Categories, norms and the Advanced tools

Categories#

Categories divide a tournament's players into groups for prizes, for separate standings and, optionally, for separate pairing (rating groups such as U1800, age groups such as 65+, women).

Settings, Categories:

• New category name (for example U1800 or 65+) adds a category.
• Each category may have a rule, any combination of five conditions: rating from, rating below, age from, under age and women only. A category with no rule is hand-assigned. Nested, banded and combined categories can all be written this way. Age is counted by the FIDE convention, as of 1 January of the year: the editor shows the birth year that a limit means ("under 16 = born 2010 or later").
• Rename beside a category changes its name everywhere: in the list, in its rule and prize count, and in the tags of every player who carries it. A restore point is saved first, and a name that already exists is refused.
• Save rules keeps the rules and the prizes of the whole table at once and answers Rules saved. A rule whose from is not below its below matches nobody and is refused. The button that assigns categories works from the saved rules, so it waits (Save the rules first.) while the table differs from what is saved; it fills each category from its rule and says how many of the players it assigned, or that nobody needs changing.
• Remove asks first. The rule and the prize count of the category go with it; the players keep the category on file, so adding the same name again brings the assignments back. Typing in the table is not lost when someone else changes the tournament.
• A player can be in several categories. On the Players page the category cell (right-click or Space) assigns categories one at a time, and the header of that column assigns everybody.
• Prizes: an optional number of prizes per category. The standings of that category mark the places that win a prize. This is informational; the program does not allocate prizes or apply a "one prize per player" rule.

Two switches on the page:

• Rank each category separately: the Standings page gets a filter and each category has its own ranking.
• Pair each category independently (beta): each category is paired by its own engine run and the results are merged into one round with continuous board numbers and a single pairing sheet. In a round robin each category gets its own Berger table. It is locked after round 1. A category with a single player gives that player the pairing-allocated bye; once they have had it (or a win without playing), the round has no legal pairing and is refused, with the offer to pair it by hand.

Norms and FIDE forms#

Advanced, Norms produces the official FIDE forms as Excel files, filled in from the tournament:

The forms are filled in from the officials and arbiters under Settings, Officials & norms, the identifiers under Settings, FIDE, and the player list (Tournament set-up). A banner says Not ready to submit to FIDE while something required is missing, and names it.

• For FA1/IA1, Pick an arbiter takes the candidate from the event's officials, or type the name, FIDE ID and federation of any arbiter; nothing is stored.
• For IT4, a player is included once a claimed title has been set for them (Edit norm data: the title claimed, the norm description, medal percent, group, participating federations, remarks).
• A combined report (festival) joins several of your tournaments into one report: choose the other tournaments, one of them as master tournament (it supplies the header, schedule and name) and download the combined IT3, FA1 or IA1. Duplicate players across tournaments are detected.

The forms use the FIDE house style for names (given name, SURNAME in capitals).

The page also judges, per player, whether the event amounts to a title norm (FIDE B.01). One rule concerns round robins only: games against an unrated player who scored zero are not norm games (B.01 1.4.2). "Scored zero" is read as the points from games actually played: a point for a bye or for a win by forfeit is not a score, so an unrated player with only such points is still left out, and one draw over the board is enough for their games to count. The games stay in the standings and in the rating report; only the norm calculation leaves them out.

The judgment uses the event type for title norms set under Settings, Officials & norms, which can lower the number of games (B.01 1.4.1 b) or lift the federation mix (1.4.3 a-c), and checks by itself whether the event is a big open Swiss (1.4.3 d), which lifts the federation mix for everyone. An exempted check passes and says which article lifted it. The table under the heading names the event type the players were judged as.

Norms without an account#

The Tools tab in the top bar opens a public page for arbiters who have no account: upload .swar or .trf files (up to ten, 5 MB each), fill in the officials, and download the IT3, FA1 and IA1 forms, combined across the files. Nothing is stored: the files live in memory only while you work.

History (restore points)#

Advanced, History. Times here, and in the audit trail and the incident list, are shown in your computer's own time zone (hover for the UTC time), and Today turns at your midnight. A restore point is a full copy of the tournament at one moment. The program takes one automatically before an action that is hard to undo (pairing or unpairing a round, importing results from a file, a forfeit or score of a match, a changed line-up, a withdrawn team, a hand-off) and before a bulk change that rewrites many players with one click (giving everyone a category, everyone present, absent or paid, Assign categories, re-seeding the pairing numbers or the starting numbers, Refresh ratings and the player-data refresh, applying the extra-points bands, re-seeding the manual ranking, ordering teams by rating). Each is labelled with what is about to happen, for example Before assigning categories to 24 players. The newest fifty automatic points are kept; the older ones are pruned. Press Save restore point (with an optional name, for example End of day 1) to take one yourself: those are never pruned and do not count towards the fifty.

Go back to this point restores the tournament to that moment.

Audit trail#

Advanced, Audit trail. Every action that changes anything is recorded: who, when, what, with the old and the new value for a settings change. The rows can be filtered (players, pairings, settings, standings, imports, collaborators, the tournament). The audit trail travels with a hand-off.

Pairing rationale#

Advanced, Pairing rationale is the explanation of a paired round (Pairing a round).

Badges#

Advanced, Badges opens the accreditation badge editor for this tournament (Printing). The badge editor saves as you type: a Saved tick appears beside the heading after each save.