[candybar]

I recently put together a proposal for what I hope is a better tournament management system, and sent it to Uday and Fred.

I am posting it here also, so that TD's and others can comment on it. Maybe together we can net out what is the most important and useful parts, what we'd all like the most to have, and get some feedback on what is really possible.

I've numbered the items and TMW features, to facilitate easy discussion.

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TD Wish List

Highest Priority

Item 1: Ding the dealer with the usual sound when the round starts (beginning and round change). When waiting for a tournament, or when there is a long wait between rounds, people often go off to get a drink or check their email, and without ringing a sound to recall them, there is frequently a delay in starting each round.

Item 2: Create a Tournament Management Window for the TD. This window should be open for the TD permanently during the entire tournament and contain all the functions as shown below. It should not ever force itself to the top focus, but leave the TD free to do other actions without interruption.

High Priority

Item 3: The TD should be able to see red spots on disconnected players.

Item 4: Director call windows do not pop on top. This constantly slows down the activities of the TD. Move this function to the Tournament Management Window.

Item 5: Clearly display to all players who the TD is/are in the tournament info. Many times a player wants to ask the TD a question before the tournament starts but cannot find out who it is. Also, some players prefer to avoid certain TDs.

Item 6: Give TDs the ability to penalize 1/4 or 1/2 board penalty for repeated or procedural infractions, and the ability to assign a different result/score for each direction. Move this function to the Tournament Management Window traveller screen.

Medium Priority

Item 7: Allow a player to "withdraw" from a tourney just like they can from a team match. Make them give the reason, but record and track withdrawals (maybe a popup to warn them of consequences), as well as logouts and closing BBO. This will save a lot of the deliberate logouts to escape from a tourney, and save the TD and tourney time when someone actually takes the trouble to ask to be sub'ed and waits. It will also save the time that TDs often wait to see if someone will come back. As a TD, I don't need to hear the excuses, all I care about is getting the sub and keeping the tourney moving.

Item 8: Allow TD to specify the "withdraw" limit for players when they create a tournament. This will avoid the constant "blacklist" threats and even the need for the TDs to do the blacklisting. If the TDs could specify that they won't take anyone with, for example, 4+ withdrawals in past week, it would smooth the operation, eliminate the need for individual blacklists, and make the same information available to all TDs.

Item 9: Add two Chat Options in tournaments, one to the TD for players, and another separate one for TDs to other TDs in the same tournament.

Low Priority

Item 10: The ability for a TD to see chat that occurred at a table for the current round prior to the TD arriving. This would be extremely helpful and save time for complaints of rudeness or bad explanations. Currently it is necessary to ask people to repeat what was said. I know it was stated in the BBO Forum that this is not possible with the current logging, but permanent logging it is not required, just saving it for the duration of the round for each table would be enough.

Item 11: The ability for the TD to pop up a list of bids, alerts, and explanations with timestamps for a given table. This would help determine when alerts were made, if more than one explanation was given, and would show if one pair or the other was delaying the round. Saving this is not required beyond the current round for each table.

Item 12: A way to stop a substitution. Many times, I have substituted for a disconnected player, only to have him return just before he was replaced with a sub. It would be nice to be able to quickly click a "stop" of some sort and not replace him after all, or better yet, for the system to automatically stop the substitution if player was red and returns.

==============================================

Tournament Management Window

The Tournament Management Window should contain all of the following:


TMW 1: Round Status (updated real time as tables finish), each unfinished table number is a click to join.

TMW 2: Scrollable list of all players in alphabetical order, with right-click options same as current. This will allow a TD to find a player easily, without having to look through the entire table list to find him.

TMW 3: A Place to enter board number and see the board traveller as of the moment, with easy way to find a specified player. Be able to show Movie directly from the traveller. Be able to adjust scores directly from the traveller.

TMW 4: A button to add 1 minute to current round without affecting subsequent rounds.

TMW 5: A list of TD calls in order showing those that are unanswered with "take this call" and "ignore this call" buttons which delete it from the list. NO MORE POPUPs! When a TD call is answered, the call is deleted from the list but the call information stays visible to the TD who answered the call.

