why do I pay the Ottawa R.A club again?

[Tony Ficzere]

Re: SwissSys - Difficult to Use?

Well, I certainly would not call it good software. When it works it is sufficient, but getting it to do some things is incredibly difficult (for example, input tournament results after the fact - as someone else point out the 'assistant' version is better for that). I found using it for round robins a real PITA.

Manually sending results quickly becomes impossible for anything more than a 6-player RR. I wonder if the author of that program has ever used it to do real work - not just testing...

The program itself is not very intuitive. However the more you use it, the easier it gets as you become accustomed to its quirks.

I tried to use the Swiss tool to manually submit a tournament once, I didn't like it much myself.

It took a bit of time to figure out how to do the round robin correctly, but I seem to have overcome that obsticle and now understand how it works.

After learning all of this, it is easy to submit CFC rating reports, and the FIDE rating reports work as well, saving TONS of time for myself and/or the CFC.

All of that being said, it sucks when it comes to doing pairings. You have to constantly check to make sure it isn't making major pairing mistakes. We have found many. I am also finding other quirks as time goes by, but I have not contacted Thad Suits to let him know them yet. One day I will get around to this.

I would not have selected SwissSys myself if I was working at the CFC when it was selected as the official CFC pairing/reporting program. There are several other programs that work much better IMO.

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: SwissSys - Difficult to Use?

The program itself is not very intuitive. However the more you use it, the easier it gets as you become accustomed to its quirks....

Meaning that the TD can not just take it and use it in the first or the second try (the help was not useful as well.) Anyway, it is off top.

Back to the origin of the thread - I think there were the CFC rule that results must be submitted within a reasonable time (any help ), as it is bad for everybody, not just who participated in the tournament.

Probably the better way to solve or to rise the complain to other level is by submitting it to the CFC Ethic (Appeal) committee.

[Ken Craft]

Re: why do I pay the Ottawa R.A club again?

The rule used to be that the TD had three months to submit results. I'm not sure what the rule is now.

[Aris Marghetis]

Re: why do I pay the Ottawa R.A club again?

The rule used to be that the TD had three months to submit results. I'm not sure what the rule is now.

I don't know if an actual rule exists, but from what I understand, every time an event is submitted more than a week after the fact (in other words, misses the weekly rating it should ideally have been in), then that causes Gerry extra work, as all of the events are supposed to be rated in chronological order. This repeats, so when a TD submits weeks late, there has been an accumulation of extra work for Gerry, and any website that tries to link to specific CFC crosstables, needs to be rechecked after re-ratings are done! :(

In summary, even if there is no rule, unless the rating mechanism is changed, then we would really help Gerry (and thus ourselves) by submitting all events as soon as feasible.

[Stephen Wright]

Re: why do I pay the Ottawa R.A club again?

From Article 733 of the CFC Handbook:

"An event will not normally be rated if the report is received more than three months after its end. A report should be submitted within one week of the end of an event."

This is theoretical and may not reflect current practice ...

[Aris Marghetis]

Re: why do I pay the Ottawa R.A club again?

From Article 733 of the CFC Handbook:

"An event will not normally be rated if the report is received more than three months after its end. A report should be submitted within one week of the end of an event."

This is theoretical and may not reflect current practice ...

agreed - one week seems reasonable - IMHO

[Bob Gillanders]

Re: why do I pay the Ottawa R.A club again?

I don't know if an actual rule exists, but from what I understand, every time an event is submitted more than a week after the fact (in other words, misses the weekly rating it should ideally have been in), then that causes Gerry extra work, as all of the events are supposed to be rated in chronological order. This repeats, so when a TD submits weeks late, there has been an accumulation of extra work for Gerry, and any website that tries to link to specific CFC crosstables, needs to be rechecked after re-ratings are done! :(

In summary, even if there is no rule, unless the rating mechanism is changed, then we would really help Gerry (and thus ourselves) by submitting all events as soon as feasible.

Just off the top of head (I never kept the stats), I used to get about 75% crosstables submitted on time for wednesday's rating, another 15% would come the following week, leaving about 10% thereafter. It is the last 10% that will be rated out of sequence.

Getting those late tournaments rated chronologically does require extra work. You need to redo the batch with the late ones in, and rerate them all. Extra work indeed, with the potential for errors if you are not very careful.

IMO, the rating distortion (from being out of sequence) is minor and doesn't warrant the extra work to fix it. Gerry disagrees with me, so I'll give him credit for going that extra mile.:)

We should all strive to submit our tournaments for rating within a week. That would save Gerry the aggrevation of redoing ratings. I'm sure he has lots of other crap to worry about! :D