All right … now that things are a little less frantic, let’s turn that last post into something with more useful content.

First of all, some context on what happened. When DCI Reporter takes in the last result of a round, it then spends some time processing all of the results and getting the points for the wins associated with each player record. When that process completes, then you have the right records for generating pairings for the next round. Unfortunately, this process is not instantaneous, and furthermore, the program does not block you from doing other things while it’s processing. So if you happen to pair the round quickly enough, it will go ahead and do so with the player records it has, which will not include the points from the most recent round.

This results in completely unusable results and, for the record, is one of a vanishingly small number of things for which you absolutely must re-pair (which really is a dirty word – there are very few other circumstances in which you should ever do a full re-pairing. More on that in a future topic for scorekeepers). Which means it’s entirely and cripplingly bad.

There have been a few comments lately of the nature of, “it’s 2014, why not just fix the program rather than talk about how the program is as a given?” And while I can see that point, it’s not a useful one for run-time operations of an event, because we have to work with the software we currently have, as it currently works. Anything else is unhelpful pipe dreaming when you’re actually mid-tournament and trying to make sure everything goes well.

So, reality is, that behavior exists, and you have to work around it. In this case, the best fix is actually a bit retroactive and not proactive. You can’t guarantee you won’t run into this bug, but you can verify after the fact whether you did or not. When you finish generating pairings, the pairings by table always pop up. Takes only half a second, if you remember, to look at the top pairing and make sure it has the number of points you expect based on the round. If it doesn’t, just kill and remake the pairings.

This is but one of a number of things that can and should be getting checked reactively to prevent any issues from turning into real problems. Here are some more:

Players:

– Always check your points, every round. They are listed on the pairings next to your name. Make sure you look at your own row, and make sure you look at your points rather than your opponents. Many players seem to use table number as a substitute for checking points, and while it’s generally true that higher records mean lower table numbers, this is not a guarantee. Fixed seatings can force tables into unexpected ranges. Seatings are sometimes done randomly for a variety of reasons. There is no real substitute for actually checking your points, and if an error has been made, there’s only a limited window during which it’s reasonable to fix.

– Always check your result slip to make sure your name is on it and that you’re playing the right person. A few times a tournament, somebody sits at the wrong seat, plays the wrong person, fills out the result slip, and turns it in without ever seeing the issue. This leads inevitably to confusion, and generally to penalties and game losses. You don’t want to be that person, nor to receive any of those things.

– Always check your result slip to make sure it is accurate before you sign it. It’s a document. Which you are signing. With your signature. Do I really need to say more about this? What would your mother think?

Scorekeepers

– The aforementioned pairings check to make sure the points stuck.

– Make sure you check for last minute drops after you think you’re done. If a judge is helping you manage the drop list (and they probably should be, if we’re talking about a large event), one always seems to manage to sneak through.

– Make sure you check to see if you sent your coverage files to the coverage team. I actually recommend you leave your e-mail client in the Sent Items folder and title your e-mail messages with something descriptive and easy to parse so that you can easily see at a glance what you’ve sent and remind yourself to do so if you’ve forgotten. This is often the slow link in getting pairings/standings/results up on the coverage site, which makes players grumpy.

Judges

– Make sure you’ve checked that you’ve got all the pages you expected out of the printer before you run off. Being in a hurry doesn’t help if you don’t have all your materials, and printers unfortunately still run out of paper.

– Check your result slips as you put them down on the tables. It only takes one stuck piece of paper to make you redo a ton of work.

– Double check a player’s result when they hand you a slip. They should have done so before they signed it, but … well, you know.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, of course. If you’ve got your own tips, please let me know!

There’s a crowd of people sitting around table 243, including a pair of judges. Things seem a bit tense, understandably so, as a few minutes ago, a little bit of sloppiness in communication lead to a huge disagreement about whether this creature attacked or not, and before you know it, an eight minute extension was issued after the judges finally sorted out what actually happened and got the match ready to go again. Which is a bit of an unfortunate coincidence, since this match also got deck checked this round, which was another seven minute extension (a fast deck check, really). We’re finally entering extra turns now, though, and whether it’s because it’s an interesting match or because it’s the last match going, either way there’s a gaggle of people watching.

