Outline

GIGO

I am a strong believer in GIGO, so know now that if you input junk into Ire we will proudly output junk.

Interface

Everything you are going to do in this file is done through the terminal/command prompt or (depending on your machine) a text file or some sort of spreadsheet. Given that tournaments are normally planned out months in advance, I don't imagine that this lack of sexy graphical user interface poses any real problems.

Basic Flow

• Start the program from the terminal with a command like "Ire.exe"
• Choose a new directory for your tournament
• Download the latest ratings file from the EGD if needed or refresh the players file
• Enter basic tournament information, you must get the number of rounds correct.
• Enter players into Players.txt - you can take their details from the modified ratings file - "egf.txt"
• Set Byes as needed in the file Players.txt
• Enter the full tournament information in Settings.txt
• Check the bar details
• The draw for the first round will be produced
• Enter the results
• Update bye or late player information
• The draw for the next round will be produced
• Enter the results
• etc..
  Loading partial or completed tournaments is covered in Restore.

Players File

After we provide the basic tournament details a players.txt file is created. Here you enter the players who have registered for your tournament. If a player has never played in an EGD tournament before, you need to give them a fake EGD pin. To assign a bye to a player, you should enter in the numbers of the round (or rounds) which they will not play in. The format of each line is then:
Pin,Name,Rating,Club,Country,Grade,N* where N is optional and the round number for a bye to be assigned
The file can be read in as either/or comma or tab separated.

• As an example, Paal Sannes taking a bye in rounds 1 and 2
• 10233047,Sannes Paal,2345,Oslo,NO,4d,1,2

There is a special syntax to autoassign a new player's rating to the EGD rating for that rank

• First example will set from EGD Rating, Second example sets your own rating
• 999900,Merciless Ming,*4*dan*,Belfast,IE,4d
• 999901,Gordon Flash,2350,Belfast,IE,4d

Results Files

The results file has the following format. It is possible to manually alter the pairings, but if you want to do this, then you should know that players are identified by their seeding (which is shown in brackets). When reading in data, a result can be 1 , 0.5 or 0 . Later on we will add some additional parameters to indicate Forfeit.

Round 1

• Bd White Result Black Handicap
• 1 Davis.A(1) ?:? Jones.B(2) 0
• 2 Davis.C(3) ?:? Evans.D(4) 0

There are 4 results possible

• 1:0 white win
• 0:1 black win
• 0.5:0.5 draw , or possible double bye
• 0:0 Some kind of double forfeit

Handicap

How are handicaps assigned? Let's take the following example of a first round pairing: rating bar: 1800
grade width: 200
handicap policy: 1
handicap above bar: no

Name rating MMS
P.Colmez 1900 100
F.Donzet 1789 99
G.Zemor 1500 97
D.Feldmann 1111 96

Ranges(MMS): 1899-1701 (99) 1700-1501 (98) 1500-1301 (97) 1300-1101 (96)

Colmez:Zemor 0 stones (permit handicap above top bar=no, otherwise 100-97-1=1 handicap)
Donzet:Zemor 1 stone (99-97-1=1 handicap)
Feldmann:Donzet 2 stones (99-96-1=2 handicap)

It is vary rare to see a tournament where handicap above the bar exists, but it is not impossible. Therefore, you have the option to allow it in Ire. The default maximum handicap is 9, because this is the cut off in terms of having a game rated.

What about the case of half points from Byes or Ties? Well a difference of 1.5 is treated as a difference of 2 for our purposes.

Tiebreakers

See this page

The Bar

If you look around then you can find some recommendations for the size of the top group (the players above the bar). Since the circumstances of the tournament can change the size of the bar, we simply don't make subjective suggestions for you. We assume that you, as a tournament director, are competent enough to set a reasonable value for the bar. In fact, let's be blunter still, if you don't know how to set the bar then you should consider not being the tournament director.

If you have a situation where 2 or more players have the same rating, and you have to arbitrarily exclude one of them to make an even number, then just alter the rating of one of the players in the initial input file.

File Structure

Here is the expected directory structure of a tournament with 3 rounds

• allworld_lp.html
• egf.txt
• egzipdata.zip
• Init.txt
• Players.txt
• Round1Results.txt
• Round1Standings.txt
• Round2Results.txt
• Round2Standings.txt
• Round3Results.txt
• Round3Standings.txt
• Round3Standings.html
• RoundStandings.txt
• Settings.txt
• TournamentName.h9

Pairing Theory

Sorry but this has its own page in the wiki , but okay, how about a picture to give a quick reminder

Irregular Things

There are always going to be problems which we did not foresee. A player who doesn't turn up for a round is a good example. You can handle this through manual edit of the results file. Byes will be overridden or enforced on players according to your input there. Loading partial or completed tournaments is covered in Restore. A further note regarding byes. Normally there is an option to set a Zero point bye or a Half point bye. I have considered implementing this, but am still drawn to the feeling that a zero point bye should normally only apply to the starting rounds, in which case it can be handled by adjusting the rating (subtract the Grade Width) of the player concerned. Deducting half a point from a player who is skipping a round is not a good solution, you also hurt that player's previous opponents.

EGF File

We download the EGF All Players History file, which contains just about every player ever in the last 30 years be they living or dead. Please don't download this more often than you need to. We unzip and parse the file both to remove some useless information from it, and to exclude some fake players from it. It is possible to refresh ratings selected from an out of date file