League Management Software

Discuss anything you like about chess related matters in this forum.
Mick Norris
Posts: 10329
Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:12 am
Location: Bolton, Greater Manchester

Re: League Management Software

Post by Mick Norris » Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:26 pm

In the MCF, the trick is getting (1 of the) captains to post the result - with the 6 month cut off for grading at present, we have 2 useful time lags as the fixtures finish before Christmas but don't need to be posted until 31 Dec, and at end of May with an end June deadline - if we move to monthly, then we lose that "extra" time

For the ECF purposes, it probably needs the bigger leagues in terms of results to have a suitable LMS (Manchester and London share the same system, and from what I read earlier on this thread, I assume Birmingham has a system) to make it work, and the smaller leagues are less of an issue

Any idea what Richard Haddrell thinks of the idea?
Any postings on here represent my personal views

Roger de Coverly
Posts: 21301
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:51 pm

Re: League Management Software

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:58 pm

Mick Norris wrote:In the MCF, the trick is getting (1 of the) captains to post the result - with the 6 month cut off for grading at present, we have 2 useful time lags as the fixtures finish before Christmas but don't need to be posted until 31 Dec, and at end of May with an end June deadline - if we move to monthly, then we lose that "extra" time
You can live with one recalcitrant captain or club secretary per division, but not two, for the match where they play each other. Player pester power can be used, if you post results promptly, early leavers can still fund out the match result that evening or the next morning. League controllers and webmasters can see easily enough which results are missing and chase accordingly.

The drop down fill in versions are easier to use than those that require you to fill in an email or email attachment.

There's a decision re cutoffs to make. FIDE will always publish their new list at the exact end/start of the month. In order to do this, they cut the data about a week or more earlier. So if the ECF were to publish a new list on 1st December, results after, say, 20th November would be excluded. Otherwise if the cut off includes results to 30th November, you've got the unspecified delay while missing results are chased.

Dragoljub Sudar
Posts: 165
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2010 10:34 pm

Re: League Management Software

Post by Dragoljub Sudar » Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:07 pm

The Croydon League results screen is what I was looking for - thanks. I very much like the 'player' feature.

I guess it would be quite a task for a national LMS to incorporate all the features everyone wanted but the idea is an interesting one.

Malcolm Peacock
Posts: 67
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:47 pm

Re: League Management Software

Post by Malcolm Peacock » Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:08 pm

Dragoljub Sudar wrote: I'm impressed by the work done to create the above systems, but do any of them provide the facility to see all of a division's results in detail 'in stream' on the same page as the Notts website currently does (http://www.nottschess.org/2014_15/d1.html)?
I find it very irritating to have to click on each match result to see the match details.
Score Checker has an option that does this for a range of dates: http://sc.popmalc.org.uk/node/15/reports/press

David Robertson

Re: League Management Software

Post by David Robertson » Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:33 pm

I liked Score Checker - clean, neat, easy-to-use. Malcolm looks to have done a good job there

Malcolm Peacock
Posts: 67
Joined: Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:47 pm

Re: League Management Software

Post by Malcolm Peacock » Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:44 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote: The question to be asked of all such systems is as to how the transmission of grading data via the local grader to the ECF works and what would streamline it, where it to be done monthly. I know that one problem can be the absence of grading codes for new players. You have to insist on the presence of grading codes to avoid ambiguous data, but as they can take a while to be issued, you can end up with your own home made temporary code, which later has to be updated.
Currently with Score Checker the process is, click to generate file, put the file through the ECF File checker just to be on the safe side, email to Richard Hadrell. Then if the submission has a player with no grading code a new one is generated. I also have trouble getting people to find out if new players already exist in the grading system and have just moved to the area which can cause delays. Maybe you'd have to insist on player registration before they can play in matches.

For monthly reporting it would be nice if it were more automated ( e.g. my cron job generates monthly file. connects to ECF SOAP service, and emails me if the grading file transmission was successful or not ). The local grader/administrator needs to be able to request new grading codes automatically

Roger de Coverly
Posts: 21301
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:51 pm

Re: League Management Software

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:55 pm

Malcolm Peacock wrote: Maybe you'd have to insist on player registration before they can play in matches.
The Berkshire rules insist on this at least notionally. But more to the point is to encourage match captains or club secretaries to research their new players properly. It isn't difficult with the length of the archive available at the ecfgrading site, to generate possible matches, even for players who haven't played for ten to fifteen years.

Players at the "strong" end of the spectrum are likely to be known by the local veterans, which is most of the league in some places.

