Maybe not known to all of you, but Christoph Gerlach also developed pairing software (MacMahon) for go.
Fair, pre computer organizers obviously ran tournaments, so Iām sure itās doable. But the editable/automated collection and reporting of information surely has some benefits, no? Regardless your experience is valid, thanks for sharing!
In part itās because I only know how to build web applications, not desktop ones. But there are other benefits, such as being able to send pairings to players or a live list standings for people to check. These are benefits every TD can recognize.
And luckily every location that Iāve played in for at least the past 10 years has had internet. And as a backup my phone is able to act as a mobile hotspot.
Honestly the card method sounds really cool! But I promise the software is more than a glorified spreadsheet. Although it can definitely be improved and the simplicity of the card method is not to be undervalued.
A super important question. To me it seems the answer is essentially the story we tells ourselves. For some, having defined rounds helps that story feel more authentic.
But games played in an arena tournament arenāt casual and can effect rating points. Itās just as legitimate as any other tournament assuming the time settings are long enough and the rules are enforced.
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I would add assuming you donāt chose your opponent by yourself.
I think itās something essential in any tournament to get paired by the organization.
What about self pairing tournaments?
I think the main reason why people use Gotha in France, including people who would be more comfortable with pen and paper, is that if you want to send the results to the federation for the ratings, you need to generate a text file presenting the results in a certain format.
And the easiest way to do that is to use Gotha.
On some occasions, you can even see some people doing the pairings with pen and paper, and then re-entering the pairings on Gotha just to generate that file with the results. But it feels a bit like doing the job twice.
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They miss an important point, to be sure to play the unknown. (Beyond the possible self management of your rating)
To be fair, the self pairing tournaments I have known are unrated small board tournaments as small board side events to the main rated tournament so itās a win win!
Thanks, Iāll have a look at it later!
My use case would be quite small tournaments at my local club (maybe 10 participants or so). I think the arena format in general works better the more players there are, but Iām hoping it will still be viable with few players.
I also like the suggestions for analogue solutions, and I might try something like that as well. But I think having good software for this could really help with getting more organizers interested in the format, so thanks for working on it @Devin_Fraze!
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Iām sorry, but I messed up the link between those posts when splitting off some posts to a new topic.