TMW 6: Button to delay Results (to allow late adjustments), and to then to complete Results after adjustments are finished.

TMW 7: A button to pop up a substitutes window. The sub window should be organized as a 3 column table, showing all subs and their skill levels in 1st, red players in 2nd, and the skill level of the PARTNER for each red player in 3rd. Then allow click on sub, on red player, and replace button.

[coyot]

Nice ideas!

I would try to elaborate a little on TD calls.

Any "call TD" request from players should move into a queue. Ideally, the item in the queue would cointain player name, board number and reason for the call. This could mean that any adjust calls could be removed from the queue automatically once the TD makes the adjusts.

This queue could "block" the results from being computed - i.e. until the TD deals with all adjusts (either adjusting the score for the player+board or by deleting the entry manually), the results are not computed.

Also, as I have suggested somewhere else, do NOT allow the TD call to be sent without giving a reason.

What I would really want - automatically log all message chat of TD, preferrably with timestamps AND if possible, also log important events (i.e. tourney started, time added, TD call request)... Do the logging server-side so it can't be faked.

[Dwingo]

I like the suggestion outlined by candybar. Some thoughts on those lines

Quote

Item 5: Clearly display to all players who the TD is/are in the tournament info. Many times a player wants to ask the TD a question before the tournament starts but cannot find out who it is. Also, some players prefer to avoid certain TDs.

Whover the host puts as Director & co-TD's in the Director box ( originally or later while editting) should be seen by the players.

Quote

TMW 4: A button to add 1 minute to current round without affecting subsequent rounds.

Prefer Clock to be shown in Minutes & Seconds and ability to edit Time per Round in seconds as well or enter fractions like 7.5minutes

Quote

Item 9: Add two Chat Options in tournaments, one to the TD for players, and another separate one for TDs to other TDs in the same tournament.

If this is not possible, have the TD chat (& co-TD chat) in a different colour

Quote

Item 3: The TD should be able to see red spots on disconnected players

To replace an unresponsive player ( who may not be RED) , we need to enter the player's name in the Window to effect a substitution. This takes time. If I can right click on the player and make the subsitution ( should be able to select the sub without entering the sub name in the box) , this make the substitution a lot easier.

Other issues which has been covered in earlier threads

1. Players to know before they register if TD is playing or not
2. If TD is playing, software to restrict No. of entries in some fashion.

Godwin

[mink]

Dwingo, on Aug 3 2005, 08:27 AM, said:

Quote

Item 3: The TD should be able to see red spots on disconnected players

To replace an unresponsive player ( who may not be RED) , we need to enter the player's name in the Window to effect a substitution. This takes time. If I can right click on the player and make the subsitution ( should be able to select the sub without entering the sub name in the box) , this make the substitution a lot easier.

Maybe you already know this: Even today you can right-click on a player's name and then click on the substitute menu item. Typing in a player's name is only necessary if you want to replace him by a specific player.

Karl

[Dwingo]

mink, on Aug 3 2005, 04:26 PM, said:

Dwingo, on Aug 3 2005, 08:27 AM, said:

Quote

Item 3: The TD should be able to see red spots on disconnected players

To replace an unresponsive player ( who may not be RED) , we need to enter the player's name in the Window to effect a substitution. This takes time. If I can right click on the player and make the subsitution ( should be able to select the sub without entering the sub name in the box) , this make the substitution a lot easier.

Maybe you already know this: Even today you can right-click on a player's name and then click on the substitute menu item. Typing in a player's name is only necessary if you want to replace him by a specific player.

Karl

Yes, I was referring to replacing from a player from the Substitution list, not any other sub

[pigpenz]

yes my biggest problems is when you get flooded with td calls, it doesnt que them up for you. would like to be able to save them without waiting for them to call you again, and also more options for adjusting scores and handling the auction like rolling it back for a failure to alert.

