use a lower live rating and I am not thinking of any off hand.
I make sure I refresh everyone’s live rating upon each time someone enters and at registration close – with a timestamp on last registration list update. I know quite a few play in multiple tournaments each week, so re-rates do change things.
I had a 2nd grader (1300) who played in my tournament which got over around 3pm and then she played on the other side of the county for 5pm start time. I think they got rated in the right order since I was quick (5 minutes) to get mine rated.
I think it may be the case that in only shows the reference information (arrow and icon) if the followup post isn’t the next post in the chain. I do see at least one recent post from you that has the arrow and icon.
