Submitting tournament results

This page describes the process of submitting tournament results.

Directors of sanctioned NASPA tournaments are responsible for submitting the results promptly to ensure that player records and ratings are kept up to date.

All tournament results must be submitted electronically, and every tournament director is expected to be technically able to do so without assistance.

These instructions apply to the new NASPA rating process that has been operational since July 10, 2009.

Preparations

All tournaments must have been entered into the tournament database before any results can be submitted by directors using the new tournament submission process. The process is still under development, however, so all tournaments NOT listed on the tournament calendar, e.g., local club tournaments, club challenge tournaments, must be entered into the tournament database manually by John Chew. So, if your tournament is NOT listed on the tournament calendar you must contact John Chew before you can submit your tournament results.

Check to make sure that all of your players are listed on this web site as members. Rating data will not be accepted if any players are not members. Since however we are not yet set up to accept membership payments online, if you need to pay for memberships to get your tournament rated, please send a list of members with contact information to John Chew, who will bill your director account and activate the memberships. If you have players who say they have recently mailed membership checks to NASPA, we will put those on your account so that your event can be rated, then remove the charge when their payment is received.

We will continue to streamline this process in the near future. Thanks for your patience.

How to upload the results

Instructions vary according to the software that you are using to run your tournament.

Uploading directly from tournament management software

tsh

If you are using tsh, make sure you are connected to the Internet and enter the SUBMIT command. The software uploads the results and redirects you to the payment form for final submission.

Note: you must UPDATE to the current version on or after 2009-07-10 to obtain the above functionality and set the configuration variables director_id and tournament_id to your NASPA ID and your event’s ID (the easiest way to find this right now is to check go to Submit Rating Data in Member Services, look for your tournament in the popup menu and see the number next to it). If you use an older version, the network commands will be unable to connect to the correct website and report an error. As an additional benefit of updating, the USERATINGS command will warn you if any of your players are not current members, or have memberships which will expire within the next seven days.

If you are unable to use the SUBMIT command (e.g., because you are not online, have a firewall, are running a very old version of Windows), run the SUBMIT command, ignore any error messages, then look in your event folder for a file called all.tsh. You can submit this file manually as described below.

Uploading a text file through the tournament data submission application

Save the results in a text file as instructed in one of the following subsections. Use one text file per event.

Go to Member Services in the sidebar at left. Log on, if necessary. If you are registered as a NASPA director, you will see a button labelled Submit Ratings. If your event is registered in the tournament schedule, you will be able to choose it from a menu. Do so, select the file you are going to upload, and submit it. If there are inconsistencies in your data, or nonmembers among your players, you will be asked to correct the situation and resubmit. When you have successfully submitted your data, you will be directed to a payment screen. If you are submitting data for more than one event (e.g., if you have an Early Bird), you may wait until you have submitted all your data before making payment. If you have trouble, contact John Chew.

TourneyMan

If you are using TourneyMan, use the “Save for Chew” menu item to create a file whose name ends in “.CHW”, and then upload the file.

The players in each division must be assigned contiguous ranges of player numbers, with no intermingling of players from other divisions.

TourneyMan has limits on the lengths of player names. If you are trying to submit results for an event that included Verna Richards Berg, TourneyMan will omit the “s” in “Richards”. Use a text editor such as NotePad to restore the “s” before uploading the “.CHW” file.

TMENU (TurnMenu)

If you are using TMENU, use the “Copy computer data to a Disk” command and choose the Format “NSA crosstable disk”. Make sure you choose the option to include game scores in the output. Then upload the file.

TMENU saves players in order of pretournament rating. This can cause problems with the rating system software if you have more than one division, but the players haven't been assigned to them strictly by rating. To ensure correct processing of your tournament, enter pretournament ratings (even if they are inaccurate) that would arrange your players by division. For example, if a player rated 1590 is allowed to play in a division for players rated 1600 and up, enter their rating as 1600.

Other software

If you are using other software, please contact the Web Committee to have its instructions posted here.

Software developers should contact John Chew for details of a richer data format recommended for automatic generation of result submissions.

No software

If you are using no software to run your tournament, you should prepare an ASCII text file (not a Word document or a Unicode text file). It should look as follows, and you should upload it when it is ready.

 #division A
 #ratingcheck off
 Chew, John:CM000003   1800 3 0 2 3 0 2; 300 50 350 300 50 300
 Edley, Joe   2000 0 3 1 0 3 1; 50 300 350 0 300 400
 Butts, Alfred 500 1 2 0 1 2 0; 400 400 50 400 400 50
 #division B
 Doe, John 1500 3 0 2 3 0 2; 300 50 350 300 50 300
 Doe, Jane 1400 0 3 1 0 3 1; 50 300 350 50 300 400
 Doe, Kate 1300 1 2 0 1 2 0; 400 400 50 400 400 50
 #division C
 Sherman, Joel:AA000999 2000 3 0 2 3 0 2; 300 50 350 300 50 300
 Wapnick, Joel:AA000386 2000 0 3 1 0 3 1; 50 300 350 50 300 400
 Horn, Joel:AA000172 1800 1 2 0 1 2 0; 400 400 50 400 400 50

Here is how to read the above.

• If there is data for more than one division in the data file, each new division should begin with a line that consists of “#division”, a space, and the division name.
• If the input ratings in the data file do not match the currently posted NASPA ratings, adding the line “#ratingcheck off” will suppress error messages.
• The player data for each division must appear on consecutive lines. Spaces (blanks) must be inserted where described below, and additional spaces may be added between syntactic elements for clarity or aesthetics.
• Each line begins with the following elements:
  • a player’s last name
  • a comma
  • a space
  • the player’s first name
  • optionally, a colon followed by the player’s NASPA id (AA... or CM...)
  • a space
  • the player’s input rating (or 0 for previously unrated players).
• After this come a list of pairing numbers (each number preceded by a space) indicating who the player played in each round, from the first round to the last. A pairing number of 0 indicates that the player had an unrated bye or forfeit; a pairing number of n means that the player’s opponent was the nth player listed in the division.
• After the pairing numbers comes a semicolon and the player’s scores in each round (each number preceded by a space), again from the first to the last. If a player had a bye or forfeit, the score should be the player’s spread for that round, typically +50 or −50.

We do also support, but do not encourage new directors to use, older data formats. If you are used to using an older format to submit NSA results, please feel free to continue to keep using it with NASPA results. Player’s NASPA id (following the first name, separated by a colon) can optionally be added to the old format files.

Payment

When you submit your ratings data, an invoice will be added to your member account, and you can make online payments toward it using major credit cards through the Member Services link. The former NSA payment system is now deactivated. Here is a link to member services:

http://www.scrabbleplayers.org/cgi-bin/services.pl

If you cannot pay by credit card online, you can mail your check for participation fees in U.S. funds payable to NASPA to:

NASPA
PO BOX 12115
DALLAS TX  75225-0115
USA

Submitting payment by mail may delay rating of your event.

The participation fee is $.50 per person per game for all rated tournaments (club tournaments as well), not including byes or forfeits.

The NSA’s late fee of $0.25 per person for events whose data is not received within two weeks of the last date of an event is still in effect. After an ongoing review, it may be replaced by an increased penalty, sanctions applied against the director, or both.

Links

• NASPA tournament data submission application
• NASPA member services (payment of invoices)