[newmoon]

candybar, on Aug 2 2005, 07:36 AM, said:

Item 7: Allow a player to "withdraw" from a tourney just like they can from a team match. Make them give the reason, but record and track withdrawals (maybe a popup to warn them of consequences), as well as logouts and closing BBO. This will save a lot of the deliberate logouts to escape from a tourney, and save the TD and tourney time when someone actually takes the trouble to ask to be sub'ed and waits. It will also save the time that TDs often wait to see if someone will come back. As a TD, I don't need to hear the excuses, all I care about is getting the sub and keeping the tourney moving.

Hi!

I allow players to log off at the end of the round, but before the move, since I serve only Survivor format for all my Pairs events.

Perhaps partner was a pick-up from Partnership Desk and had "Expert" in his profile and plays like a Novice-, and perhaps his mother-in-law decided to visit now. Whatever... I have no qualms.

This is the beauty of the Survivor format - even with 0% cut. REDS drop off automatically.

Try it - Survivor 0% cut is far superior to a normal Swiss.



Newmoon

[jillybean]

It would be good to be able to add "backup TD" - only to get calls if the original TD is stuck/offline. This could perhaps be a permanent list of people, the system could search for first available.

jb

[mink]

newmoon, on Aug 3 2005, 11:59 PM, said:

Try it - Survivor 0% cut is far superior to a normal Swiss.

True. But there are also disadvantages: if an odd number of incomplete pairs is removed at the end of the round, the worst-perfoming intact pair is removed with them. Maybe this is no problem after some rounds when the misfortune of that pair is evident. But unfortunately this can happen even after the first round, and if you have one board per round, even after the first board. This is really unpleasant for the players to whom that occurs.

Rather, there should be the policy that no intact pair is ever removed if less than 4 boards have been played.

The other problem with surviver is that a pair with a missing player is removed even if the player lost connection only some seconds before the round switch and this was has no chance to return. On the other hand, players who have red dot or simply do not do anything for a long time are not removed automatically.

Karl

[jillybean]

Another wish

Ability to chat to registered players before the tournament starts and for a couple of minutes after the tournament ends.

jb

[candybar]

Sometimes a TD has to make judgments about explanations and the possibility of concealed or implicit partnership agreements.

It occurs to me that the software could easily keep a count of the number of hands that player1 has played with player2.

In a tournament, the TD should then be able to see that number for any given partnership. That would tell him/her if the partnership is experienced together.

[luke warm]

is it a good idea or not to have tds *have* to log all decisions/actions taken? maybe the software can do this, but i doubt it... maybe not make them public, but someplace where one or a group of volunteers can review the decisions... this could also be a first step toward a more unified set of 'rules' by which tournaments are run

[jillybean]

luke warm, on Aug 13 2005, 07:39 AM, said:

is it a good idea or not to have tds *have* to log all decisions/actions taken? maybe the software can do this, but i doubt it... maybe not make them public, but someplace where one or a group of volunteers can review the decisions... this could also be a first step toward a more unified set of 'rules' by which tournaments are run

Yes for pay tournaments. NO for free tournaments.

If a free TD is interested in a ruling they made they can request feedback here or elsewhere.
Compulsory review of td rulings would be a) A waste of time, if TD are interested they are going to ask for feedback and b.) Deter some people from running tournaments.

jb

[luke warm]

my aim is

1- to give them feedback whether they want it or not, and
2- to say bon voyage to those who don't

[guggie]

I think this is a rather useless debate. TD's who care like Jillybean, JW_nl, etc etc (including myself) read this forum, post problems and try to do their best and improve.
The reward we get is TD bashing and proposals for all kind of extra work for a freely undertaken job.

Let the TD bashers just for once organize a tournament and experience the problems in real life.

And than let us come to a practical and constructive way to improve on TD's and TD-ing

[candybar]

I have run many tournaments, all of them free, and I know very well the problems of TDs. I created the TD Wish List as a "practical and constructive way to improve on ... TD-ing "

Now, I'd like to find a "practical and constructive way to improve on TD's ...", so if you have any suggestions, please post them.

[guggie]

Gweny used to organize meetings for BBO-TD's. Since the upcome of the payed tournaments we did not get any invitations anymore. I liked the few meetings I attended. Could we not revive those meetings and add in some mentoring/teaching from volunteers like Candybar?