Bridgescore+ - Chattanooga Regional - February 26-March 3, 2019

Executive Summary

Bridgescore+ (BS+) started/ran all the team games (except BAM) and the very small Swiss events. There were no problems.

Players entered scores for Swiss events. Automatic assignments for each round. Events needed fewer directors to run. Directors can run more tables per session. Players love the ability to see assignments and rankings. Names were transferred from BS+ team IDs (TIDs) to ACBLscore using a namefile.

I was fortunate to have exceptional directors assigned to me all week.

Monday, February 25, 2019

12pm. Set up projector inside room to display assignments. ACBL gave me a member database in a new format at 12:15, had to import to Bridgescore+. It was a CSV file but with 12 extended UTF-8 characters inside the file. The silly ACBL rule is that they will not give me access to a member database; other software vendors are allowed access. ACBL created a stripped CSV file, that they give to someone from D7, who then gives it to me.

1pm. KO start. 23 teams. 12/11. Very simple event for Bridgescore+ (BS+) to start. One team wanted to drop out when they found they were in round 1. A simple thing for BS+. Manually break a Round Robin (RR) and move to a Head to Head (HH).

7pm. Evening Swiss. 16 teams. No problems.

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Tue 26 Feb 2019 Morning Swiss is two session Open and Gold Rush. Set up one projector and one monitor. There was not enough room to use two projectors as nearly all tables were in use. Two input stations for teams to enter scores are laptops. Afternoon/Evening is bracketed Swiss. 30 teams. 3 brackets of 7 teams and 1 bracket of 9. The bottom 9 play as a regular Swiss. Verified that the masterpoints assigned by ACBLscore are the same as BS+. Used same projector and monitor as this morning. Same two input stations. Teams with either Open or GR can enter their scores on either input station.

Bracket 1: 22:15 done. There is one much slower team in bracket 1 (always last to report). Bracket 2: 22:03 done. Bracket 3: 22:06 (22:22) done. Bracket 4: 22:16 (22:24) done.

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

DIC decided to move rooms. All team games moved upstairs to their own room. Morning Swiss moved upstairs from previous day. Changed table inventory in BS+ and asked to reassign tables. Set up one projector for Open, one for Gold Rush. Two input stations. Each input station was configured to allow results for either event.

Thursday, February 28, 2019

New Morning 2 session Swiss. 14 teams in A, 14 teams in B. No issues.

Afternoon bracketed Swiss. 29 teams. 3x7 + 1x8. All assignments up within a minute of game time. One stationary. Used two input stations from the morning and two projectors from the morning.

Evening was a continuation of the bracketed Swiss. All the assignments are up for each round. Little/nothing for me or the TDs to do. I set up for round 4 before I went to dinner. Came back at 6:45 pm for a 7:00 pm second session start and there was nothing for me to do. Players are bringing up their team mates and showing them how to enter their team scores!

There is even less for the TDs to do. There is nothing for them to do on round change. After each round has started and players have settled down, the TDs update ACBLscore with the match results and new assignments.

Almost all the teams were done by 10:00 pm.

Players love the screens and being able to track results and see where they stand.

Friday, March 1, 2019

9:00am. Writing software for running bridge tournaments is mostly adding exception handling code. This morning was an example. There was one team that was dropping out of the 14 table continuing Gold Rush Swiss. This is normal situation and is easily handled. Drop one team, add either a short round robin in the 4th or 6th round. Then one team came up and told the TD that their teammates were in a car accident and would be late. Again, not a problem, marking them as a bye or something else for round 4. Unfortunately they gave the TD the wrong team number. This was not discovered until a couple of minutes into the round. So.... we had to move some teams around. It is virtually guaranteed when something like this happens that the two teams who were now playing each other had played each other before. But, once the confusion of the wrong team numbers was fixed, everyone was playing new opponents. Bridgescore+ was updated after everyone was seated. Even with software, some things will always be manual. The players in the car accident showed up at 9:30. They were fine. All is good.

1:00pm 31 teams in KO. Several teams had a team ID. BS+ created a namefile. ACBLscore then imported the names from this name file. This saved typing.

Metrics from earlier in the week had a TD entering names in a bracket, with no interruptions, and knowning that they were being timed at under 4 minutes.

A different director, not knowing they were being timed, took 7 minutes for one bracket. It takes longer to look up names if the players do not enter their player numbers. Several bracket one players are guilty of this. They all seem to think that the TDs know their ACBL numbers.

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Nothing in the morning. Bracketed Swiss (9/7/9) in the afternoon. Teams enter scores. Similar to earlier in the week. Everything ran fine.

