English Chess Forum

In Swiss Manager

a) allow someone else to run a tournament that I have created from their copy of Swiss Manager?

b) print pairing cards for each individual player, suitable for manual pairing?

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:31 am

a) allow someone else to run a tournament that I have created from their copy of Swiss Manager?

Email them the file, or share it in the Cloud/Dropbox. So long as you have a licence at the right level, that's fine - it doesn't need to be the same specific licence. Not having the same specific licence might be a barrier to uploading the tournament to web - I enable that setting for security reasons, I don't want some guy downloading my tournament and uploading over the top of it! - but I'm not sure if you count that in the scope of "[running] a tournament".

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:31 am

b) print pairing cards for each individual player, suitable for manual pairing?

No idea - I've never had the need to do it, because the idea of the program is that it it does the pairings, so I've not needed any cards.

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:21 am

Email them the file, or share it in the Cloud/Dropbox. So long as you have a licence at the right level, that's fine - it doesn't need to be the same specific licence. Not having the same specific licence might be a barrier to uploading the tournament to web - I enable that setting for security reasons, I don't want some guy downloading my tournament and uploading over the top of it! - but I'm not sure if you count that in the scope of "[running] a tournament".

I tried that before, but it didn't work. Are there any known subtleties?

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 10:34 am

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:21 am

Email them the file, or share it in the Cloud/Dropbox. So long as you have a licence at the right level, that's fine - it doesn't need to be the same specific licence. Not having the same specific licence might be a barrier to uploading the tournament to web - I enable that setting for security reasons, I don't want some guy downloading my tournament and uploading over the top of it! - but I'm not sure if you count that in the scope of "[running] a tournament".

I tried that before, but it didn't work. Are there any known subtleties?

I confirm that I have successfully used Dropbox to share Swiss Manager databases with others. Of course, all users had Swiss Manager installed on their machine and a full licence.

(i) Is it simply that that the other user didn't have sufficient access rights to the shared files?
(ii) What error messages were displayed?

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 10:34 am

I tried that before, but it didn't work. Are there any known subtleties?

Make sure you both have the same version (ideally the latest) installed. Emailing the TUNx file and loading normally just works and, as Alex says, is independent of key.

Another possibility is to upload to Chess-results. Then the other person logs in and I believe can then download the tournament. I've not done this. I guess this depends on having the same Swiss Manager key.

If you both have versions of the same tournament and yours is more up to date then you can upload to chess-results and the other can other can download via the option in the "Internet" menu in Swiss Manager.

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:31 am

In Swiss Manager

b) print pairing cards for each individual player, suitable for manual pairing?

How is that different from having a dog and barking yourself?

Brian Towers wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 09, 2019 6:43 pm

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:31 am

In Swiss Manager

b) print pairing cards for each individual player, suitable for manual pairing?

How is that different from having a dog and barking yourself?

You may wish to make different barking noises from those made by the dog.

In particular, the pairings produced by Swiss Manager may not be suitable for Junior events with a lot of players of limited but otherwise unknown strength.

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 09, 2019 11:12 pm

In particular, the pairings produced by Swiss Manager may not be suitable for Junior events with a lot of players of limited but otherwise unknown strength.

I thought it defaulted to ranking players alphabetically for the purposes of initial ranking and once the initial ranking is set, all the pairings are deterministic. If you are running a series of tournaments involving mostly the same players, a more random method of initial ranking might be preferable.

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 10, 2019 1:02 am

David Sedgwick wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 09, 2019 11:12 pm

In particular, the pairings produced by Swiss Manager may not be suitable for Junior events with a lot of players of limited but otherwise unknown strength.

I thought it defaulted to ranking players alphabetically for the purposes of initial ranking and once the initial ranking is set, all the pairings are deterministic. If you are running a series of tournaments involving mostly the same players, a more random method of initial ranking might be preferable.

You're quite right, that's precisely what it does. And that's the problem with the system for the scenario David outlined; it assigns seedings to a scenario where they are irrelevant, and then does pairings based on the assumption that those seedings are meaningful. What you want instead in that situation is a pairing system that assigns less importance to seedings and more to colour history, float history and other data that actually rests within the tournament itself.

Brian Towers wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 09, 2019 6:43 pm

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 5:31 am

In Swiss Manager

b) print pairing cards for each individual player, suitable for manual pairing?

How is that different from having a dog and barking yourself?

It provides a fallback, in case the sharing of TUNx files doesn't work. Or other reasons that a fallback might be needed.

I wasn't going to be at the tournament, I knew in advance I could not be there, I knew from previous experience that sharing TUNx files hadn't worked, I was anticipating a problem and trying to provide a working solution. I also anticipated that first time users, even if they could get the TUNx files to work, having been shared might have difficulties with using the software, it being supremely cussed.

In any case, I now have an Excel macro which formats a starting rank listing from SM from the "zeroth" round into pairing cards, which may/or may not be useful depending on your view of dogs barking.

In any case, as previously experienced and again anticipated, sending the TUNx files by email failed to allow the files to be used for read/write access by the sharee. Never mind. Further investigation needed.

IM Jack Rudd wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 10, 2019 1:31 am

You're quite right, that's precisely what it does. And that's the problem with the system for the scenario David outlined; it assigns seedings to a scenario where they are irrelevant, and then does pairings based on the assumption that those seedings are meaningful. What you want instead in that situation is a pairing system that assigns less importance to seedings and more to colour history, float history and other data that actually rests within the tournament itself.

You can pair according to tiebreak though - and assign your own tiebreaks (manually input) to give weighting to particular players regardless of actual score I think. Ironically Swiss Perfect is easy to use in this regard, and that is really good for junior events.

Paul McKeown wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 10, 2019 3:53 am

In any case, as previously experienced and again anticipated, sending the TUNx files by email failed to allow the files to be used for read/write access by the sharee. Never mind. Further investigation needed.

Do not ever send them by email. Ask the other user to download a copy directly from Chess Results (show tournament details), and give them your installation code for SM. Then they will be able to create pairings and upload them to Chess Results.

If your sharee has issues it is because they have not installed a full copy of the program, and not used your code to install it.

Alex Holowczak wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:21 am

No idea - I've never had the need to do it, because the idea of the program is that it it does the pairings, so I've not needed any cards.

Some like to have pairing cards at their disposal. One of the bigger points of potential failure is printers, they run out of ink, paper or just sulk. With pairing cards, pairings can be transcribed from the pairing program and published without needing to write them longhand should there be a printer issue.

Adam Raoof wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 10, 2019 8:13 am

Do not ever send them by email. Ask the other user to download a copy directly from Chess Results (show tournament details), and give them your installation code for SM. Then they will be able to create pairings and upload them to Chess Results.

If your sharee has issues it is because they have not installed a full copy of the program, and not used your code to install it.

Adam, what is the issue with emailing the files? I can just copy the .TUNx files from one directory, volume or share to another locus and use at will, why does that not work when sharing? (Indeed if something has gone badly wrong, I can rename a *.bak from SM to *. TUNx and carry on where I left off).

Also, if I download from chess-results.com, which I have tried personally - it seems to work for me - the DOBs are suppressed. Which is of course as it should be (and I would argue that the gender should also be suppressed and locus information, too, but isn't), which is, of course, not ideal or efficient for rating, grading, calculating age-related prizes, sections or pairings.

Adam, so I pass them my 15 character installation code (and my user name?), and they can pass themselves off as me? Is that entirely correct? Heinz Herzog is happy with this process?