If one is interested in working as a TD at a US Chess run national event for the first time, how much time before the event should they send in the application?
Also, this is the application form I found online, https://www.uschess.org/tournaments/common/TD-Nat-Event.pdf. Is this the most current application form? It’s slightly dated since it lists the “National Junior High (K-9) Championship” which is now the “National Middle School (K-8) Championship” and it lists the old US Chess Crossville address.
It would be much more efficient to ask applicants to fill out a Google Form instead of printing a pdf, filling it out by hand, scanning it and emailing it to a particular email address.
True, but there’s something to be said about making sure applicants can follow instructions, because following instructions and helping others to follow them is a large part of a TD’s job.
Thanks everyone for the help. I agree that having a google form would make things easier (I currently don’t have a printer at home. I guess I could convert the pdf into a word document and fill it out that way).
I agree that a more modern system than print, sign, FAX or scan would make sense, but I’m curious about how you run non-trivial Swiss system tournaments without a printer.
That is fine with affiliates and sites you’ve previously worked with but I don’t depend on that with new affiliates. I do know a lot of TDs that work larger events, do not work the back room and thus do not need good computer skills - they are fine with the limitations that puts on the events they can be hired for (more then 70% of the National Scholastic TDs do not touch a computer during the event - more than 85% at Supernationals VI).
Having sufficient computer skills to upload and submit an event online is a prerequisite for advancement to higher levels of TD certification. That makes sense to me as it is how at least 95% of events are submitted for rating these days.
I have very mixed emotions over the Delegate proposal to drop paper ballots, as it in effect would require every voting member to have some kind of computer/phone access (which can be expensive), and I don’t feel that should have to be a requirement to be an active voting member. It would probably exclude prison members from being voting members and might impact blind members as well.
Famous last words (from tournament host to a TD): “Don’t worry, we have a printer”. And you get to the site and discover that it’s a 100 lb behemoth that’s 100 yards from where you would like it to be. Or it’s on a network and the IT staff doesn’t work on weekends and no one there knows how to connect it to your computer. In short, if you want to move up the (backroom) TD food chain, get a printer—they aren’t that expensive for something that can handle a <100 player tournament adequately.
I once suggested, in all seriousness, that for national events US Chess should visit a local computer of big box store near the venue, buy 3 or 4 ink jet printers, and give them away as door prizes during the awards ceremony.
I still think it could save money over having to ship and store them afterwards.
That could work, but they would have to be laser printers. There’s no way an inkjet would be sufficient at national event. We do use one color inkjet printer at the Nationals. But, that’s specifically only for things that require color (badges, etc.). It also has a scanner for copying.
Actually, I recommend all TDs who do their own pairings, etc. get a laser printer. They are faster, better, and cheaper than inkjets.
Bill, my suggestion is that all TDs who do their own pairings learn how pairings are supposed to be done. That allows them to identify when the pairing program has a wrong setting and is not giving the correct pairing.
If one doesn’t already own a printer (which was the case here), and would only occasionally need to bring a printer to direct a tournament, a color ink jet printer-scanner-copier is probably a better bet as it has more uses than an inexpensive monochrome print-only laser. The much higher cost per page doesn’t matter much when you are only printing a few hundred pages a year for tournament work.
Note that I use a 25 lb high speed laser that I bought for the day job.
It is also helpful to understand how pairings are done when asked by a (usually irate) player about a recently posted pairing, especially when there are other, similarly valid, pairing options available.
And knowing how pairings are done also helps to know how to modify pairings to deal with specific situations (siblings in early rounds, for example) while maintaining their overall validity.
Knowing how pairings are done can also help you avoid going to great lengths to fix non-problems. One time the back room person at a 100+ player tournament came to me as we were about to start the first round and said that they made a horrible mistake and left the highest rated player in the top section with no rating and he was paired on the bottom board as an unrated (there were an even number of boards in the section). I was asked what the best method was to minimize the disruption of other sections while getting revised pairings to those players before the round was started (the back room had not yet done the re-pairings).
My response was that they should correct the rating for future rounds and there was no need to do a re-pairing or any other change for the first round because every player was already paired against the correct opponent. I’ll leave it as a useful homework exercise to figure out why that was true.
PS If there had been an odd number of boards then the only change would have been to switch the colors on the bottom board (where the top player had been entered as unrated).
