This paper is written in order to help Rating Officers and chess players understand the rules of tournament report submission as well as disclose some common problems of report submission.
FIDE produces four issues of the FIDE Rating List.
The list has grown to over 35,000 active players competing in more than a
six hundred tournaments per period, plus some 5,000 inactive players.
I. See if your tournament was submitted for rating
A common complaint of players is that a tournament was not reported
in time for rating. Check out the Web site for regular
updates on tournaments reported for rating. If your tournament is not
there, see your national federation rating officers. Otherwise,
tournaments received after the cut-off dates (15 December, 15 March, 15 June and 15 September
respectively) can only be included in the succeeding rating list.
II. Perennial Problem of Late Reports
It is preferable to receive Swiss System tournament reports
in dBASE (.DBF) compatible format with the following file structure:
| Field |
Field Name |
Type |
Width |
Decimal |
| 1 |
Code |
Numeric |
8 |
0 |
| 2 |
Name |
Character |
32 |
|
| 3 |
Country |
Character |
3 |
|
| 4 |
Rc |
Numeric |
4 |
0 |
| 5 |
W |
Numeric |
4 |
1 |
| 6 |
N |
Numeric |
2 |
0 |
| 7 |
Birthday |
Date |
|
|
| 8 |
Sex |
Character |
1 |
|
where
Name = (Family then First Names) (Fylenn, Helen)
Country = the three letter code of federations
Code= FIDE ID Number
W = score against rated opponents
N = number of games against rated opponents
Rc = average rating of rated opponents
Birthday if not published.
Sex - male (M) or female (F).
The written report with the crosstable should follow by post.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
For Round Robin tournaments you may not create RC and N fields.
It is also possible to send tournament reports in alternative format:
1. Delimited text (tab, comma delimited)
In the delimited text all the above mentioned data must be included.
III.Common problems with tournament reports
This articles discloses the most common problems we deal with during tournament report submission in EDF (electronic data format).
Perennial problems with TXT
1. Different data types in one column:
It is not acceptable to submit reports with different data types in one column: as id number and birthday (for players without id):
+--------+------------------------+-----+---+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+
¦ 1407570¦ Skjoldan,Benjamin | 2010| 2 | 2211| 0.48| 0.5 | 25 |+ 0.50|
+--------+------------------------+-----+---+-----+-----+-----+----+-------+
¦06.04.88¦ Glud, Jacob Vang | - | 7 | 2158| - | 4.5 | - | (2183)|
Birthdays are met in RC column, Name column etc.
Hint: it is better to split data in to columns and leave blanks if there is no ID and add columns for each kind of data (Name, Rc, W, N, birthday, sex)
2. Delimiters
Standard delimiters are comma and TAB. They are very convenient and file are readable by any program:
BACROT Etienne,00605506,FRA,4.5,9,2681,m,22.01.83
BAREEV Evgeny,04100140,RUS,4.5,9,2674,m,21.11.66
FRESSINET Laurent,00608742,FRA,4.5,9,2687,m,30.11.81
GELFAND Boris,02805677,ISR,6.0,9,2674,m,24.06.68
Using SPACE character as delimiter is not so safe, as one should always control the number of this characters:
1 PAPP Tamas HUN 2061 725897 5.0 2058 9 3.5 -1.00
2 BERCZES David HUN 2146 722960 8.0 2054 8 5.5 +0.46
3 BALINT Laszlo 05.04.88 HUN 0000 2.0 2058 10 1 1692
4 IGNACZ Maria HUN F 2069 725803 6.0 2057 9 4 -0.68
5 NAGY Peter 11.11.76 HUN 0000 1.0 2058 10 1 1692
6 LAKAT Gyula HUN 2016 705918 5.0 2063 9 3 -0.87
7 FRANK Jozsef HUN 2005 726281 8.0 2054 8 5.5 +2.06
Hint: Use commas and TABs as delimiters, it is safer and more convenient
3. Extra commas in delimited text
When text is comma delimited, it is very important that commas will only serve as column delimiters and not used in names or numbers:
4659163 ,Schueler Wolfgang ,m,GER,21.06.36, 0.0, 1,2333
4680847 ,Lammers Markus ,m,GER,07.07.86, 2.5, 3,2198
4669703 ,Bruening Wolfgang ,m,GER,27.07.58, 0.0, 2,2251
4654323 ,Lang Andreas ,m,GER,20.05.67, 0.5, 2,2258
4653262 ,von Loehneysen Leona ,m,GER,19.10.61, 0.0, 1,2343
4658876 ,Lausen Berthold,Dr. ,m,GER,28.12.61, 0.0, 1,2219
In this example comma will be submitted by the program as column delimiter the whole data will be erroneous. It also concerns decimal numbers, where comma is used as decimal point.