Sunday, March 3, 2019

Last day was an AXY Swiss, 21 teams, numbers 101-121. Bracketed B was 4 brackets, 32 teams, 7, 7, 7, 11. There were more teams that expected so AXY was moved downstairs. Was simple to move equipment. A TD that had not been running team games was assigned to the AXY and had to run BS+ for the first time. No problems. At lunch everyone moved upstairs. DIC decided to use perfect matching for last 3 rounds, so at the mercy of the slowest team/pair.

Summary

BS+ ran nearly all the team (non BAM) games. There were a couple of very small Swiss where BS+ was not used as not worth my time to set up. These were run by ACBLscore, and even though smaller events, ran longer than the bigger two swssion Swiss events that were being run. No problems with BS+. All events run with BS+ checked the masterpoint output with ACBLscore. All matched except there was one discrepancy - but this was a data entry error in ACBLscore, not BS+. Hardware: The tournament was run using Raspberry Pis (RPi) to run the projectors. Either old laptops or RPis with monitors were used for data input.

2019 Suggestions for D7

Some of these are related to the software, some are general. I wrote down the various suggestions during the week.

1. Continue using pre-sales, pre-registration for large KOs.
2. Do pre-registration before the tournament for team events.
3. Use BS+ to run all team games - Swiss, KOs, compact KOs. Use BS+ to print out press sheets, recap sheets.
4. Better use of caddies, i.e. train the caddies to enter names for teams without TIDs.
5. Use different colored paper each day. Make it easier to see postings on the wall.
6. Improve reporting KO wins.
7. More metrics.
8. More TD training.
9. More use of the cheatsheets.
10. More use of BS+ capabilities to reduce players not knowing where to go.
11. Consistent placement of all events.
12. Better use of projectors.
13. Use the text-to-player capability.
14. Consistent placement of supplies. We ran out of several supplies during the week. Players kept asking where they were. Put them all on the central table. Keep extras underneath the table so they can be easily restocked. Put pencil sharpeners on the tables. Better use of signage on where to go, or, use projectors/TVs.

Pictures

Descriptions appear underneath the photograph. Images are shown chronologically.

Monday evening Swiss. The hotel wall background washed out the colors some. The projector was in focus, the camera taking the pictures was not!

We used a monitor to display the teams. Sharper image than the projector. Also testing out different alternatives in preparation for Gatlinburg. This shows the hardware used to power the monitor. There is a Raspberry Pi computer - it is inside the box with the red lego piece on top - yes, it is that small. There is a USB keyboard, a USB mouse, a power cord to the Pi, a power cord to the monitor and an HDMI cable from the Pi to the monitor.

A close up of the Pi.

BS+ displayed on a monitor.

This is another District 7 Pi that is running the projector. For future tournaments, I suggest we set up a remote VNC connection so that we do not need the mouse or keyboard and can control remotely.

More behind the scenes. This is the District 7 short throw projector. With Pi, keyboard, mouse, WiFi router.

Same picture but further out. Shows the advantage of the short throw projector.

Player input station. This is powered with an old laptop. Attached is a large (1" keys) numeric keypad. This worked well. It is $21. Attaches via USB. The big keyboard works well with our demographic.

Two events being run. The ladies in the back are pointing to the Gold Rush displayed on the short throw projector. The gentlemn in the front are looking at the A/X on the monitor. Bridgescore+ can run multiple events at the same time. The monitor/projector can be configured to share events. The input stations can be configured to run multiple events.

Results of the Gold Rush. After the event is over, BS+ shows the standings and, after checking with ACBLscore, displays the masterpoints each team won.

Player entering scores on laptop.

Another input station, different keypad. Typically had at least 2 input stations each day.

Larger keypad. We tried both out as a test for Gatlinburg. The larger keypad is the preferred choice by far. Some players cannot read/see the smaller one.

Short throw projector. Shows how close it can be to the wall.

Moved two tables aside for the players to enter scores from Swiss and bracketed Swiss events.

Older projector. Needs more room to throw the image.

Player entering scores on a monitor powered with a Pi. Used a large keyboard with a side numeric keypad. This is another option that was being tested to find out which one players liked.

After entering scores, it displays the team's total VPs in the ACBLscore letterbox format. This is 'trust but verify'. We trust the players to enter the scores, the other team verifies by checking the total VPs displayed. We did have some players come up to verify - in nearly all cases it was an error in the teams calculations, not an entry score error.

Another picture of Pi with projector to show size of Pi.

BS+ can print out more information in how the masterpoints are calculated.

Close up of final day AXY Swiss results showing teams that have yet to report and leaderboard.

Close up of AXY leaderboard. A player wanted to head home early and wanted me to text them a picture of the final standings.

Players checking the scores of the bracketed B Sunday swiss. The dog is ready to go home - played all week!

Video of Bridgescore+ running multiple Swiss events using multiple input stations with multiple projectors. Players are entering scores; TD has little/nothing to do during the event other than answer TD calls. Event is two session Thursday/Friday morning Swiss. A/X, Gold rush.