Only one event this evening because the Seniors Congress has finished; and there were no appeals, late rulings, or score changes; so the event was scored and the results provided to the display boards, the internet and the bulletin, and we were in the bar, before midnight.
In the bar were several club TDs who had been on the four-day Club TDs; and those who did well were celebrating. One of the club TDs came over to talk to us and explained that there were people he wanted to avoid. This lead us on to the very important TD skill of being to tell people to go away firmly, while remaing polite.
As a TD or a scorer, one has to be available to the players when one if on duty. But there are times as a scorer when you need to left in peace and any queries an individual player may have have to be delayed for the greater good of producing a score for all the players. Such times include at the end of the event when a complicated event involves alot of operator input to fix the problems; and also in the middle of an event when the progress of the event while be compromised if scoring problems are not fixed.
Scoring v Philosophy
One example was. when we were dealing with introducing the rover pair and their results into the scoring of the Seniors Pairs Qualifier. A player came up to discuss how the overall winner of the “Play With The Experts” was determined. It became clear that they wanted to discuss the principle that should apply to determining the winner.
- “Has there been an error in the scores?” “No”
- “Has there been any failure to implement the conditions of contest?” “No”
- “Then perhaps you can leave us to sort out the other event and we can discuss the philophy of your event another time.”
Today's problems v yesterday's problems
Today we had problems with the scoring system during the first round of Seniors Swiss Teams. We were trying to understand the size of the problem and now much intervention was needed to recover all the scores. A player who was about to play in in the Open Pairs wanted to look at problem with the scores from the previous evening's Mixed Pivot Teams. I was trying to politely but firmly tell the player to come back in an hour when a colleague came to take details of the problem and promised to follow it up.
Lot of scratching of heads, printing of scores, and ticking boxes in the scores database eventually solved the problems in the Seniors Swiss Teams (with minimal impact on the players). When we came to catch up with the problem from the Mixed Pivot Teams, it turned out to be same problem that his opponents had raised earlier in the day. Despite both sides thinking there was an error, it turns out that both teams had made the same error in scoring up, and the scores we had were correct.
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