Hint: Remeber this and check your reports
4. Not required data in reports
Plenty reports coming with not required data and it takes a lot of time to filter it. The requirements for EDF tournament report are described above. Additional data is not used:
Name:Exmaple
Venue: Gadsee
Date:04.01-12.01.2006
Type: 9 Rnds SS
Schedule: 40 ms/2 hs + all ms/1 h QPF
Arbiter: Example Name
Rating Results Table after round 9 of Example Tnmt 04-12.Jan 2006 Gadsee WSD
nr Name nat T rating Rat-ID tot Rc N W W-We
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Tian Tian CHN 0000 8602417 6.0 2218 9 6 +1.50
2 Majeric Zoran CRO FM 2337 14500523 7.0 2208 8 6.5 +1.14
3 Pasztor Ferenc HUN 2310 704989 6.0 2163 9 6 -0.30
4 Orso Janos HUN FM 2303 702099 5.0 2128 8 4 -1.84
There are 5 extra columns the data in which is not used (Nr, Title, Rating, Total, W-we) plus the file contains all data about the tournament.
Hint: Please be exact when sending report. Include required data only. It is better to split tournament registration information (Venue, dates etc.) into different file. So you will have 2 files - with registration information and tournament data.
5. Forfeit calculations
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
1 ¦ Nilssen,John Arni ¦ X - 1 1 1 1 ¦ 4.0
¦ 3434323 FED 2357 ¦ ¦ ¦
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
2 ¦ Pallesen,Jacob ¦ - X 0 1 1 1 ¦ 3.0
¦ 3333381 FED 2061 ¦ ¦ ¦
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
3 ¦ Nielsen,Jan Mose ¦ 0 1 X 1 .5 .5 ¦ 3
¦ 3405306 FED 2055 ¦ ¦ ¦
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
4 ¦ Andersen,Rune ¦ 0 0 0 X 1 1 ¦ 2
¦ 2222283 FED 2063 ¦ ¦ ¦
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
5 ¦ Andersen,Daniel ¦ 0 0 .5 0 X 1 ¦ 1.5
¦ 3222224 FED 2093 ¦ ¦ ¦
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
6 ¦ Kragh,Niels Kristian ¦ 0 0 .5 0 0 X ¦ .5
¦ 8888888 FED 2099 ¦ ¦ ¦
-----+--------------------------+------------------------------+-------+----
T O T A L S 15 15 300
Hint: It is preferable to submit pre-calculated forfeit tournaments, not tables. The calculations are done manually and such a report cannot be considered as EDF.
DBF tournament reports
1. Wrong field names
It is very important that field names should be the same for everyone (field names are described above) and even if field name is very close to the original (as Birthday - Birthdate, country-fed, sex-woman, id_number-id-code),it should be named as Birthday, Country, Sex, Code.
2. Not required data in files
We do not use additional data given DBF files as position, tournament name, venue, start and end dates. Let this information be in different file with tournament registration information.
3. Sex field and Birthday field
Field SEX should be Character (1), not logical, and F - stands for Female (not W), M for Male. And Birthday is Date (8).
4. Name field
It is commonly accepted that names appear as &rsquoNielssen, Mark&rsquo and not &rsquoNIELSSEN MARK&rsquo or &rsquoNIELSSEN Mark&rsquo. In DBF file there is no need to avoid commas in names (as in comma delimited tournament reports) and the first letter of the Last and Fist name should be UPPER case (not whole name).
5. Field number
The number of fields is another common problem. It is not necessary to split, for example, Last Name and First Name into 2 different fields.
6. Field length
Many reports coming with field length different from the length required. As Name field Character (19) instead of 32, Country field Character (5) instead of (3) etc.
Hint: be careful with the length of the field, it may lead to errors in names or federation, check everything
Common problems:
1. Special characters
Special characters (special symbols of your own language) should be avoided as they do not appear to be valid on the PC without your language installed.
Hint: use ASCII character map, not your regional.
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