—

It’s two minutes into the round, and a frantic and upset player runs up to the desk. He was already late to start with and trying to rush to his seat, so he’s already under duress. The inevitable and universal first statement comes spilling out.

“I’m not on the pairings.”

Here we go again.

“We have you dropping last round, did you not mean to?”

“No, that got entered wrong.”

And now the usual ritual of finding the table number and pulling out the slip.

“This says you lost and dropped, what happened?”

“Oh.”

Depending on the person, some different variant of mumbling and bumbling around why they might sign something you didn’t verify ensues. Three more minutes pass while we verify what happened with the opponent, and validate that no funny business was afoot.

Problem is, this player wasn’t near the bottom of the standings, they were actually X-1, so they’re in contention. Can’t really just give them a bye, nor can we just match them against one of our lower ranked players because getting the matchups right is actually a tournament integrity issue. So now we have to issue what’s called a cascade, in which we break a series of pairings and mix-and-match them to get valid pairings. This affects four tables this time, and it’s already now seven minutes into the round, and by the time all is said and done, now we’ve got four tables of people who are starting to play a good twelve minutes into the round, with full time extensions (since for most of them, at least, it wasn’t their fault).

—

“Player X and Player Y, please report to the main stage. Immediately.”

The immediately is an extra bit of urgency, since it’s the third time we’ve called them, and theirs is the last match slip that we don’t have, despite having triple-checked our stack of sorted slips for it and having sent multiple judges to verify that the table is actually empty. Eventually, perhaps we’ll tack on the public shaming clause – “the entire tournament is waiting on you right now.” For now, though, we’re still hoping they get the message and come up on their own.

Finally, one of them ambles up.

“Where’s your result slip?”

“I brought it up.”

“Are you sure? Can you do us a favor and check your pockets?”

“Oh … uh … sorry,” and the inevitable sheepish crumpled up slip from the pocket. No matter how many people we tell that they need to bring their slips up right away when finished, this will always happen.

—

Little-known fact about DCI Reporter – it won’t let you insert players mid-round, even if you intend to give them a bye or otherwise can perform one of the rational fixes that would be possible when a player is inadvertently left out of a tournament. In this case, it’s a simple miscommunication by which a series of players with byes who were given free entry to the tournament (in exchange for doing some promotional work) weren’t actually put into the system.

The round’s actually over, and we have all the slips. But since the software wouldn’t let us put those people into the tournament until the round was properly over, now we actually have to take the time to insert those players, and manually add their byes round-by-round (another fun software quirk) before we can get around to pairing the next round.

—

“Player X and Player Y, please report to the main stage. Immediately.”

The immediately is an extra bit of urgency, since it’s the third time we’ve called them, and theirs is the last match slip … well, you get the idea.

Player Y walks up, and Arthur (the quite accomplished and upstanding judge – let this be a lesson that things happen to everyone and you have to stay vigilant!) asks, “we’re missing your result slip, where is it?”

“Um, I handed it to you, remember?”

Arthur reaches into his pocket, and then prepares for public shaming.

—

It’s been a few minutes now, and the judges are positive – there’s nobody left playing on the floor. Certainly not the 20 matches of missing slips that the software is waiting on.

Is there an errant judge walking around with a pocket full of slips? While one judge starts circulating the word to do a pocket check, another follows the usual first step of going to the group of judges sorting the slips and checking whether they slipped through somewhere. And lo and behold, there they are. We might never know why – sometimes there’s a stack set to the side for entering penalties that the scorekeeper accidentally forgets to enter the results for. Sometimes a judge gets confused and passes a stack of slips directly to the sorters rather than putting them in the box to process. Sometimes the sorters take from the wrong pile and end up with a stack of slips that hadn’t been entered yet. Doesn’t actually matter so much, the minutes are gone either way.

—

It’s fifteen minutes after the round has completed, as evidenced by the timer slowly counting up in the corner of the room. Pretty long turnaround time between these two rounds, really. So … who’s fault was it?

Perhaps you didn’t receive a Batterskull at a recent Grand Prix (or perhaps you received more than one – I certainly hope you’re ashamed of yourself …). Pretty obvious what happened … right?

Hopefully you’re not as sure as you were a few minutes ago.