Mick Norris
Posts: 10329
Joined: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:12 am
Location: Bolton, Greater Manchester

Re: League Management Software

Post by Mick Norris » Wed Aug 19, 2015 6:00 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Malcolm Peacock wrote: Maybe you'd have to insist on player registration before they can play in matches.
The Berkshire rules insist on this at least notionally.
Manchester League rules insist on it
Any postings on here represent my personal views

MartinCarpenter
Posts: 3044
Joined: Tue May 24, 2011 10:58 am

Re: League Management Software

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Aug 19, 2015 8:30 pm

Dragoljub Sudar wrote:I guess it would be quite a task for a national LMS to incorporate all the features everyone wanted but the idea is an interesting one.
Depends what you're after. If by features we're actually just talking about different ways of presenting the data once its been stored into a sensible database somewhere - which electronic grading nearly requires anyway - then allowing for lots of different ways of viewing the data isn't that hard in principle.

'Just' need to write the queries/simple interface for presenting it and you're done. Difficult to anticipate what everyone wants to see of course! In an ideal world, you could imagine them exposing a public(?!) API for querying for things so people could write their own things for presenting/examining it. Can't think why not.
(That would need a much more robust infrastructure of course.).

If you want what chessnuts/Yorkshire allows for a given league:
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/fixture ... ionid=1382
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/league. ... ionid=1382
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/pstats. ... ionid=1382
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/pstats. ... eamid=4956
http://www.chessnuts.org.uk/ny5/match.p ... =384499716
(Apologies for the imodest choice of match!).

All the extra stuff related to actually managing a league could be rather trickier, but I don't see quite why they need to do that. Just get the data input/output really clean/well specified.

Roger de Coverly
Posts: 21301
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:51 pm

Re: League Management Software

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Aug 19, 2015 8:47 pm

MartinCarpenter wrote: If by features we're actually just talking about different ways of presenting the data once its been stored into a sensible database somewhere - which electronic grading nearly requires anyway - then allowing for lots of different ways of viewing the data isn't that hard in principle.
If there's an intent to use the data stored at the ecfgrading site, that will need modifications to the data structure. As far as I understand it, the stored data doesn't include team name. They've stopped displaying the club as well, but I would imagine that's still there in the background.

User avatar
Christopher Kreuzer
Posts: 8806
Joined: Fri Aug 06, 2010 2:34 am
Location: London

Re: League Management Software

Post by Christopher Kreuzer » Wed Nov 25, 2015 4:58 pm

Have just updated the list at the start of this thread to include the Thames Valley League.

Anyone want to say anything more about this topic to justify resurrecting it? :wink:

User avatar
John Upham
Posts: 7179
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:29 am
Location: Cove, Hampshire, England.
Contact:

Re: League Management Software

Post by John Upham » Wed Nov 25, 2015 5:52 pm

Just one of the things I am aiming towards with the "League Management System" is for any individual player to be able to track all the games they have played in particular season in whatever League and for whatever club.

Right here, right now, each league system is ring-fenced and stand alone each using its own MySQL database.

You will be able to import all of the fixtures for your chosen teams into favourite calendaring application (apart from the ECF diary) with one click such as "Import my fixtures".

I have a whole bunch of stuff in the development pipeline and am hoping to offer the chess community in England something that would be a flagship application with apps for mobile devices, tablets etc.

Other things will be a given such as results will be continuously fed into the ECF grading back-end managed by Richard Haddrell.
British Chess News : britishchessnews.com
Twitter: @BritishChess
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/britishchess :D

MartinCarpenter
Posts: 3044
Joined: Tue May 24, 2011 10:58 am

Re: League Management Software

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Nov 25, 2015 8:09 pm

Sounds great :) Planning any captaincy support?

I've been using google calendar like that for a little bit, which is quite nice with the automated reminders and things.

User avatar
John Upham
Posts: 7179
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 10:29 am
Location: Cove, Hampshire, England.
Contact:

Re: League Management Software

Post by John Upham » Wed Nov 25, 2015 9:28 pm

MartinCarpenter wrote: Planning any captaincy support?
Could you be a little more specific and I'll try my best to answer?
British Chess News : britishchessnews.com
Twitter: @BritishChess
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/britishchess :D

MartinCarpenter
Posts: 3044
Joined: Tue May 24, 2011 10:58 am

Re: League Management Software

Post by MartinCarpenter » Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:51 am

I dunno. Things like attaching a set of 'expected' players to a given pending match and having it fire them a reminder a few days before hand?
(ie a specific reminder for the expected team as opposed to a general reminder for the potential squad.).

Some way for players to indicate expected availability too perhaps?!

Realise that this could be quite hard as you'd obviously need to keep it semi private :)

Post Reply